On 1/6/2017 3:36 PM, John Hudson wrote:
More will be revealed, for sure, but this can't devolve into a
gun/anti-gun argument as there really has to be more to the story than
Really .......... these mass shootings in the USA are becoming as common as
daily football and baseball scores!
Have you considered that you may be a silly person? :-)
You have a gun and violence culture that is frightening.
I agree with you on that generality, and would add fear based - and yet . . .
I live in California, which is about 9% more populous than Canada. As far as I recall, we've had one mass shooting of
the sort to which you refer in the last few years. I also recall a few incidents in Canada, a couple of school shootings
at least?
Consider that it may not be that you northerners are less prone to violence, but, at least in part, that there are so
few of you. The US population is about 9 times that of Canada, so any direct comparison of absolute numbers of anything
is meaningless.
Back around '67-'68, a good friend and ex-roommate called one Fri or Sat. evening. He was highly agitated, wanted to
know what was going on, said "Berkeley is burning!!!" I looked out front of the apartment he used to live in as my
roomer, and said it was completely quiet. I said we were just about to go out to a rock band performance. He said "You
can't go out, Ray-Gun has declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew!"
I looked outside again, shrugged, we drove to the venue in another part of Berkeley, had a good time and drove home. We
never saw anything out of the ordinary. No cops, sirens, nothing.
It turned out that there had been a sort of riot on South side, on a couple of blocks of Telegraph Ave. Not up to some
'events' after Midwest football games. A few windows were broken, a couple of trash cans set on fire. The TV news used
carefully chosen camera angles and inflammatory words to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
I've lived in the US for coming on 73 years. 70+ of that close to Oakland and Richmond, cities famous for drug and gang
violence. I worked for several years in the heart of East Oakland, where most of that city's violence was concentrated.
Have I on very rare occasions been uneasy, yes.
But I've never seen a hand gun on the street other than in the holsters of police, never seen a gun fired other than at
a range, and that only when the US military forced me to go a couple of times.
I have been completely unaffected in any direct way by "these mass shootings in the USA [that] are becoming as common as
daily football and baseball scores!" I imagine you would find that to be true of the vast majority of US denizens. The
news media do their level best to scare everyone to death, but that doesn't mean the things they use for that purpose
are meaningful threats.
We here north of the 49th parallel are by no means surprised at these daily
outrages.
Nor am I surprised at the less frequent similar events in Canada, although I was surprised by the first big school
shooting there that I was aware of, some years ago.
Pay yor NRA dues and this is what you get.
I have never owned a gun, nor belonged to the NRA, nor, as far as I know have any of my immediate family. Noise aside,
the NRA has a membership of about 5 million, that's ~1.5% of the US population and ~6-7% of US gun owners.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/15/most-gun-owners-dont-belong-to-the-nra-and-they-dont-agree-with-it-either/?utm_term=.de63e41317bf>
Anybody with half a brain will avoid the USA. We do !!
And we appreciate it! It's too darn crowed here anyway, and we don't need
people who will panic at a car backfire.
If you enjoy being paranoid (although I gather it may be harmful to your health), tarring others based on false
statistics, throwing your regular anti US smoke bombs here, go right ahead.
I'll go right on living here and enjoying it. I hope you don't mind the occasional foray into Canada on our part. It's
been a four years, but I expect we will be back. I've not seen Saskatchewan or the Maritimes. I can live without the
former, but would like to visit the latter, if you are sure it's safe. :-)
Down to Earth Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
--
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