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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Guns are not a part of the culture of my homeland, except perhaps for the occasional Bollywood movie in which the bad guy meets his demise staring down the wrong end of a barrel.
My childhood in India was steeped in ahimsa, the tenet of nonviolence toward all living things.
The Indians may have succeeded in ousting the British, but we won with Gandhian-style civil disobedience, not a revolutionary war.
I grew up not knowing a single gun owner, and even today India has one of the strictest gun laws on the planet. Few Indians buy and keep firearms at home, and gun violence is nowhere near the problem it is in the United States. An American is 12 times more likely than an Indian to be killed by a firearm, according to a recent study.
It's no wonder then that every time I visit India, my friends and family want to know more about America's "love affair" with guns.
I get the same questions when I visit my brother in Canada or on my business travels to other countries, where many people remain perplexed, maybe even downright mystified, by Americans' defense of gun rights.
I admit I do not fully understand it myself, despite having become an American citizen nearly a decade ago. So when I learn the National Rifle Association is holding its annual convention here in Atlanta, right next to the CNN Center, I decide to go and find out more.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/28/world/indian-immigrant-nra-convention/index.html
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:57PM (9 children)
I can't think of anything more un-american than to say american principles aren't good enough to convince anyone else of their value and correctness.
I think us real americans need to kick your traitorous ass out of the country.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:21PM (7 children)
It is simply a fact that principles are enforced by people who appreciate those principles—if you change The People, then you change the principles.
There's a reason that the third world struggles to implement even the most basic ideas of a Jeffersonian representative democracy; the institutions of such a government have more-or-less worked in the United States not because the principles are inherently workable, but rather because The People appreciate those principles.
NEWS FLASH: The United States Government wasn't created by Indians.
When humanity finally achieves civilization, there won't be a government. How is that for "un-American"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:49PM
Again you proclaim that you have no faith in the inherent superiority of american principles.
If that's true, then we should welcome better ones.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:04PM (3 children)
I'm sorry, but humans need governments to exist peaceably in dense populations. Actually, even to exist peaceably in sparse populations, but in sparse populations encounters are less frequent, so government is less important. But do note that the murder rate among the Kalahari bushmen was found to be higher than the rate in the Detroit slums. (I'm not the one who picked out Detroit, it was in the original article I read.)
OTOH, the above cited figure isn't quite correct, as the "civilized" murder rate doesn't include those killed in war or by other governmental actions. There may be other problems with it.
People change their nature quite slowly, but the environment within which that nature manifests itself changes rapidly. So I don't expect people to become inherently peaceful, but hope that environmental changes will cause them to react peacefully. Of course, peace can come at too high a price, but as various technologies become more powerful we will eventually find the alternatives of peacefullness or extinction. We're actually already at that point, but currently it's only the large groups (powerful nations) that can unleash extinction. This is in the process of changing. It's is actually probable at this point in time that a medium sized country or a major corporation could unleash extinction on humanity if it really worked at it for a decade. Most of them, though, find other goals more enticing. But as the technologies become more powerful, smaller groups will have the ability to use them.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @07:24PM (1 child)
WRONG
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:44PM
Well, you convinced me!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @12:13AM
government is the biggest killer of humanity yet you claim it would be worse without them. you're a slave.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:17PM (1 child)
When humanity finally becomes angels, there won't be a government.
FTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @09:52AM
Then why do we have human government? Your argument is nonsequitur: "humans are not angels, so we need government ruled by humans".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 05 2017, @11:57PM
I can't think of anything more un-american than to say american principles aren't good enough to convince anyone else of their value and correctness.
The obvious rebuttal here is the fact that those other parts of the world aren't already embracing better practices. That's a strong indication that American principles can be much better and still not be good enough to convince someone else.