Joe Gerardi wrote:
Ah: but is he a US citizen? If not, he is NOT protected by the Constitution. All he is a some foreigner opening his mouth when he should remember he's a guest here, same as if I were in England and screaming for the head of Her Majesty. I'd have no right to do that. Here, he really has no RIGHT, because he's not a citizen
That to me says something is rotten in the US. Freedom of speech only counts to those born there, thankfully that isn't the case here. If he was demanding President Obama was killed, I'd agree with you 100% he's a guest in your country and has no right to spout such hatred, but giving his opinions on gun laws is an entirely different thing altogether.
It's no different from when Mitt Romney visited London and questioned whether Britain was capable of running a successful Olympics. It didn't go down at all well by virtually anyone in the UK, but he still had the right to give his opinion without fear of persecution and had he decided to ask whether a monarchy was relevant in this century, again he would be slaughtered by most of the press for saying so but would not have broken any laws.
And had the person been staying legally in the UK, they could say what they liked about who they liked and unless it was considered terrorism or inciting hatred, it could not affect their stay in the UK and is very doubtful that it would affect his/her chances of getting an extension to stay either.
Piers Morgan is a git, few people in the UK miss him and we don't really want him back. I could understand the US not wanting such a slimy weasel of a person being resident in their country but I cannot understand how your laws don't apply to someone currently resident there either (can fully understand someone might need to be resident for x number of years before xyz applies)
I love the US and have been there numerous times, Florida mainly but also to Houston. I would hate to think if a news team walked up to me with a mic and asked me my opinion on something, others could ask me to leave the country as they disagree with what I say.
The US gets a lot of investment by overseas companies and earns a lot of money from tourists. On average each time I've gone there with my family, I've spent over $3000 in addition to my hotel costs etc.
I hope I'm not considered as "just some foreigner" and if you think I am considered that, maybe that sort of attitude goes a long way to explaining why the US is disliked by many many nations around the world and explains why in western countries like the UK, I find myself constantly sticking up for the US as the majority of people I meet have a very very very low opinion of the country as a whole.
It seems for every 1 other person I find that loves the US, I find 50+ that don't and the reasons for this are very obvious to anyone outside of the US (and very obvious to most of my US real life friends too)
The biggest complaint is how insular the US is. Most US people I talk to have never ever left the US and have no intention of doing so., Most have zero idea of what's actually going on in the rest of the world. Most have zero idea of how they are really perceived by the rest of the world.
And using phrases like "All he is a some foreigner opening his mouth when he should remember he's a guest here" is typical of peoples experiences while dealing with the US.
Again I always stick up for your country and explain how big it is and how you cant judge any country on a few people yet alone one of your size.
But I do understand where they are coming from, for example what I said in my earlier post about Mitt Romney's aid slagging off the NHS then UK games players being asked to help fund Childrens ops in the US.
I love the UK and would not want to ever live permanently in any other country but England, I'm sure you feel exactly the same way about your country.
But I would be lying if I said Britain had a good history and we always treated other countries well etc, far from it, some of the things from our past (both distant and recent past), I'm totally ashamed of and I don't hide from it either.
Thing is, if most people from the US were discussing our countries with me and they bought up things they thought wrong with current or past UK issues, I might agree with them, I might disagree with them, but if I disagreed with them, I would politely debate why.
When it's the other way round, most US people I've encountered (not all) put their patriotic hats on and wont hear a bad word said against them and most refuse to even try to debate issues with those not born in their country as we're just some foreigner opening our big fat mouths and we should be quiet instead.
I wonder whether many actually realise how many of the worlds problems (including many terrorist groups) are caused directly by the USA (and the UK) interfering with the running of other countries etc.
I would hope if while in the US I ended up being arrested say as a suspect for something I'm totally innocent of, the same rules apply to me as they do to an American citizen, it appears this might not be the case?
Joe Gerardi wrote:Many people own tanks. In Britain you can as well.
In Britain you can own one if it's weapons are deactivated, you cannot own one that's capable of firing which is what I was talking about.
Joe Gerardi wrote:
Or how bout that guy in Britain about 8 years ago that drove a car into a school playground and killed 6 kids? What difference did guns make there?
That's a pretty poor argument in my opinion, it's like me saying what about xyz who committed suicide by jumping off a bridge.
That said, I have no recollection of such an incident taking place (not saying it didn't just that I have no memory and a long google shows nothing)
I haven't for one second denied murders/suicides etc take place by other means I simply state that in every case where someone has gone mad with a gun and mascaraed numerous people, it's always been by a legally held firearm (not necessarily legally held by the gunman).
And those times where someone does flip and go mad with a car/knife/baseball bat or whatever, personally I suspect there would be many more victims if they went mad with a gun.
Joe Gerardi wrote:See: Libya: without the access to automatic weapons, where would they be today. Same for Syria. There's the argument FOR fully automatic weapons. It's not a different society- it's the same society, but people want to think it is, and create an illusion that the world is a warm, safe place. Here's why I say this:
Syria is a mess caused totally by western interference. It will be years before any form of lasting peace is in place there and again its countries like the Uk and US picking sides and arming one side (usually more for long term financial gains rather than any real moral outrage).
Collectively, the numbers of Syrians on the move dwarf any refugee crisis in recent memory. They are fleeing cities that have become ghettoised, initially through the rampant destruction of regime shelling and lately through an uncompromising two-way fight that is whittling away historical cities and starving their inhabitants ...
Parts of Aleppo, much of Homs and even sections of Damascus are now in worse shape than even Sarajevo or Grozny ever were. The UN is trying to raise $520m to cater for the needs of the 4 million people, almost a quarter of Syria's total population, who it thinks may need help by next summer.
Follow how the day unfolded after UN investigators warned that entire communities could be killed or forced out of Syria
or
The conflict in Syria has become "overtly sectarian", according to a UN team investigating human rights abuses in Syria.
In their latest report, the investigators led by Brazilian expert Paulo Pinheiro said: "As battles between government forces and anti-government armed groups approach the end of their second year, the conflict has become overtly sectarian in nature."
Reuters said the investigators had noted that Syrian government forces have increased their use of aerial bombardments, including shelling of hospitals, and evidence suggests that such attacks are "disproportionate".
The conduct of hostilities by both sides is "increasingly in breach of international law", they added.
"Feeling threatened and under attack, ethnic and religious minority groups have increasingly aligned themselves with parties to the conflict, deepening sectarian divides," the report said.
Most of the "foreign fighters" filtering into Syria to join rebel groups, or fight independently alongside them, are Sunnis from other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, the UN investigators said, reporting on their findings after their latest interviews conducted in the region.
The UN report covers the period between 28 September and 16 December 2012.
The Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah has confirmed that its members are in Syria fighting on behalf of the government, while there are also reports that Iraqi Shias are coming to fight in Syria, and Iran confirmed in September that its Revolutionary Guards are in Syria providing assistance, it said.
"As the conflict drags on, the parties have become ever more violent and unpredictable, which has led to their conduct increasingly being in breach of international law," it said.
Iraq is still a mess
In December 2012, a year after the departure of the United States military closed a painful chapter in the histories of both nations, Iraq found itself in a familiar position: full-blown crisis mode, this time with two standing armies, one loyal to the central government in Baghdad and the other commanded by the Kurdish regional government in the north, staring at each other through gun sights, as officials in Baghdad, including American diplomats and an American general, tried to mediate.
Then there's Lybia
Tripoli, 27 December:
Local officials in Sirte decided to impose a nighttime curfew in a meeting yesterday due to unresolved security issues in the town, Libyan news agency LANA reported.
Consultations were first called in in response to the deterioration of security in town, as shown by the increase of assassinations, smuggling and irregular migration
or
21st October 2012
A year after Gaddafi's death, rebel hero is abandoning hope for peace in Libya
When Muhsen al-Gubbi entered the dictator's palace, he thought the war was over. But he is still waiting for it to end
One year ago Libyan rebel fighter Muhsen al-Gubbi shot to international fame after marking the capture of Muammar Gaddafi's compound by draping a pair of the dictator's underpants over one of his prized works of art.
In a remarkable account for the Observer of the ferocious battle for the dictator's Bab al-Aziziya palace in Tripoli, al-Gubbi recorded the horror of seeing comrades slain, the triumph of liberating his country from 40 years of brutal dictatorship and his decision on the day of liberation to mark it with ridicule by draping Gaddafi's underpants over a sculpture in the palace grounds depicting a steel fist clutching a US fighter plane.
A year later, he is sadder, wiser and more sanguine about the fate of his country that remains in the grip of violence and chaos.
Joe Gerardi wrote: Can't remember if it's Switzerland or Sweden where every household has an automatic weapon in it, because everyone is part of the citizen army after conscription. Not many mass shootings there, are there?
Your talking about Switzerland, a country that has no actual army. It still has less gun ownership per capita than the USA, Yemen and Serbia.
Every male from about 18 to about 30 are effectively members of their army, hence all have proper military training, go on regular refresher courses etc.
When people quote about gun ownership in Switzerland and try comparing that to the US, they are comparing apples with oranges. When people point to Switzerland and say every male owns a gun, what they should really be saying is that every fit male has military training following psychological evaluations, has strict rules about the gun he has, cant go anywhere with it, cant even keep it anywhere he likes and more and more lately cant even keep it at home as the Swiss has realised that when they take the gun out of the home, people are safer.
Gun regulation has got much stricter in recent years in Switzerland and again they have very strict training.
Its true that when a Swiss male is old enough to be discharged from the army they get to keep their weapon if they so choose, but if they do choose to do so, before they are allowed to take the weapon home, it has it's fully automatic capabilities removed and they then end up taking home a semi automatic rifle.
Switzerland started changing and tightening their gun laws after someone in 2001 opened fire in a local parliament with his military weapon killing 14 people and injuring 14 others.
Switzerland has a very low overall crime rate, but even then, out of the 53 murders in their country in 2010, 40 were by firearm. They also have between 200 and 300 suicides by guns each year.
Swiss people have a different mindset to other countries, it's entire population is smaller than that of the city of New York. It has a GDP per capita almost double that of the US (2011).
The gun crime is very very very very low there, few politicians have armed guards and due to the way the country as a whole operates, it has none of the social problems other countries experience with gun crime such as drugs or urban deprivation.
I read a Washington Post article about gun ownership in Israel, they used to be able to take their guns home with them, now they have to leave them on their base, since that has happened, there's been a 60% decrease in weekend suicides by IDS soldiers (and no increase in weekday suicides either)
