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> And then I always get in debates on here why as a European I would not want to live in the US for any amount of money in the world. What the hell are you doin

> And then I always get in debates on here why as a European I would not want to live in the US for any amount of money in the world. What the hell are you doing over there? What kind of tragedy will be enough for the majority to want gun restrictions, instead of repeating the same idiotic and brainwashed idea that guns keep people safe? This isn't an argument, but as a person from the US living in the EU specifically because I got tired of senseless violence I realized that on scale Europe is more volatile and prone to senseless violence. I was in Ukraine in the Fall of '21 during the Belarusian and Poland proxy war where hapless refugees were used for political aims and as cannon fodder while Russia was preparing for invasion. Then the invasion sparked a conflict not seen since WW2 with full out kinetic warfare with drones, tanks, and anti-ballistic missiles and warships broke out on this continent. And depending on where you are in the EU it is happening in your backyard--personally speaking I'm like 700Km from Ukraine. And the fact that Russians were occupying Chernobyl without a clue of what the hell they were doing and they were shooting in Zaporizhzhia and people just went about their day sent me into a state depression for weeks if not months. Most Europeans seem to just be going about their life like it doesn't matter either and that is a much bigger worry to me since this seriously has the potential of ending in Nuclear warfare and people seem equally as desensitized to something that was thought to be impossible since Hiroshima/Nagasaki. School shootings are horrible, but the insane level of violence that my friends in Ukraine have been subjected to due to Russian invasion is order of magnitudes worse than all the school shootings combined by far. But I also have some observations: while going and coming back to Ukraine I stopped in Hungary and crossed through Slovenia and the thought never crossed my mind that it was a lack of guns that made things seem calm in the EU. It was access to medical resources, and counseling for most, especially those in dire need; relatively speaking most EU citizens will always have lower standards of living relative to the the outliers in the US (those here on HN for example), but it's the growing bottom percentile that I think commit most of these crimes to begin with and not always in impoverished places either. While gun restrictions may appear on paper to be the answer, and I think it should be more difficult to acquire a firearm in the US and that training be mandatory the same way a drivers license is required, I think what is really at odds is a Society with horrible mental health issues and no real way to treat it due to a broken medial system that seems to concerned with price gouging than it is with treating patients. Moreover, media sensationalism plays a large part in this: it's bad, but the media has helped push the narrative that any kid being bullied at school is likely to shoot everyone at school, when in reality everyone was bullied in school to some degree and had to learn coping mechanisms to deal with these realities of Life. But that doesn't sell ads, so it is never focused on, and educators are paid nothing and demoralized and forced into apathy. Guns are just like hammers, an amoral tool that can be used for whatever ends the user intends to use it for. What I fear has happened is that most will always play the 2nd Amendment card rather than look at the lack of a well regulated Militia part and see that a permanent standing itself is also in direct violation of the Constitution (Article 1 Section 8) and only has provision for a Navy to deter piracy. I have a firearm, and I have taken the training to use it for hunting purposes, which I still intend to make use of when I return as the cost of meat continues to rise. But I bought it primarily for self-defense as the rate of soldiers with PTSD coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan were shooting their families, communities and ultimately themselves. And by all standards most veterans would be the last to ever be denied firearms since they are the most well trained by the State to use and own them so regulation wouldn't solve this alone. I think addressing the large amount of mental health issues is a bigger component to the equation.

pella 4y ago
> Guns are just like hammers, an amoral tool > that can be used for whatever ends the user intends to use it for. You can usually survive a mistake with a hammer. The difference is the cost of the errors. With guns it can be fatal error. With nuclear bombs -> it can be fatal for the humanity.
sph 4y ago
> Guns are just like hammers, an amoral tool And here's lies the problem with the American view of the matter. No, guns are not amoral. Guns are tools _literally_ designed for killing people. In what world is a killing instrument amoral? Also, I don't get the whole spiel of having more senseless violence (is that a competition? how would you measure that?) or a war "in your backyard", to quote you, as if to suggest it's a European culture problem that we have a war, or that it would not happen anywhere else. Yes, there's a war close by, it doesn't invalidate any of my point nor bring any justification to citizens in a country at peace to be able to buy an assault rifle in a store. Let's try not to move goalposts and playing the ostrich to justify that what's going on in the United States is fine. It is not, and we should talk about that, not "what about Europe?"
- odessacubbage 4y ago
  when you premise your argument with >debates on here why as a European I would not want to live in the US for any amount of money in the world. you naturally invite comparisons to europe. fwiw the single most dangerous place in america is the motorway.
- Melting_Harps 4y ago
  > And here's lies the problem with the American view of the matter. No, guns are not amoral. Guns are tools _literally_ designed for killing people. In what world is a killing instrument amoral? It's not an American-centric view, because it's also held in Switzerland where you see Military walking around in full fatigues and fully loaded automatic weapons on a daily basis and no one cares; the issue is your conclusions are lazy at best, firearms may have been designed for that purpose, I agree, but they can also be used to hunt, ward off predators in the wild or on your land, or protect your from a would-be assailants just the same. And that is not what is taken into account in your very biased assessment, firearms were/are required in the frontier that the US is/was for all those reasons, and more. Much of the US is vast and still mainly uninhabited and very far from what you'd call civilization. As I said, I'm likely the closest thing to the ideal fire arm owner: I own only one and I know how to use it, I have been screened by the DoJ and and have had that firearm since I was in my 20s. I've gone to hunting training safety courses, too. As for the War part, no this is exactly a byproduct of nations like Germany and Italy and most of the EU building their entire economies around Russian energy knowing full well what the consequences were and enabling despots to commit crimes against Humanity to maintain the status quo; the invasion may have taken place in '22 but war has been ongoing since '14 in Ukraine and still Nordstream 2 was well under way. This one single aspect on the European continent has led to lots of deaths, too. Just because it didn't affect YOU directly doesn't mean that it doesn't count and THAT is most certainly cultural in Europe--just for context I've been involved since the Maidan Revolution in 2013 and most Europeans are entirely oblivious to have has been happening in order for them to live their lives as-is to the determent of Ukrainians in the Donbas and Crimea regions all these years. My point is that just because you outsource your violence to those 'other Europeans over there' in order to live your cushy lives in EU then there is no point in having this conversation because you willfully have blinders on that make you incapable to see what the real issue is that my entire argument is based on. The totality of the issue needs to be taken into account, and the only one here moving goals posts is you. You don't need to convince me about how life is the US including the violence, I lived in it for most of my Life (I'm from SoCal and grew up when LA was ground zero for some of the worst gang violence in the US in the 80s with the crack epidemic) and I chose to move back to EU after COVID because I was concerned with the growing violence from that time was coming back and I was tired of fighting after nearly 20 years of activism, but the truth is I feel way more threatened here than I did back in the US. And it had nothing to do with the fact that I do not own a firearm in the EU.

pella 4y ago

> Guns are just like hammers, an amoral tool > that can be used for whatever ends the user intends to use it for. You can usually survive a mistake with a hammer. The difference is the cost of the errors. With guns it can be fatal error. With nuclear bombs -> it can be fatal for the humanity.

sph 4y ago

> Guns are just like hammers, an amoral tool And here's lies the problem with the American view of the matter. No, guns are not amoral. Guns are tools _literally_ designed for killing people. In what world is a killing instrument amoral? Also, I don't get the whole spiel of having more senseless violence (is that a competition? how would you measure that?) or a war "in your backyard", to quote you, as if to suggest it's a European culture problem that we have a war, or that it would not happen anywhere else. Yes, there's a war close by, it doesn't invalidate any of my point nor bring any justification to citizens in a country at peace to be able to buy an assault rifle in a store. Let's try not to move goalposts and playing the ostrich to justify that what's going on in the United States is fine. It is not, and we should talk about that, not "what about Europe?"

odessacubbage 4y ago
when you premise your argument with >debates on here why as a European I would not want to live in the US for any amount of money in the world. you naturally invite comparisons to europe. fwiw the single most dangerous place in america is the motorway.
Melting_Harps 4y ago
> And here's lies the problem with the American view of the matter. No, guns are not amoral. Guns are tools _literally_ designed for killing people. In what world is a killing instrument amoral? It's not an American-centric view, because it's also held in Switzerland where you see Military walking around in full fatigues and fully loaded automatic weapons on a daily basis and no one cares; the issue is your conclusions are lazy at best, firearms may have been designed for that purpose, I agree, but they can also be used to hunt, ward off predators in the wild or on your land, or protect your from a would-be assailants just the same. And that is not what is taken into account in your very biased assessment, firearms were/are required in the frontier that the US is/was for all those reasons, and more. Much of the US is vast and still mainly uninhabited and very far from what you'd call civilization. As I said, I'm likely the closest thing to the ideal fire arm owner: I own only one and I know how to use it, I have been screened by the DoJ and and have had that firearm since I was in my 20s. I've gone to hunting training safety courses, too. As for the War part, no this is exactly a byproduct of nations like Germany and Italy and most of the EU building their entire economies around Russian energy knowing full well what the consequences were and enabling despots to commit crimes against Humanity to maintain the status quo; the invasion may have taken place in '22 but war has been ongoing since '14 in Ukraine and still Nordstream 2 was well under way. This one single aspect on the European continent has led to lots of deaths, too. Just because it didn't affect YOU directly doesn't mean that it doesn't count and THAT is most certainly cultural in Europe--just for context I've been involved since the Maidan Revolution in 2013 and most Europeans are entirely oblivious to have has been happening in order for them to live their lives as-is to the determent of Ukrainians in the Donbas and Crimea regions all these years. My point is that just because you outsource your violence to those 'other Europeans over there' in order to live your cushy lives in EU then there is no point in having this conversation because you willfully have blinders on that make you incapable to see what the real issue is that my entire argument is based on. The totality of the issue needs to be taken into account, and the only one here moving goals posts is you. You don't need to convince me about how life is the US including the violence, I lived in it for most of my Life (I'm from SoCal and grew up when LA was ground zero for some of the worst gang violence in the US in the 80s with the crack epidemic) and I chose to move back to EU after COVID because I was concerned with the growing violence from that time was coming back and I was tired of fighting after nearly 20 years of activism, but the truth is I feel way more threatened here than I did back in the US. And it had nothing to do with the fact that I do not own a firearm in the EU.