Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
legalize and control drugs and you eliminate a lot of gun crime
this is quite true.
legalize and control drugs and you eliminate a lot of gun crime
I actually never understood this sheer feeling of threat that some Americans seem to feel on basically a daily basis and use as their justification for having guns. As somebody who grew up in a war zone, you'd think that a person like myself would be the one stockpiling assault rifles and what not to ensure that when I'm shot at again, I have a means of retaliating, but I don't. I absolutely don't comprehend on any level at all where this feeling, and the strength and conviction of it comes from. It's really bizarre.
The South was largely settled by people who came from herding economies in Europe, most notably from borderlands of Scotland and Ireland (Nisbett, 1993). The North, by contrast, was setlled by Puritans, Quakers and Dutch farmers, who developed a more agriculturally-based economy (Nisbett, 1993). According to Nisbett, violence is more endemic to herding cultures because it is important to be constantly vigilant for theft of one's livestock. It was important in these herding economies to respond to any threat to one's herd or grazing lands with sufficient force to drive away intruders or potential thieves. Nisbett maintains that from this herding economy arose a culture of honor that persists in the South to this day. This culture of honor primes southern individuals for greater violence than their northern counterparts.
legalize and control drugs and you eliminate a lot of gun crime
instead of going after guns, why dont we go after these social problems that cause violence: poverty, poor education, bad economy, failed war on drugs, lack of jobs, breakdown of the family, lack of respect for eachother, etc etc
because that would be socialism.
notice i said WE, not the government
if our system worked properly, we would demand these things of the government and they would act based on what the people want, not just doing their own thing like bailing out banks and whatnot, which is kind of like socialism, right?
If only it were this simple. I don't think anyone thinks if you ban guns then all of life's problems will be solved.really the issue should be making people not want to kill eachother, rather than just BAN GUNS! BAN GUNS! BAN GUNS!
nobody ever answered a question i asked a few pages back: if we were all well educated, financially well-off, and healthy, would we still be killing eachother as much as we are?
instead of going after guns, why dont we go after these social problems that cause violence: poverty, poor education, bad economy, failed war on drugs, lack of jobs, breakdown of the family, lack of respect for eachother, etc etc
Nisbett's study was heavily criticized, both for leaping without adequate cause to an ethnic explanation for the 'culture of honor' (i.e., the finding that Southern white men are more likely to react aggressively to insults, which isn't itself much disputed), and because subsequent studies testing certain elements of his hypothesis by comparing Southern counties' homicide rates when adjusted for factors keyed to his work--land use histories, white poverty rates etc.--failed to confirm it, and in many cases found the reverse of his predictions to apply.I imagine it has to do with deeply entrenched cultural differences.
Not too long ago I read some interesting background on higher levels of violence and homicide in the southern US relating to the persistent culture of honour that has lingered since the frontier-herding economy of the early settlers.
Nisbett's ethnic 'culture of honor' hypothesis ignores any potential influence from this rigidly hierarchical aristocratic society, as well as from virtually all the Civil War having been fought on this region's soil, from the psychological experience of federally-imposed 'Reconstruction,' from the subsequent paranoia among white Southerners about freed slaves owning guns, etc. etc. Even if you narrowed the focus to Appalachia (though violent crime isn't higher there than in the rest of the South; it's pretty much the same), what about the centuries-old resentment of lowland elites who exact taxes but ignore mountain regions when it came to roads and other civic improvements (unless there's a mine to be acce$$ed); the far more frequent violent clashes with Native tribes during colonial times; the extensive guerrilla warfare that plagued the region during the Civil War; the greater geographical isolation of residents from one another; the virtual absence of 'town living' and generally more rugged living conditions; etc.
Finally, it's always struck me as the sort of 'explanation' one could only get away with when it's white Southerners we're talking about--what sort of reception do you suppose someone'd get who suggested that, say, actual Irish people, or Irish-Americans from Massachusetts, are more violence-prone than their English or Anglo-American counterparts because, after all, they're closer to their "herding roots"? Even if the 'violence-prone' part were statistically true (which it might be; I'd have no idea).
Oh, I agree, the general idea of looking to a region's socioeconomic history for insight into its social psychology is an interesting one, and as I said the findings of his behavioral research (that white male Southerners are more likely than their Northern counterparts to react aggressively when insulted) aren't really disputed. I just think that the rigidly stratified, aristocratic nature of Southern society historically (on into the late 20th century, albeit in a loosened form), which does give rise to distinctly different ideals of masculinity, is a much more plausible explanation as to why.What I find so interesting is the idea that the earliest origins of a culture and its economic structure at a basic level may still manifest today albeit in a very different way (strong gun culture?) as it evolved over time and circumstances as you've pointed out. Most of your examples would loosely support culture of honor as a lingering or cumalative influence.
legalize and control drugs and you eliminate a lot of gun crime
Agreed. I've said this for a long time.
It would also make life a whole lot safer for the addicts -- drug addiction treated as a medical issue instead of a criminal one. (but that's a different topic)
i skimmed through the thread and didn't find any discussion on this so i figured i'd share this.
story: tennessee gun laws;guns and restaurants; guns and bars - WREG
recently, the state of tennessee passed a bill allowing guns to be brought into bars. so now if you want to go to a bar over the weekend to have a drink or grab a bite to eat and watch the game, the person next to you who's drunk off his ass might have a gun. needless to say, there's been a lot of people as well as restaurant/bar employees upset over this. what if someone's had a few too many and you cut them off as that's your responsibility as a bartender, and they put a gun to your head and demand you give them another beer? as long as they have their permit and it's between 5 a.m.-11 p.m., they're not breaking any laws.
not to even really get into a huge gun control debate, i don't even see why this was brought to the floor in the first place. tennessee's unemployment is at nearly 10% (yippee, i'm part of a statistic!) and this is what they're debating about? that's another issue of course, but when did tennessee become the wild west where debates had to be settled out back with a duel?
Um, yeah... It's kinda stupid to get scared after the fact.More people scared about what could happen.
But now it's legal. So what do you think the likelihood of more guns being carried into a bar now? More or less than before?I doubt anyone that has shot someone in a bar in TN to date has cared about whether it was legal to carry a gun inside.
given that forbes just put out an article listing memphis (where i live) as the second most dangerous city in america and nashville in ninth place, i'm not exactly convinced this is no big deal. and given it's been legalized in all bars, it's more an issue of someone going to the local bar and having one too many beers than someone at applebee's getting drunk off mudslides.I don't think it's really a bar thing as much as restaurants like Applebees and I'm surprised that in TN it wasn't already legal.
A lot of the people doing your killing really don't care about laws.
Well this is obvious, for once you pull the trigger you've broken the law, but did they care about laws prior to that, obviously some did since they weren't in prison.