Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 10:59:01 11/30/00
Go up one level in this thread
On November 30, 2000 at 07:22:29, Michael Cummings wrote: >The world is changing, the U.S is being hit with many natural disasters, they >will soon be in a position where apart from worrying about other countries >wanting to attack them, they will have their own hands full just trying to keep >their own people safe from sotrms, floods, fires, etc. The last big storm we had here, a tree fell over and killed someone. I think we can handle it. By "here", I mean the city where I live. It's a big country. >I suppose it is going to sound like Yankee bashing again, but the US Government, >and I state government, is only seen as being arrogant these days, and Bush or >Gore have given no impression in changing that view in how they responded to >questions before the election. > >Even though there are many countries that are far worse, if I was to go on a >holiday anywhere, the U.S would be on the bottom of my list, simply because I >would never goto a country where kids can take a gun to school and blow someone >away, and the next day you see the president of the U.S coming and saying that >we need to teach our kids about guns, but nothing about taking them off the >streets. We have a gun problem because our country was founded as a result of a popular revolution and did not maintain a standing army. The foundser built the right of ownership of "arms" into the constitution, somewhat ambiguously. Things have changed, but in many places the gun is still viewed as a symbol of freedom. Those who want to do something about this find it hard to do, because the people who want to keep gus going are very well organized, and in order to make big changes, the constitution will have to be affected, that that is designed to be extremely difficult. Things will change more, but it will take a long time. >The U.S is a far too violent place for me and my family, and the sad part is, >that most of the U.S people have lived like that their whole life and do not see >it. And the two jokers fighting for the white house both support red necks >walking around the streets with guns in their pockets ready to blow away a kid >who is spray painting a wall (and yes that has happened three times in the U.S) Please pardon small errors in my statistics, it is hard to find good statistics without killing the whole morning. I'm looking at 1998 statistics when I quote them. Maybe I'm wrong about all of this, but I think the odds that I'm wrong are about the same as the odds that you are wrong. I live in Washington State. The population here is something under six million. How often do you hear about something dramatically bad happening here? When was the last time you heard about someone going crazy and shooting up a restaurant or something like that? It happens, but there are 49 other states, so these things tend to happen there. We have 2% of the population here. You probably don't hear much about it. We had some guy a few hundred miles from here who was a serial killer, but that's the biggest thing I can think of in the past few years, except for that WTO nonsense last year (one year ago today, actually). Big deal. Something over 200 people per year are murdered in this state, and this number is dropping gradually, five years ago it was closer to 300 people. We had 2700 reported forcible rapes, and so on. We can compare this with New South Wales, which includes both Sydney and Melbourne, and which has a population roughly comparable with the state of Washington. 96 murders, 3000 sexual assaults. Woo woo, twice as many murders here, better stay home, because you know for sure that you're gonna get shot if you go to eat at Jack in the Box. You guys have a lot more robberies than we do, and more car thefts, and the number of assaults you have is outrageously huge. You had twice as many assaults alone as we had violent crimes of any sort. What are you doing there, wandering around beating the shit out of each other all day long? You don't call this violent? Someone broke into my car, which was easy since the door was unlocked. They didn't find anything, but they threw a bunch of the trash I had on the floor out onto my lawn. I have decided that I can tolerate this level of crime. I am much more concerned about the traffic, frankly. >I do not hate the U.S, nor most of its people, but in large they have turned >into something which is more of a fairy tale than real life. Anything is a fairy tale if you haven't seen it and won't go look. It's like I said to Thorsten -- I doubt he'd like it here, but if he visited at least he'd have real reasons rather than stereotypes. bruce http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/bocsar1.nsf/pages/crim_culm3 http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/wacrime.htm
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.