we are super friendly to anyone, as long as they are not harming anyone else
If only that tenet applied to the whole world. As for guns, that's just so foreign to me. We feel safer because there AREN'T guns, but that's absolutely a cultural difference and I don't imagine either of us would totally understand each others in that regard! I'm glad you feel safe.
Every drawer is part junk drawer
Ha! Thank goodness for drawers. As long as we know where things are, right?
How does only the government enforcement agencies having firearms make you feel safe in the current political environment? That is foreign to me.
I know, right, it's a cultural thing! For one, we don't have law enforcement like you do... Those ICE agents omfg.
We have different founding myths, for one. Yours is from
violent rebellion against a government. Ours was flawed but pragmatic. Your whole second amendment supports your founding mythology. Suspicion first. Your gun lobby and politics are all about distrust and fear - any regulation is seen as the first step to dictatorship. We don't have that belief. Our fear is we'll become a gun culture like the US!!!
Here, the government is largely seen annoying, overly bureaucratic, sometimes incompetent, depending on your leanings, weak and so on, but not imagined as totally an enemy you must resist with arms, unless you are some conspiracy lunatic that lives Woop Woop and goes on a mad spiral and kills cops like has happened a couple of times here, and has been very sad. There's never any cover up about cop behavior and government lies. We really really don't have a cultural industry built around how the state is coming for us. It just doesn't exist.
We just simply don't have an entire country built on the identity of gun ownership = autonomy. It simply doesn't exist. Guns here are for roo shooting, for farms, for deer hunting and sport, unless you are a criminal. Our big massacre that brought in more gun laws and an amnesty seemed reasonable to us - dead kids horrified us. It didn't challenge our identity because we didnt have one..meanwhile, school shootings in America make us shake our heads and go what the actual fuck.
Yes, you can kill people without guns. We had the Bindi massacre of late, but they had shot guns as it's less likely to own assault rifles. Yes, government response was knew jerk, but most people didn't care unless they were hunters, farmers etc (even most of us thought it wouldn't work - we believed AUSPOL should have done their jobs properly since the guys were on a list, and that continued division in society leading to hate had to be addressed more than anything).
We just never went the route you did.
We trust systems more than individuals with weapons - look I'm not saying we all out trust the government, just we don't see arming ourselves as a viable option. We would rather out up with a flawed system than millions of armed strangers, which we find fucking terrifying. We would never put up with dead children as background noise. We feel safe without guns because we have always been safe without guns. It's learned, cultural. Guns are freedom for you, not having guns is freedom for us.
I can't even recall a time where a cop killed someone in line of duty. Yes, it happens, and sadly, we have a larger proportion of indigenous people who die in custody for various reasons. But fuck, in your country it seems to happen all the time. Your authority look like mad soldiers out of a war movie to us.
Sorry for the long response. It helped me understand it better myself. I can't explain to you how lying in bed here, watching kangaroos leap down the street and joggers and dog walkers take their morning exercise, that seeing a gun here would paralyse us with fear and we'd be immediately ringing the police to save us haha.
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I'm sorry if I offend here. I only hope to discuss.
You had, and submitted to, far more draconian measures during the covid con than we did in the USA. Mass vaccination of schoolchildren in school cafeterias, no? (Experimental medical treatments were never mandated on our children thank god) Are you forgetting the days you spent in a hotel, allowed no more than 15 minutes a day on a rooftop as your outside time? What went on in Australia during those years scares the crap out of me. Was there any resistance to that, or would resistance have been futile? Your country is one press release away from going through that, and no doubt even worse, to everyone again. So is mine.
Given what I see going on worldwide, not just in Minnesota, I think that kind of trust in any government, especially western, is dangerously misplaced. I'm now officially scared shitless. It will be worse the next time, and last time I was threatened with being shipped off just for having made a government-frowned-upon lifestyle/medical choice. That was not freedom, that was fascism. Worldwide, in Australia and New Zealand especially. Some tout those two countries as having done everything right.
Oh no I'm not offended whatsoever!! It's interesting to discuss! I hope we could do that here without losing a friendship!
I didn't hear of this! It was fake news. No child under 16 was forcibly vaxxed. Arguably, no one was, unless you wanted to work.
Absolutely we were draconian. I don't think we would put up with it again, especially as those fucking fines were waived, showing how stupid they were and how so many people broke the rules and nothing happened. I am not sure the government would even take those measures again. And especially people like us, well, I was breaking every rule I could. So much of it was idiotic and the premier of our state much hated because of it. We had state law, not national. It was so fucked up. Don't even get me started.
Fuck me no. I had PTSD from it. Still don't believe in guns though ;p
And I still don't believe in mandatory vax and losing your job over it. That sucked. I am not even sure that would happen again. I think we learnt a lot from that unprecedented virus. Forced medicine is absolutely abhorrent.
I'm absolutely not saying we all trust the government unreservedly. We don't. But we believe in a system without guns. It's not the only way.
I can see why you're scared shitless. You live in America ;p