It's a little overbearing and unsophisticated bring the murder of a 7 yo girl into your personal philosophies of how much liberty you personally believe is necessary for others. We all care care about the innocents and this was a tragedy and a crime of immense proportions, makes me angry as well. But the people that drafted our constitution knew a thing or two about the even more tragic and abuses of government upon people and put a equalizer (Bill of Rights) into our charter to distinguish the principles of a Republic (where the individual is most powerful) from those of a Democracy (where groups are the most powerful). We are the former, which is why the rule of law and courts are the mechanism for injustices in the United States. It's a strange concept for many to understand with a lot of responsibility tied to it, but that's who we are as a nation and there is enormous cultural and national identity built into the fabric of freedom that will not go unchallenged.
Yes but everyone knows Brett is a cheater. Tyre pressures? Dodgy non-standard suspension parts etc etc Who knows what go fast bits are in the engine.
i wasn't comparing road toll to gun related death, but rather our policies made road toll as bad as gun related death. i could have compared cancer death vs gun death, but i didn't so there was no comparion. but while we are on the car idea, our poli believes, if there is no speed limit, everyone will drive as fast as the car could go, which is not true. Most people will drive at what speed they are comfortable or feel safe. Guns related death is just about the same, with 300mil guns in USA, gun related death is at what %. how do you change the a nation where the very foundation of their culture is based on bang bang boom boom; gun blazing wild wild west loving; shoot bad guys, terriosts, aliens in the face and the crowd in the cinemas celebrate such scenes with claps and cheers (REAL DEAL)
And yet this same country had slavery and the worst racial intolerance for way too long (yes Australia was very bad and still not perfect but I believe [once we got past the English shooting our Aboriginals] not as bad as the 50's and 60's in America). How could there be "even more tragic and abuses upon people" than that! ... ? I think American's are working out it is not the government you should be worried about it is the individual. Maybe if America (and Australia) had proper demogracies where majority votes actually meant you got in to power we would not have this issue/fear of governments?. The American weighting system is silly as is the Australian system where I think 2 elections in a row we have had more votes for the opposition than the government, and yet the government is still in power. I think America is staring down the barrel of a constitution rewrite, which with American lawyers involved would take at least 50 years. The current constitution is the root of their problems IMO. Pete ps: And some (fools IMO) want Australia to become a republic ... got to be crazy. It would bankrupt the country writing all the laws AND there is a unhealthy chance that we would make a mistake like America did, where best intentions many moons ago have turned into their down fall.
Google "fast and furious", not the movie, but the us government giving thousands of assault weapons to Mexican drug gangs. The purpose was to track the violence of those weapons back in the USA to ultimately use said violence as a way to alter our 2nd amendment rights. That is the type of government we Americans fear. Ed
I did read it : Nice having neighbours like this !! As if the poor Mexican law enforcement didn't have enough trouble getting killed by the cartels on a daily basis then they get handed over 2000 assault weapons as an experiment by the Yanks and they don't inform the sovereign country they are perpetrating upon. BTW I think the project had merit but lacked delivery , something has got to be done about the mexican drug cartels but this seemed like pie in the sky
You're right, our opinions mean little (even though they are widely held) but perhaps we can pose a question? Would even another, much larger school massacre bring about change? Short extract below from the following: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/guns-and-the-limits-of-shame.html#ixzz2FIF3dbmI What does it take for a society to be sickened by its own behavior and to change its attitudes? That can be asked about questions of power and political repressionand also about distinctive national pathologies. When did a majority of South African Boers realize that Apartheid was reprehensible? How about whites in the American South? When will the Japanese force their whalers to stop, finally realizing that their persistence has caused widespread international revulsion and opprobrium? When will the British realize that public drunkennessa practice now internationally associated with them as a nationis something to be embarrassed about? When will we Americans realize that our society is an unacceptably violent one, that this is how the rest of the world sees us, and that much of that violence is associated with guns? Will it be the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School? Where is our threshold for self-awareness?
Notice it's only the skips (including me in the lambo section - which was moved to p&r) trying to convince the yanks to give up their guns. Time to give up and let it be. It's an arguement that will never be won. The cultures although getting more similar as time goes by, will never see eye to eye on this one. The circumstances are different for both countries. I suppose we get annoyed when the yanks construe us as being racists when we take the piss out of each other - you bunch of skippies, wogs bush kangarootas. Or Harry conick getting precious when a few lads black faced and did a michael Jackson skit on hey hey. To us it was innocent fun. To harry it was disrespectful. Certain things we will never see eye to eye.
