Quote:
Originally Posted by Ducimus
If I didn't think things were very serious, I wouldn't have gotten off my lazy ass.
|
Alright, but why? Why do you think that this bill, in a nation that so fiercely clings to its right to bear arms, has a hope in hell of actually passing anytime this year?
I'm sure that if this issue goes on longer, which it will, then the chance of it passing will increase with each school massacre that takes place over the coming years. It's a quick and easy 'solution' to the problem and it's good for political points.
However, the more vocal the pro-gun crowd seem to get, the more they are dismissed as 'gun-nuts', a claim which is not helped by some of the rather misguided statements the NRA releases.
Personally I think you are fighting a losing battle which is dealt a serious blow every time some kid decides to run amok with a gun. However, it is your right, as given by the first amendment, to make that battle and that fight, and I support your right to do so. What I don't agree with though is the conspiracy theory that is put around by some of the more...entertaining...of the pro-gun lobby that this is just the first step towards a dictatorship that Obama is working on creating, and that he's going to appoint himself President for life, or some such nonsense.
Perhaps it is a first step on a road towards a more invasive government, but equally perhaps it is not, despite the claims that no guns = no freedom, I am quite free to do what I wish to do in this nation with its gun control laws. Admittedly if someone does pull a gun on me then I am stuck, but the likelihood of that happening only increases if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is more likely that you would be stabbed anyway, but I digress.
In short, it is not easy for anyone who is not American to fully understand the argument in favour of guns from a nation that suffers from such terrible school massacres on a semi-frequent basis, it baffles us, but then we are not Americans and we do not have quite the same patriotic fervour that many Americans seem to, not since the 1800s anyway. So when an American makes the claim that his country, which enjoys freedoms and luxuries far greater than even some European nations, is turning into a dictatorship because of a gun control law, it confuses people who live in democratic countries with gun control laws and have relatively equal freedoms of expression.
I overreacted a little, perhaps, in posting that facepalm gif, although I've been dying to use that one ever since I discovered it on an obscure board, perhaps I should have waited until Yubba created another thread. I am certainly grateful of your consideration in keeping this within the same thread instead of pulling a Yubba and starting a whole new thread for it.
The thing is though, who was the video directed at, on this forum? As far as I can make out, those who are pro-gun would already be following the story, those who are anti-gun would automatically dismiss it as nonsense, and those who are neither would probably not even look at the thread, or dismiss both sides as lunatics.
Not a personal attack or anything, I'm just curious because of what I call the 'Chicken Little' effect, in that the longer a dire warning is stated and issued, the less effective it becomes, until eventually it actually starts having the opposite effect to that of which it was originally intended.