FREEDOM!!!! [4]

But I don't see these are shades of grey- it is straightforward, lots of other countries already do it its not like your going unguided into the dark- if you have a legitimate reason to own a gun- farmer, hunter, marksmen whatever the legitimate reason is you get your gun- all it means is the authorities know you have them and where they are and that you are sound of mind.

The bit thats puzzling is why its such a huge deal doing so. And my original point on guns was that your system means even such basic steps towards gun control even of the most rudimentary type seem unreachable to achieve, for reasons that have nothing really to do with the issues so much as the partisan nature of the system leaving the government unable to respond.

Oregon recently passed a law to close a large background check loophole which makes a lot of sense. The details of implementation are being fought out now. But if you look at where the votes that passed the bill came from, most of the support was from urban areas. At least in my corner of the world, the partisan lines aren't Left/Right but Urban/Rural.

Why?- what is the rural people's fear?- if you need a gun for your livelihood you would get to have a gun.
I mean how do they think farmers in countries with gun laws get rid of pests and predators? Harsh language?
I dont see that it would effect rural farmers any more than being the inconvenience of filing out the forms to register your weaponry, letting some clerk check it, and as its a government thing, pay a small charge for the privilege.
Annoying maybe, but hardly worth opposing given the state of affairs with gun massacres right now.

It's also a cultural thing: hunting, target practice - things not needed for livelihood. People grow up with these things and identify with themselves as a gun owner. Many of the arguments offered about "protection against the government" and the like are actually rationalizations to validate the lifestyle. To prevent part of their identity being stripped away.

Drinking alcohol in large quantities is obviously bad for you. If the government started trying to regulate how much bucky you could drink, wouldn't you start constructing defiant arguments against it? Isn't it a matter of individual liberty how much you can drink?

Why?- what is the rural people's fear?- if you need a gun for your livelihood you would get to have a gun.

We've had this discussion before Petty.  It's not just pests and predators, it's law enforcement.  We're dependent on an informal community watch system for almost everything.  The county I've lived in all my life is 12,000 sq mi with a population of under 20,000 men, women and children.  For comparison, Wikipedia tells me that's 10% bigger than Ayrshire but 95% smaller in population, and we have 2 deputy sheriffs to respond to everything.  That's all we can afford.

So while our cities have big expensive police forces with special drug task forces and SWAT teams, we humble country folk get by just fine with neighbors, cell phones and the knowledge that everybody is, and always has been, armed.  Just like the heathcare system, democracy dictates that public resources get allocated where they serve the most citizens, which is obviously where the population densities are the greatest--in the cities. That in turn means siphoning resources from rural areas.  That's what civilizations do everywhere. Surely as a Scotshobbit you can understand that?

Result-- our law enforcement and firefighting, and to some extent our health care, is done by volunteers. The meager budgets go to training and technical assistance.  I know you think law enforcement shouldn't be armed either, but that's a pretty hard sell in most places.

It's also a cultural thing: hunting, target practice - things not needed for livelihood. - Halfwise

But you can do those things here- you just need the right licenses- if you shoot for sport at targets you need to be a member of an official gun club, if you shoot for hunting, say taking part in the annual deer cull you get a license for that too.
Its not about stopping people with a legitimate reason from having a gun, its about stopping people without a reason from having one.

'If the government started trying to regulate how much bucky you could drink, wouldn't you start constructing defiant arguments against it? Isn't it a matter of individual liberty how much you can drink?'

No there are laws- if I am too drunk its a illegal for a pub to continue serving me, if the police see me and think I am too drunk I can be arrested for Drunk and disorderly, its illegal to drink in the streets, the Scottish government has passed a lot of legislation to try to reduce the Scottish alcohol problem.
There is also social responsibility which has to go with individual liberty or its anarchy.
If I want to drink I have to be mindful of the laws around it, if I want to drive a car I have to have a license and insurance, if I want to own a gun I need a reason and a license. Its all the same thing.


'The county I've lived in all my life is 12,000 sq mi with a population of under 20,000 men, women and children.'

Surely though that means the chances of being a victim of crime is also a lot smaller than in an urban area. You really need firearms for protection?

And the police issue seems like another failure of government- no police coverage, no health care- what is it exactly your governments spends your hard earned taxes on exactly!

'That's what civilizations do everywhere. Surely as a Scotshobbit you can understand that?'

Our system takes the rural nature of much of the country, and its inaccessibility into account. The Barnett Formula by which Scotlands budget is calculated has a clause in it allocating extra funding specifically for the rural areas like policing and ambulance and fire coverage.

'I know you think law enforcement shouldn't be armed either, but that's a pretty hard sell in most places.'

Its not that our police are not armed, its that the average cop on patrol is not armed, if they encounter any sort of even seeming firearm incident they don't respond, they call in a specialist trained firearms unit.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:You took that as an attack on your character Eldo?  
This is what I mean when I say you seem a mite, reactionary, when discussing the US political system. You seem to sometimes take the criticism as if they were against you personally, not your political system.

As to you not taking the pledge, I did not recall you having said so until you mentioned again it just there, there's a lot of conversation to remember on Forumshire over the years for this ageing mind.

I'm sorry for being so pissy earlier.  It's been a really stressful week at work, but today went fantastically and I hate to think I left things on a bad note with you, because I like and respect you a lot, so I wanted to come back.

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't bristle at some criticisms of America, but on the other hand, I've been a pretty vocal critic on this forum (and elsewhere) of a lot of things America has done. So the whole "reactionary" charge was both puzzling and bothersome to me. What bothered me more though was the ad hominem insinuation that I was speaking solely from indoctrination, especially since I never even went through the pledge process in school (and in case it wasn't clear from me not saying it today, I think the way it's beaten into kids is gross.  Hopefully it's not literally beaten into people as much anymore but my brother had some horrible experiences with adults regarding the pledge when he was as young as five). But anyway...

I mean, regarding the structural political system the US has, I think it's a pretty good one.  I think many criticisms of the American system are poorly informed or arise from a certain chauvinism of "well we do it differently, so it's dumb".  Of course, a lot of Americans take the same attitude towards other countries.  I'm certainly not immune to these impulses but I like to think I've put a lot of thought into it.  I think our system would be improved by proportional representation and I think the two party stranglehold (much stronger than in many other FPTP countries) is bad for the country.  I like the idea of a written constitution but it's been bent and reinterpreted almost as much as the Bible, to a point that honestly becomes hard to justify with the "living document" interpretation.  So I'm open to what you say about the benefits of an unwritten constitution.  I do feel pretty strongly that separation of powers is preferable to the fusion thereof, but there are certainly a raft of social and cultural issues (including polarization) that impede the functioning of the American system.

Anyway, I would probably benefit from a short break from spending so much time on forums, but like I said I didn't want to leave things on such a bad note.

Dont you dare bugger off anywhere on my account, besides I'm going to lose my internet for a few days at some point imminently so you will be free from my crabbit inducements

Pettytyrant101 wrote:


'The county I've lived in all my life is 12,000 sq mi with a population of under 20,000 men, women and children.'

Surely though that means the chances of being a victim of crime is also a lot smaller than in an urban area.  You really need firearms for protection?

Actually the chances are a lot higher in the country. A lot of petty criminals from the city come out here because they think there's no law. Here's a story from yesterday.
http://kbkw.com/three-arrested-after-burglary-of-grays-harbor-historical-seaport-building/
Some stupid criminals from Seattle 100 miles away [where they have well funded police departments] came out to the warehouse that supports our local tall ship (which you may remember I volunteer with from time to time). They did $60,000 worth of damage to steal a few hundred dollars worth of wire and pipe. During the summer it's not uncommon for thrill seekers to come out into the rural areas and commit these kinds of vandalism just for kicks. What can you do?

no police coverage, no health care- what is it exactly your governments spends your hard earned taxes on exactly!

I told you before. Police and healthcare in urban areas.

The Barnett Formula by which Scotlands budget is calculated has a clause in it allocating extra funding specifically for the rural areas like policing and ambulance and fire coverage.

To be honest, I'm not sure where our funding comes from anymore. The State budgeting process is such a mess. Not as bad as the Feds, but getting there. There was plenty of money for such things when the timber sales from State Lands kept the coffers full, but since the logging boom is passed the dollars are scarcer, and few of them flow out to the rural areas. We're often referred to as a "3rd World County" by the more developed parts of the state. Funny, huh?

Anyway my original point was that using mental health as a threshold for gun ownership wasn't as popular as you seemed to think, and I stand by that. Bans of assault weapons, background checks, limited magazine size are all things that could probably get majority support in many rural areas if people were convinced that they'd be enforced equitably. It's the enforcement that's the problem though, and that will need to be addressed on the state and local level. Definitely not from the Feds. That's how gun control will eventually be accepted, if it ever is.

That's just 2 cents from a country boy.

I kind of understand why Petty keeps going on about the gun thing because I think us Brits will never really 'get' it no matter how logical the arguments for.. But having lived in a country which does have a lot of guns floating about including the police, I do think there is a balance to be had where people who need guns for work should have them, and ordinary citizens shouldn't, if only because of accidents and rage attacks and so forth. More guns = more shootings. its simple really.

I agree it's simple, but I wouldn't go so far to say that people who don't need guns for work shouldn't have them. I'd be satisfied if every gun has to be registered (with scratch mark patterns on the bullet) and every transaction needs a background check. That way crimes (or at least original owners) can be traced. It wouldn't stop real criminals from filing down ID marks on guns, but it may make non-criminals who get pushed over the edge think twice before pulling a trigger.

Unfortunately we have a glut of unregistered guns in this country, and they can last for lifetimes if properly maintained. But it would be a good start.

There's no doubt there's a growing problem in the US where guns, especially military style weapons and hand guns like in the movies and video games, are viewed as status symbols and toys.

Personally I think we'd all be better off if ownership of those guns were heavily restricted.

Actually, that applies to wars too. The Middle East and Africa would be better places today if all guns still only held 1 to 5 bullets and looked like grandpa's shotgun....

Yep, assault weapons should be illegal.

On another note (from the Week):


Only in America: Mississippi police unable to arrest man terrorizing Walmart shoppers with loaded gun
June 26, 2015

Frustrated police in Gulfport, Mississippi, were unable to arrest a man menacing shoppers with a loaded shotgun in a local Walmart because of the state's permissive "open carry" gun laws. Terrified employees huddled in a safe room while the man loaded and racked the 12-gauge, but police said there was nothing they could do. "Our state law allows for this," said police chief Leonard Papania. The Week Staff

----
There's some clarification needed here. What is meant by "threatening shoppers"? If he was uttering bodily threats, that alone is illegal and grounds for police removal from the premises. I don't understand what was going on here.

Some backstory: two men, not doing anything threatening except publicly loading and "racking" (closing) the gun. This wasn't part of the purchase process because they had done it before in a supermarket. This was a demonstration of their 'gun rights'.

Miss. police: Open carry laws kept us from arresting shotgun-toting man who terrorized Walmart shoppers
TOM BOGGIONI
23 JUN 2015 AT 10:50 ET
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The police chief of Gulfport, Mississippi, expressed his frustration with his state’s open carry laws after a man strolling through a Walmart Sunday night menaced shoppers by loading and racking shells into his shotgun, causing police to dispatch a SWAT team and evacuate the store.

According to Police Chief Leonard Papania, he would have arrested the unidentified man and his companion if he could for stretching the city’s police forces thin while panicked Walmart employees huddled in a safe room, WMC reported.


“If I were in a situation where I’m in the store shopping with my family and I see an individual loading a 12 gauge, and racking it, I’m not coming to the conclusion this is good,” said Papania. “While the actions of these two men are sanctioned by state laws, what they did negatively impacted our community.”

According to police they received multiple calls about the men who had possibly done the same thing at a local Winn-Dixie, forcing police to divert officers to the Walmart to form a perimeter as the SWAT entered and searched the store. By the time police had arrived, the two men had left.

Using surveillance video police were able to track the men down and speak with them, but due to Mississippi’s open carry laws, the chief said his hands were tied after conferring with city attorneys.

“In our nation there continues to be violent events. Many of these tragic events start to unfold with very similar circumstances where individuals exhibit peculiar actions with firearms around large crowds,” he explained. “The actions of these two men could have inadvertently led to a very violent misunderstanding.”

Without mentioning it, the police chief may have been alluding to the shooting of John Crawford in an Ohio Walmart last August, after police gunned the African-American man down while he held a toy rifle.

Asked whether he believed police overreacted to the situation, the police chief said absolutely not.

“You don’t have to look hard in today’s media and see demonstrations of very violent acts. And if I had been in the store last night watching someone load a shotgun and rack it — that’s not normal. And that’s usually precipitates a violent act.”

After saying “Our state law allows for this,” Papania said, “If there was something I could have arrested these people for, I would,” before concluding, “Gun laws should be such that it provides us security. As we look at this fact pattern, do you feel safer?”

It's the first time I've seen gun rights supporters making rational comments en masse. Most thought the police had ample reason to arrest them, and some quoted the appropriate laws. This gives me hope. I had lost all hope when a couple guys in Texas walked into a fast food joint with assault weapons, the chains proceeded to ban weapons, and the gun rights gang went rabid.

http://www.theweek.com/speedreads/562711/only-america-mississippi-police-unable-arrest-man-terrorizing-walmart-shoppers-loaded-gun

I told you before. Police and healthcare in urban areas.- David

So you don't pay taxes in rural areas? If you do then you should have adequate coverage, if not you should be kicking up a stink about the fact you don't. Surely your budgets take into account the rural nature of your state? And if not why not?

Seriously I don't know what it is Americans pay taxes for. Yes our governments still waste tons of it, or use it as expenses to buy houses for their ducks, but in theory we pay in and in return we get health care, public transport (pensioners for example can travel anywhere in Scotland for free), emergency services, state pensions, and the safety net of the welfare system- its far from perfect but at least it seems worth paying taxes for.
I mean Republicans seem to run on a ticket of making the government do even less. So what are you paying in for? I mean I don't understand what the deal is between government and people- what are they supposed to provide for your tax money?

'my original point was that using mental health as a threshold for gun ownership wasn't as popular as you seemed to think....Bans of assault weapons, background checks, limited magazine size are all things that could probably get majority support in many rural areas'- David

Surely any background check would include mental health issues anyway?

'and that will need to be addressed on the state and local level.'

That seems sensible given your political system, but surely the general direction of progress should still be set at Presidential level to apply a little pressure?

"That seems sensible given your political system, but surely the general direction of progress should still be set at Presidential level to apply a little pressure?"

The president is effectively powerless to do anything except send emergency troops if the popular opinion is against him. Explains a lot. He may be able to talk up a good game, but really can't fight an uphill battle. Grassroots is where it's at, as it should be for most things.

The president is effectively powerless to do anything- Halfy

Which rather brings it back to my initial point about all this- that your government often seems ineffectual at the top end.
And I am all for grass roots and the devolution of power downwards, but what's the point of electing a particular party, or a particular leader if they cant get much done anyway?
You have a President who wants to reform gun control law but basically has to shrug his shoulders and say 'sorry, nothing I can do about it. Its out of my control.'
Maybe your system would work better without a President at all! He doesn't seem to do much anyway, which probably explains why he has so much time to play golf.

Haha! Theoretically he just carries out the law, he doesn't make it. There's more latitude in foreign policy than in domestic.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:You have a President who wants to reform gun control law but basically has to shrug his shoulders and say 'sorry, nothing I can do about it. Its out of my control.'
Maybe your system would work better without a President at all! He doesn't seem to do much anyway, which probably explains why he has so much time to play golf.

Because the President is not a law-making authority.  That power is vested in Congress.  The President can control certain federal regulations through his cabinet, and the growth of executive orders has become a sort of de facto legislation, but major reform requires new laws, which have to be approved by the people's representatives in Congress.  The biggest difference from the UK system here is that the party leaderships don't have the power of life and death over their members (which is part of the reason why the term "backbencher" doesn't exist here).

Pettytyrant101 wrote:And I am all for grass roots and the devolution of power downwards, but what's the point of electing a particular party, or a particular leader if they cant get much done anyway?

Because the system isn't party-oriented.  People vote for individuals in elections, and the party label is often little more than a convenient guide to what sort of policies they are likely to pursue (and a source of funding for the candidates).  But American political parties don't have very much ideological consistency (though that's been changing over the last few decades) and tend to be more general coalitions based on historical factors than beliefs.  So y'know, if an MP in the UK changes his party affiliation, he has to immediately fight a by-election.  If a Congressperson changes their party affiliation, they get to keep their seat until the end of their term, because the idea is that their constituents voted for the person and not the label.  'Course it does piss a lot of those constituents off so it doesn't happen very much.

[EDIT: and yes, I know that UK elections are based around on individual candidates in each constituency as well, but the cultural difference is significant.]

It also comes back to separation of powers.  A simple majority in one house of Parliament is enough to get through most legislation in the UK, even pretty sweeping stuff.  It's not in the US, because the lawmaking process is designed to require the agreement of many different groups, as a check against the tyranny of the majority.

It's a good point that the system is designed to prevent tyranny of the majority. This makes it slow to change.

Your point on parties and the difference is food for thought Eldo- from the outside party affiliation seems just as strong as here, this is probably in part because your press use the terms Democrat and Republican exactly the same way our press use Labour and Conservative.

And certainly from a UK perspective electing a leader who cant do anything is sort of against the whole point of having a leader. A leader has to sort of, you know, be able to lead.

On a point of technicality the UK doesn't pass law with 1 chamber, there is the Other Place, the House of Lords. All legislation goes through both Chambers.
The difference is that the Lords can only send a bill back to the Commons three times, even if they still reject it on the third go it becomes law anyway- this is to enforce the fact that the Commons have the authority of the People over the unelected peers.

What tends to happen in practise that most stuff the Lords sends back is for technical reasons rather than party- they think its not thought through, or there are flaws in its implementation or some such, it goes back to the Commons, gets debated again and often amended before they try again. Its rare for a government to try to just force a bill through the Lords unchanged three times in a row, though it does happen.

One of the weird things about the Lords is that despite being about as undemocratic as you can get it can be oddly effective. And this is down largely to who makes up a lot of its inhabitants, you tend to get a lot of lawyers, ex-politicians, financiers, Professors, clergy as well as your expensively educated Lords and Ladies. And they are all of an age where they are no longer fighting up the greasy pole, or playing the game of politics to advance career, as they have a wealth of experience between them in a broad range of fields they are often in fact the better debating chamber.

This is one of the main reasons is been so hard to replace in our system- the annoying thing about the Lords is that it actually, more or less, works most of the time and has done for quite a while now.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Your point on parties and the difference is food for thought Eldo- from the outside party affiliation seems just as strong as here, this is probably in part because your press use the terms Democrat and Republican exactly the same way our press use Labour and Conservative.

The rise of mass media has definitely made the national perspective more important, but Tip O'Neill's old maxim that "all politics is local" still holds true to a large extent in the US.  The parties are more uniform now than they arguably have ever been, but you still get a lot of differences.  The Blue Dog Democrats are conservative in most respects but they took up a lot of the Democratic vote in many places.  In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the South was more reliably Democratic than any region of the country has ever been loyal to a political party, but in the mid-20th century they switched to voting almost as uniformly for Republicans in Presidential elections (largely due to Democratic Presidents' support for civil rights).  But for a long time afterward, state and local elections continued to be strongly Democratic, but the people elected shared less and less in common with the national Democratic party.  The Republican Party used to be dominated by establishment interests in the Northeast and was associated with the progressive movement in the early 1900s.  But by the 1960s they reoriented strongly towards social conservatism, actively sought to pick up disaffected former Democrats in the South, and brought evangelical Christianity into the fold as an integral part of their coalition.  But there is today a huge gap between the social conservatives of the GOP and the pro-business, small government faction of the party.  There are also a few genuine libertarians who remain Republicans in an effort to influence the party, and on foreign policy they remain split between neoconservative and paleoconservative factions.

TL;DR the parties have traded places on policy issues several times in their history but even when they do, a lot of people continue to vote for the party their parents and grandparents voted for.  But it's also seen as totally legitimate to vote party line for state and local elections but vote for the other party's candidate for President, in part because the state parties can sometimes be quite different.  And very importantly, the way the system is structured gives a lot more autonomy to individual legislators as opposed to party leadership. So while Democrats are generally liberal (though progressive would be more accurate) and Republicans are generally conservative, this is too simplified to really be useful if you want to understand American politics beyond superficial stuff at the national level, or anything at the state level.

And certainly from a UK perspective electing a leader who cant do anything is sort of against the whole point of having a leader. A leader has to sort of, you  know, be able to lead.

I think part of this is a cultural difference but it's also probably a factor of people being raised to be used to different constitutional arrangements.  Whether that's fusion of powers versus separation of powers, or parliamentary sovereignty versus constitution worship.

The difference is that the Lords can only send a bill back to the Commons three times, even if they still reject it on the third go it becomes law anyway- this is to enforce the fact that the Commons have the authority of the People over the unelected peers.

I appreciate your point of technicality, but the different here is why I excluded the Lords from my line about lawmaking powers, as they're not necessary to the process the way getting the House and Senate to agree in the US is.  Plus the Houses in the US can both introduce legislation and are a lot more comfortable rejecting bills for political reasons, as you say.

One of the weird things about the Lords is that despite being about as undemocratic as you can get it can be oddly effective. And this is down largely to who makes up a lot of its inhabitants, you tend to get a lot of lawyers, ex-politicians, financiers, Professors, clergy as well as your expensively educated Lords and Ladies. And they are all of an age where they are no longer fighting up the greasy pole, or playing the game of politics to advance career, as they have a wealth of experience between them in a broad range of fields they are often in fact the better debating chamber.

I'm actually not as opposed to the idea of the House of Lords as I am to the idea of monarchy.  I would rather they got rid of the last of the hereditary peers and the bishops (really just disestablish the church the way it was in Scotland and Wales), but the concept of a chamber that is semi-removed from politics and is able to provide a more sober and informed perspective on legislation is actually a pretty good one I think.  It was sort of the idea behind the US Senate, which was originally chosed by state legislatures and whose longer terms was supposed to make them less prone to voting based on what they thought would get them re-elected.  Obviously it doesn't function like that anymore, if it ever did.  It was also the idea behind the Electoral College, which was supposed to be a collection of wise, experienced figures who would choose the President based on their judgement, but that has literally never fulfilled this role, because from the very beginning people demanded their electors vote in accordance with what their constituents wanted.  This I'm actually pretty okay with, though it renders most of the arguments in favor of keeping the electoral college pretty silly.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I told you before. Police and healthcare in urban areas.- David

So you don't pay taxes in rural areas? If you do then you should have adequate coverage, if not you should be kicking up a stink about the fact you don't. Surely your budgets take into account the rural nature of your state? And if not why not?

Oh sure, we pay taxes. Property taxes are assessed and collected by the individual counties and sent to the State Capitol, where they're redistributed back to the counties as our state legislators see fit. Although the property is more valuable in urban areas, there's a LOT more land per capita in the rural areas which makes it a higher tax per capita. On the other hand there are more legislators from the high density areas, so they make sure their constituencies needs are taken care of first. It's similar to what you've mentioned of taxes from Scotland going down to London before coming back home.

Yeah but we kick up a stink about that! Get on it- it sounds like your being royally shafted to me. Dont put up with it! Get yer crabbit on!