TikTok is now the most popular website

Or we could have free speech and celebrate art

What sort of silly talk is that? :-)
I will have to stop, as the Moderators will get cross if you ask why a country will ban Classical Art and theatre to "save" children but not firearms after the multiple (13?) mass shooting in the last three months. That is insanity.
The Handmaids Tale seems to be more fact than fiction.
So I shall stop,
 
I never had any interest in them, but you'd never be able to ban guns here, it just wouldn't work.

Same with alcohol; an impossible task with so many people in this kind of large territory with a particular mindset.

And that art would be banned on a state, local level if that's what it would come to, not the entire country.
 
What sort of silly talk is that? :-)
I will have to stop, as the Moderators will get cross if you ask why a country will ban Classical Art and theatre to "save" children but not firearms after the multiple (13?) mass shooting in the last three months. That is insanity.
The Handmaids Tale seems to be more fact than fiction.
So I shall stop,

Margaret Atwood always points out that everything in Handmaid's Tale has happened somewhere at some time. It's just an amalgamation of all those repressive terrors.

American history has all the answers. All the religious zealots who weren't welcome in Europe found their way here. And the colonizers who spread across the continent had to defend themselves as the native population was hostile (and other colonizers were hostile as well) and there was no law enforcement. That's who we were then and it's who we are now. Of course, there were numerous groups of immigrants who weren't zealots or gunslingers.

image_131294.jpg
 
I never had any interest in them, but you'd never be able to ban guns here, it just wouldn't work.

Same with alcohol; an impossible task with so many people in this kind of large territory with a particular mindset.

And that art would be banned on a state, local level if that's what it would come to, not the entire country.

Then why not for the firearms "banned on a state, local level if that's what it would come to," Then again with abortion laws being moved back 100 years you are not going to have a shortage of children to shoot at.
 
Then why not for the firearms "banned on a state, local level if that's what it would come to," Then again with abortion laws being moved back 100 years you are not going to have a shortage of children to shoot at.

You could probably try that in the states that care less, but anytime you try to ban something like that from people it has the potential to only make matters worse.

You could also try to make it harder to obtain them but the gun wars are like the drug wars; just one of those things that will never go away and people will always be able to get them.

___

I think the only type of organization, leadership - for better and for worse - and you can call it whatever you want - that works to drastically transfer a society is one with one ruler where, in this case, the penalty for breaking a gun law is execution. So if guns are banned and you're caught with one, you're executed. Immediate death.

This would never happen - at least in the USA - but that's the only type of system that could work to make any impactful change.
 
You could probably try that in the states that care less, but anytime you try to ban something like that from people it has the potential to only make matters worse.
.

It's because of the Supreme Court. For example, new york state has passed gun control laws that were overruled by the Supreme Court after a legal challenge. New York is not allowed to regulate guns within its boundaries, Subject to the high court's interpretation of the 2nd amendment.

And the same goes for abortion. Roe v Wade was a Supreme Court decision that forced all states to permit abortion providers. It was recently overruled, paving the way for state bans of abortion.

The Supreme Court is inherently a political institution whose composition reflects the presidencies and, increasingly, the senates of the last few decades.
 
Then why not for the firearms "banned on a state, local level if that's what it would come to," Then again with abortion laws being moved back 100 years you are not going to have a shortage of children to shoot at.

Firearm ownership provides individual protection, whereas crime rates in the US are specific to various enclaves within the same administrative district. In other words, the information the Euros peddle about about America is thus grossly inaccurate.

But easily available online via sources such as Wikipedia, the FBI, etc.

The Supreme Court is inherently a political institution whose composition reflects the presidencies and, increasingly, the senates of the last few decades.

Oh, really? Maybe I should have emigrated to Israel. Uh, nah ... that won't work either.
 
On a related note, I think machines and AI are going to be helpful with preventing bad stuff from happening in the future.

Armed drones, security systems that neutralize potential suspects from their locations (maybe with tranquilizing darts from the ceiling), automatic barriers and shields that go up in certain places, thermal scanning technology that will be able to see weapons on the body, etc.
 
It's because of the Supreme Court. For example, new york state has passed gun control laws that were overruled by the Supreme Court after a legal challenge. New York is not allowed to regulate guns within its boundaries, Subject to the high court's interpretation of the 2nd amendment.

And the same goes for abortion. Roe v Wade was a Supreme Court decision that forced all states to permit abortion providers. It was recently overruled, paving the way for state bans of abortion.

The Supreme Court is inherently a political institution whose composition reflects the presidencies and, increasingly, the senates of the last few decades.

That's why that text above specifically mentioned one ruler (again, for better or for worse)...nothing like whatever this is that we have now.
 
On a related note, I think machines and AI are going to be helpful with preventing bad stuff from happening in the future.

Armed drones, security systems that neutralize potential suspects from their locations (maybe with tranquilizing darts from the ceiling), automatic barriers and shields that go up in certain places, thermal scanning technology that will be able to see weapons on the body, etc.

eventually, AI will be able to predict who will commit a crime and then apprehend them before they perpetrate it

minority-report.jpg?quality=75&width=1200&auto=webp.jpg
 
eventually, AI will be able to predict who will commit a crime and then apprehend them before they perpetrate it


Will need chips in brains for that (or somewhere), which might happen, but that's going to be a whole other thing...the chip war.
 
Not to worry. The information being peddled to Americans about Europe is off by miles too. And don't even start me on Russia. Or USSR.

Most Europeans probably have a better idea of what's happening in the US than most Americans do
 
Most Europeans probably have a better idea of what's happening in the US than most Americans do

There was an old Soviet era joke - obviously, it's old since the USSR hasn't existed in over 30 years - about this.

Q. Why does an average Soviet citizen know more about the American politics than he knows about the Soviet?

A : Because he knows nothing about the Soviet.

----------------------------

The odd part here is that even people who were supposed to know a lot about the Soviet Union, still knew crap. In 1974, Soviet economist Igor Birman made his way to the US. He was in his 40's then and I still can't explain how the Soviets managed to let him go because, having spent his career working for Gosplan (literally, the State Planning Agency), he had some very important and mostly hidden information. He applied to several jobs and,given his expertise on the matter, subsequently hired by Pentagon. After familiarizing himself with its and CIA's data, Birman came to the conclusion that the Amerikanskis, despite their satellites, spies and highly paid analysts, simply knew nothing. He then appealed to the CIA heads George Bush and Stansfield Turner but was told to mind his own business. Finally, with Reagan's election in 1980, he found a sympathetic ear in Bill Casey. Birman's assertion was that, despite billions spent on the intelligence, the CIA's understanding of the Soviet economy was idiotic and that they overrated its performance and size by several times. Colby listened to his claims and the subsequent Reagan era dealings with the USSR were based on them precisely. At the end, Birman was proven right. As the USSR was collapsing everywhere in the late 80's, perestroika and glasnost were taking shape, and more relevant information came out. Equipped with that updated statistics, Daniel Patrick Moynihan then suggested on the senate floor that the CIA, having been shown as a bunch of inept nitwits, be eliminated completely. According to the stats assembled for the senator from new York, the CIA overestimated the size of the Soviet economy by about 300%. In other words, instead of it being approximately 40% of the American, it was closer to 13%.

Now, here's a kicker - I could have told him that and I was barely out of high school.
 
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Just for a perspective. The chart below shows the deaths per 100K people in the world's Developed Countries There are 36 "developed Nations" in the world according to the UN. In 35 countries the rate is between 1 and 35 deaths per 100K people. The USA is the one to the far right. (Ironic really) with over 120 per 100K
However, if you go to healthcare and coverage, the chart looks similar. Then you have the US going back 100 years on terminations and family planning healthcare.
The question most ask is : "Is the USA a Developed nation?", and the answer is usually "not really".
BTW myself and several people I know have lived and worked in the USA and parts of Europe. One of my friends (and former colleague) has done training at Ft Bragg so are well aware of life in the US.

But this is straying off the politics of TikTok and big internet companies spying on their users.
Though I do know of one ISP that actively spied on its users. (it was a US company)

usgundeathsrate.PNG
 
It's too developed for its own good, which is why these problems exist.

Also, life in the US can be drastically different from one state to another, Wild Wild West different.

People here in some states with certain lifestyles are afraid to go to others.
 
Just for a perspective. The chart below ---

As a wise man once said without knowing that the phrase was soon to be popularized by and attributed to Mark Twain, 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics".
 
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