Current Affairs - The Bear and Badger

bad_hair_day

Out of 120 million adult male apes, a few are going to flip out now and again.
It's comforting, those who do can't buy automatic weapons in our shopping centres.

[Deleted User]

The American dream is trash and sometimes when people realise it they snap.

Diluted Dante

The question is, do they want to do it any more than anyone else, or is the the difficulty of doing so that prevents occurrences elsewhere?

Yossarian

Greater inequality which in this case leads to a lack of mental health support for many people, plus easy access to guns.

Brooks

I do think they're pretty obnoxious to eachother with more casual frequency than other peoples I've tangled with.

mistercrayon

Imagine living in a country where the entire mythology is about 'making it' and basically you are dung heap else wise. And 'making it' really just means robbing shit off people but getting away with it.

Escape

Brooks wrote:

I do think they're pretty obnoxious to eachother with more casual frequency than other peoples I've tangled with.

If you look at pro sports, they're the most competitively-minded wealthy nation on Earth. The worst excesses of that nature seem to lean too heavily on religion for mediation. As much as I loathe religion's dogmatic history as a catalyst for murder, perhaps God is the US' social glue to an extent? Scary thought.

[Deleted User]

Given the knife crime and rise of acid attacks along with growing nationalism and right wing agenda I dare say we would also have a similar gun crime issue without the strict laws we have.

poprock

Probably, yeah. But our strict gun laws stop there being 50 dead each time one nutter cracks.

JonB

A potent mixture of religious fanaticism, nationalist exceptionalism, hyper individualism, poor welfare and mental health care provision, and access to powerful firearms.

[Deleted User]

poprock wrote:

Probably, yeah. But our strict gun laws stop there being 50 dead each time one nutter cracks.

Exactly.
The issue is it is so easy to do so much damage with a gun so quickly.

I think the worst isn't even the grade of gun available but the ease of availability and the amount of ammo that can be hoarded.
This guy had 10 firearms! That is beyond efficient prep work for a planned attack and into fetishism.

Escape

JonB wrote:

hyper individualism

I don't know if this rates above the others, but I was thinking about how the Internet's fostered it recently. For all the online-social energy behind acceptance, it's never been easier to shun those you don't like.

Poor welfare's an interesting one if you expand it over a century. I watched a bit of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning the other night and realised how little we've progressed socially since the 1960s. That film's very nearly as far in our past as Queen Victoria's final years were in theirs.

To a degree, it's as if life reached a point of sufficient comfort for most people from the '70s through to the '00s, and it's only now, with a resurgent Labour seeking to capitalise on soaring poverty, that we're seeing countrywide anger again. The Monarchy went from all-powerful to questioned by a rapidly rising number in that first half-century, but that push against autocracy has eased right off. Before Diana, even.

This is probably the sort of thing you read and work with, Jon, so feel free to recommend.

Tempy

Brooks wrote:

I do think they're pretty obnoxious to eachother with more casual frequency than other peoples I've tangled with.

except for the Minnesotans

Matt_82

Liveinadive wrote:

poprock wrote:

Probably, yeah. But our strict gun laws stop there being 50 dead each time one nutter cracks.

Exactly. The issue is it is so easy to do so much damage with a gun so quickly.

This is it for me. Guns allow so much more destruction without having to actually physically fight with someone to do it.

The other thing that I think we're removed from here is the advertising and day to day chat about guns. "God created man, Sam Colt made them equal" is something you'll hear a lot if you watch gun supporting Youtubers. There's a feeling of empowerment that comes from owning a powerful weapon.

That feeling of empowerment is a dangerous thing when given to a lunatic with a desire to hurt as many people as possible. Society/government/economy might have stripped you of your dignity. So here's a gun to make you feel like a man again. It's a poisonous concoction.

[Deleted User]

That 10 firearms has now been confirmed as 19 rifles.

19
Rifles

Brooks

Guns are fucking cool gadgets that make explosions. Don't touch my toys!!

Escape

Liveinadive wrote:

19 Rifles

As many as Sharpe?

Brooks wrote:

Don't touch my toys!!

I imagine this line from beside his truck.

hunk

Wild wild west?

LarryDavid

It's basically down to America's constitution being drawn up fucking years ago when using guns and owning a gun were pretty important, or at least had some value beyond indiscriminately mowing down Garth Brooks fans...

Since then generations of Americans have grown up associating the concept of freedom as being closely related to their ability to regularly and freely let off firearms. Obviously having a different culture over here it seems mad to us. I mean, it is mad obviously but you sort of understand the reasoning behind it. Since then the issue has become way too complicated & sensitive to ever successfully resolve, and generations of hillbillies, Republicans, 'patriots', bigots and arms manufacturers have successfully associated the ability to wield high powered firearms with the concepts of freedom and self-determination in the minds of large numbers of Americans.

To be honest it's probably better to have America's prehistoric gun laws remain as they are than have them amended by Donald Trump and his brains trust of Fox News-addicted advisors.

EDIT: as amusing as the concept of high-powered forearms is I had to change it back to the originally intended 'firearms'.

Brooks

I mean really you scan most of these blobby tacticwear pissbaskets and they only look like the weirdest toddlers alive.

Escape

Tah! We could always try feeding them Rich Teas and milk. All choo and no track.

[Deleted User]

Over the course of four days a man carried 19 rifles through lobbies and lifts of a hotel within one the most heavily concentrated CCTV areas in the world.

Escape

Were they broken rifles in high-roller cases?

Kow

I think you just invented that last fact. Fake news.

[Deleted User]

Edited a bit sorry.
19 rifles and 4 days stand.
Vegas and the hotels are heavily monitored.

Escape

Desperado?

Vela

Of the four major ex-British colonies (USA, CAN, AUS, NZ) I would hazard a guess that only one of them has worked out sensibly. And that's NZ. No gun problem, a treaty with the indigenous people, no rampant xenophobia.

LarryDavid

I like to imagine him checking in with a ridiculously large and conspicuous violin case ... which he then proceeded to bring in and out of the hotel a further 19 times.

It says a lot for the lack of inquisitiveness of the hotel staff that no one once thought to ask him what he was doing repeatedly smuggling in all these large, suspiciously rifle-like packages.

LarryDavid

Hopefully some security camera footage will emerge showing him driving an armoured personnel carrier straight past the front desk and into the lift.

[Deleted User]

It is his freedom Larry, how dare you think to question it.
I mean, it's not like he was black or Asian.

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