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| BBC: Despite widespread gun ownership, America is a peaceful place |
| 2008-04-27 |
| Let's take a ride on the double-decker clue bus . . . Despite the fact there are more than 200 million guns in circulation, there is a certain tranquility and civility about American life. . . . . . . A British man I met in Colorado recently told me he used to live in Kent but he moved to the American state of New Jersey and will not go home because it is, as he put it, "a gentler environment for bringing the kids up." This is New Jersey. Home of the Sopranos. Brits arriving in New York, hoping to avoid being slaughtered on day one of their shopping mission to Manhattan are, by day two, beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. By day three they have had had the scales lifted from their eyes. I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place, the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns. "It seems so nice here," they quaver. Well, it is! . . . And this is Manhattan. Wait till you get to London Texas, or Glasgow Montana, or Oxford Mississippi or Virgin Utah, for that matter, where every household is required by local ordinance to possess a gun. Folks will have guns in all of these places and if you break into their homes they will probably kill you. They will occasionally kill each other in anger or by mistake, but you never feel as unsafe as you can feel in south London. It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquillity and civility about American life of which most British people can only dream. What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime. Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #15 "Twas talking to a patron at Mickey D's this AM > over bfast coffee, etc, he strongly favors a DEMOCRAT to win in November agz Mccain, either OBAMA or HILLARY. Also opined that CHINA is getting ready to take over from America as world Numero Uno. INTERESTING - BESIDES KNOWING THAT AMER IS EVERYWHERE OR ENTRENCHING IN ASIA, STILL BELIEVED THAT NO ONE NATION OR BLOC CAN, NOR SHOULD, DOMINATE OVER ANY OTHER,AND THAT "WE/ WORLD ALL HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER". refreshing. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-04-27 20:57 |
| #14 It's also that Americans are simply nicer people than people in certain Other Countries™. We learn from childhood that all men are created equal, and so we assume everyone is worthy of consideration who doesn't forfeit that right by misbehavior. In places where politeness was only expected by the powerful, you get violent undercurrents and currents. |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2008-04-27 17:15 |
| #13 An armed society is a polite society - John Adams Ummm, no, Robert A. Heinlein |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2008-04-27 14:01 |
| #12 I meant: |
| Posted by: gorb 2008-04-27 13:43 |
| #11 Despite Thanks to widespread gun ownership, America is a peaceful place There. Fixed it. Unless everyone has everyone else by the balls, the system drifts away from reality and fairness. People's natural tendency is to do what they want unless there is some kind of penalty. It's a sort of "child" psychology thing. Of course, child psychology seems to apply more and more these days . . . . |
| Posted by: gorb 2008-04-27 13:42 |
| #10 “It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquility…” Christallfridays…everything has to be a paradox for these dimwitted story tellers. Lights…Camera…CONFLICT! C’mon now…you don’t need to be a high-brow British “journalist” to figure out that thuggary is the practice of fools and cowards. It’s really not paradoxical at all. Criminals prey on the most vulnerable. They are reluctant to rob the old man down the street even if they only suspect he might have a gun. The author should acquaint himself with the old American idiom called “The equalizer”. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2008-04-27 12:21 |
| #9 There is a huge crime problem in many UK cities, it is officially ignored and the populace is in despair over it but conditioned not to protest. |
| Posted by: lotp 2008-04-27 10:43 |
| #8 "One reason - perhaps the overriding reason - is that there is no public drunkenness in polite America, simply none. Spot on, I mean look at Japan -- there's no public drunkenness there and it's got a very low crime rate. Oh wait ... there IS public drunkenness. Must be something else. Perhaps it's the fact that the UK govt. has given up on enforcing laws except those related to political correctness. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2008-04-27 10:42 |
| #7 One of the article's key points is this: "you never feel as unsafe [in most of the USA] as you can feel in south London." I get the impression from reading UK media that there is a huge crime problem in the UK, that it is under-reported and ignored by the MSM & the chattering classes of the UK, and that the average UK citizen is deeply and increasingly concerned. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2008-04-27 10:29 |
| #6 From the article: "One reason - perhaps the overriding reason - is that there is no public drunkenness in polite America, simply none. I have never seen a group of drunk young people in the entire six years I have lived here. I travel a lot and not always to the better parts of town. " I agree with that statement. Even in Vegas. |
| Posted by: Penguin 2008-04-27 10:28 |
| #5 I would not get your hopes up that the Brits are lurching toward enlightenment about the USA thanks to the Beeb dweebs. Read the whole article: Typical Americans are nuts -- check: Last month Mr Long decided to install a satellite television system in his Deepwater home. His efforts to make a hole in the outside wall came to nothing because Mr Long did not possess a drill. It's not about constitutional rights, it's about capricious efforts to overturn a ban -- Check: At the moment, there is an effort being made to overturn a ban on some types of weapon in Washington DC. Cue the typically American story: Korean emigrates to US, raises deranged kid who goes on a shoot spree Check: On the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting, all this will feel to some like a rather depressing, if predictable, American story. A story of an inability to get to grips with violence The typical man in the street is a bullet riddled guy who hangs out in the alley and looks like a basketball player (hmmm what do you think that means?) Check -- ...is a lanky black man (he looks like a basketball player) called Anwan Glover. Anwan peeled off articles of clothing for our cameras and revealed that he had been shot nine times. One bullet is still lodged in an elbow. His younger brother was shot and killed a few months ago. Anwan was speaking to us in a back alley in north-east Washington. If you heard a gun shot in this neighbourhood you would not feel surprised. Suppose our only hope is that incredulous Brit tourists return to tell their remarkable tale of "tranquility and civility in American life." |
| Posted by: regular joe 2008-04-27 09:33 |
| #4 Hopefully, the light is starting to dawn in England that the "years of shame" for being English should end, that nonsense like having a nanny government or a foreign government are a terrible mistake, and that the "Rights of Free-Born Englishmen" trump any promise or threat against them. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-04-27 09:10 |
| #3 This is New Jersey. Home of the Sopranos. Funny that the BBC dweeb needs to mention a fictional mob family to help make his point. Nothing like truthiness! |
| Posted by: Raj 2008-04-27 09:02 |
| #2 Number of Americans murders around 18,000 per year. Number of Americans who died because of mistakes at the hospital around 200,000 per year. The piece is a fine conviction of MSM of engaging in scare mongering and bias and its lack of real value to the consumer*. Hate guns, hide malpractice. *Is free speech really the issue, or piss poor commercial practices that deserve some government oversight for fraud and willful misconduct that any other business is subject to? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-04-27 08:45 |
| #1 An armed society is a polite society - John Adams |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2008-04-27 07:45 |