Is it really hard to fathom why many people despise the US?

[careful_eugene]

So a positive reason for being allowed easy access to guns is its easier to to commit suicide to avoid high medical bills? That's the most f***ed up thing I've heard this year.

[vtsnowedin]

So a positive reason for being allowed easy access to guns is its easier to to commit suicide to avoid high medical bills? That's the most ****** up thing I've heard this year.

Even if you are free there are sometimes no good choices to make. I for one do not want to end up in a nursing home sitting in adult diapers with a feeding tube down my nose. Or to go through being eaten up by bone cancer while the staff skims off the morphine that would make my pain bearable.

[clv101]

Actually no.I do not agree. The freedom of Americans to bear arms is their last great defense against being subjugated by some agency, either foreign or domestic. It is worth having in spite of the cost (very real)of civilian deaths from criminal acts and those of the mentally deranged.
In a population of some 300 million there are sadly enough nut jobs and criminals to keep the presses rolling about the "latest tragedy" but we must endure this (certainly spend a lot more on mental health)or else be left defenseless if invaders or a rouge government comes to power.

So you're saying thousands of deaths each year (far exceeding anything caused by terrorism) including hundreds of young children are a cost worth paying to protect against some hypothetical invasion or against your own government.

Have you any idea how utterly bonkers that makes you sound? Just what is the 'post peak' scenario you're thinking of where the US military has evaporated but some other country's military is still able to prosecute wars thousand of miles away from home? But for your small arms? No, your small arms kill Americans today, not some hypothetical invading army decades from now.

The US is simply wrong on the issue of guns, very wrong. If you personally aren't working locally for far tighter gun controls then, in my opinion, you are personally part of the problem and share responsibility for these thousands of killings. Sorry.

So call me part of the problem.
You have to consider that some 60 percent of these Gun deaths are suicides where free people choose there own time and way out rather then submitting to the tortures of the medical profession that bankrupts their spouse and other heirs. And on top of that a very large chunk of the actual homicides are minority killing minority and not a concern of the average non minority person.
You might look at this.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/featur ... n-america/
And then compare suicide rates by all means between the USA and other countries and see that they are not that far apart except that the Americans use the effective tool that is close at hand and others have to get more creative.

I am having trouble following your logic here. Are you now saying that a justification for lax gun control - with the huge associated damage - is to make suicide easier? If America actually wants to facilitate suicide (and I'm not convinced that's the case) why not just set up an assisted dying organisation like the Swiss have.

[vtsnowedin]

I am having trouble following your logic here. Are you now saying that a justification for lax gun control - with the huge associated damage - is to make suicide easier? If America actually wants to facilitate suicide (and I'm not convinced that's the case) why not just set up an assisted dying organisation like the Swiss have.

No I'm saying that suicides by gun should not be included in gun death statistics being used to promote gun control. Those deaths are the citizen choosing to use his gun in a manner that should be his legal choice.

[clv101]

Oh, so how many of those 559 children aged 11 or under killed or injured as result gun violence so far this year are 'acceptable' as collateral damage associated with sducidal folk exercising their right use use a firearm?

I'd argue none.

[biffvernon]

Yes but it seems that from the American perspective, collateral damage is fine, nothing to worry about - hence the way they rampage around the world.

There's a nice line in that recent Orlov piece:

There are exactly two ways to legally bomb the territory of another country: 1. an invitation from that country's government and 2. a UN Security Council resolution. The US has not obtained either of them.

[vtsnowedin]

Oh, so how many of those 559 children aged 11 or under killed or injured as result gun violence so far this year are 'acceptable' as collateral damage associated with sducidal folk exercising their right use use a firearm?

I'd argue none.

The same percentage as the 2000 that die and 250,000 that are injured each year in auto accidents. World wide road deaths of children amount to close to a million per year and is their leading cause of death.
Shall we ban cars and motorcycles?

[Little John]

Oh, so how many of those 559 children aged 11 or under killed or injured as result gun violence so far this year are 'acceptable' as collateral damage associated with sducidal folk exercising their right use use a firearm?

I'd argue none.

The same percentage as the 2000 that die and 250,000 that are injured each year in auto accidents. World wide road deaths of children amount to close to a million per year and is their leading cause of death.
Shall we ban cars and motorcycles?

Tell me, would you sanction the right of citizens to carry a grenade in their pocket? If not, why not? Or, perhaps, a hypodermic needle containing a lethal cocktail of drugs in their pocket? Again, if not, why not?

[careful_eugene]

I am having trouble following your logic here. Are you now saying that a justification for lax gun control - with the huge associated damage - is to make suicide easier? If America actually wants to facilitate suicide (and I'm not convinced that's the case) why not just set up an assisted dying organisation like the Swiss have.

Ha Ha, good luck with that, can you imagine the reaction? It would make the protests outside abortion clinics look like Sunday afternoon picnics.[/quote]

[biffvernon]

Shall we ban cars and motorcycles?

It's an idea. I can see that happening, or at least improving transport to the extent that it become safer. We've come a long way already with brakes that work and airbags and so forth. Cars are a lot safer, at least in Europe, than they used to be.

But of course vt's comment is utterly bonkers. Guns are designed for the sole purpose of killing. Cars do other stuff and designers go to a lot of trouble to avoid them killing.

[vtsnowedin]

I am having trouble following your logic here. Are you now saying that a justification for lax gun control - with the huge associated damage - is to make suicide easier? If America actually wants to facilitate suicide (and I'm not convinced that's the case) why not just set up an assisted dying organisation like the Swiss have.

Ha Ha, good luck with that, can you imagine the reaction? It would make the protests outside abortion clinics look like Sunday afternoon picnics.

[/quote]
Physician assisted suicide is becoming the law of the land in the USA one state at a time. A spirited debate for sure but no great uproar or protests.

[vtsnowedin]

Shall we ban cars and motorcycles?

It's an idea. I can see that happening, or at least improving transport to the extent that it become safer. We've come a long way already with brakes that work and airbags and so forth. Cars are a lot safer, at least in Europe, than they used to be.

But of course vt's comment is utterly bonkers. Guns are designed for the sole purpose of killing. Cars do other stuff and designers go to a lot of trouble to avoid them killing.

Guns do other stuff as well such as defending the bearer from other people who wish to harm them and harvesting game for the table and predator control around the farm. I consider them an essential tool.

[biffvernon]

Guns do other stuff? I suppose you could bash nails in with the back of hand-gun if you were short of a hammer.

Nobody is arguing about the way farmers use guns as a tool of their trade. We allow that in the UK.

[UndercoverElephant]

Guns do other stuff as well such as defending the bearer from other people who wish to harm them...

Only an American can say this and believe it. To everybody else looking in, it is the absolute epitome of insanity. You simply do not comprehend how utterly bonkers it looks to anybody capable of thinking about it objectively.

The United States is awash with guns - far more per head of population than in any other developed country. The United States also suffers a level of gun-related crime, injuries and deaths that defies belief everywhere else in the world. And yet you seriously claim that arming the US public actually defends the US public from people who wish to do them harm.

You really might as well have said "gravity makes water run uphill". It makes about as much sense.

The truth is that far more Americans die because of the easy availability of guns and insanely relaxed gun laws than would die if America had gun control laws similar to those in most of the developed world. The very fact I have to point this out to you - that you don't understand it already - is a symptom not just of a cultural problem in the United States but what can only be described as a form of collective mental illness - a chronic collective inability to think rationally about anything which challenges the prevailing views of the political-religous right wing. And it is precisely the same collective mental illness that leads a majority of Americans to believe that Charles Darwin was wrong and that Climate Change isn't real.

[biffvernon]

Here's a remarkably true comparison between USA and UK. Guns get several mentions.

http://www.theladbible.com/articles/ame ... -brilliant