Time to bash Americans again
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honest question: then why do you own one?
I get self defense, of course, but doesn't the fact of owning a firearm make you part of gun culture?
or am I missing something?wrote last edited by [email protected]No, you'll know gun culture when you see it. The people that put the stupid stickers all over the car, the firearm brands, the calibers, stuff like that, becomes a major part of their personality.
Like the other commenter said, you would never know that I even own a gun unless we were pretty damn close.
I don't really have a solid answer for you. I think it started growing up where my dad had guns, rifles, in the army but he was super protective of them, he wouldn't show them to us, he wouldn't let us see them at all, he wouldn't teach us about them so I was just genuinely curious. So when I moved out that was the first thing I bought.
And I hated the gun laws here, you can buy and sell guns just like you're selling a car, just do a bill of sale. There's no background check for secondhand guns. i bought my first one at a metro stop in DC area, rode the train out, guy pulled up to the metro parking lot and we traded. i mean we took pictures of each other's IDs and did a bill of sale, but beyond that, nothing.
Mine doesn't really ever come out of lockup unless we're camping or going on a long road trip. I haven't carried it in years and I think my license might even be expired at this point. I'm not scared, maybe wildlife, I'm near the Appalachian Mountains. I don't carry it around to intimidate anybody, or try to use it for coercion. But I guess the fascination has just always been there since it was withheld growing up.
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Again? When did everyone stop?
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I mean income directs it a bunch but some communities are just very insular and like to keep to themselves.
I agree, that’s why I went with typically, but many aren’t allowed to live near the future “expats” so that property values aren’t negatively impacted.
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I can’t imagine going to school like that bro.
Like is it scary and you always wonder if some lunatic is going to come and shoot it up or no?
A lot of this is overblown really. A few things:
- The vast majority of school kids in the US will never deal with an active shooter situation.
- 43% of school shooters in the US are themselves active students
- Only 20% of school shooting perpetrators had no affiliation to the school, meaning that ~37% of shooters were former students, teachers, or parents.
- From 1999 - 2023 there were a total of 131 school shootings, but in 2024 alone there were a reported 332 school shootings.
- These are some terrible numbers, but statistically it's a rare thing. There are approximately 130,000 K-12 schools in the US and ~75 million students per year. If we assume all schools have the same chance of having a school shooting (they don't) they would have a 0.2% chance that your school will have a shooting that year or 4% chance that in your k-12 years that you would be at a school shooting.
When people talk about school security in the US they often don't consider how litigious and risk adverse the US is. You don't lock doors, build fences, and hire security guards to protect from such a small risk chance, if they actually cared there would be a greater emphasis on mental health. No, they do these things to minimize risk, lower insurance rates, and ward off lawsuits.
The defense writes itself,
"Hey, you can't sue us for your child's trauma, we did everything we reasonably could to ensure that a shooter couldn't get into the school. We built a fence, we locked the doors, we made the kids wear clear plastic book bags, we used a metal detector, we hired a guard, we expelled kids who made threats, and we called the police on people who aren't allowed to be here. If a kid then sneaks a 3D printed plastic gun on site and traumatizes the students it's not the school systems fault."
The US is crazy litigious, especially if a government entity is involved and someone might get a pay day. In my area a high school girl and some similarly aged boys ran away from school while at recess to a forest a mile or two off site. The girl then said she was sexually assaulted by the two boys, called her mom and was picked up and taken to the hospital directly (never came back to the school). The school had reported the girl missing, but only found out about the sexual assault after the mother filed a police report and the police reached out. The school cooperated with the police and reached out to the girl and her mother asking if she was ok or there was anything they could do, but the mother refused to answer their (the schools) phone calls or cooperate with the police. A year later the mother sued the school, the school system, the municipal government, and the police each for several million dollars for allowing her daughter to run away from school and for not protecting her from sexual assault in an offsite location. This lawsuit went on for over a year before the judge dismissed the case.
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A lot of this is overblown really. A few things:
- The vast majority of school kids in the US will never deal with an active shooter situation.
- 43% of school shooters in the US are themselves active students
- Only 20% of school shooting perpetrators had no affiliation to the school, meaning that ~37% of shooters were former students, teachers, or parents.
- From 1999 - 2023 there were a total of 131 school shootings, but in 2024 alone there were a reported 332 school shootings.
- These are some terrible numbers, but statistically it's a rare thing. There are approximately 130,000 K-12 schools in the US and ~75 million students per year. If we assume all schools have the same chance of having a school shooting (they don't) they would have a 0.2% chance that your school will have a shooting that year or 4% chance that in your k-12 years that you would be at a school shooting.
When people talk about school security in the US they often don't consider how litigious and risk adverse the US is. You don't lock doors, build fences, and hire security guards to protect from such a small risk chance, if they actually cared there would be a greater emphasis on mental health. No, they do these things to minimize risk, lower insurance rates, and ward off lawsuits.
The defense writes itself,
"Hey, you can't sue us for your child's trauma, we did everything we reasonably could to ensure that a shooter couldn't get into the school. We built a fence, we locked the doors, we made the kids wear clear plastic book bags, we used a metal detector, we hired a guard, we expelled kids who made threats, and we called the police on people who aren't allowed to be here. If a kid then sneaks a 3D printed plastic gun on site and traumatizes the students it's not the school systems fault."
The US is crazy litigious, especially if a government entity is involved and someone might get a pay day. In my area a high school girl and some similarly aged boys ran away from school while at recess to a forest a mile or two off site. The girl then said she was sexually assaulted by the two boys, called her mom and was picked up and taken to the hospital directly (never came back to the school). The school had reported the girl missing, but only found out about the sexual assault after the mother filed a police report and the police reached out. The school cooperated with the police and reached out to the girl and her mother asking if she was ok or there was anything they could do, but the mother refused to answer their (the schools) phone calls or cooperate with the police. A year later the mother sued the school, the school system, the municipal government, and the police each for several million dollars for allowing her daughter to run away from school and for not protecting her from sexual assault in an offsite location. This lawsuit went on for over a year before the judge dismissed the case.
Dude, don't start bring out statistics sticking up for america in the school shooting department. I can't figure out your reasoning to defend American on this topic.
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Dude, don't start bring out statistics sticking up for america in the school shooting department. I can't figure out your reasoning to defend American on this topic.
You don't seem to have read my post....
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You don't seem to have read my post....
I read it. You're saying generally, "it's not as bad as it looks."
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I read it. You're saying generally, "it's not as bad as it looks."
That's not the take away you should be getting by any means. Yes, school shootings are more common in the US than the rest of the world, but they are statistically very very rare in the US. The reason why schools in the US react so dramatically for such a rare event is because they are trying to protect themselves from liability and lawsuit, not because they are trying to protect students or help troubled kids.
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Who the fuck emigrates to Europe as a hardcore American fascist? Seriously? What the actual fuck?
I’m an American living in the EU, and I’m surprised by that. All the other American immigrants I’ve met so far have been opposed to Trump and Republicans generally. I always figured the conservatives were likely to be buying into AmErIcA iS tHe BeSt propaganda and would thus be uninterested in moving to another country.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
I'm not sure yall get the joke. It's funny cause 13- 17 year old angsty males in the us have unlimited access to military grade weapons. These bitch ass losers, I mean kids, then take these arms, designed to take out isis and sudam and murder a bunch of 5 year olds with them. Do you get it now?? It's hilarious !
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🤩 ️ 
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Yeah this confuses me to no end. I thought they made America great last election?
Trump made it great, but Biden and woke already made it so un-great that the greatness hasn’t all trickled down yet.
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I hate the word for the reasons you've said, but I know a lot of black Americans in Portugal that refer to themselves as expats.
Feels to me that the line is drawn along economic privilege lines rather than simply race.
There’s also this level of like, still identifying as being primarily of the country they’re from, like a rejection of assimilation into the place they’ve moved to. I’m not saying that’s inherently good or bad, but, it’s an interesting dynamic, and an option that a lot of immigrants don’t have.
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I'm not sure yall get the joke. It's funny cause 13- 17 year old angsty males in the us have unlimited access to military grade weapons. These bitch ass losers, I mean kids, then take these arms, designed to take out isis and sudam and murder a bunch of 5 year olds with them. Do you get it now?? It's hilarious !
️️ 🤩 ️ No, no, no. These weapons pale in comparison to basic infantry in the modern military. Not only are they way overkill for anything a law abiding citizen should ever need for recreation, they would also be useless in the case of a 2nd Amendment related coup of the corrupt government.
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And until our societal issues are solved, the guns need to go back into Pandora's box.
Too late now unfortunately. The people who'd need to give up their guns, will never do so voluntarily. The actually responsible gun owners might give theirs away though.
It's media, education and the political system that need to change. It won't.
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But since US has the issues, you should lock guns away.
Aye, but when all the lunatics already have guns and you remove the guns from the responsible citizens, is that putting people in more or less danger?
I think it's too late at this point to solve this one via gun control.
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Nope, Switzerland had one of the highest rates of gun suicides before measures were taken.
Gun suicides or suicides in general?
Because suicides will always be an issue. Guns just make it easier. How many mass shootings have the swiss had though? Switzerland has a "List of mass shootings" article on Wikipedia. The US has a "ListS of mass shootings" category. The US list for 2018 alone is significantly longer than Switzerland's list starting with 1905. I realize that Switzerland has a smaller population, but the per capita rates have a large discrepancy too. Something like a 9x difference.
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Because a gun is cheaper than mental healthcare.
It's more than just mental healthcare. American society is just broken in so many ways.
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I mean some people typically called immigrants do that too
When brown, they are inmigrantes anda those are ghettos. When white, they are expats in expat communities.
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I've always assumed it depends on what your context is. If your perspective is the country that the immigrant is from, then they would be an expat. If you are in context of the other country they are an immigrant.
Ie
"My friend is an expat who went off to The Netherlands."
"My friend is an immigrant that came here from The USA."Emigrant. That's the kind of migrant who leaves a country. They'd be an immigrant in their new country.
But, IMO there's a difference with an expat. An expat is often someone who isn't moving permanently, and as a result is often not trying to integrate into their new country.
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Because we don't have regular mass shootings in schools because we don't give every single person the money for a ticket to a gun show a gun and where we do, we legislate that they keep their gun in a gun safe. You know, like the rest of the world...or the USA in 1792.
we don't give every single person the money for a ticket to a gun show
Erm, wut?
