I like how Lily tells us she’s not worth bothering with in her username.
A MAGA IMMIGRANT in Amsterdam? ewww, I wish we could close our borders to the likes of them.
You know what would be weird? A president of USA doing anything that trump’s doing…
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This thread is Poe’s Law-ing the shit out of me
No, no, no. These weapons pale in comparison to basic infantry in the modern military. Not only are they way overkill for anything a law abiding citizen should ever need for recreation, they would also be useless in the case of a 2nd Amendment related coup of the corrupt government.
Are you saying an AR-15 can’t take out an attack helicopter at 2000m??
“Expat” is my favourite dog whistle. Because “migrant” is only used for brown people, or other undesirable minorities for racists.
She has “MAGA” in her display name. Why listen for dogwhistles when there’s a red alert siren?
BTW I had several teachers that described themselves as expats from the UK or US, and they were alright.
From my own experience as an immigrant in The Netherlands and Britain, “expat” is generally used by Americans and Brits when living abroad and pretty much nobody else no matter what their skin tone. I mean, I’ve seen on or two Ozzies using it but it’s way rarer with them and I suspect they were just copying the Brits and Americans. The New Zeelanders I crossed paths with weren’t “expats” and neither were the Canadians. Similarly I never heard any of the other Europeans immigrants there refering to themselves as “expats”.
I think “expat” is more a thing of people who thing they come from a “great country”, as if somehow it’s a priviledge for the other country to have them there.
I think “expat” is more a thing of people who thing they come from a “great country”, as if somehow it’s a priviledge for the other country to have them there.
This is it. If you move from a “better country” to a “worse country” you are an expat (because you think you are something better than the lower people you live among). If you move from a “worse country” to a “better country” you are labelled as a migrant (by the “better” people you live among).
I would have said the two words are different by perspective. An “expat” is talking about where you’re from. An “immigrant” is talking about where you are. Also, if you start talking about 2nd generation immigrants, then “expat” can’t be used at all, which means it is narrower in scope, too.
I know there’s some opinions on this, but I would consider this to be the case. Many people don’t have so much pride in their origins to consider using a term like expat, then there’s Americans, who’s entire identity is based on where they were born.
So it makes sense that someone from America living in another country would identify as an American expat, while everyone else is just, immigrated to where they are. Not enough focus on what country they came from to bother with an expat definition.
Makes me think that American expats are looking backwards, while other immigrants are looking forwards.
In my experience people will use “immigrant” to talk about were they’re from by referring their nationality (i.e. “I’m a Portuguese immigrant”) or explicitly adding a “from” and then using the country name (i.e. “I’m an immigrant from Portugal”).
If talking about where they’re an immigrant in, they will explicitly use “in” (i.e. “I’m an immigrant in The Netherlands”).
Even though “emmigrant” is about where you were born and aren’t living in anymore and “immigrant” is about were you went to, in my experience emmigrant is only ever used when physically in one’s country of original and talking about living elsewhere (i.e. when in Portugal I would say “I’m an emigrant” whilst when in The Netherlands I would say “I’m an immigrant”).
It’s funny since as I’m writting this I remembered that when I first left my country of birth to go live abroad it actually took me a while to figure out the proper usage of the whole immigrant/emmigrant thing.
As I said, I was an immigrant in The Netherlands and worked often with other immigrants from all over there (mainly because until I learned Dutch I could only work in English-speaking environments and in my area - software engineering - those attracted immigrants), and most people would use “immigrant” when talking about were they came from (i.e. “I’m a French immigrant”) and I only ever heard expat used instead of immigrant by people from Anglo-Saxon nations, overwhelmingly Brits and Americans.
That said, “expat” was used as a single word combining both “immigrant” and “emigrant” - in other words, unlike with the immigrant/emmigrant pair, the single word expat is valid both when one is physically on one’s country of origin and when one is physically in one’s host country: when I lived in Britain I did hear Britons saying that they were “expats” and meaning it as “living elsewhere than Britain”.
And yeah, 2nd generation don’t call themselves expats, but they also don’t call themselves immigrants. It’s only people from outside talking in general about people who are the direct descendants of immigrants in a country who will use “2nd generation immigrants” for the groups as a whole. Calling somebody who is a national of that country and has immigrant parents “an immigrant” in that country is only ever used as an insult by Far-Right extremists.
There is technically a difference in the definition, but mostly people use it exactly as you’re describing.
I’ve really had to catch myself when I notice myself using it.
But honestly it’s so expected that people can get confused when you call yourself an immigrant (and you aren’t doing it to make yourself a martyr somehow).
I hate the word for the reasons you’ve said, but I know a lot of black Americans in Portugal that refer to themselves as expats.
Feels to me that the line is drawn along economic privilege lines rather than simply race.
“No war but the class war” strikes again
There’s also this level of like, still identifying as being primarily of the country they’re from, like a rejection of assimilation into the place they’ve moved to. I’m not saying that’s inherently good or bad, but, it’s an interesting dynamic, and an option that a lot of immigrants don’t have.
an option that a lot of immigrants don’t have.
Especially when a lot of the same type of people will throw a fit if an ‘immigrant’ doesn’t do everything they can to assimilate.
Because these people think they are “better”. So when a wild barbaric immigrant shows up, they want that person to assimilate, but when they move among the unwashed lower folks, they don’t want to assimilate themselves, because it would be a step down in their eyes.
(I am talking about their view, which I very much despise, just as a clarification)
Wherever white people get mad at black people you hear the word “thug” thrown out a lot and i always wonder if they’re just using that word to substitute another one they’re not allowed to use publicly.
For us latinos it’s immigrant.
This was a troll account. It was a Dutch guy pretending to be MAGA to point out how arrogant Europeans are. He succeed thoroughly
Is it arrogance when you’re just correct?
When its all made up? Yes. Yes it is
What’s made up? That the US has school cops and Europe doesn’t?
Im not sure which bits would be getting made up in response to this. Americans need hella security because school shootings are real. Europeans need minimal security because they simply aren’t. Its a risk assessment thing. I dont think any of our schools, either side of the pond, are secure against ICBM attacks, because theyre unlikely to actually happen.
Why would you move to the Netherlands if you are MAGA? Isn’t your country so much greater again now? You ellected your king and then you left?
Well, the Dutch are moving right. Gert Wilders is a literal fascist.
AfD in Germany then we have Norway, Italy, Finland, UK, France and on and on. They probably feel at home
Well, if this wasn’t a troll account, it would probably be for work. The US has a military presence in the Netherlands, and we have a lot of corporate cross-over, especially in the tech industry, like the photo lithography involved in making CPUs. It isn’t that weird.
This is s troll though
Yeah this confuses me to no end. I thought they made America great last election?
Trump made it great, but Biden and woke already made it so un-great that the greatness hasn’t all trickled down yet.
Because they live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance.
laughs in Dutch politics
Cries in Dutch politics
Lily (MAGA)
expat in Amsterdam
Can someone tell this bitch to go back to where she came from?
For those unaware, an expat is an immigrant, but white.
I always thought expats had to live in little expat communities, keeping themselves aloof from the rest of the population. It’s a level of snobbery beyond even still caring where you’re originally from. That was my understanding from all the little compounds I saw in the global south.
I mean some people typically called immigrants do that too
When brown, they are inmigrantes anda those are ghettos. When white, they are expats in expat communities.
Typically “expat” communities are much wealthier. Poor white immigrants live in pretty shit conditions too and the areas are considered ghettos, at least historically
Typically because that’s where they’re ALLOWED to live.
I mean income directs it a bunch but some communities are just very insular and like to keep to themselves.
I agree, that’s why I went with typically, but many aren’t allowed to live near the future “expats” so that property values aren’t negatively impacted.
We should call them extracts and their communities “extractor communities”
Don’t forget to mention why they left their own country.
For those unaware, an expat is an immigrant, but white and racist.
I’d personally argue against it. I’ve a British neighbour old-man who I walk with and he’s very nice and world travelled. He even said that he chose to have the British retirement fund over my country’s because that’s where he paid taxes in.
I think Japan also gets ‘Expat’ credentials too.
we should call the us ones immigrants though. i think it would bother them a bit.
Not an expat, an immigrant. I hate the term expat.
I’ve always assumed it depends on what your context is. If your perspective is the country that the immigrant is from, then they would be an expat. If you are in context of the other country they are an immigrant.
Ie
“My friend is an expat who went off to The Netherlands.” “My friend is an immigrant that came here from The USA.”
Emigrant. That’s the kind of migrant who leaves a country. They’d be an immigrant in their new country.
But, IMO there’s a difference with an expat. An expat is often someone who isn’t moving permanently, and as a result is often not trying to integrate into their new country.
From my observation when living in The Netherlands as an immigrant (from Portugal) sometimes working in companies with lots of foreigners, most of us said of ourselves as being “immigrants”, except Americans and Brits who often said they were “expats”.
Curiously, generally the other people from different nations, including the Dutch, would use immigrant rather than expat when refering to the status of the self-proclaimed “expats” in that country - “expat” was very much their label for themselves.
The Americans and Brits were there in average for just a long as the rest.
I don’t think it’s really length of stay, at least not directly, I think it’s about the immigrant believing or not that their country of origin is a “greater country” than the country they’re living in. You can see this for example in places like Spain where British retirees have retired to and live the rest of their lives in their own Little Britain communities calling themselves “expats”.
This also matched to how some of the British immigrants most pissed of about their homeland (for example, a gay guy who had to move to The Netherlands to marry his partner, as back then that was not allowed in Britain) made a point of using “immigrant” for themselves instead of “expat”.
It’s about national delusions of grandeur, IMHO.
That’s what I’ve always assumed too, but I only ever hear it in reference to other Americans, so I could absolutely believe that it’s just some weird shit they use to separate themselves from immigrants.
I always assumed that ‘expatriate’ meant that you gave up citizenship in the old country to get citizenship in the new country. Like it’s a type of immigration that a lot of people like to pretend they’ve done because it’s pretty hardcore.
We don’t want her back. Throw her into the sea and let nature take its course.
Who the fuck emigrates to Europe as a hardcore American fascist? Seriously? What the actual fuck?
Spreading the plague, as insects are wont to do.
As an American, I would like to apologize profusely for the rank idiocy of my fellow citizens.
No need for an apology here, I too am beyond mortified by what my country has revealed itself to be. I do sincerely hope the rest of the civilized world resists the ideology we seem to be exporting before it’s too late.
We have plenty of fascists here. It’s not like the US have a monopoly. We don’t quite let them run the show yet, but we’re certainly working on it.
Yeah, but a really big part of the MAGA platform is hating on the “communist” and “woke” “yuropoors”. She must really really hate it here.
Also insane because I’m willing to bet she grew up and went to school in the era before we militarized our schools
We have European fascists here. The point here is: why would an American fascist move to Amsterdam?
The difference is that while we may have several fascists here, unlike in the US the majority are not fascists.
I’m an American living in the EU, and I’m surprised by that. All the other American immigrants I’ve met so far have been opposed to Trump and Republicans generally. I always figured the conservatives were likely to be buying into AmErIcA iS tHe BeSt propaganda and would thus be uninterested in moving to another country.
They come here to spread their culture, their ideology of violence and intolerance.
As an American, please enthusiastically tell any American that tries to do this to fuck all the way off and go back to our own shitty country. I don’t want us fucking up your continent too.
Here here. If Europe goes to trash I won’t even be able to VPN my way out of fascist bullshit.
If Europe goes to fash, my options narrow to Japan or SK or A/NZ, and none of those have the same geopolitical weight as the EU.
The EU is, IMO, the last best hope for democracy in the world these days, in the context of a geopolitically significant polity that is (mostly) cohesive.
And I hope that statement ages like wine, not milk (or, like the B5 S3 intro)
I mean Japan’s political situation is kind of weird. The LDP has basically been in power forever (with super brief interruptions). It lost power recently though so we’ll see what happens I guess. IIUC tho anti-immigrant sentiment is rising (at least partly fueled by the massive waves of shitty tourists IMO), which prob isn’t a great sign based on what’s been happening in other countries.
I still speak a reasonable amount of Japanese, and am familiar with the social norms. I think I would be fine, despite being white as a picket fence.
That’s not to say I am dismissing the xenophobia - it’s real, and it’s one of the aspects of Japanese society that troubles me the most, in a general sense.
Europe has its own nest of fascists and they’re gaining popularity.
Europeans invented fascism so she’s just trying to learn from the best.
Could be a military member stationed there. A guy I work with is one of those 4chan “libertarians” and had nothing but “horror stories” about living in Germany. Same guy is terrified to venture into the local major metropolitan area or take the light rail system.
I’d love to hear more
It’s funny, the fascists “won” here, but they are still expatriating themselves to fuck up other people’s countries too.
Maybe they needed the more affordable healthcare?
We need that, and healthcare that isn’t tied to our jobs, because that significantly entrenches the whole wage slavery thing.
Maybe for a specific job? Booking.com used to heavily recruit US talent to work in Amsterdam. It was usually only for a few years at a time, though, in accordance with Dutch labor and immigration laws.
Not for years and years. Most of the booking.com staff is remote. All the senior staff is outsourced now too and very little is in Amsterdam. If you get a job there, word to the wise, don’t compliment the one lady’s chickens, she gets big mad.
Yeah, fuck off back to your own shit country if you don’t like it
Imagine being racist and wanting to enjoy it instead of making it political. In the US it’s culture war shit. In Europe you can go to a football match and throw bananas at the black players and it’s chill. It’s just easier to be casually racist in Europe because racism doesn’t exist there, and if it does, it’s not as bad as America.
Recently in Spain a football fan got sentenced for racist chants
In fairness nobody ever died from a stray banana.
metal detectors and xray scanning of backpacks made me feel like I was going to prison lol
Honestly I believe it’s to train the younger generation to accept a police state and continuous surveillance.
I can’t imagine going to school like that bro.
Like is it scary and you always wonder if some lunatic is going to come and shoot it up or no?
I mean, I also worry about getting beat up by bullies… 🤷♂️ (its whatever, at least dying form gunshot wound is a cooler way to die than getting kicked in the face, luckily for me, neither happened (although the bullying definitely did happen, just not as violent as I imagine it could be))
I’m sorry you have to go through that bro.
What I learnt about bullies is once you smack them in the face most of them will think twice before bullying you again.
Well that I did. I defended myself against a bully who started a fight with me, then the school admin sided with the bully and call the cops on me. Luckily my mother naturalized as a US Citizen so I, being under 18, derived Citizenship status form my mother, and so I was safe from potential deportations, but like jesus christ wtf.
Fuck that school admin. ACAB.
It’s sad that the school did that and sided with the bully, but at least you stood your ground.
It’s shocking that teachers over there seem so quick to call the cops which is sure to escalate any situation. We had fights in school in the UK and never had cops called. Maybe that’s changed now with knives and stuff, but 🤷♂️
I’m in the US. Got a text from my son, 12th grade, the other day at 12:09pm that said, “we just had our sixth fight today”
To clarify, he did mean 6th of the day, not the school year. He goes to the worst highschool in the area. Anyone with the capabilities gets their kids in a different school. We do not have those abilities. On the upside, he’s learning how to avoid conflict and enjoying his phlebotomy class. He’ll even be a certified phlebotomist by the end of the year (assuming his teacher can get access to funding for supplies that she’s currently disappearing from her hospital job)!
*I’m donating blood tomorrow at the local bank. Usually donate a few times a year, but scheduled for tomorrow for a specific reason. I have name and phone number of his teacher, and a list of supplies. I’m donating now to give me an excuse to ask for a supply donation from the blood bank. It’s a long shot, but the answer is always no when you don’t ask 🤷♀️
The fact that you can even be considered for deportation over that is so dumb. That’s a child, like not an adult with adult capacity.
Well to be fair, no formal deportation procedures were ever initiated, so idk if that was actually possible (but had I not been a Citizen, it would’ve shown up in the files if I went through naturalization, so the USCIS Officer could potentially use that to determine “Crimes of Moral Turpitute” or that it indicates bad “Moral Character” and try to delay or deny naturalization, so it really depends on if you roll the dice and get a Obama appointed USCIS officer, or a trump appointed one). But that was during trump term 1 so I already got a bit paranoid. trump term 2 definitely would’ve attempted to use that as an excuse.
Yea schools will always side with the bully or just look at the one incident in isolation not as a pattern of abuse.
Also the school system just doesn’t work, like one time I reported a kid for talking about bringing a gun to school and it got turned around to ME threatening to bring a gun to school. Then that was a whole feasco that me and my parents had to deal with.
Bullying is often in the form of low-level violence combined with verbal and other forms of harassment committed repeatedly by folks who enjoy it.
There is little hope of beating it at the same level of intensity and for reasons of culture and not prosecuting thousands of kids adults avoid dealing with low intensity harm between kids even when over time it is intolerable. Beating up the bully requires one to be capable of such when the bully may be larger and physically imposing and part of a group then not getting treated as the guilty party afterward for being the one who actually caused real harm as if the harm of years of harassment aren’t real.
Its great your solution worked for you but for lots it would mean bully and friends get to beat you without consequence and you get in trouble reinforcing the game.
Its quite frankly on average a bs solution. The actual one is to pay attention to who is a pos and kick the 1% worst pos to shit schools so 99% can learn in peace.
Beating up the bully requires one to be capable of such when the bully may be larger and physically imposing and part of a group then not getting treated as the guilty party afterward
I was small for my age up until 10th grade. Bullies would look at how small I was and decide I was an easy target, so they would start in on me. One thing you have to realize is that bullies aren’t bullies because they are tough and good at fighting, they pick on the smallest, ‘weakest’ kids they can find- so being a great fighter isn’t nearly as important as being willing to fight back in the first place. The point isn’t to beat them up, it’s to make them think twice about picking on you. If there is a chance they will get hurt, even if they end up winning the fight, they will always just move on to the next victim who wont fight back.
Between 5th grade and 10th grade I got into 1 fight every year. A kid who didn’t know me would try to bully me, and I would defend myself. I never lost a fight, not because I was a badass or anything, but the teachers would break up the fights before it progressed too far. I would always get in trouble with the school, but never with my parents who taught me it was ok to defend myself (but not start fights). When word got around that about the fight, I wouldn’t get picked on the rest of the school year. When the next year rolled around it was either a new student, or I was the new student. Someone who didn’t know me basically who would try to bully me.
You just have to ask yourself- would you rather accept the bullying and allow it to continue, or risk getting beat up by fighting back and getting in trouble- but putting a stop to it.
Perhaps I should have highlighted that it’s not a viable option for everybody.
I would say that your solution is also pretty shitty. As bad as bullies are many of them are doing because either they’re getting bullied / hit at home and so they act out in this way or have other issues.
I don’t think sticking them all together is the solution, we should be trying to understand why someone is doing that and see if we can make positive changes. When I say we I mean the education system.
A lot of this is overblown really. A few things:
- The vast majority of school kids in the US will never deal with an active shooter situation.
- 43% of school shooters in the US are themselves active students
- Only 20% of school shooting perpetrators had no affiliation to the school, meaning that ~37% of shooters were former students, teachers, or parents.
- From 1999 - 2023 there were a total of 131 school shootings, but in 2024 alone there were a reported 332 school shootings.
- These are some terrible numbers, but statistically it’s a rare thing. There are approximately 130,000 K-12 schools in the US and ~75 million students per year. If we assume all schools have the same chance of having a school shooting (they don’t) they would have a 0.2% chance that your school will have a shooting that year or 4% chance that in your k-12 years that you would be at a school shooting.
When people talk about school security in the US they often don’t consider how litigious and risk adverse the US is. You don’t lock doors, build fences, and hire security guards to protect from such a small risk chance, if they actually cared there would be a greater emphasis on mental health. No, they do these things to minimize risk, lower insurance rates, and ward off lawsuits.
The defense writes itself,
“Hey, you can’t sue us for your child’s trauma, we did everything we reasonably could to ensure that a shooter couldn’t get into the school. We built a fence, we locked the doors, we made the kids wear clear plastic book bags, we used a metal detector, we hired a guard, we expelled kids who made threats, and we called the police on people who aren’t allowed to be here. If a kid then sneaks a 3D printed plastic gun on site and traumatizes the students it’s not the school systems fault.”
The US is crazy litigious, especially if a government entity is involved and someone might get a pay day. In my area a high school girl and some similarly aged boys ran away from school while at recess to a forest a mile or two off site. The girl then said she was sexually assaulted by the two boys, called her mom and was picked up and taken to the hospital directly (never came back to the school). The school had reported the girl missing, but only found out about the sexual assault after the mother filed a police report and the police reached out. The school cooperated with the police and reached out to the girl and her mother asking if she was ok or there was anything they could do, but the mother refused to answer their (the schools) phone calls or cooperate with the police. A year later the mother sued the school, the school system, the municipal government, and the police each for several million dollars for allowing her daughter to run away from school and for not protecting her from sexual assault in an offsite location. This lawsuit went on for over a year before the judge dismissed the case.
Oh cool.
Can you give us the statistics for school shootings in Europe so I can compare?
Dude, don’t start bring out statistics sticking up for america in the school shooting department. I can’t figure out your reasoning to defend American on this topic.
You don’t seem to have read my post…
I read it. You’re saying generally, “it’s not as bad as it looks.”
That’s not the take away you should be getting by any means. Yes, school shootings are more common in the US than the rest of the world, but they are statistically very very rare in the US. The reason why schools in the US react so dramatically for such a rare event is because they are trying to protect themselves from liability and lawsuit, not because they are trying to protect students or help troubled kids.
I think the most security I ever had was the gates being locked between opening and closing times. This was during primary school. Britain sucks but at least it’s not America.
Because we don’t have regular mass shootings in schools because we don’t give every single person the money for a ticket to a gun show a gun and where we do, we legislate that they keep their gun in a gun safe. You know, like the rest of the world…or the USA in 1792.
It’s not JUST the guns tbh. Everyone in Switzerland has a gun and they don’t shoot eachother up. American society is fucked up on multiple different levels and the guns are just adding extra fuel and oxygen to a forest fire.
Everyone in Switzerland has a gun and they don’t shoot eachother up. American society is fucked up on multiple different levels
Whenever i mention the Swiss having as many guns as the US, if not more, and yet the former has practically zero mass shooting incidents, and pointed out the problem of America is cultural, Americans tend to turn a blind eye to it.
We “tend to turn a blind eye to it” because “cultural problem” is primarily used as a racist dog whistle.
If your intention was to point at the underlying cause, you need to be talking about systematic impoverization, lack of generational wealth, devaluation of labor, etc.
Being American is not exclusive to black people and thus American culture has a country-wide problem in relation to guns.
That makes sense from an outside perspective, sure. But your criticism was about Americans turning a blind eye to the “cultural” problem.
Within the US, blaming gun violence on “culture” means pointing out that 13-17% of the population commits (and are the victims of) 55-65% of the murders. Blaming “culture” means pointing out that mass shooters are predominantly white, they also account for less than 1% of all murders.
The Americans broadly adopting your “cultural problem” argument are MAGAts. Normal Americans are turning a blind eye to that viewpoint, rather than being lumped in with those racist pricks.
Oops, replied to the wrong comment, lol.
Because a gun is cheaper than mental healthcare.
It’s more than just mental healthcare. American society is just broken in so many ways.
Yup. I sometimes travel (or travelled for that matter… I’m not going back to that shit hole) to the US and basically everyone there is living an act. It’s so weird and artificial and it all boils down to an “I’m the best and deserve everything, all the others can go fuck themselves” attitude. This is highly toxic and can easily lead to violence. Pair that with how they breathe the most toxic form of capitalism and you have a recipe for the shit show that is the USA. I’m really sorry for all the cool guys over there. There certainly are some fine people, but the majority is completely lost.
In Switzerland most people give their state issued gun away when they are not serving. So almost nobody has a gun at home.
and when they had guns, they were highly trained. They didn’t carry them loaded in their purses so their toddlers could play with them.
Ah but is that not something they opt to do because they feel safe? In comparison, American gun nuts would never do that, they don’t feel safe without their guns.
all 37 of them
Yeah it is their choice.
So that’s part of the same point. They COULD have access to guns and could shoot each other, but nobody wants to. Thus guns are only a problem when there’s other underlying issues.
But since US has the issues, you should lock guns away.
Aye, but when all the lunatics already have guns and you remove the guns from the responsible citizens, is that putting people in more or less danger?
I think it’s too late at this point to solve this one via gun control.
Nope, Switzerland had one of the highest rates of gun suicides before measures were taken.
Gun suicides or suicides in general?
Because suicides will always be an issue. Guns just make it easier. How many mass shootings have the swiss had though? Switzerland has a “List of mass shootings” article on Wikipedia. The US has a “ListS of mass shootings” category. The US list for 2018 alone is significantly longer than Switzerland’s list starting with 1905. I realize that Switzerland has a smaller population, but the per capita rates have a large discrepancy too. Something like a 9x difference.
And until our societal issues are solved, the guns need to go back into Pandora’s box.
Too late now unfortunately. The people who’d need to give up their guns, will never do so voluntarily. The actually responsible gun owners might give theirs away though.
It’s media, education and the political system that need to change. It won’t.
back to 1776
It’s a dumb comparison, as their reason for owning guns is entirely different and tied to national defense, not self-defense and “freedom”
It’s not a dumb comparison because it shows that in a healthy society, people don’t try to murder each other even given the chance. The fact that Americans buy guns for “freedom” is a symptom, not the root cause of all issues.
Also crazy as they don’t really have that much freedom. They’re slaves to capitalism.
Still shows the problem is the Americans rather than the guns
As a gun owner in USA, I fucking hate gun culture.
That’s why I never tell anyone outside of my immediate family that I own a firearm. Because some weird fucking people in America exist. And they are gun nuts.
No bro, I don’t want to talk about your 300 blackout how you wish someone would bust into your house so you can shoot them.
I keep my shit in my safe, that’s it. It’s not a personality.
Same. Very few people know I own one and have a concealed license. Made sure the gf knew how to shoot and that she wouldn’t hesitate to use it if necessary. But that’s it. Been locked away at least since Valentine’s last year when we went to shoot.
how do you use it in a home invasion in the middle of the night if it’s locked up and unloaded?
honest question: then why do you own one?
I get self defense, of course, but doesn’t the fact of owning a firearm make you part of gun culture? or am I missing something?No, you’ll know gun culture when you see it. The people that put the stupid stickers all over the car, the firearm brands, the calibers, stuff like that, becomes a major part of their personality.
Like the other commenter said, you would never know that I even own a gun unless we were pretty damn close.
I don’t really have a solid answer for you. I think it started growing up where my dad had guns, rifles, in the army but he was super protective of them, he wouldn’t show them to us, he wouldn’t let us see them at all, he wouldn’t teach us about them so I was just genuinely curious. So when I moved out that was the first thing I bought.
And I hated the gun laws here, you can buy and sell guns just like you’re selling a car, just do a bill of sale. There’s no background check for secondhand guns. i bought my first one at a metro stop in DC area, rode the train out, guy pulled up to the metro parking lot and we traded. i mean we took pictures of each other’s IDs and did a bill of sale, but beyond that, nothing.
Mine doesn’t really ever come out of lockup unless we’re camping or going on a long road trip. I haven’t carried it in years and I think my license might even be expired at this point. I’m not scared, maybe wildlife, I’m near the Appalachian Mountains. I don’t carry it around to intimidate anybody, or try to use it for coercion. But I guess the fascination has just always been there since it was withheld growing up.
we don’t give every single person the money for a ticket to a gun show
Erm, wut?
In America you can bypass gun checks in most checks if you buy your gun from a Gun show.
As a Canadian, I would very much like some sort of barrier between my country and the United States. We’ve got our own brand of crazy up here and have absolutely no need to import any junk from the USA.
Build a wall, make the USA pay for it
(Kidding, mostly.)
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As an American, I hope Canada gets some sort of barrier between it and the United States.
I would gladly go with my family and volunteer to help build it. If my family “accidentally” ends up on the Canadian side, I’d much rather stay though and help offset the crazy you have there…
I mean if you are there putting the last bricks in and you are standing on the north side you really don’t have much of a choice.
North of the Wall!!! I want to be a wildling
Gotta say, thats a pretty good burn.
I remember the exact day they closed up the college with fences and the look on the face on the children who started to feel like prisoners. I also remember the day they started to locked all doors but one to inconvenience potential invaders in high school forcing surveillance on who’s coming and who going on grown teens.
And we don’t have people walking around with guns (yet).
Europe has gangs and guns and whatnot. But people have more to lose I think. Something like that. Better education maybe?
Could be way better here as well
Hardened criminals have access to firearms but they tend to be expensive and difficult enough to get a hold of that you don’t waste them on holding up a 7-11.
But angry children and adults who just want to hurt people generally don’t.
It is why gun control works. It isn’t about getting rid of ALL guns. It is about reducing their number so that people don’t realize a year later that five of their ar-15s are missing
eh… in my country firearms are illegal, yet somewhat available. heavy explosives/fireworks and WW2 grenades on the other hand… plentiful
The above chap hit the nail on the head in terms of the UK.
Sure, hardcore criminals can get their hands on a gun, but the sort of people who want to cause trouble at a school certainly don’t.
I went to one of the worst schools in the country and while some of our students did occasionally murder people out in their private lives (I lived in the biggest shit hole in the country - the government even said so), in the school itself the worst thing I ever saw was a pupil throwing a chair at a teacher. And that was incredibly rare and shocking.
A student did arson one of the maths rooms too but that was over the weekend when nobody was there. They really hated that teacher haha. We had to do the rest of the year’s maths lessons in the Hall. So weird.
But ya, that’s all the extreme cases, and they’re nowhere remotely near “gun” territory. That’s just insanity. I never felt unsafe in a school.
Every country have criminals and guns. The difference is how available they are to the general public. And what type of guns.
Anyone in the US that isn’t a convicted felon can buy a handgun as soon as they turn 21. And there are very few laws on how you’re required to store them.
Compared to Europe where it’s incredibly rare for an average citizen to have access to a handgun.
More chill, probably.
Unchecked capitalism of this degree is a stressful world to live in and it drives people insane. Fear and hate not only breeds mass shooters, it makes your random Joe shoot PoCs, delivery guys or really everyone stepping on their lawn. And it’s not racism or some other kind of hatred alone. It’s a general fear that EVERYTHING entering your comfort zone is there to fuck you over. And in the US they aren’t totally wrong, because many things we find normal in Europe, like affordable healthcare, insurance, education, etc - are traps constructed to drink you empty, not to say about how many real scams flourish there. They are in a fight or flight mode like 24/7, so it’s no wonder they shoot on sight and cheer to bigotry.
Meme/anecdote: many european listeners of Cool Zone Media podcasts were confused, while visiting US of how many advertisements to buy gold deposits were in automatic ads while there, and how agressive they were. In a sense, gold investments is a panic button you press when you gamble on everything else going down. And this particular scam, the popularity of crypto, and the power of rabid christian sects kinda says a lot about how secure regular folks feel.
I’ve never been to the US, so it’s all built on assumptions and hearsay.
