Gun mad

[kevin3]

Last week,following the mass slaughter in the school in Newtown,USA by a gunman,using some of the five guns his mother had bought for "protection" the all-powerful gun lobby,the NRA,went into lockdown shutting down their web sites,twitter,facebook and refusing all requests for interviews and comments.Yesterday,following a week of outcry against guns,as bells tolled across America for the dead,as four more Americans were being killed in a shootout the NRA called a meeting,refusing to take questions and announced their "solution"to stop the mass killings.     Put an armed cop in every school in the USA ( 135,000 I believe ) and get teachers to carry guns in school,!!!! What a bunch of brain dead,macho wanabee,morally bankrupt b#####ds.The $$$ rules over kids safety, Rant over,!!   

[johntaylor49]

Sigh,

they really are amazing in the USA. Problem is it is too big and too wealthy so
it has become totally insular and only about 18% own a Passport and that is only
because they introduced Legislation to have to own a Passport to travel to Canada
and Mexico which formerly they didnt!

So you get a Society that has become so inward looking and with serious Paranoia
issues when they travel, I remember an American colleague of mine who would not
come to the alley at the back of the street where the Gold Shops were to look at
the bespoke jewellery makers ---in Dubai of all places! We suddenly realised --- he was scared!
(sad really).

So they are convinced they need all this "Protection" as well as the fools who just
love Guns but dont really know how to look after or use them.

As I often say "It is the law in the USA that every office must show a Map of the World
on the wall -- From the East Coast to the West!   

Meldrew

[SuzzPuss]

I agree with some of what you say John but I just have to defend Americans a bit.  I lived a few years in Chicago and my experience of the many friends I made while I was there is that they aren't as insular as individuals and they appear en masse.  My friends, admittedly well educated people on the whole, were interested in and knowledgeable about the rest of the world.  Often more so than I.  Also I believe the numbers of passport owners in US is nearer 40% than 18% and rising fairly rapidly.

As for the gun issue I'm with you on that.  I do think the NRA is wrong about a lot of things.  However, yet again I think the numbers are skewed.  I've looked it up after reading this post and apparently only about 35% of Americans households has guns (legitimately) and that percentage is falling.  It was over 50% in the late 70s.  It also appears that, even amongst gun owners, the number of people who feel that they have any kind of affinity with the NRA is quite small.  Most feel that the NRA is an extremist organisation and not representative of the vast majority of Americans.

Now, it may be that I see Americans through rose-tinted spectacles because my experience of them is that they are kind, funny, thinking people but I also believe that most anti-American feeling is based on a skewed picture of the people as a whole and not allowing them to be individuals.  It's very easy to believe generalisations.  After all, the Germans have no sense of humour, the French all smell of garlic, Spaniards are lazy, Italians are sleazy, Swedes are sex-obsessed, the Irish are drunks and all Dutchmen wear clogs.  Not my experience of any of these I must say...

[KKOB]

the Germans have no sense of humour, the French all smell of garlic, Spaniards are lazy, Italians are sleazy, Swedes are sex-obsessed, the Irish are drunks and all Dutchmen wear clogs.

And of course, every household in England that flies a St George's Cross is occupied by racist football hooligans.  

[johntaylor49]

I do love a good debate! Actually I too lived in America for a while (Chicago and Atlanta) and for many years travelled there on business ever few weeks. It is regional, I dont think a farmer in Alabama has anything in common at all with a salesman in Boston! If anythiung the borxer is the qwrong way round between Canada and the USA, it should be east-west not north-south as someone in San Francisco is more likley to relate better to someone from Vancouver than New York!

SO, where do I find this sex mad sleazylazy Irish-Swedish-anish-Italian Alchoholic with the clogs on then? (There is still some life in the Old Dog    )

I have been looking for womething i ssaw years ago that was very funny, all about perfect and imperfect, like in perfect the English were the Policeman and in the imperfect it was the Germans etc.

Meldrew

[johntaylor49]

Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the
 mechanics German, the lovers Italian and it's all organised by the
 Swiss. Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the
 lover's Swiss, the police German and it's all organised by the Italians.

And the Americans??? Well in every case they will of course be the Lawyers