4 ms·

"Essentially no gun violence"* *If you ignore wide swaths of the 20th century, during which certain disarmed Dutch citizens were systematically sent to be exec

"Essentially no gun violence"* *If you ignore wide swaths of the 20th century, during which certain disarmed Dutch citizens were systematically sent to be executed. Which by the way, happened within plus or minus 1 expected lifetime of your future children.

camgunz 5y ago
Unless we foolishly enter a time machine, this is irrelevant.
- notch656a 5y ago
  >Unless we foolishly enter a time machine, this is irrelevant. I don't think the holocaust is "irrelevant." When you stop believing it can happen again (which apparently you've done), you lose the defenses to keep it from happening again. I'm very glad my minority kid has means to self defense if people ever choose to attack her perceived ethnic group. Also, there are plenty of murders in Netherlands, too. Although not as many (but then again, stay away from gangs and a few large cities in US, and you'll probably find you're far from any non-lottery-ticket risk of murder). - Our kids won't ever have the internal debate about reproductive rights: birth control will be a norm and abortions will be available. Neither will ours, many US states allow this. - We'll stay healthy more easily with healthier food and a more active, less car-dependent lifestyle. Healthy food is widely available in US and you can live with just a bicycle in places like Chicago or even in rural areas if you stay fit. - Our lives won't revolve around our jobs, we'll be able to be more present for our kids. I have this same thing in US. - We won't have to solve all of our problems (education, health care, housing) with huge piles of money, driving us to work harder and take jobs that exploit others just so we can stay ahead. My family makes maybe 75th percentile at best in our city (and I'm guessing you will too if you're internationally mobile). If you live away from the coasts that is plenty for those, like in Midwest. Is that huge piles of money? - Our kids will probably not have to spend a ton of money or time taking care of us when we're old. In US kids are not deemed slave to their parents, they can do as they wish after reaching adulthood. - Our kids will grow up in a more multicultural environment, hopefully giving them a broader view of humanity. I live in one of the most multicultural nations in the world. The city I live in, in fact, I am a minority as a white European descent person. Will Europeans be minority where you live in Netherlands? Netherlands sounds like a great place. I'm sure it'd be fun to live there. But the reasons you give make no sense, you can achieve all your goals in America and many other nations. I think you're just culturally, ideologically, or politically interested in Netherlands. Which is a great reason to go of course.
  - camgunz 5y ago
    The holocaust really has no relevance to gun policy. Plenty of well-armed nations were invaded by the Germans and subjected to its horrors. I don't want to get into a whole 2A discussion but, this is precisely the kind of garbage pro-gun rhetoric we're hoping to escape by leaving. The rest of your comment feels like it's from the perspective of someone who's not tried these lifestyles, or is naive to their costs. Cycling in the US is super dangerous. Living in the Midwest subjects you to intense levels of religiosity, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and a thorough lack of multiculturalism. Obviously kids aren't obligated to take care of their parents, but we don't want to force them into a system of bad choices. A nation without equal access to reproductive freedom teaches each of its citizens that women do not have a fundamental right to control their bodies. It is true it's possible to carve out the kind of life we want here, or perhaps other non-EU countries. We don't know if we'll stay in NL past a year or two. But it's really about what kind of society we want to live in and what values we want our kids to absorb. And yeah, the US really just isn't on that list.
    - notch656a 5y ago
      >The rest of your comment feels like it's from the perspective of someone who's not tried these lifestyles, or is naive to their costs. This couldn't be further from the truth. I was born and raised in the midwest, and founded my career there. I raised my family there for some time as well (and you may be suprised, but my brown wife and half brown daughter were never mistreated because of their race, even in our white town I (white guy) was the only one of us to ever receive scornful racial slur said to me). There was never a single 'shooting' you are so worried about at my school, or any of the surrounding ones. The only school where I can think of where that even happens is the closest big city. The most violence I ever saw were a few consensual fist-fights amongst middle and high schoolers, which always ended when one opponent gave up. My parents were school teachers. Which in rural America is to say, they made barely more than a factory worker. Like the factory workers, we had a single family home, health care, and I received such a good education at my shitty midwestern public school. With that rural ('free') public school education I received a full scholarship to a top 10 engineering school in the US. >Living in the Midwest subjects you to intense levels of religiosity, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and a thorough lack of multiculturalism This is utter bullshit, have you ever lived in the midwest? I experienced none of this in Chicago, in fact in many areas I was minority as a white person. One neighborhood I lived in on the north side, probably half the people were LGBTQ. I worked extensively with people of all nationalities; in fact most business owners I met in my line of work came from either 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. Yes I lived most my life in the US (although I have lived and fought in 3rd world and married a 3rd world national). I used a bike exclusively for 5+ years. I exclusively biked in Chicago, which is a walkable Midwest city, and had healthcare/education/decent apartment all for ~75th percentile wage. I was hurt a few times on a bicycle but never murdered. Were I to have owned a gun while in Chicago, I thankly never would have had occasion to have used it, because unless I was dumb enough to sell drugs on the south side no one had any interest in murdering me. >A nation without equal access to reproductive freedom teaches each of its citizens that women do not have a fundamental right to control their bodies. There are plenty of states in Europe too with reproductive rights controversy, such as Poland. To suggest contraceptives or abortion are inaccessible in US is just fabrication. >The holocaust really has no relevance to gun policy. It does if you want people to have some sort of defense to soldiers, even if it means dying on their feet instead of their knees. The ghetto uprising held off the Nazis for days and that was under incredibly unfavorable gun policy. When the Russians attempted this same genocide in Chechnya, widespread arms in Chechen hands prevented a holocaust sort of scenario and in fact the Chechens even gained independence for some time. And in the French underground, policies restricting arms to civilians in France played significant factor in issues with arming the underground (who helped liberate Paris from holocaust causing Nazis). >garbage pro-gun rhetoric we're hoping to escape by leaving. You haven't escaped it. People are printing FGC-9 and other home manufactured firearms in the Netherlands as we speak. And jail sentence is very lax/minimal there compared to US, so you can be assured those trading in arms in Netherlands are really not worried about being caught. Here is example of people selling them in NL on insta [0]. Oh and ammo -- don't worry it can easily be made from completely unregulated components in EU, although mostly only people in EU interested in firearms know about this. Anyway, have fun in Netherlands. You do have my jealousy for the experience. It's always fun experiencing life in new places, and I hope it is a great time for you. [0] https://twitter.com/Xaniken/status/1345308913189715970/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Xaniken/status/1345308913189715970/photo...
dang 5y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30074656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30074656.

camgunz 5y ago

Unless we foolishly enter a time machine, this is irrelevant.

notch656a 5y ago
>Unless we foolishly enter a time machine, this is irrelevant. I don't think the holocaust is "irrelevant." When you stop believing it can happen again (which apparently you've done), you lose the defenses to keep it from happening again. I'm very glad my minority kid has means to self defense if people ever choose to attack her perceived ethnic group. Also, there are plenty of murders in Netherlands, too. Although not as many (but then again, stay away from gangs and a few large cities in US, and you'll probably find you're far from any non-lottery-ticket risk of murder). - Our kids won't ever have the internal debate about reproductive rights: birth control will be a norm and abortions will be available. Neither will ours, many US states allow this. - We'll stay healthy more easily with healthier food and a more active, less car-dependent lifestyle. Healthy food is widely available in US and you can live with just a bicycle in places like Chicago or even in rural areas if you stay fit. - Our lives won't revolve around our jobs, we'll be able to be more present for our kids. I have this same thing in US. - We won't have to solve all of our problems (education, health care, housing) with huge piles of money, driving us to work harder and take jobs that exploit others just so we can stay ahead. My family makes maybe 75th percentile at best in our city (and I'm guessing you will too if you're internationally mobile). If you live away from the coasts that is plenty for those, like in Midwest. Is that huge piles of money? - Our kids will probably not have to spend a ton of money or time taking care of us when we're old. In US kids are not deemed slave to their parents, they can do as they wish after reaching adulthood. - Our kids will grow up in a more multicultural environment, hopefully giving them a broader view of humanity. I live in one of the most multicultural nations in the world. The city I live in, in fact, I am a minority as a white European descent person. Will Europeans be minority where you live in Netherlands? Netherlands sounds like a great place. I'm sure it'd be fun to live there. But the reasons you give make no sense, you can achieve all your goals in America and many other nations. I think you're just culturally, ideologically, or politically interested in Netherlands. Which is a great reason to go of course.
- camgunz 5y ago
  The holocaust really has no relevance to gun policy. Plenty of well-armed nations were invaded by the Germans and subjected to its horrors. I don't want to get into a whole 2A discussion but, this is precisely the kind of garbage pro-gun rhetoric we're hoping to escape by leaving. The rest of your comment feels like it's from the perspective of someone who's not tried these lifestyles, or is naive to their costs. Cycling in the US is super dangerous. Living in the Midwest subjects you to intense levels of religiosity, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and a thorough lack of multiculturalism. Obviously kids aren't obligated to take care of their parents, but we don't want to force them into a system of bad choices. A nation without equal access to reproductive freedom teaches each of its citizens that women do not have a fundamental right to control their bodies. It is true it's possible to carve out the kind of life we want here, or perhaps other non-EU countries. We don't know if we'll stay in NL past a year or two. But it's really about what kind of society we want to live in and what values we want our kids to absorb. And yeah, the US really just isn't on that list.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    >The rest of your comment feels like it's from the perspective of someone who's not tried these lifestyles, or is naive to their costs. This couldn't be further from the truth. I was born and raised in the midwest, and founded my career there. I raised my family there for some time as well (and you may be suprised, but my brown wife and half brown daughter were never mistreated because of their race, even in our white town I (white guy) was the only one of us to ever receive scornful racial slur said to me). There was never a single 'shooting' you are so worried about at my school, or any of the surrounding ones. The only school where I can think of where that even happens is the closest big city. The most violence I ever saw were a few consensual fist-fights amongst middle and high schoolers, which always ended when one opponent gave up. My parents were school teachers. Which in rural America is to say, they made barely more than a factory worker. Like the factory workers, we had a single family home, health care, and I received such a good education at my shitty midwestern public school. With that rural ('free') public school education I received a full scholarship to a top 10 engineering school in the US. >Living in the Midwest subjects you to intense levels of religiosity, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and a thorough lack of multiculturalism This is utter bullshit, have you ever lived in the midwest? I experienced none of this in Chicago, in fact in many areas I was minority as a white person. One neighborhood I lived in on the north side, probably half the people were LGBTQ. I worked extensively with people of all nationalities; in fact most business owners I met in my line of work came from either 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. Yes I lived most my life in the US (although I have lived and fought in 3rd world and married a 3rd world national). I used a bike exclusively for 5+ years. I exclusively biked in Chicago, which is a walkable Midwest city, and had healthcare/education/decent apartment all for ~75th percentile wage. I was hurt a few times on a bicycle but never murdered. Were I to have owned a gun while in Chicago, I thankly never would have had occasion to have used it, because unless I was dumb enough to sell drugs on the south side no one had any interest in murdering me. >A nation without equal access to reproductive freedom teaches each of its citizens that women do not have a fundamental right to control their bodies. There are plenty of states in Europe too with reproductive rights controversy, such as Poland. To suggest contraceptives or abortion are inaccessible in US is just fabrication. >The holocaust really has no relevance to gun policy. It does if you want people to have some sort of defense to soldiers, even if it means dying on their feet instead of their knees. The ghetto uprising held off the Nazis for days and that was under incredibly unfavorable gun policy. When the Russians attempted this same genocide in Chechnya, widespread arms in Chechen hands prevented a holocaust sort of scenario and in fact the Chechens even gained independence for some time. And in the French underground, policies restricting arms to civilians in France played significant factor in issues with arming the underground (who helped liberate Paris from holocaust causing Nazis). >garbage pro-gun rhetoric we're hoping to escape by leaving. You haven't escaped it. People are printing FGC-9 and other home manufactured firearms in the Netherlands as we speak. And jail sentence is very lax/minimal there compared to US, so you can be assured those trading in arms in Netherlands are really not worried about being caught. Here is example of people selling them in NL on insta [0]. Oh and ammo -- don't worry it can easily be made from completely unregulated components in EU, although mostly only people in EU interested in firearms know about this. Anyway, have fun in Netherlands. You do have my jealousy for the experience. It's always fun experiencing life in new places, and I hope it is a great time for you. [0] https://twitter.com/Xaniken/status/1345308913189715970/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Xaniken/status/1345308913189715970/photo...

dang 5y ago

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30074656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30074656.