Quote Originally Posted by ThisYouWillDo View Post
Personally, I think USA would benefit from taking a long hard look at how European countries deal with issues such as these, so it should care what Swedes say. Maybe, then, it could see itself more clearly in a brighter light. It is not alone in the world, and it has no monopoly on what is right.
Damn but that's condescending of you.

How lovely it must be to be so insular to think you would even have the right to have this conversation if (pick one)

Communism,
Nazi Germany,
The Triple Alliance, or
Napolean Bonaparte had been more successful. (I get hazy thereafter.)

We are what we are specifically because of how history unfolded. A large part of your current freedoms are about, is because of how your international neighbors conduct themselves... and in the last century, to a great degree, the US.

I'm not here to knock anyone (as you seem so fond of doing) but if the US acted like Sweden during WWII, would you be speaking German? Russian? Hell man, would the Swedes be speaking those languages?

See TY. I can be condescending too!


I think Tom's suggestions are probably the best on offer so far. Certainly poverty is an issue, because I am sure that most armed crime is committed by the poor and hopeless. Education, too, is important, and I would suggest that smaller schools would go a long way to helping, too. Where students number a few hundred rather than several hundred or even thousands, they become impersonal and potentially hostile places where all forms of bullying and petty crime can flourish unchecked: smaller schools can identify such behaviour quicker and stamp it out easier. Also, it is easier to identify with a smaller school and build ties of loyalty. This is character forming. I would suggest also that smaller schools would be able to produce better levels of education, so fewer people, even poor people, would feel quite so helpless and hopeless.

But none of that stops the "crazies". And they must either be prevented from assassinating their school chums, or they must suffer punishment for doing so afterwards. If prevention is seen as better than cure, isn't the first step to make it nigh on impossible to get hold of guns?
No! The tools of choice for the young has traditionally been knives and clubs and pipes and chains and have done plenty of damage and harm... Eliminate guns and other weapons will be used. Bombs maybe. You seem to think the controlling the tool eliminates the problem. Or at least you delight in saying so when it comes to guns.

Sure, it means that a "freedom" is sacrificed: the freedom to do what? And does that amount to a hill of beans?

TYWD
Fine. We can discuss a lot of things and get heated or not... But as you are so dismissive of my sensibilities... that I hold my freedoms dear, it's no longer worth discussing.