carstenw
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 p.18 #19 · Best Alt Images, EVER! (before we all die) | |
hayek wrote:
Why you need to to go into the politics mode, I cannot understand. You've probably visited the United States a few times, doubtful you've ever lived here, probably get all your news from the BBC or die Tageszeitung and you think you know what you're talking about because a handful of horrible events makes it all seem the same. You simply don't know and the tightly packed places of Western Europe don't extrapolate to the expanses of North America. I'm from Wyoming and the polizei aren't right around the corner. I haven't contributed in the past because I respect the knowledge of many of you, which exceeds my novice photo skills. But Carsten, whose photographic opinion I do respect, has to always pipe in about what he knows not. Shall I raise the fact that your beloved Deütschland rampaged across Europe for a century and laid waste to everything it touched? Is it relevant to conversations about lenses? NO. Spare us the moralizing already, from your perfect socially just European perch....Show more →
I won't answer the general gist of this, which cannot really be answered. If that is what you choose to believe, go ahead.
However, I will answer the facts you got wrong:
- I am British/Canadian, not German.
- I lived 19 years in Canada and have been in the States very many times, to very different parts, including Wyoming (but never to the south-eastern parts, apart from New Orleans).
- In 1990 I took a 37 day, 19000km motorcycle trip through Canada and the States, from Toronto to Vancouver to Los Angeles and back, through many of the larger cities in the western half of the States, and I met many people along the way, and discussed many things, including guns, with Americans, and it was always civil and mutually respectful.
- I live in Europe because I choose to, because I like the choices made in these countries. Significantly, this includes tight control of guns, and a very low rate of violent crime.
- I do not advocate gun elimination, but tight gun control and sane parameters around the whole thing. This means training, psychological evaluation, checks, tight laws regarding the handling and carrying of guns, waiting periods, tight controls on the sales of all parts of the gun cycle, the elimination of combat-oriented fully-automated or excessively powerful weaponry, and so on.
- I actually like guns, and used to be a gun club member, and I may buy a gun one day. But I won't carry it, it will be a gun club/range thing.
- I think people are generally too stupid to own guns, and that includes intelligent people.
- I don't love Germany, I like it. I haven't found the perfect country yet, but Germany is a great place to live, with good education, a good, subsidised health system, a peaceful populace, a good and fair police, and a multi-party balanced democratic political system.
- The Germans did not rampage across Europe for a century.
- Even at its worst, Germany did not lay waste to everything it touched.
- Europe (let's say the EU) is not perfectly socially just, although it tries to do the right thing, even when that is hard.
- Deutschland does not have an Umlaut.
- I don't get all my news from the BBC or the "Tageszeitung", whatever that is. On the topic of American gun laws, I get my news from American news outlets, like the New York Times and so on.
And finally:
It is not necessary for me or anyone else to keep their nose out of anything. Both Germany and the USA are free countries, and that includes freedom of thought and freedom of expression.
Perhaps we can end it here. We all have opinions and they don't usually change.
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