• #GenerationLockdown: Two Australians shake up America with viral anti-gun ad
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Is the United States the only country with mental illness?
Our mental healthcare system is absolute shit.
I remember looking at the news occasionally and there's like a 10 second mention of some market bombing in Baghdad with hundreds of people vaporised. Never mentioned again, meanwhile 80 kids die on Utoya and nobody forgets.
What makes it any better/worse than comparable countries? Is there any way to quantify this, relatively speaking?
Mental healthcare around the world is generally pretty shit. In the UK it's not exactly known for being easy to access due to severe underfunding or just a total lack of availability in some areas. We still don't see shootings like the US does. What we do have is fairly limited to oft-ocurring political assassination attempts or London/ Manchester/ etc. gang violence. Which is still so irregular that it hits the news when it spikes even slightly. There is very little that is so genuinely different in the US compared to other English speaking western countries that can justify the sheer number of mass shootings or attempted shootings. Outside of the ease of access to firearms that is. And a subculture that practically deifies the idea of the rough and tumble survivalist with a rifle.
I think a good part of it is that living conditions in the United States promote poor mental health. Americans work more than most other countries. Americans have a poor diet relative to other countries. Americans have low satisfaction with their communities and their government. American values are not in line with living well. I honestly do not think funding for mental health will fix this. It's always going to be a game of catch up with mental health funding unless we go after why people are getting fucked up in the first place. It's not just the shootings we have to deal with, it's all of the deaths of despair with opioids, suicides, and other destructive behaviors.
This I can agree with on a conceptual level, as these are absolutely things I have subjectively observed living in America. Do you have sources to back up these claims, though?
For which in particular?
In general, but if I had to choose two that seem harder to support - having lower satisfaction in their communities and their government, and "American values are not in line with living well"
Indirect measure of more work Nat Geo primer on diet, but there's a good Lancet paper out there somewhere this is a decent way to compare aspects of life satisfaction across developed countries The values bit is a bit harder to come up with something more objective. My daily experience is also atypical of most Americans since academia is filled with chronic workaholics and is a perpetual rat race. In my field anyway, places like NZ value life outside of work far more than we do. If you're not working 80+ hours a week or dare to not work on weekends you're made to feel guilty for it here.
Life satisfaction does not appear to deviate much from the other countries listed that have far lower gun violence rates. Thanks for the former two.
I had active shooter drills when I was very young in elementary school and all throughout my education. These are not a recent thing.
You're right, we should just change the amendment instead.
We’re more likely to slip into another civil war than succeed in doing that.
Funny thing about gun rights advocates saying that is it sounds more like a threat than anything else, which isn't all too surprising given that we're on the precipice of civil war anyway.
Except let's replace the statement with other things and see how you feel. Let's just edit the first amendment. Let's just edit the fourth amendment. Fuck, let's just edit the Bill of Rights. Do you think threatening to change any of these three things might provoke a response that sounds like it's threatening civil war? When you talk about altering or removing fundamental freedoms, people don't like that. I guarantee you the solution to America's gun violence epidemic is not to simply take away guns, no more than taking away freezers will prevent Winter.
Can't the US just adopt an European style gun law? I'm not going to say that all weapons should be banned, but my opinion the law should be more stricter in this topic since shootings are happening almost every week. Also it's funny for me that a "first country" could be in risk of a freakin' civil war if you modify the gun amandment, but nothing that major happens about healthcare, school, civil rights and general safety.
It's the second amendment. Not the bill of rights. The second amendment is literally not relevant as it is written any more, and you would know this if you knew the tiniest thing about the history of the US. Militias that aren't being used as literal KKK recruitment vehicles barely exist with the exception of the National Guard, which is barely even a militia any more. It's not even hard to argue that the second amendment doesn't even apply to private citizens, a legal battle which was barely won in a republican-controlled supreme court only very recently.
Pray tell, what is the 2nd Amendment a part of then? Disagree. Being able to defend yourself is a fundamental human right. Well, it has and does, so :shrug:.
I should have been clearer and said the entire bill of rights, implying the whole thing wasn't being changed. You should make a different amendment then, because the second amendment has literally nothing to do with being able to defend yourself as an individual 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.' You're literally ignoring the context under which the interpretation of the amendment was changed, just because you like the outcome.
Wasn't the entire conclusion of DC v. Heller "that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm, unconnected with service in a militia, for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home" ? It also appears that McDonald v. City of Chicago further solidified this with the majority opinion saying "in Heller, we held that the Second Amendment protects the right to possess a handgun in the home for the purpose of self-defense." The entire purpose of the Supreme Court is to determine the specifics of the constitution, just because you don't personally agree with their assessment does not invalidate other people's rights.
Or more realistically you're ignoring the fact that a majority of the nation agrees with current precedent so good luck accomplishing anything. Or you could, you know, do what I've said several times in this thread and address the reasons why people shoot people. Canada's gun laws are more strict than in the US but they aren't prohibitionist strict. I could get a pistol and keep it in my house for self-defense if I wanted it and ponied up the cash for a license and the actual gun and ammo, and while it might take a little longer than in the US it's still happening. We don't have a second amendment in the same form the US does, but we do not have absolute gun control and we do have gun crime, but not nearly to the capacity America does. But on the other hand, Canada has not been squeezing the middle class out of existence, and I think that has a lot more to do with the problem than simply "gun: *exists*".
Yes it was, I said precisely that- recently, a right-leaning supreme court recently interpreted the second amendment as that, 5-4.
That's nice. I've NEVER HAD a shooter drill. Get the point ?
Gun ownership isn't a human right though. We've had that discussion before. The most generous interpretation of human rights as described by the UDHR only claims that you shouldn't receive legal punishment for exercising self-defense, not that you should be provided any and all means to successfully defend yourself. And even then, what qualifies as self-defense varies greatly depending on jurisdictions. Not having free access to firearms isn't any more of a violation of human rights than not providing a firearm to every citizen free of charge.
What, pray tell, is the bill of rights exactly? A militia is composed of private individuals, what are you even talking about. Thats literally the definition of a militia. I dont think you understand what that statement means at all.
I think a lot of people here are forgetting why the second amendment really exists, it's not really for defense against criminals, it's for defense against our own government or other governments. As per the 2nd Amendment it's "necessary to the security of a free State". If so many of you think a civil war or the collapse of the US Gov is coming you should be running the gun store. In reality, there's no gauruntee we don't blow our species back to the stone age in the future, we as a species are not out of the woods yet. It's still not too late to go back. In the event something like that happens, a lot of people probably won't want to deal with it and just off themselves, but those with weapons will continue to fight for what they once had, and if you don't have a gun to defend yourself or your country in that scenario, you're dead. Yeah, I know this sounds like a doomsday conspiracy in the defense of gun rights, but it's partly why it was added. The founding fathers tried to be as insightful into the future as possible, even going so far as to exclude English as the official language of the USA as languages change over time. But what doesn't seem to change is the nature of mankind, and they very well knew that.
You're from a prison colony, it makes sense that you don't value personal rights. You never had them.
I think it needs some updating, while some Americans here might say 'oh soldiers wouldn't shoot at their own people', (I'm sorry did you miss out on all the civil wars where the soldiers shoot their own people) how are militia going to keep up with the well armed American military in the event of a fight against the government? Sure, you might say 'look at Vietnam' but this is everybody's own backyard
Good for you. There is no point to get, though. You didn't provide one. It's better to be prepared than ignorant.
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