What are you talking about? Capitalism has never existed in practice...

the concept of nationality is divisive and abhorrent, imo. it exists so the ruling class/es can pit one against the other and thereby distract the population from the atrocities the owners are committing (or seeking to commit) in the name of the people.

ONE WORLD!

Just like the the american democratic party tries to pit the lower and middle class against the upper class and promises FREE healthcare and FREE everything to get votes

I've had exactly that happening to me a couple of years back.
Well....
I'm still around....

Strenghtened my opinion , that private gun-ownership should be banned ;
Easier to spot the criminal : the guy with the gun is the crook.
It's all about prevention of crimes , not mopping up the mess afterwards.

The only problem with banning them is that law abiding citizens will do the right thing, the criminals won't. I'm not a killer or anything, but I wouldn't be worried about the extra gun charges if I was about to spend the rest of my days in prison for the murder anyway. The murder trial I was on the jury for, they didn't charge him with any gun charges. After the guilty part was over, we had two choices anyway, death penalty or life with no parole. What would be the point then? Oh, he stole the gun from a cops house to. The gun was legal just not for him. He was a crook before he got the gun.

Gun control would likely work IF the people in the country never had guns to begin with and the government had little control otherwise. Our country will never be able to effectively take the guns away.

I happen to live way out in the country. The last time I had to have the Sherriff out here a good while back, it took them about 25 minutes to get here. It was a urgent situation too. A lot can happen in that time frame. Back in my healthier days, I could beat someone to death with a water hose in that length of time.

Another thought to ponder, You ever see a gun jump up and kill someone all by itself? Guns don't kill people, people do. There was murders long before guns come along. They used sticks, rocks and such to do the deed then. Guns may make it easier, but it also makes it easier to defend yourself.

You may want to keep this in mind also. I am disabled. I probably couldn't beat my way out of a wet paper bag nowadays. Short of using a gun, I would be defenseless. He/she/they could do whatever they wanted. If I couldn't get to the phone on time, they could do it as long as they wanted.

I have seen what some of our law enforcement can do. I have seen what the criminals can do as well. I have sat on a jury before, even on a murder trial. I would say this, I trust our government to a point, past that I don't trust them at all. Our government realizes that WE ARE the checks and balances. If the government done something really bad and offended enough of us, we WOULD set that straight right away. They know that.

I have lost a lot of friends to crime. I wish a lot of them could have defended themselves. There are also historical reasons for our right to bear arms. Our forefathers didn't trust the government either. Government tends to start out good and then go down hill from there. Look at what a mess we have now. That would be another long story.

Oh, that murder trial I mentioned. I bet the guy that was dead wished he had the opportunity to defend himself. Trying to jump him didn't work, since he was already shot. It was three against one. Three good guys and one bad guy. If the gun hadn't jammed there would have been three dead folks that day. I guess that would be three life sentences then. Still no point to the extra though.

I rest my case here. Not trying to start a flame here, there are different sides to the story. I still think Switzerland has the best idea. Arm everybody and teach them gun safety.


Later

canada has millions of guns, but they have virtually no gun murders -- one in 30 years, or a similar number. so any intelligent analysis would have to conclude that in a society with hundreds or thousands of murders, guns are not the problem, the society is the problem.

why is the american society so violent and prone to gun murders? the answer would seem to be in the media violence, and the portrayal of events on the news in a way that creates fear, animosity, and class divisiveness among the population. we see that kind of thinking reflected in Baja Nick's blaming of the democratic party for class divisions, when in fact the owners of the society DEPEND on having the population afraid and divided so they can be controlled more easily to work for those owners.

it is not "dem vs. repub," or "liberal vs. conservative" as we are (literally) programmed to believe. those divisions, as well as the racial ones, are smokescreens to keep us at each others' throats so the owners of the means of production can exploit us for our labor. the real site of contention is the wealthy/owners/corporations vs. the rest of us. that is the battle we are distracted from with propaganda about "liberal vs. conservative," "black vs. white," and with the various media entertainments that are designed to distract us from the massive inequities and abuses that are being perpetrated in our society by the power elite.

think of it this way: in a society where the poor, the sick, the misfortunate are taken care of, there is much less fear of becoming a have-not. one knows that if one falls on hard times, the society will provide a safety net so the person does not go under. most indigenous societies functioned that way, taking care of the elderly, the unfortunate, and the sick until they were back on their feet and able to participate fully again. unfortunately our system has nearly wiped most of those cultures out of existence, and indeed we see a massive disrespect for the sick and elderly that literally was unknown and unheard of before our corporatist system gained so much power.

otoh, the situation we have is much different. we have a villianizing of the poor in our society ("they want everything for free, they're lazy and don't want to work," etc.) so that people will be afraid of falling into those and similar conditions. and rightly so. the poor are treated practically as criminals in this country (the US) -- no one in his or her right mind would want to be poor in this society.

when the population has reason to fear poverty and hard times, they can be more easily controlled to work for as low wages as possible, with as few or no benefits as possible, in all sorts of mindless and boring jobs, under all sorts of working conditions that can be quite horrible and dehumanizing. the name of the game is to sqeeze the poor and middle classes as much as possible -- to the breaking point and often beyond -- to keep the pressure on the populace and ensure a willing workforce.

so the problem with a lot if not most of the violence stems from a natural outgrowth of those conditions. the poor and working classes are sqeezed to the point of breaking and beyond, so that crime comes to be seen as a viable if not a necessary option for the poor just to survive, and gun and other violence become a symptom of the massive pressure under which the working and some of the middle class is functioning on a day to day basis -- with huge bills, job insecurity, no health care, and so on. the pressure is immense -- right to the breaking point, as i said -- and there comes a need to let off steam, leading to much of the violence, alcoholism, domestic/child abuse, drug abuse, and so on.

the hollywood entertainment, once designed as a way to allow for that letting off of steam, has now become increasingly more violent itself, which starts to feed back into the problem. the same with the news media, which independent and scholarly analyses continually show portray murders and violent crimes and sensational aspects of the news hundreds of times disproportionately to other news, way more than "positive" news stories, etc. so the entire culture moves toward violence and aggression, with one aspect feeding into another.

in the meantime, the corporations are getting richer and richer and more and more powerful by the minute, gaining more and more "rights" under laws they increasingly are having passed through the massive influece they wield with the lawmakers, while the rest of us have more and more of our rights taken away. when the population in one location is sqeezed as much as possible, the corporations simply move operations "overseas" to another region to exploit the workers there. and so the whole system, based on profit, on greed, and which is careening out of control, spreads literally like a virus wiping out any sane culture in its path, all in the name of profits at any cost.

and the costs are devastating, as we are seeing with global warming, the clear cutting of forests, the massive chemical pollution everywhere, the astronomically rising cancer rates -- especially among children, the skyrocketing debt seen everywhere, the increased violence, and so on. the system itself is sick. but a select few are becoming unimaginably wealthy through this system, and things like increased gun violence and the other problems are seen by those who profit as unfortunate but ultimately irrelevant side effects. it's only too bad that we the people are the ones absorbing the costs, and we will continue to do so as long as the systems of inequity remain in place. it has nothing to do with guns or drugs or any of those excuses. those things are the symptoms, just like a fever is a symptom that the body has an infection. the infection the west has is corporate capitalism, which stands for profit at any cost. and the right "medicine" to fix the infection is not more corporatism, but for the population to take back its power and institute sane and just societies that put people before profit.

Right on the button synaptical.

I agree, violence is the symptom, not the desease. We have to many people that only care about themselves and no one else. They don't care about others.

How many people would jump in front of a speeding car about to hit soneone else? It is not likely anymore, not even for a child.

I saw on a foreign TV show that was talking about Switserland a while back, the crime is very low. They appear to do a better job of teaching respect for humanity. We in the US need to do much better job of that. The teachers used to try but all this Politically Correct crap makes it impossible. I still like what a insurance company I used to work for says, "Do the right thing, because it is the right thing to do". Then came the new boss and the company has went down the drain morality wise ever since. The new boss is milking the company for everything it is worth. He wants money, not a successful company.

I guess it is like Enron and some of the other companies, maybe even Microsoft, success at any price. Doesn't matter who we step on as long as we make money and win the battle.

I do wish WE could do a better job, in a lot of ways.

Later

Capitalism exists and total free market capitalism exists in the minds of some who conduct themselves and their affairs accordingly.

Each person of influence who lives according to the rules of capitalism drains the personal resources of others in a leach like fashion and the natural human response is to release the leech.

Imagine an eight foot by two foot leach. You know what he wants. He knows you know. But for the sake of those who believe his 'I'm friendly' propaganda all he can do is protect himself from annialation by those who know. And those who know must protect themselves from the believers.

Each capitalist sucks the spirit of community dry.


AND hey!! I'm guilty too. As are you and you and your mates too.

With the seive that is the U.S. border, all the well-meaning anti-gun laws one could dream up will never amount to anything. Guns are here, and have been since day one in this country. Work to stop the causes of crime, and you might see results.

Adding more hollow gun laws will yield results similar to all the mindless war-on-drugs laws we passed. The result will be higher court costs and higher prison costs, but no real results.

And yes I know that someone will talk about meritocracy and reward for being agood little member of society. But as synaptic points out people are born into all sorts of circles. It does not follow that each will acheive their deserved place in the sick and classless(sic) society of a meritocratic state.

In the U.S. this is what we call Penis Envy.

Lets keep these types of comments off the forum please. That's taking it a little too far and if you insist upon this, this will only lead to this thread being closed.

Regards.

Sorry, wasn't ment to be a dirty thing.

My point was he sounded a bit jelous.

Looks like more than one in the last 30 years.