Q12543 wrote:SameOldNudityDrew wrote:I don't care about the weed, but it sounds like he pulled a gun on somebody, which is really serious.
There are a lot of details we don't know. How many guns did they find? What kind?
If there were a bunch of people at his house with weed and guns, it does also raise real questions about his judgement. Has he been participating in the workouts with the rest of the team? What kind of a reflection is it on his focus if this is how he's spending his time?
Seriously, America, WTF with the guns? I grew up in MN in a hunting family and we had guns. It was part of our family culture. I still remember the 30-30 my grandpa gave me when I first started deer hunting, and I remember my first deer. I get the allure of that. And sure, in places like Alaska, I get that you want something if you're going to be in bear country or something. But with just a few exceptions, allowing guns is just not worth the trouble, especially when it comes to handguns, semi-automatic rifles, etc.
I think this is a totally underreported part of the police killings everybody's been talking about. The racial bias is real--stats show black people are 2-3 times more likely to be killed than whites--but I can sympathize with cops in America being on edge because they could at any point be walking into a deadly scenario because of all the guns. I'm guessing that's a big part about why cops are so quick to use force. Their work must constantly be incredibly stressful because of all the guns. They live on edge because it is a little like they're living in a war zone.
Here's a stat for you. Cops kill about 1,000 Americans every year. I've lived in Germany for the last 6 years. Do you know how many people cops shot and killed last year? 14. And that tied for the highest in 20 years here. Many years it's single digits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_Germany
Germany's got about 80 million people, so it's about a quarter of the population, but quadruple 14 to 56 and you're still nowhere near 1,000. And this doesn't even touch on the disparity in gun violence by non-police. Most of this is suicide, which is underreported. But the numbers are still crazy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States
Seriously, just read any random paragraph from that wikipedia page and it should make your stomach drop. Here's one:
"Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related homicide rate is 25 times higher. Although it has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, among those 22 nations studied, the U.S. had 82 percent of gun deaths, 90 percent of all women killed with guns, 91 percent of children under 14 and 92 percent of young people between ages 15 and 24 killed with guns."
Any guesses why Germany doesn't look anything like the U.S. in this regard? I'm sure a big reason is basically nobody has guns here because they're not allowed to. A few people in rural areas can get licenses for hunting rifles as there is some very regulated hunting allowed. Some others have guns for target practice at shooting clubs or for biathalon practice, but they are basically .22s with pellet bullets. Bolt action. Single shot. Glorified BB guns basically. But basically anything else is forbidden, especially handguns.
And is life that much worse without them?
Not at all. Life's pretty great. Germans basically do all the other leisurely things Americans do, so they don't miss guns there. And nobody really feels like they're missing out on a sense of security by owning a handgun because they also know nobody has one. Cops almost never fear for their lives in confrontations with people, I never even think about the possibility of anybody else having a gun here, I don't think I've ever heard of a mass shooting here, and I'm sure most interactions people have with the police are likewise much less stressful.
It's too easy to just say, "Look how great Germany is compared to the U.S. on guns!" without going into each country's respective histories.
The right to bear arms is embedded in the U.S. Constitution and therefore has been a founding pillar of the country. While one could argue times have changed drastically since the founding of the country, it's not easy to just legislate this stuff away. There are strong interest groups AND plenty of regular citizens who will fight change tooth and nail, whether you agree with them or not. Would this same culture exist if the Second Amendment was never part of the Constitution? Probably not. But perhaps the U.S. wouldn't exist either.
Guess who doesn't have this right in their version of the constitution? Germany. Don't you think that just might influence the culture and evolution of gun violence in each respective country.
Oh, and don't forget that Germany had a major chance to hit the re-set button in the late 40s and into the 50s to rebuild their country and their laws, thanks in no small part to the Marshall Plan, which was largely funded by the U.S.
As a history teacher, I love any opportunity to talk about history!
Of course the 2nd amendment is at the root of the issue in the U.S. You're absolutely right it would take a sea change to repeal that amendment (2/3rds of both congressional houses plus 3/4 of all states). That's next to impossible for almost any amendment, and of course there's no chance of that happening anytime soon. You can try to pass laws regulating guns to some degree. At the national level that's incredibly difficult because of the NRA and in most rural states it's also hard because of public opinion in support of gun rights. More liberal states and cities have passed stiffer regulation, but it's up to the courts to decide constitutionality, and given the direction of the courts in recent years (especially with a looming 6-3 conservative majority on the supreme court), a lot of those laws will get struck down too. So yeah, legally, it'd be like climbing Everest on your knees and elbows at this point.
And Abe is also right that there are just already so many guns out there in the U.S. that even if you did manage to change the laws, you'd have an incredibly difficult practical challenge of getting them out of circulation. Australia actually successfully did this both from a legal standpoint and a logistical one, but that's obviously a tiny fraction of the size of the U.S.
I don't think the second amendment ever saved the U.S. from existence. I get that at least part (and arguably the entirety) of the original intent of the second amendment was to be able to quickly muster a citizen militia to fight the British again or for surprise Indian wars because there wasn't really much of a standing army to speak of. But that purpose was basically obsolete within a few decades of the founding. I know there's a long history of guns on the frontier and definitely in the rise of organized crime in the early 20th century. But I feel like the intensity with which people have defended the right to guns, as well as the proliferation of the numbers of guns in the U.S., has accelerated in the last 30-40 years. I know the NRA never used to be so political and that it started out much more as a sportsman's organization than anything, advocating conservation for hunting and gun safety.
And of course, every country is different and is burdened with or helped by whatever constitutional framework they are given. To be sure, I'm glad the Allies forced Germany to re-establish democracy after the Nazis. I'd be happy to point out the Germans brought defeat on themselves and nobody should ever forget their crimes (actually, most Germans today would agree with this). A lot of people don't quite realize that basically, Americans occupied and were running West Germany until 1949, they handpicked their new leaders in 1949, and then they basically kept the training wheels on until 1955. I'm fairly sure the Americans did not pressure Germany not to establish gun rights though (it would definitely be interesting if they did!). The Weimar Constitution also had no right to guns, and I'm pretty sure the imperial constitution of 1871 didn't either. A lot of it was probably rooted all the way back into the middle ages when only the nobility had the legal right to hunt.
Either way, sure, for various reasons, all countries have histories that leave the present generation with certain problems that others don't have to deal with. I would argue that although there are some legitimate uses, guns are one of America's present-day problems. I also think there were a lot of decisions along the way that might have mitigated this, and that there have been a lot of decisions, including in recent years, that have allowed the situation to get worse.
I guess my whole point is not to criticize one country and praise another, but just to say: it doesn't have to be this way. A country can have a radically different set of laws and culture around guns and life goes on as normal. Nobody even thinks about it here. It's not like one side won the debate. There is no debate and never was one. Not really anyway. I think it's the same in a lot of other countries. But if you listen to people talk in the U.S., it sounds like people either support gun rights and think any amount of regulation would somehow end the existence of freedom itself, or they support gun regulation but just assume it's so completely impossible there's no point in even thinking about it. You're absolutely right, Q, there are all sorts of reasons why it is that way, and why it would be very difficult to change in the U.S. But until I moved abroad I guess I kind of didn't realize how easy and possible it is to live in a world in which it just isn't an issue at all. It's a matter of mindset, which seems impossible to change, and at the same time it's really nothing at all.
I'm trying to think of a good metaphor for this. Like, imagine you lived in a country in which people had intense debates about whether or not cars should have brakes and seat belts, with some people saying they are an infringement on liberty and others saying they should be encouraged but they aren't hopeful they'll ever be widely adopted. Then you move to another country where everybody has seat belts and brakes on their cars--it's legally required and everybody agrees with that--and they look at you funny if you suggest maybe it could be otherwise. And then you realize, man, this makes all the sense in the world. Why do it any differently? Why is this even a political issue? That's kind of what this feels like. It feels so obvious, and at the same time, the fact that everybody accepts that logic makes you feel weird for ever thinking it had to be any other way.
The guns in the U.S. are there as a culmination of lots of different decisions built up over years and years, and especially now that they're entrenched in the partisan politics there, the possibility for change does seem incredibly remote. And yet, being here on the outside makes me totally aware of how it doesn't have to be that way, and how, I would hope, with a series of decisions over years and years, Americans could at the very least do a lot more to reduce the rates of gun violence and get closer to something like what much of the rest of the world has.
At least, it would have been nice if Beasley had made some better decisions in recent days.