Summary
In October 2020, Samuel Paty, a French teacher, was murdered following a false accusation by a 13-year-old student who claimed he’d shown anti-Muslim bias. The girl had made up the story to cover the fact she had been suspended from school for bad behaviour.
In reality, Paty’s lesson on free speech included optional viewing of Charlie Hebdo cartoons, but he hadn’t excluded anyone. The student’s story triggered a social media campaign led by her father, who, along with others, is now on trial for inciting hatred and connections to Paty’s attacker, an 18-year-old radicalized Chechen.
The school will be named the Samuel Paty School from next year.
I’m of the opinion that a lot of gun control is ineffective, especially given what guns are supposed to mean. Yes places like Australia have been extremely successful in removing guns, but also look at their policing system and governmental overreach which is honestly quite terrible. I’m of the opinion that the most effective gun control is changing the culture surrounding guns. Bring back (optional) shooting classes in schools, teach kids (and adults) gun safety and actual useful knowledge about firearms. Regulate the access, storage, and use of ammunition. Change the culture from people thinking they’ll be John Wick once they get their glock to people who actually understand that firearms are tools that can be used as weapons, and that they require time, effort, training, and a lot of responsibility to use safely. The cat is out of the bag in the US; guns aren’t going away. Acting like we can remove them is silly, but we can change the perception around them.
I also think we need similar movements for a lot of things, like cars.
Why do you need guns in schools? Even if it’s just to teach about them, it’s not the place to bring guns into, and giving them to kids creates this expectation that they should own one, and it’s normal to own one. It’s kind of fucked up. You can have a class discussing them, but they should be expected to handle one. Nobody in the world does that.
The government should just mandate that, to own a firearm, you need a license. This license can be obtained like a car license, after attending a number of classes, passing a written test and a practice test, where you show the examiner you know about gun safety. Then you have to renew every two years or how long it is, pass a medical exam and on you go. If you get caught intoxicated while holding or near an unsafe firearm, your license is taken away from you, with all your firearms, for a period of time, or permanently for repeat offenses, like with cars.
Just make guns act like cars, if it’s fine one way, it’s fine the other too. Putting restrictions instead of giving guns away like you’re Brian from Family Guy trying to buy a carton of milk in Texas will drastically reduce the number of people who even want one. If it’s too much of a hassle to own one, most people will just do without.
In most developed countries you don’t even need a gun. Why would you need a gun if you are living in Paris, or Rome for example, or New York.
In Paris and Rome most of the police don’t have automatic rifles.
And I think plenty of people would tell and show you exactly why you need a gun in NYC.
As a counter point, America has fewer gun restrictions and more convicts than Australia. Gun laws and government overreach do not seem connected.
America has a lot of government overreach too, don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying that American gun laws were originally meant to be modeled after Swiss gun laws and if we had also adopted Swiss gun culture we wouldn’t have the problems we do today.
I understood your point. I was showing that not only does America have “a lot” of government overreach, it has “more” government overreach. An Australian is less likely to be shot by another of its citizens and less likely to be imprisoned, enslaved, or killed by its government.
Sure, I can agree with that. But the amount of police corruption is also quite high in Australia. Not saying the US doesn’t have that, but it’s a lot of the same issues just without guns. I mean look at FriendlyJordies getting firebombed for whistleblowing on politicians.
I couldn’t say where police corruption is worse if I’m honest, I would guess its worse in America. But, Police violence is absolutely worse in America.
Regardless, I think the take away is: “whatever the intention, guns don’t equal civil liberties”.
My post was actually about religion and I only used gun control as a theoretical comparison.
However, it seems funny to me that you start by stating that ‘gun control is ineffective’, and then proceed to describe gun control in great detail and praise it.
Gun control =/= banning all guns.
Fair, i certainly couldve used better wording