4 ms·

Grecy, with all the respect I have for Australia, there is a HUGE difference culturally between your population demographics and ours. The primary reason why th

Grecy, with all the respect I have for Australia, there is a HUGE difference culturally between your population demographics and ours. The primary reason why the Australian ban (noting that 65-80% of guns are still in the general population in your home country, and never reclaimed by the ban - because who's going to enforce that? really?) will never work here. Australia = 97% white/Caucasian, 2% Asian, 1% everything else. The US is a vastly different landscape and our population comes from ALL over the world. If I were to introduce very deeply concentrated communities of 50 other religions, 15 other race demographics, and stir the pot the debate becomes that much more problematic. Back to Australia - having a very, very homogeneous society makes it easy to pass and maintain order in comparison to what makes our country so incomparable with yours on this issue in particular, as a model to follow. Same occurs with the Japanese model - so, leaning on that won't help either. I respect you, and I believe you have a valid point on face value but when you dig into the complexity and what I consider a unique trait of the US citizen (as a positive! for our diversity!) ... we will never ban guns. It's a poverty issue here, not a gun issue.

SteveLAnderson 11y ago
How do you know it won't work? Seems like speculation to me.
grecy 11y ago
You're saying that because of the demographics, diversity and poverty of the American population, putting restrictions on guns is impossible? That same population has gay marriage (before Australia and Japan), and (in places) legal marijuana. The reasons you state don't mean that laws can not be passed an enforced. You're also giving up before you even try. Nobody said it was going to be easy - but if it brings gun deaths per capita in line with the rest of the developed world, I think everyone agrees it would be worthwhile.
rbg246 11y ago
Hi, Such a complicated issue! But if I may correct a few errors,Australia is 60% British descent not 97% which is decreasing year on year. Within the larger cities Melbourne and Sydney there are levels of diversity observationally comparable to most large US cities. Our rural cities have a much higher homogeneous population but I believe that is similar to the USA, observationally anyway. The 65% guns still in population is an interesting statistic but as a well read Australian I am surprised I have never heard this before and suspect it is a politically motivated / chery picked statistic. Probably a better statistic if we are talking about gun violence would be the decrease in the levels of gum violence that have occurred since the buy back of guns in 1997.

SteveLAnderson 11y ago

How do you know it won't work? Seems like speculation to me.

grecy 11y ago

You're saying that because of the demographics, diversity and poverty of the American population, putting restrictions on guns is impossible? That same population has gay marriage (before Australia and Japan), and (in places) legal marijuana. The reasons you state don't mean that laws can not be passed an enforced. You're also giving up before you even try. Nobody said it was going to be easy - but if it brings gun deaths per capita in line with the rest of the developed world, I think everyone agrees it would be worthwhile.

rbg246 11y ago

Hi, Such a complicated issue! But if I may correct a few errors,Australia is 60% British descent not 97% which is decreasing year on year. Within the larger cities Melbourne and Sydney there are levels of diversity observationally comparable to most large US cities. Our rural cities have a much higher homogeneous population but I believe that is similar to the USA, observationally anyway. The 65% guns still in population is an interesting statistic but as a well read Australian I am surprised I have never heard this before and suspect it is a politically motivated / chery picked statistic. Probably a better statistic if we are talking about gun violence would be the decrease in the levels of gum violence that have occurred since the buy back of guns in 1997.