General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Should America work towards becoming a gun-free Country? [View all]marions ghost
(19,841 posts)where we're not subjected to the daily carnage reports, where nobody fears public places and where masses of people don't feel they have to arm themselves. Try to imagine that. As I've said over & over if you only have guns for actual hunting or sport, then I'm not talking to you. I am talking to people who feel that the world is so dangerous they need to carry lethal weapons for self-defense. Think about it. This is a tragic devolution.
If anyone could fix this problem, it would not only make me feel better it would change the country. There are many things short of banning that would help so much. But it's kind of like getting over the addiction to cars and providing good public transport. Or serious protection from tainted food. Or moving immediately to sustainable energy. We are not allowed to have those things in these dark and troubled times. We are not allowed to have even reasonable gun controls. Americans are so cautious, suspicious, untrusting, basically paranoid. The rate of gun ownership is a symptom of a sick society, a national failure. It hurts us all individually and collectively in too many ways to list.
The fact of this insane rush to guns for self protection is what is so damaging. It's not only the grim statistics, the daily carnage, it's the selling of a commodity to a gullible fearful public that does in no way make people safer, under false pretenses. But it makes some elements of society a shitload of money. It's the big lie of it that bothers me. Most people cannot defend themselves with a gun. It only makes them feel safer. Oh sure we do lots of things out of compulsion, for dubious psychological reasons, but buying guns should not be one of them.
We desperately need reasonable & fair gun control but because of extremists we will not have it. It's part of the whole degeneration of America as a whole. And future historians will see it that way. America became a backward state in the 21st century, unable to solve its own problems. Sinking into Idiocracy.