A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes to immediate living environments, Americans’ views on gun control may be less divided than the polarized national debate suggests.
The research was conducted against a backdrop of increasing gun violence and polarization on gun policy in the United States. The United States has over 350 million civilian firearms and gun-related incidents, including accidents and mass shootings, have become a leading cause of death in the country. Despite political divides, the new study aimed to explore whether there’s common ground among Americans in their immediate living environments, focusing on neighborhood preferences related to gun ownership and storage.
That’s a fair answer, I appreciate the depth you went into.
I think US is the center of immigration due to high economic potential first and foremost. Building careers in the richest country in the world sounds like an attractive option. Especially for young people who consider burdens like healthcare and home ownership to be less significant. Barely so for democracy outside of proclaimed “land of the free”. But I may be wrong.
If US will not speak with one voice, no amount of arms is gonna help. And I’d much rather live in a country where people don’t have access to guns than in a country where left and right are pointing muzzles at each other (not to mention American left and right are just different sorts of right to the outside world, but that’s a story for another day).
On far-right in Europe - true on your side.
I think you’re right about the perceptions of economic freedoms, yeah. Which is kinda wild, given that most countries in the EU fare much better overall in cost-of-living versus salaries. So it’s like playing roulette; they’re betting that they can win big, instead of being just another chump that loses money to the house.
And, TBH, I think that if the US had the same kind of criminal justice reform and social safety networks that you see in most of the EU (and I’m not including Great Britain in this; they really suck in a lot of ways, which is intentional on the part of UK conservatives), I think that you’d see a lot less violent crime in general, and a definitely lower murder rate.
I don’t know where you live. But you gotta understand a couple of things about the US. First, the US is big. All of Europe–including Russia–is 3.9M square miles. The continental US (not including Hawai’i and Alaska) is 3.1M square miles. All of Europe has a population of 745M people, and all of the US has a population of about 335M. So the US is a very large country, and statistically it’s very sparsely populated. I live in a semi-rural area; if shit happens, it’s going to take emergency services–cops, fire department, ambulance, whatever–a minimum of 20 minutes to show up. But in the US, the cops have no legal obligation to protect you in any way; there is no criminal or civil liability if any police officer or agency refuses to do their job. On top of that, cops are far, far more likely than not to be on the political right.
So what does this mean?
You need to be able and willing to protect yourself, and take care of yourself, because the government here can’t, and won’t. Especially if you aren’t white and christian.
You can say, “I don’t want to live in a society that’s armed”, but that’s a very privileged stance to take, given that most of the people in the US have to be ready to fend for themselves, and hope that the veneer of civility doesn’t fail.
I’m from, well, Russia :D With half the population over almost double the area, and quite some threats, too.
And yeah, we have guns banned here.
Not that we don’t have issue with police/other emergency services arriving to remote areas in time, nor are we a thriving peaceful nice democracy, but I certainly don’t expect less gun control to improve the situation here - and I don’t think it’s optimal for the US, either.
Individually, you may benefit from holding a gun. But collectively, there will be plenty of people putting those guns to a bad use, or just overreact in self-defense.
Collectively, if all of you had guns, you could have October Revolution Pt. II, and maybe get your other rights back.
I wish it were true, but Russian opposition is very scattered and in a full disarray, people are individualistic and opportunistic, and if you add guns to that mix, you’d just get massacres and marauders.
Besides, most people opposing the current regime seem to think that Putin is the sole problem, and that without him everything will magically get great.
Not a revolutionary mindset, if you ask me.