From: "curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : While I agree with you that the problem is probably unresolvable at this point because 1) there are too many guns already to ever be "controlled," 2) there would be a huge black market of them if they ever *were* truly controlled, and 3) Americans really *do* have a "people problem" that is larger than its gun problem, I was nonetheless horrified that the gun manufacturers and the NRA could be so crazy as to try to use the "smart gun" thing to make guns MORE available. And to argue that owning a "smart gun" should allow the person who owns it to get on a plane with it. That speaks to me of a country beyond repair, and possibly beyond the hope of rehabilitation. I completely agree with you that if a child (or anyone) dies as the result of a gun kept in the home, at the hands of one of their children, both parents should be tried for murder and spend the rest of their lives in prison. And I do feel fortunate to live in a country that avoided the gun insanity that America fell prey to. C: Holland has just under 17 million people and the US has about 313 million. Comparing countries problems has a bit of a built in bullshit factor. We are a way more diverse culture with many built-in problems European countries are just starting to have to deal with on a much smaller scale. I'm going to have to quibble with the "bullshit factor" comment, Curtis. Yes, the Netherlands has fewer overall people than the U.S., and yes, it has fewer guns because owning and carrying guns *never* gained a foothold here the way it did in the U.S. But Amsterdam actually has a significantly *higher* population density than Washington, DC (12,670/sq mi as opposed to Washington's 9,316.4/sq mi). Seems to me that we should be able to compare gun homicide statistics in two cities of a similar density. Doing so, I find that in 2010 the average rate of gun homicides in Washington, DC seems to have been 21.9 per 10,000 people and the average rate of gun homicides in Amsterdam seems to have been 0.29 per 10,000 people. That puts Washington's rate about *75 times higher* than Amsterdam's. So I'm back to "America has a people problem." Here is an interesting point from 2005 gun death study: "gun murders comprise less than a third of that total -- about 9,000 per year in recent years. With accidental gun deaths steady at around 500-600 per year, the bulk of those 32,000 "gun deaths" are suicides. " Of the murder rate, which had been steadily falling, it is estimated that 1/3 to 1/2 are drug related. Prohibition raises its ugly head again. Could more access to mental health help stop some of those suicides? Maybe. We're back to Andy Borowitz' perceptive one-liner: I'm sure there are many advantages of living outside the US. But if you are not in the drug business or feel like killing yourself, getting shot is probably the least of my problems! True. But how about the issue of "feeling safe?" I haven't felt *unsafe* walking anywhere, at any time of day or night, in any city I've lived in or visited in Europe since I moved here in 2003. This statement includes *supposed* high-crime areas of Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, and Marseilles. Hearkening back to what I said earlier about population density, Paris' is one of the highest in Europe, at 55,000/sq mi. And still no feelings of being unsafe, anywhere. That *absence* of the near-constant fear of random crime is one of the best parts of living outside the U.S. Yes, there are places on the planet that are worse, but that doesn't alter the fact that the country that considers itself "the best" in so many things is one of the most dangerous to its own citizens on the planet. One of the things I don't miss is that near-constant fear. People in big cities in America just get used to it, so much so that they don't realize that they're walking around in an adrenalin-pumped-up state all the time, with part of their awareness always wasted sustaining low-level fight-or-flight mode. Somehow I don't think this is the "reduction of stress" Maharishi promised to the country that has the highest percentage of TMers.
