Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to DexterX,
Female violence agaisnt children and partners is masively under reported to the degree that it almost doesn't exist
It's not a matter of no consequence, but part of the reason it's under-reported is that the consequences of it are less fatal by orders of magnitude. Men can easily kill women with blows alone, or choking them. The reverse is not true. I never met in 17 years of martial arts training any woman that I would fear in a physical unarmed confrontation, and that's including the self-selected strongest and best trained, naturally aggressive ones, definitely not your average random woman. Armed, it's a different matter, but domestic violence is something that erupts, rather than being planned. The women die a lot more, and are obviously a lot more intimidated by it as a consequence.
A guy I know has been the victim of domestic violence quite a few times, for reasons I won't go into. But the one time he fought back, the woman was skittled. He was never really in anywhere near as serious danger as she was.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to James Bremner,
Sounds crazy and shouldn’t be needed but we don’t live in a perfect world and never will.
Certainly never will if we never try.
It is child like magical thinking to believe that if we declare somewhere a gun free zone, that everything will be wonderful.
No, but it's also child-like thinking to construct that as the aim. A reduction in gun related killings would also be worth having, and can and has eventuated from stricter gun controls elsewhere.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
"Obviously the Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and “bear,” so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose here are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided."
If you can carry it, it's all good
ETA for those who haven't seen this movie, this scene is followed by Arnie depopulating an entire island. He got all of this stuff just by breaking into a weapons shop.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
wut?
Well, per 100 people. Don't worry, the USA on 88 is still kicking our butts.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Bart Janssen,
If you want to modulate testosterone driven behaviour you must acknowledge it is real.
It's even got a name. The Animalistic Penis Brain (APB)
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
No, I can't think of anywhere relevant at all to compare the situation in America with.
They're not actually aliens, you know. It's a society with a fairly strong rule of law, a federal system, and a colonial history, like many other countries. The human beings inhabiting it can largely be controlled by the same mechanisms that work elsewhere. Their institutions are not unique on the planet. They move slowly, but they still have the power, with sufficient motivation, to change fundamental things.
What I don't know is whether they have the will. But that's a notoriously difficult thing to make statements about that span any length of time. A spate of these incidents might flip the public debate.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Sacha,
just enforce it - "a properly regulated militia".
LOL, yeah if they had to do a boot camp every couple of weekends, with territorial training, then put their firearms under lock and key at the barracks when they go home, it might be a whole lot less popular. Especially if during wartime they could be called on to do a tour, any time the engagement has gone on too long and the regular army needs a rest.
On the other hand, that might just encourage it.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Ana Simkiss,
Ben, I disagree that Australia and the USA can be seen as equivalent in this area. They are just not the same and gun culture is not only an aspect of the Ameerical self, but in the constitution which might as well be the Bible so reified is it. Yes legislation can work, but it will work differently in different environments.
Sounds like exceptionalism to me, again. America really isn't as unique as it would like to make out. The people aren't some strange species that don't think like the rest of the planet. It actually isn't synonymous with its extremists. It might suit the gun lobby to make out that they are, to make everyone else feel powerless. But that's just not the case. They are not harder to control than other nationalities.
Yes, there are nuts there, like everywhere. But don't forget that the power of the state makes every other power look feeble by comparison. No matter how much of a gun nut you are, when the police turn up and demand to search your house for guns, most people are going to let them. If an amnesty period is ended, and the mere suggestion that you possess a dangerous and illegal firearm is enough to trigger a search, then intimidating people with weapons becomes quite a short lived thing.
I suggest that it would be significantly more difficult to do this in America and that it was successfully done in Australia isn't really relevant.
If you can think of anywhere more relevant, go to it. Yes, it's not identical. But America is still, by and large, a society of laws. If the law changes, their enforcement agencies have it well within their powers to reduce the number of guns floating around by orders of magnitude very rapidly. I expect they'd even love to do it.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Tom Semmens,
The Australian experience is therefore of precisely zero relevance to the United States.
Hardly precise. It answers the question of "how" to introduce gun control. It can and has been done, it wasn't even hard. Whether US governments of various levels have the actual will to do it is the only question. The means is very simple, it's just like any other kind of law enforcement.
Anyway, premature. You'd have to get this sort of measure past Congress, Senate and the Supreme Court. It might even take a constitutional amendment.
It's not premature to talk about how. It's vital to making laws, to know whether they can be enforced. The Australian example shows that they can. It's not hypothetical about whether a ridiculously over-armed citizenry can have their gun levels reduced. It's a known fact that they can.
How it could happen politically in the USA is actually the secondary question. Probably on a state by state basis, the way they do everything. Or they could actually change the constitution. That is actually within their power.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Ana Simkiss,
The thing that has been twisting my noodle is this. How would you ever get those weapons out of circulation if the US Goverment decided to go ahead and legislate for that?
I think the Australian experience would be the one to look to. Essentially, they moved rapidly to strict controls. They used a "buyback" scheme to compensate people for the guns, and had an amnesty period, after which it became very difficult to legally own the most dangerous kinds of guns. It wasn't really hard to crack down at all*.
*ETA: Well, they did have to pick the right time. The Port Arthur massacre was a particularly horrific event.
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