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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: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:18PM (7 children)
Sorry about this, but while your post is technically correct ... please note that ALL people are ALWAYS irrational, EXCEPT when they pay careful attention to logical steps...and often even then.
There are good reasons for this. Logic is slow, and takes a long time to work through, so people normally work on pattern matching, and from initial positions chosen in a non-logical manner...basically based on what you were exposed to when young.
THIS means that lots of different people will have different conclusions than you do when presented with the same evidence in any complex situation. And the conclusions are all "justifiable" from their normal thought processes.
WARNING: Even when one is reasoning carefully, and following precisely logical steps, the conclusions will still depend on the initial axioms, which are usually not known.
I generally presume that people are telling the truth as they see it unless there are good reasons to believe otherwise. It normally seems to work out well. So I believe that she really doesn't understand the fascination with guns. Of course, this is easy for me, because I don't understand it either, even though I can accept it. And I'm usually less worried about their fascination than with their actions, which aren't directly predictable from the fascination.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @07:06PM (6 children)
Rational/irrational are not binary states.
Some people are further disconnected from reality than others,
Khallow is regularly found wandering around in the weeds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:13PM (2 children)
So easy to sling stones from the safety of anonymity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:49PM (1 child)
What the parent says!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:46PM
Yo momma!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 05 2017, @06:00AM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @05:15PM (1 child)
Obvious answer: yourself.
On the house ;)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 06 2017, @10:48PM