11 Plus Exams Forum

piggys wrote: (it's on the Guardian - got to learn how to do links!)

Just press the button "URL" then paste/type the web address between the two sets of brackets

I just copy and paste the link ....

piggys wrote:You cannot make 350 million guns - likely more - vanish. Americans will die coveting their guns because it's in their blood. It's how they conquered the territory, after all. I know a little about this issue for family reasons I do not care to explain just now. Americans are not like Europeans and especially not like Brits. They just aren't. They see their identity as intertwined with their weapons. It's a sickness - IMHO.

I can't think of any other meaningful word for it either. I just don't see any solution to this. As we've just seen the first answer to gun crime is always "more guns" (it's not just Trump, there are organisations dedicated to providing firearms training to teachers). There are now so many that I don't know how you could possibly even start to "control" them.

mike1880 wrote: There are now so many that I don't know how you could possibly even start to "control" them.

It is a battle, as politicians say, for hearts and minds. You have to persuade people by intelligent argument that there is another way. That would usually mean looking to community leaders, schools, religious organisations etc. The trouble with that approach in the US is that the links between the far right and the evangelical Christian community would stop it before it even began. "American values" and all that.

A book to add to Piggys' reading list on this is called 'Banal Nationalism' by Michael Billig. It challenges us to rethink patriotism ('good', right?) in terms of nationalism ('bad') for nations whose ideology we sympathise with. Easy to read and thought-provoking.

mike1880 wrote: I can't think of any other meaningful word for it either. I just don't see any solution to this. As we've just seen the first answer to gun crime is always "more guns" (it's not just Trump, there are organisations dedicated to providing firearms training to teachers). There are now so many that I don't know how you could possibly even start to "control" them.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

I was just coming on to recommend the same book as piggys. It's excellent.

I know more Americans from the South than I feel I need to. But the concept of needing to be armed in case their government becomes "rogue" is very prevalent.

That's the core of the problem and why it's so difficult to find a solution. When so many people feel it necessary to own guns to protect themselves against their own government (and that's just plain delusional on so many levels), calling for tighter controls on gun ownership is simply pouring petrol on the flames. I would be wary of saying that it's mass shootings that cause the spikes in gun ownership: calls for gun control have exactly the same effect and they're never more prevalent than after yet another of these incidents.

Sadly I see that 45% of Americans currently favour arming teachers.

Was anybody ever saved by owning a gun ? Does owning a gun protect you from being shot dead by a gunman ? So out of all the people killed in these massacres, some of them must have been gun owners, if so it didn't help them to survive. Owning a gun does not protect you, it just make you more likely to be involved in a gun crime.

There are some memes going around from teachers against this idea and a lot of replies saying "if teachers were armed most of these 17 students wouldn't have died".
I think they are utterly delusional.

I don't think we Brits can understand the American psyche about this. We don't live in a country and society where guns are so widely available and gun crime so common. I too have family in the States and many US friends who are totally reasonable, sane individuals, yet cannot see how owning a gun "for their own family protection" is so contradictory. It is terribly depressing and sad. I hope someone in the US can find a way through, but it is a huge task.