29 ms·

For example in the media. Let's take major newspapers like _The Times_ or the _Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung_ as examples. You will not find any article that

For example in the media. Let's take major newspapers like _The Times_ or the _Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung_ as examples. You will not find any article that mentions 2nd amendment rights while not taking side against gun ownership. Every time the American practice is mentioned, it is scoffed at. At least by implication.

bawolff 6y ago
So? make your own newspaper. A newspaper (especially a privately owned one) not agreeing with you hardly amounts to suppression.
belorn 6y ago
A German news paper like Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has little reason to mention the 2nd amendment rights, because there are no 2nd amendment rights in Germany. What most countries in EU has is gun ownership license, similar to a driving license, and thus the default right that people without a license has is no rights. Permission is given by the government, and thus the government set the terms. In the US this power relationship is the other way around. People have a default right to bear arms, and so government have to take away rights in order to enforce gun control. One could easily imagine a country where driving a car would be part of a constitution, in which case a driving license would be a hot discussion. How, when and where should the government be allowed to step in and remove peoples right to do with their car property as they wish? People from other countries would look at the debate and find it a bit odd.
pksebben 6y ago
Perhaps there's a good reason for that. Not all ideas are created equal, and the proliferation of mass shootings in the states should serve as a strong signal that our gun laws are dumb. Somehow, the conversation has stalled here because some people actually believe they're going to protect their freedoms with violence. You know, by fighting against a government equipped with stealth bombers and death drones and navy seals. With their hunting rifles. I served in the army. The idea that civilians could put up anything of a fight is a fantasy more ridiculous than kung fury. What keeps you safe from "the government" is that soldiers are taught that they are there to serve and that American citizens are off-limits, not that they are somehow quivering in their boots about losing a fight with your cute little club of weekend warriors that play dress-up in the woods with walkie talkies.
- mindslight 6y ago
  I agree with you on the practical utility of the 2nd amendment for defending against tyranny (and if anything it seems to be more of a distraction, encouraging tyranny to developed unchecked with the idea that it will be fought at some future breaking point). But with regards to school shootings there is a much more prominent and straightforward cause - mass media itself, both news and entertainment. And they're continually working to write themselves out of the narrative by directing focus at inanimate objects.
  - mbrodersen 6y ago
    I am not sure I understand your argument. Are you saying that it was actually journalists that were running around shooting the kids, and not kids wanting to take revenge with guns they had easy access to? And that without easy access to guns the kinds would have killed the same number of people with, say, a kitchen knife? Really?
    - mindslight 6y ago
      It seems like you willfully misunderstood my argument, as talking about journalists shooting kids is some obvious caricature. Society is held together by people's values and individual adherence to shared rules - aka culture. Kids, like everyone else (eg cops), are acting out cultural norms, being mostly defined by mass media. Entertainment media mostly consists of easy-to-write fight scenes where the main characters dispose of some endless supply of nameless "bad guys". A few hits or shots, that one is gone, move on to the next one. No scenes showing henchman #17 hugging his kids goodbye that morning, or henchman #31's parents grieving. Just purely transactional force-of-will violence - sound familiar? Furthermore, news media then glorifies shooting events when they do happen, showering the perpetrator with attention and making sure they go down in infamy - it's actually a quite precocious way to get one's 15 minutes of fame. And of course there's that other uncomfortable issue of why school environments cause kids to want to kill their peers in the first place! But there's no straightforward approaches to those, and they're held in place by entrenched incentives (lazy writing, clickbait advertising, ass-covering school administrators), while the people speaking up for the inanimate objects are easy to write off.
EdwardDiego 6y ago
People outside the US scoff because of the ridiculous amount of harm done by overly easy access to firearms in the US and your inability to discuss it seriously as a nation, as profoundly ridiculed by the Onion[1]. As people outside the US are fond of pointing out, your right to bear arms came from the 2nd _amendment_ so you know, you could always make another amendment. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_To_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_To_Prevent_This,%27_...

bawolff 6y ago

So? make your own newspaper. A newspaper (especially a privately owned one) not agreeing with you hardly amounts to suppression.

belorn 6y ago

A German news paper like Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has little reason to mention the 2nd amendment rights, because there are no 2nd amendment rights in Germany. What most countries in EU has is gun ownership license, similar to a driving license, and thus the default right that people without a license has is no rights. Permission is given by the government, and thus the government set the terms. In the US this power relationship is the other way around. People have a default right to bear arms, and so government have to take away rights in order to enforce gun control. One could easily imagine a country where driving a car would be part of a constitution, in which case a driving license would be a hot discussion. How, when and where should the government be allowed to step in and remove peoples right to do with their car property as they wish? People from other countries would look at the debate and find it a bit odd.

pksebben 6y ago

Perhaps there's a good reason for that. Not all ideas are created equal, and the proliferation of mass shootings in the states should serve as a strong signal that our gun laws are dumb. Somehow, the conversation has stalled here because some people actually believe they're going to protect their freedoms with violence. You know, by fighting against a government equipped with stealth bombers and death drones and navy seals. With their hunting rifles. I served in the army. The idea that civilians could put up anything of a fight is a fantasy more ridiculous than kung fury. What keeps you safe from "the government" is that soldiers are taught that they are there to serve and that American citizens are off-limits, not that they are somehow quivering in their boots about losing a fight with your cute little club of weekend warriors that play dress-up in the woods with walkie talkies.

mindslight 6y ago
I agree with you on the practical utility of the 2nd amendment for defending against tyranny (and if anything it seems to be more of a distraction, encouraging tyranny to developed unchecked with the idea that it will be fought at some future breaking point). But with regards to school shootings there is a much more prominent and straightforward cause - mass media itself, both news and entertainment. And they're continually working to write themselves out of the narrative by directing focus at inanimate objects.
- mbrodersen 6y ago
  I am not sure I understand your argument. Are you saying that it was actually journalists that were running around shooting the kids, and not kids wanting to take revenge with guns they had easy access to? And that without easy access to guns the kinds would have killed the same number of people with, say, a kitchen knife? Really?
  - mindslight 6y ago
    It seems like you willfully misunderstood my argument, as talking about journalists shooting kids is some obvious caricature. Society is held together by people's values and individual adherence to shared rules - aka culture. Kids, like everyone else (eg cops), are acting out cultural norms, being mostly defined by mass media. Entertainment media mostly consists of easy-to-write fight scenes where the main characters dispose of some endless supply of nameless "bad guys". A few hits or shots, that one is gone, move on to the next one. No scenes showing henchman #17 hugging his kids goodbye that morning, or henchman #31's parents grieving. Just purely transactional force-of-will violence - sound familiar? Furthermore, news media then glorifies shooting events when they do happen, showering the perpetrator with attention and making sure they go down in infamy - it's actually a quite precocious way to get one's 15 minutes of fame. And of course there's that other uncomfortable issue of why school environments cause kids to want to kill their peers in the first place! But there's no straightforward approaches to those, and they're held in place by entrenched incentives (lazy writing, clickbait advertising, ass-covering school administrators), while the people speaking up for the inanimate objects are easy to write off.

EdwardDiego 6y ago

People outside the US scoff because of the ridiculous amount of harm done by overly easy access to firearms in the US and your inability to discuss it seriously as a nation, as profoundly ridiculed by the Onion[1]. As people outside the US are fond of pointing out, your right to bear arms came from the 2nd _amendment_ so you know, you could always make another amendment. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_To_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_To_Prevent_This,%27_...