|
Not sure where you're leaning, Gerard, but simply looking at a chart of firearm deaths doesn't show the entire picture of what's happening. It tends to skew reality. Most European countries aren't racially (ethnically, whatever's PC) diverse. Not to mention population density, cultural rivalries, and governments that induce/promote/inject fear into it's citizenry. Nor are those EU countries saturated with greed based advertising that media outlets tend to project for ratings benefits. Those advertisements tend to focus primarily on all the evils and none of the goodwill variety. Americans live in fear, because the government and corporations make money off of it.
The USA, for example, is its own worst enemy. If you took away all the guns, as someone stated before, the only ones with guns would be the criminals, and the firearm deaths would be even higher, no doubt. Just look at our "war on terrorism". The terrorists don't frighten me nearly as much as my own government does, by making otherwise illegal actions legal, only when those actions serve them (e.g. invasion of privacy scans, and groping by TSA agents at our airports). Are we really safer? No. Any terrorist, if they really wanted to, could bribe some schmuck baggage handler/airport personnel to accomplish the task of loading a bomb or chemical agents onto an aircraft. Scanning my body, invasively, and molesting my body parts, physically, won't stop a terrorist. They must be laughing at us.
But getting back to firearm deaths, and taking a gander at the top country, South Africa. Lawlessness the whole answer? No. This is much like Arabs and Israelis. You got two factions that absolutely detest one another: Zulus and Xhosas, an unpopular political group: ANC, extremely corrupt police forces, very high drug and human trafficking (considering its location), extremely high poverty rate, revenge retaliations, and the list goes on. Pretty much the scenario of Mexico, current day.
America, on the other hand, you have a climate of fear, government and corporation induced, making someone's bottom line. And sadly, Americans buy into it, willingly, like sheep. They should remove the "United" from States of America, because we are anything but that.
_________________
You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
|