One more thing. I would suspect that the higher rates of violence in
the US have to do with cultural attitudes towards drugs and alcohol.
We know that the US has a much bigger problem with drugs (I'm
classifing alcohol as a drug here) than Europe. Probably something to
do with the combination of puritanism on one hand and the frontier
ethic on the other.
Perhaps if we overhauled our societal reaction to drug use we might
have more success in reduing violence than through more direct control
over weapons. We should reduce the drinking age to 18, encourage and
model realistic alcohol use, stop the war on drugs. The gang crack
wars of the 80s and 90s fueled an incredible amount of violence, not
just in themselves, but because people who percieve that they are in a
violent environment are much more likely to be violent themselves.
Likewise, I believe that the current rash of school
shootings/knifings/bombings is really a fad, like streaking, hula hoops
or pet rocks. I'm not trivializing it, but I think that looking at the
problem this way makes it much more understandable. This is something
that feeds on itself...people seeing school violence in the news get
the idea that this is an imaginable response. We know that communities
can have similar epidemics of suicides. All the school shootings make
more school shootings more likely as more people get the idea that this
is something that people do.
One more addition. The worst mass murderer in US history didn't use a
gun, he used fertilizer, fuel oil, and a truck.
=====
Darryl
Think Galactically -- Act Terrestrially
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