this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Ask Americans

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Yes, the yellow school buses are real. No, we don't ascribe a lot of significance to the red solo cups. We're more culturally diverse than Europeans think, but probably less than we believe. Peanut butter is delicious. Thanks to @[email protected] for Kibby, and @[email protected] for our logo.

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So let's hit the ground running: Guns (self.askamericans)
submitted 1 year ago by ttmrichter to c/[email protected]
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The USA has literally more than one mass shooting^1^ per day. It has reached the point where these don't even reach the news any longer unless there's some special angle to make them "interesting". The reaction to this, from an outsider perspective, should be "maybe we should do something about the proliferation of freely available guns". The reaction to this, again from an outsider perspective, seems to be rather "OMG I BETTER BUY MORE GUNS!!!!!111oneoneoneeleventy!"

What gives? How come the USA has not yet figured out that doubling down on the strategy that led to the nation having a shocking murder rate for the developed world is not a working solution?

What is it about the USA and guns that makes you tolerate this state when you've got a culturally-similar nation to the north of you that, despite your cultural problems being imported, still doesn't have your kill rate?

^1^ Defined as a shooting event in which at least 4 people other than the shooter are injured or killed.

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[–] ttmrichter 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I assume you want an answer with a little more meat on the bones, though.

Yeah, that was kind of the desire, yes. 😉

  • a very real segment of the population that believes hunting and agrarian outdoor life are important, either to them as a lifestyle, or as a part of the “proper” American culture.

This one I reject out of hand. I've heard it before, but ... uh ... sorry, USAnians, you are nowhere near unique on this point. Again, look to the north. My own family has about 50% of its male population being avid hunters (and that's with only about 25% of them living in rural regions). All of these hunters have firearms. All of them. There are hunters in the UK. In Germany. THERE ARE HUNTERS IN CHINA! Who hunt with firearms. But who don't have this fanatical belief that they absolutely need semi-automatic weapons (easily converted to fully automatic) with 80-round magazines. There's something else behind the sickness than a culture of hunting.

  • a sense of American exceptionalism that if we do something and live in the greatest country on Earth, then changing it to be like the rest of the world necessarily implies that this change must be a weakening of the American spirit in some vague, unformed way.

This one smacks more of the truth to me. Every American I speak with in-depth, left-wingnut or right-wingnut, has this bizarre, deeply-seated belief that America is a land of exceptionals. Some think that it's the land of the exceptionally bad: exceptional racism, exceptional sexism, exceptional thisism, exceptional thatism. Others think it's the land of the exceptionally good: exceptional technology, exceptional social structures, exceptional this, exceptional that. But both agree that the USA is somehow exceptional.

When in truth it's dead average in most things. Even in its thinking of how exceptional it is.

  • a huge number of other issues and priorities that make the political party that is less committed to the gun culture unwilling to spend its political capital on gun issues. As horrifying and preventable as they are, even our huge number of mass shootings still leave the US a fairly safe place to live by global standards.

By "global" standards meaning what? It's hard to tease out "safety" in the statistics, but there are some interesting proxy statistics you can get hints from. Statistics like "life expectancy"^1^, or "infant mortality" or the aforelinked murder rate. I mean sure, if you want to compare yourselves to Benin or Angola, yeah, you're safer. But how 'bout you compare yourselves to the better parts of the world instead of the worse if you want to claim being #1? (Collective you, not you you.)

And I guess the final question on this topic is ... do you understand how insane your nation looks to the rest of the world? That you have, and I quote...

other issues and priorities

...that outweigh 24,415 (at the time of writing) slaughtered citizens thus far in 2023? That the BARBIE movie gets more political talk time than ALMOST 25,000 AMERICAN CITIZENS SLAUGHTERED BARELY HALF WAY THROUGH THE YEAR?

Do Americans understand this, and if so, what do they think of it?

^1^ Selection criterion: I randomly went over the list of nations and clicked on western industrialized nations as I found them. I'm linking so you can add any others you think I missed because I guarantee you I missed loads.