well said....
> On January 7, 2017 at 1:18 AM Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> On 1/6/2017 3:36 PM, John Hudson wrote:
> >
> >> More will be revealed, for sure, but this can't devolve into a
> >> gun/anti-gun argument as there really has to be more to the story than
> >
> > Really .......... these mass shootings in the USA are becoming as common as
> > daily football and baseball scores!
>
> Have you considered that you may be a silly person? :-)
>
> > You have a gun and violence culture that is frightening.
>
> I agree with you on that generality, and would add fear based - and yet . . .
>
> I live in California, which is about 9% more populous than Canada. As far as
> I recall, we've had one mass shooting of
> the sort to which you refer in the last few years. I also recall a few
> incidents in Canada, a couple of school shootings
> at least?
>
> Consider that it may not be that you northerners are less prone to violence,
> but, at least in part, that there are so
> few of you. The US population is about 9 times that of Canada, so any direct
> comparison of absolute numbers of anything
> is meaningless.
>
> Back around '67-'68, a good friend and ex-roommate called one Fri or Sat.
> evening. He was highly agitated, wanted to
> know what was going on, said "Berkeley is burning!!!" I looked out front of
> the apartment he used to live in as my
> roomer, and said it was completely quiet. I said we were just about to go out
> to a rock band performance. He said "You
> can't go out, Ray-Gun has declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew!"
>
> I looked outside again, shrugged, we drove to the venue in another part of
> Berkeley, had a good time and drove home. We
> never saw anything out of the ordinary. No cops, sirens, nothing.
>
> It turned out that there had been a sort of riot on South side, on a couple
> of blocks of Telegraph Ave. Not up to some
> 'events' after Midwest football games. A few windows were broken, a couple of
> trash cans set on fire. The TV news used
> carefully chosen camera angles and inflammatory words to make a mountain out
> of a mole hill.
>
> I've lived in the US for coming on 73 years. 70+ of that close to Oakland and
> Richmond, cities famous for drug and gang
> violence. I worked for several years in the heart of East Oakland, where most
> of that city's violence was concentrated.
> Have I on very rare occasions been uneasy, yes.
>
> But I've never seen a hand gun on the street other than in the holsters of
> police, never seen a gun fired other than at
> a range, and that only when the US military forced me to go a couple of times.
>
> I have been completely unaffected in any direct way by "these mass shootings
> in the USA [that] are becoming as common as
> daily football and baseball scores!" I imagine you would find that to be true
> of the vast majority of US denizens. The
> news media do their level best to scare everyone to death, but that doesn't
> mean the things they use for that purpose
> are meaningful threats.
>
> > We here north of the 49th parallel are by no means surprised at these daily
> > outrages.
>
> Nor am I surprised at the less frequent similar events in Canada, although I
> was surprised by the first big school
> shooting there that I was aware of, some years ago.
>
> > Pay yor NRA dues and this is what you get.
>
> I have never owned a gun, nor belonged to the NRA, nor, as far as I know have
> any of my immediate family. Noise aside,
> the NRA has a membership of about 5 million, that's ~1.5% of the US
> population and ~6-7% of US gun owners.
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/15/most-gun-owners-dont-belong-to-the-nra-and-they-dont-agree-with-it-either/?utm_term=.de63e41317bf>
>
> > Anybody with half a brain will avoid the USA. We do !!
>
> And we appreciate it! It's too darn crowed here anyway, and we don't need
> people who will panic at a car backfire.
>
> If you enjoy being paranoid (although I gather it may be harmful to your
> health), tarring others based on false
> statistics, throwing your regular anti US smoke bombs here, go right ahead.
>
> I'll go right on living here and enjoying it. I hope you don't mind the
> occasional foray into Canada on our part. It's
> been a four years, but I expect we will be back. I've not seen Saskatchewan
> or the Maritimes. I can live without the
> former, but would like to visit the latter, if you are sure it's safe. :-)
>
> Down to Earth Moose
>
> --
> What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
> --
> _________________________________________________________________
> Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
> Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
> Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
>
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|