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And if your main guy gets shot, that's just an excuse to start the civil war you've been prepping for all these years.
this bigotry you have is why this happened today
I look at the US and I see one of the richest, most successful, and most impactful countries in the world (and not through any sort of low-liquidity arbitrage like being a tax haven).
Our crime rates are moderately higher than countries in similar wealth brackets, but this is entirely (and I mean, non-hyperbolically, entirely) attributable to factors besides our relatively high gun ownership rates.
> inextricably tied to the unique ethno-cultural characteristics
> scots-irish borderer culture
Hate to break it to you but the scots-irish centers of checks notes West Virginia and Bakersfield, CA are not the economic powerhouses of the USA like the Northeast or CA.
Gun ownership areas and GDP in the US are almost entirely negatively-correlated.
Rural areas have higher GDP, yes, but not relevant
Together the Scots-Irish block in pre 1900 Australia was comparable to that in colonial America circa Indpendance - some US States had a greater weighting than others.
The two countries were intertwined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalpa_rescue
Not the gigantic, habitable, natural resource filled landmass?!
I know about the Puritans, Quakers, and Cavaliers. I've read Albion's Seed.
Take a look at Scots-Irish demography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans#/media/...
You think that correlates to areas of higher US GDP?
You keep adding more guns talking about how you need them to protect yourselves from the other guns and things just keep getting worse and worse. You're on a downward spiral of gun violence and fear.
You talk about wealth but it's not evenly distributed at all and there is a reason your richest live in walled off communities and your poorest die early due to lack of access to preventative medicine and quality nutrition.
Wealth means little when you live with a constant threat of violence, it's like being a billionaire in China or Russia.
Most of us are not living in fear. If you say you rarely have to protect yourself then you’re defeating your own argument.
the problem is the rhetoric from left media. they need to calm down and quit driving deranged people to action.
That is you in another comment in this post. You are literally describing living in fear. For most people in the west the worry about needing to protect themselves never factors into their life it just isn't something we need to worry about, this constant fear is a distinctly American issue.
If you say I bought a gun because I'm afraid of being a victim of crime then you are spending your whole life in fear of crime. It is hard for people who grow up in cultures like that to understand but most people in rich western countries don't live in fear of crime like that. It just isn't something most of us think about at all.
So, I am scared of being a victim especially with criminals being released from jail at an alarming rate. But with a gun it’s less of a concern.
But again, the inflammatory rhetoric, your bigotry around guns, is what divided the nation enough to cause this today.
The sad part is you can repeatedly say you live in fear in these comments while still actively denying you live in fear. Most people in rich western countries don't live like that, I don't ever worry about being a victim of a violent crime, it isn't on my radar and it isn't for almost everyone in Australia, Canada, the UK, and Western Europe. It just isn't something we have to think or worry about so that it why it is so weird watching Americans constantly be afraid but think their situation is good.
With guns your fear isn't lessened because easy access to guns means you also worry that the person you're arguing with on the street has one too so it's constantly a concern. Criminals in Australia, Canada, the UK, etc can still get guns of course but they are hard to get and expensive so they are almost never used for random crimes. They are almost always used for criminal on criminal violence.
People like you who refuse to accept that the american system isn't working is the problem because you refuse to accept that things need to change to improve.
The American system is working fine, you see you have nothing to worry about except your hoplophobia. If a scary person shows up with a gun just call the police right?
>The American system is working fine
I honestly don't see how you can say both these things in the same comment. You do understand that basically no one in other developed western countries live in fear right? Living your whole life in fear is a uniquely american experience amongst that cohort and that is why we say the American system isn't working.
>If a scary person shows up with a gun just call the police right?
I literally have never worried about a scary person with a gun showing up at my house except when I lived in the US. It isn't on the list of things I'd even think about this year outside of conversations like this where Americans mention it as something they are genuinely afraid of.
look im scared of criminals, not inanimate objects. and if someone shows up with or without a gun to cause you harm what will you do? you’re asking everybody to be a victim to help resolve your mental health issue. see a professional!
do you think you’re going to be successful?
No, it won't be successful because America has shown time and time again it would rather watch classrooms of children be murdered than give up their guns. You'd rather have to think about mass shootings every time you go to the mall or church than give up any freedoms around your guns. You don't get over that kind of fear in a generation or two.
you don’t get it. you want to ban guns and save 15k lives a year, yet drinking takes 140k lives a year. why aren’t you scared of alcohol? you have a higher chance of dying from a drunk driver or drinking yourself than being shot. so why don’t you focus on saving more lives?
According to https://vpc.org/studies/justifiable23.pdf the FBI said there were 316 "justifiable homicides" in 2019.
>why aren’t you scared of alcohol?
Why do you assume I'm not? Alcohol is horrible, it's the only drug that isn't just socially acceptable but often feels socially required despite its dangers.
>so why don’t you focus on saving more lives?
I'm a human, I'm able to focus on multiple things in my life.
if you actually concerned with saving lives then again, focus on what will save the most.
you keep continuing this conversation like you’re going to suddenly convince me to stop wanting to protect myself. additionally on HN people are set in their beliefs. you won’t convince anybody of anything here.
No, we're not. Nor has it been during my entire life. This sounds like the kind of stereotype only someone that doesn't live here believes... the kind of stereotyping that allows you to say, "we're so much better than them!" Oh sure, there are some that are and there are some places, though relatively few, where you probably ought to be.
But if gun availability is the root of the problem as you seem to be suggesting, you simply aren't thinking very deeply about the reality in context with history. Guns are more regulated now in US than at any other time in its history (OK, given some modest ebb and flow in laws passed and litigation over the past few decades). But do you really think that during its entire 248 year history the entire country has been in a state of constant fear? If increased gun prohibitions are the answer to lawlessness certainly that fear must have been terrifically more pronounced in the past and we should already have a highly regulated gun ownership regime. I find it highly unlikely that my ancestor's ancestors were shaken to their core for fear of being shot (and some of my family goes back to the 1850s wild west in Utah!)
Gun availability in the US is simply not a recent phenomena. They use to teach shooting courses in some public high schools no less. Suggesting that after a hundred years of ever increasing gun regulation that somehow guns are the problem is just silly.
So yes, for the whole history of america you lot have been in a state of perpetual fear of things you believe your guns will protect you from which have only shown to be made worse by your dependence on guns.
You have a very superficial understanding of Brazilian history.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world I'm referring to the countries in dark blue.
Countries in light blue are subgroups of the Western world and not groups apart. Just say rich/developed Western countries instead.
> You're not really comparable.
Of course not because you are cherry picking data. You want to compare a single ethnically diverse and large country (USA) with many ethnically homogeneous, small countries with much older population. You're an ignorant racist.