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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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It's important to judge policies by how well they work, not how good they sound.

Fortunately there are many countries with various forms of gun control that we can look at to see how they're doing.

White gun homicide rate per white gun owner in the US is lower the same as in highly regulated Czech Republic, where only 1% own guns. (Assuming over 20% Americans own guns)

https://x.com/JimPurphy/status/1768936215259316482

https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1825652230680359035

For the record, about a third of Americans own guns, although I would estimate the number would be slightly higher since a nonzero amount of people will lie to people who call them on the phone asking if they own a boomstick. 44% report living in a household with a gun, which is functionally closer to a useful number (as if a wife can't or won't use her husband's revolver). I wouldn't be surprise if the "true" numbers were closer to 40% and 50% respectively.

I'm not sure I understand the point you're making. Is your argument that since it's mostly blacks being murdered, gun violence is no big deal or...?

Yes. Now that there's no need for vast amounts of field labor, blacks are even more obsolete than whites. That they're killing each other in serious numbers doesn't really matter. If young 130IQ white and asian males were prone to duelling and suffered similar attrition rates, that'd be worth paying some attention to. That people who at best would break even, tax contribution/expense wise are killing each other, and at worst (repeat offenders) are very expensive are killing each other doesn't matter.

Yes it's bad, but in the present political arrangement the cure paternalism, apartheid or serious social control etc is worse than the problem.

Lol, I've had an identical argument with another Australian friend, almost word for word.

A minority race's cultural problems aren't our collective national responsibility to pay for.

If we want to solve the problem, we already know how. It's to use programs to patch problems in low-income urban culture. It still would cost billions of dollars, but is preferable to wiping our ass with our core governmental document and punishing 80% of the country.

...or that that looking at the countries you mention will yield very little useful results for the US, given the differences in populations they consist of.

If guns were the issue, you wouldn't be getting the statistics he's citing. The UK also wouldn't be freaking out about "knife crime".

Pretty badly from a civil rights perspective, mostly?

Which is the country that restricted internal travel and refused to allow their citizens to leave recently? China? Venezuela? Oh, no, it was Australia. And the one which made it illegal to possess a video of a (violent, public, non-sex) crime in progress? And the writings of the criminal? And some foreign philosophical writings said to have inspired him? Australia AND New Zealand for the first two, NZ only for the last.

Kind of wild that you're bringing up the Wakeley church stabbing to argue against gun control. Think about how that event plays out if the attacker has an AR-15. Instead 0 people died. That one is a win for the NFA.

Kind of wild that you're bringing up the Wakeley church stabbing to argue against gun control.

I'm not. First of all, I'm arguing that Australia and New Zealand are bad on the civil rights perspective (even aside from guns). Second, it wasn't Wakeley I was referring to, it was Christchurch. Thanks for providing ANOTHER case matching the facts though.