safety and politics
 

A couple of days ago a talk show host here in Seattle was asserting that now that there is a Democrat in the White House we are less safe. He went on to say, I can't believe he said this, that Europeans want us to be less safe.

Of course Dorey Mondsons job is to p*ss people off so the station can pay it's bills I suppose. I,personally, have been in a great mood feeling that we just may have a President now who actually cares about us instead of corporations ( especially oil corporations)

The hypocracy that often seems to be there as I see it , is that if right wingers really cared about our safety, wouldn't they be willing to get behind some reforms of the gun control laws? How about health care? How about homelessness or joblessness? How about an economy that is crumbling in around us?

So, the right wants to frame safety as meaning, what?, that since Obama has pledged to get us out of Iraq, when we do leave Iraq we will then be less safe? Or, Obama wants to actually talk to our enemies about our issues, so we are then less safe?

How about we frame the safety debate to include all the things that threaten our families? Gee, like the fact that gangs are starting to totally control some neighborhoods with the help of guns? Like the fact that my health insurance now costs our family about 10 percent of our total income. And I'm lucky if the insurance company keeps me for very long if they actually have to pay my bills for too long. How about polution? I guess we sort of brush that one under the rug, but it indirectly threatens our safety through our lungs and our water.

Can we just admit one thing? We are being manipulated by powerful money interests on all these things. They use their intelegence not to help us, but to line their own pockets. We were in Iraq because the oil companies thought they needed US power there. Gun companies want to protect their markets by saying that people, not guns kill people. The health care industry fears that nationalized health care would take away the cash cow they have, so they cynically bring out Hariet to say she would hate the single payer system because she would have to wait in line.

The right will say, oh we want small unregulated government so business and the economy can grow. Let some of the profits trickle down. They hate government until they need it to bail them out, right? Right now the auto companies are asking us for a bail out. But when we asked them, as a government to build smaller more fuel efficient or electric cars that was too much regulation.

Anyway, these things, I suppose are obvious to you all. ( or most) I just needed to say it to someone, thanks for reading it.

Neil

Re: safety and politics
 

On the topic of Gun Control:

Disclaimer: I do not and have never owned a gun (young child in the house), but as a law abiding citizen I value my right to own a gun.

I agree that we have a "problem" with guns in the US. However, this will not be resolved by taking the guns FROM the law abiding citizens. The problem is that the CRIMINALS will always have or be able to get guns, and since they are already breaking the law they won't be deterred by any new gun legislation.

IIRC the British Police have in the past couple of years or so started carrying guns as they could not effectively enforce the law because the criminals had guns. FYI: Gun ownership has been illegal in the UK for many, many years.

IIRC there have been studies in the US that show a strong correlation between legal gun ownership and lower crime rates (see Texas)

I also remember hearing that Washington D.C. which has very strict gun laws also has one of the highest murder rates in the country.

A Gun is a Tool.

It comes down to Personal Responsibility & Accountability as to how the tool is used.

On the topic of Government:

The primary goal of those in power (Republican and Democrat alike) is to stay in power. Secondary goal is to take care of those who help the primary goal ie special interest groups / lobbyists. Unfortunately, the People come in a distant third and then only when there is an election approaching.

Personally, I think that both the "Right and the Left" are both WRONG. However, there are good ideas from both sides that would benefit everyone. Unfortunately, both sides are stuck in the "Us
or Them" mentality that precludes true progress.

Thanks
Matt

Re: safety and politics
 

Re: Gun Control

Most of us here own, or have owned, or frequently operate a weapon that is very dangerous, lethal to the user and bystanders. Yet, we consider this weapon to be essential to our life, freedom, and pursuit of happiness/financial security.

That weapon is a car.

Yet we operate this device for the most part perfectly safely. We take instruction in its use very seriously, and rightly so. We punish misuse severely, require registration of our use, and register each individual car to an owner who is responsible for it - in a national database. Each transaction, transfer of ownership, and modification to core functionality is tracked and regulated.

This is all a good thing, and allows for a huge percentage of a population in densely packed environments to cooperatively make use of their (mostly) individually owned vehicles.

So why does every gun-nut get their knickers in a twist if even 1% of these kind of rules are supposed to be applied for their favorite toy?

Re: safety and politics
 

Thanks Matt for taking the time to respond to my thread. The gun debate has been going on for a long time of course. And your viewpoint seems to be the one commonly held among gun rights folks.

I brought guns up obviously because it seems it's the same people resisting gun law reform that also wanted to put our military in harms way for the sake of oil. As usual, it depends on who's safety we are talking about, right?

This can be said about guns specifically. I hear you about guns actually. I'm starting to feel like I would feel safer if there was a gun in my house to protect my family from any type of home invasion robbery like we are starting to see on the news more these days. That's fine. I have no problem with you owning a gun for this sort of purpose. We really agree about the problem. Which is that too many criminals own guns and that that is a risk to safety, right? The question is what to do about it. It's a tough one because I understand we also don't want to give our government the sort of power they would need to go into neighborhoods, door to door style, and check each individual residence and house to check for guns. That's not the kind of government I want, and I doubt you do either.

So, when I talk about gun control, I mean that we need to control criminal gun use and gun proliferation. One such reform that could take place is that background checks need to start being done at guns shows. As I understand it, I could go to a gun show and buy a gun, maybe even a semi-automatic gun and they would not check me out much. Am I wrong? Last year a guy went nuts killing his fellow college students . He had been allowed to buy a gun even though there was serious evidence that he was mentally ill. As I recall, all he had to do was drive to a nearby state where they didn't have records or need such records about his mental history.

Hmm, guns are a tool? Well, they are a tool designed to harm whatever that bullet hits. I'm just saying that there is a heck of a lot more that could be done to make this place safer for everyone and not just the fellow that can get it together to buy a gun legally and then get a permit and training to be able to carry it around or keep it at home without the kids messing with it.

But I don't want this thread to totally go off about guns. My main point is that we seem to be allowing a very narrow framing of the safety issue. It mostly seems that we talk about safety in terms of outside enemies when for most of us, it's about dayly issues at home. The car is a great example of that. We have just waisted nearly a trillion dollars in Iraq. How many mass transit systems could wwe have built with that cash? How much safer would we be by being able to commute in a well built transit system rather than an auto. I don't have the numbers, but I know the numbers are huge for auto related deaths and of course injury.

Neil

Re: safety and politics
 

You can't believe someone would make a claim about all Europeans which is obviously true about some Europeans? :rolleyes: People on both sides of everything always overgeneralize. (Of course, that just might be an overgeneralization... :eek:) There certainly are some Europeans who would rather we were less safe, although I'm pretty sure they're outnumbered by the ones who simply would rather we were less powerful.

Oh my, people who disagree with you on policy couldn't possibly be honest, but mistaken. They must be evil.

Is that just because if it came down to a simple disagreement, there's a chance either side (including yours) could be wrong? (Whereas if you just paint them evil enough, you needn't consider that?)

Moreover, many of the more principled types who would actually continue fighting your "reforms of gun control laws"* even if you proved things were safer your way would claim that they value safety, but that they value other things even higher.If having honest priorities is the new definition of hypocrisy, I'll take hypocrisy over your false dichotomy any time.


*Though I'd support some reforms of gun control laws, I think they're hardly what you meant; I'm not sure whether you know quite what semi-automatic means, but it's a distinction that would become immaterial under my reforms. But as you've said you don't want the thread going off on that, I'll spare the details and reasons, and simply take "reforms" here to mean tightening of government control over private ownership and use of arms.

Re: safety and politics
 

All true.

(My emphasis)
That's not beyond dispute; some of us, myself included, find much of that both objectionable government interference and an insane waste of public resources...

In brief, the same reason the second amendment made it into the bill of rights, and one concerning horses, wagons, or carriages didn't. Two closely related reasons: Because oppressive governments are far more concerned with seizing instruments of violence than of transportation, and because they are more crucial to a successful revolution.

Re: safety and politics
 

I don't know why the right-wingers get blamed for all the problems. Who's been in control of the current less-effective Congress? Which Senator/President-Elect has a huge number of "present" votes? To say that the Republicans are the only ones backed by special interests is a huge mistake, and to say that the Democrat's policy will fix all the problems you bring up is partisan talk and not good reasoning.
The Democrats complain about high gas prices and want to exempt the oil companies from tax breaks other corporations receive. If the oil companies have to pay more taxes, do you really think they'll lower their gas prices? Is this policy driven by a desire to lower gas prices or kowtow to the environmental special interest? You complain that insurance takes up 10% of your family income. If the government takes over, where is all the money for health care going to come from? Do you really think the government can provide health care at lower costs? Look at tax rates in countries with socialist health care.

Re: safety and politics
 

Consider me one of those who have issues with certain regulations regarding motor vehicles. Once you hand over such authority the state starts to take liberties. Take for example a recent occurence in NY. some people choose to register their vehicles in neighboring (or not so neighboring) states for a variety of reasons. One of which appears to be that it is cheaper to insure in some other state. Most states have rules about if you move into the state you must register the vehicle and exchange your license. Why? Well as we have just seen, the state of NY, seeking to boost revenue is going after people with cars registered out of state so that they can collect fees and, get this, back taxes on the sale of the vehicle, plus penalties. So we see that the DMV has become a money making venture for the state.

No don't deal with the high insurance rates in NY. Dick the people who found a means of insuring their vehicles.

Why is the state so interested in where your car is registered when EVERY state is obliged to honor the license, registration and insurance of any car from any state? It's called reciprocity.

Re: safety and politics
 

Benson,

Did I say you were evil? read your post. Who is trying to deamonize? If anything is evil, it's that we usually let the golden rule rule. Those with the money and therefore the best lobbyists rule because they have the ear of lawmakers. I give you Rush Limbau as someone who doesn't want to listen to those that disagree with him. But I know. My reverence to right wingers is what has you annoyed, right? How long have your side been ramming it in to us that we are some kind of commies simply because we care about our real safety and about the health of the planet? Fine, I'm all ears if you want to chat about the issues. But going off on me personally isn't acceptable, period.

Neil

Re: safety and politics
 

@sungrove

You reference the school shooting by the guy who later tuned out to be mentally unstable...

This is an example of the laws we have Not Being Enforced. We don't need new laws, We need to enforce the laws we have. I understand that this is a difficult task and has it's own pitfalls for privacy advocates, but it need to be done.

Opens new can 'o worms....

A similar issue with the same problem is Illegal Immigration. This is especially evident recently here in Iowa where a meat processor is going bankrupt. It is sad that the News keeps reporting that the INS raids have caused this, when it is actually due to the company's hiring practices (short term gain resulting in long term hardship for the community).


Safety

I agree that the focus on safety should be closer to home.
The intelligence that our leadership (both sides & the UN) had at the time had them believe that Iraq was either a threat to World Peace or the backer / safe haven for terrorists. Given that hindsight is 20/20 we should not 2nd guess.

IIRC multiple UN resolutions were tried and ignored by Saddam before we went into Iraq. Now that we are there, it behooves us to finish the job and not leave a completely destabilized Mid East. Leaving now will be seen as weakness and will result in further attacks like what happened in NY.