LI-ghtcycle said:
My mistake, friend, I took the "failed nation" statement to be resentment towards the USA.
I think you may misunderstand my reason for carrying a gun from time to time depending on where I have worked and where I have had to live.
I wouldn't say that I would carry the weapon for purposes of "just to feel safe" as much as a "just in case" in most instances. The one time that I was in fear of either myself or a neighbor being attacked by the ex-con, I simply had the pistol in my house, I didn't carry it with me everywhere, at that time, I didn't know about the laws concerning concealed carry, but unfortunately this guy had just gotten out of jail for breaking into the house of a young girl and attempting to rape her, and though the cops were watching his every move, he had served his sentence, and was out of jail.
He started trying to lure a young girl in the neighborhood into trusting him so he could attempt a similar crime no doubt, but once word got out that I was packing, he never appeared again in the hallway again(not that I was spreading rumors mind you, but in a small town people have a way of finding out).
I simply became educated about the use of firearms at that time, and started feeling it was a responsibility of mine as a citizen to be able to defend myself or someone else if I were to find myself in a bad situation.
I thought very seriously about becoming a police officer, and even pursued that career and took armed security jobs for a while (BIG mistake to get paid little over minimum wage and have that kind of potential liability because when it hits the fan, the low man on the totem pole takes the blame, and here I was being sent to places that had been robbed at gun point, to walk around in a police like uniform to help prevent it!
)
Thank God i have never had a reason to even un-holster a weapon to defend myself or others, but there have been times and places where I have been where I was glad I had the option.
The closest I ever came to having to shoot someone was right after 911 happened, I was in the Air Force, and my squadron was part of the auxiliary Security Police, so we were given a full combat load, stationed on the air field, and with orders to "take out" anyone who appeared to be attempting to destroy an aircraft. This was poorly coordinated, and I came very close to having to choose whether or not to shoot a bus driving Tech Sergeant who blew my check point AND the guy who issued my weapon mistakenly had done the function check WITH a magazine attached, therefore loading a live round into the chamber!!
It's not really reported much when a lawful citizen uses a firearm to prevent a crime simply by presenting it in a situation where it's use might be warranted, mainly because of general fear of guns, and how people treat you differently simply for knowing that you carry one, but there have been some horrible attacks at schools and churches where in some cases armed citizens, and others armed security have prevented a gun man from going on a rampage.
A good friend of mine who just happened to also be ex-Air Force has a permit to carry in all 50 states (I believe he was in OSI, sort of the Air Force version of FBI) that he has been able to maintain, and has crossed the USA on his bicycle many times, and was very glad to have a permit, when in the middle of the night burglars tried to make off with his and a friend's gear. He chased them off with his .357, and no one was shot, and he did wish he hadn't scared them so bad because they took off in a truck with half their stuff, but there have been instances where just for kicks criminals have done horrible things to people just because they could. I would rather not trust a criminal will just rob me and not do worse to me, I would rather have the option to defend myself.
Not quite sure what you mean about controlling destiny is Illusory? I believe that it should be the right of the citizen to do their best to self-govern, and that the less government is involved in our daily lives the better. Not sure if that is what you are referring too? But I believe there is a very different approach to government in the USA than most in Europe, and I prefer to live here, but I hold nothing against those who live elsewhere.
Just back from a holiday in London. What a week I missed out on. Superluminal particles discovered - Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity lying in shards. Irish coroner ruling a man died from Spontaneous Human Combustion. Ireland hammer Australia (well that wasn't a shock but still very pleasant to see us finally beat teams we should be beating).
I see Michael Knight has appeared and is doing a Sarkosy - 'Who me? I was in favour of regulation all along.' Though perhaps that reference is a little too obscure.
I don't know how people in London live with the constant terrorist warnings while taking the Tube. If I lived there I would be tearing down those speakers, that can't be good for your health.
We live in very different countries and I suppose without experiencing what it is to live in fear (which I don't ever want to do) I cannot really understand your position. I don't understand why your police are so poorly paid. In Ireland, prison officers get paid a starting salary close to €40,000 ($54,000). Our Gardai are very well-paid and somewhat overprotected by the judicial system. Even our teachers get paid twice as much as their U.S. counterparts and every year their salaries gradually increase as their service accumulates.
The statement about controlling our destinies, I forget the exact phrase, simply means that we are not in control of our lives. We are dependent on other people, other circumstances, our genes, our parents etc. The scary truth is that the idea that we control our destiny is illusionary.
You can die at any time, be killed at any time. If somebody truly wanted to murder you and was willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to do so - there is nothing you can do about it except get lucky. Such is life. For every successful actor, singer - there are a million other people propping them up and no amount of determination will change that outcome. Of course there are things that you can control but in the bigger picture/greater scheme of things you are largely helpless.
The cases of people killing those in schools/mass shootings etc. is very complicated and I don't believe that people having easy access to guns would do any favours but I also think discussing guns in these situations is irrelevant.
The real issue is who are these people and what makes them do what they do? I maintain that most of them are sociopaths/psychopaths. We now know a lot more about psychopathy than we ever did before. We know that there brains are dramatically different, deformed from our own. Even I could tell the difference between a normal person and a psychopath from an MRSI scan and I, with no medical background, would be the least well-suited to judge. All of this is old news and has been known for quite some time.
What is new is that we have isolated the low-risk/high risk genes that are responsible for psychopaths. We also know that, at least with the low-risk variant, troubled upbringings are also needed to cause to sociopathy. Not everyone with the genes and the abnormal brain is a sociopath.
So what do we do armed with this knowledge? Do we go around brain-scanning suspected individuals who display signs of psychopathy? If we find them to have psychopathic brains, can we justify locking them up for life even if all they have done is commit relatively minor crimes? What if there are much greater numbers of sociopath/psychopaths than we suspected? What of instead of 1-in-1,000 the number is two or three in a hundred? Off the top of my head I can think of two from a local nearby town that I would be very confident of that fit the bill.
There are many ways to destroy people. Men tend towards violence but the pain of a punch or a kick will only last a couple of days, if that. Well-chosen words, on the other hand, can inflict pain that will last a lifetime. Therefore, do we also go after the sociopaths that try to exploit and manipulate people who are often the most vulnerable? Do we brain-scan these undesirables? Do we lock them up if we find what we are looking for?
What would a world be like without sociopaths? What would politics look like? I won't name names, I don't want either Endless Sphere or me to be sued.
However, I find it easier to come up with a list of which politicians display sociopathic traits than those who don't. Do we need them? Would famous corporations, including one very famous entertainment business, exist without them?
These types of people are actually terrible at doing their jobs but they can convince others, though not all, that they are great. So do we need these people to motivate us in order to achieve great feats?
These are the questions that people will start asking in several years time. Believe, me if I have been thinking about this lately, thousands of others already have been long before me.
Back to nationalism. While on holidays I had an unusual first hand experience of how racism works.This was while taking a boat cruise along the Thames. There were quite a few Chinese tourists onboard.
I have had a few slightly unpleasant but very minor, hardly even noteworthy encounters with other people of different nationalities, including my own, before. There was an offensive Swiss guy in a queue to get into Madrid's palace who insisted that he be allowed in for free. That day it was free for all EU nationalities. The poor woman at the desk eventually allowed this oaf in for free even though he should have paid.
There also the stereotypical American tourists while on an audio-guide bus tour sitting behind who you have no trouble hearing through the headphones.
Lastly, from an Irish perspective, a bunch of extremely loud Dublin women who appeared to be a little, shall we say, tipsy, at the airport. Why do drunk people always think they are much more fascinating than the actually are? :wink:
None of these 'events', apart from lodging in the memory, merit attention or even being told. They are only for contrast.
The boat ride was something else. Until the very end it was completely unremarkable. Until several of the Chinese began loudly honking and spitting in the water. At this stage, I should point out that none of the incidents mentioned, including those above, involved anyone under the age of 30, most were a lot older. These were all adults. After these acts a Chinese woman, flanked by her husband, pushed her way through and stood right in front of me. She began retreating into me I quickly stuck out my elbows before the ignoramus walked on my feet. Fuming at this stage, I manoeuvred my way around her and stood in front. I was subsequently treating to more honking and spitting. Guess who was doing more of the honking the Chinese ignoramus behind me.
I couldn't wait to escape from the boat. If I had to be on a boat with that woman for any long period of time, or any of the others for that matter, I would have chucked them all into the water. Next to spitting on your face that is one of the foulest things you can do. I could believe the amount of disrespect being displayed.
The trouble is after such an incident a nation gets tarred. You start paying attention to other Chinese people and seeing if they are similarly ill-mannered. It is easy to see how racism starts to take a foothold. Of course you rationally know that most Chinese people are probably fairly nice, well you hope so anyway
. There is no problem in forgetting that each individual represents their country, for better or for worse. We, well at least I do, sometimes forget that we are always being judged, especially by people from other countries. Afterall we are the 'other' to them.
We are all cultural ambassadors and we owe ourselves a responsibility to portray our own nations as best as possible.
