Quote:
Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
A part of the problem here is that it looks to us like for the sake of safety you're willing to go along with whatever the government says, while many of us consider the government to be the problem, not the solution. If a law like that were passed here, a large majority would just say "No" and become criminals themselves. Win or lose, it could lead to another Revolution. A lot of elected official know this, which is why getting such a law passed here would be a lot more difficult.
The more likely situation would be that many congressmen would try to get such a law passed, fail, and find themselves out of a job come the next election.
No, I don't pretend to have an answer. I'm just making observations.
|
I think this is where between America and the rest of the world there is the vital disconnect. There's not many other countries out there that have such a fear of government, bordering in some cases on paranoia.
This is often classified by Americans as blind obedience to governments, whereas others would classify it as a form of trust.
I would ponder though, since 1787, how many times the US government has legitimately earned that distrust? Not just in a way that would upset those of a particular political leaning, but an active lurch into an area that the populace did not want it to go.
Many times people in the US will state that gun control is the first step into a tyrannical, dictatorial government (in particular a favourite copy-paste image is that one of Mao, Stalin, and Hitler saying 'These dictators agree, gun control works!' completely ignoring the
relaxation of gun control in Nazi Germany. ) and this is logical, but one could argue that there are plenty of other ways to curb a peoples freedom than removing firearms, and in that respects there are some nations that it could be argued have greater freedoms in areas than the US has but who practice firearm regulation in a stricter manner than the US.
However, one cannot simply take over 200 years of culture and throw it in the dustbin, and I think that's something that people outside of the US don't realise just how entrenched in the culture of the US the firearm is, and how little trust towards government there is in the US.
It's something that's going to come to a head there at some point in the future, and it could, legitimately, lead to civil strife. All we, as non-Americans, can do is to a) try to understand the US viewpoint if we're able to, and b) lend our support where possible.