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European had weapons too but dictatorships and then the two world wars removed them. They were removed not because an unstable person could try to exert force on others but because an unarmed population cannot revolt against their government. Remember that one unstable with weapons is dangerous, when all have weapons the field is flat and your weapons give you no advantage. P.S. the biggest genocides have not been made by an armed population...

nami 1y ago

Yes but here we had so many civil wars that an armed population might be suicidal. Consider this also

Laeserin 1y ago

I went to high school in rural Texas and was big into the JROTC program and stuff. Living in Europe, again, has given me a gun cult detox.

Also, most of the German men my age and older have done military service and/or are hunters, but they seem less keen to treat guns like fun collectables. Europeans take ground wars on their own territory more seriously, as a risk, but generally seem less eager to kill people or to glorify violence.

I think their caution is mistaken for cowardice, but my personal experience is that European men tend to run toward danger, rather than away from it, and they're generally dutifull and concerned about others.

ChipTuner 1y ago

Seeing your reply but responding to OP. I've learned there is a very big difference from suicidal to passive suicidal (clinical conditions) (assuming that's what you're referring too) Just because you have the fully loaded cold metal in your hands doesn't mean you'd have the courage to pull the trigger on yourself. Different though, I grew up around firearms everywhere and was taught at a young age to respect them.

Laeserin 1y ago

I meant that, if a male partner, friend, or family member is beating, threatening, or stalking you, adding a gun to the situation will tend to lower your chance of getting away alive, not raise it.

Intimate relationships are a hot mess, and adding firearms to the mess, just makes it even hotter.

For instance, encouraging women who have been sexually abused by an intimate partner to arm themselves is a terrible idea because those women tend to be emotionally upset or even chronically suicidal, and that increases the lethality of their attempts to harm themselves. Even if they pull the gun out, if he attacks them again, they are unlikely to pull the trigger, and then he can just take the gun from them and turn it around. Also, he probably knows where her gun is stored or even has direct access to it, and she probably isn't carrying it around in the home.

Laeserin 1y ago

A lot has been written about the skyrocketing suicide rates, but it tends to miss the fact that suicide attempts have become increasingly lethal, as easy access to firearms has increased.

One reason why European men do not tend to keep firearms in the home is because they know that the probability that they will use it to defend their home from intruders is much lower than the probability that they will use it to blow their own brains out.

Low Information Voter 1y ago

Ropes are pretty accessible, for those who are actually serious.

Very few were serious, back when I was a crisis counsellor for a bit. That's why pills are so popular. Wake up in hospital with a hangover and a week's supply of sympathy and attention.

Laeserin 1y ago

People don't like the prospect of choking to death. It's slow and tortuous. Guns are quick and painless and now they're the most-popular method for both sexes, in America. Women used to prefer pills, which is why fewer died.

During Corona, Americans bought guns in enormous quantities, and lots of women became gun owners. Since then, they're also blowing their brains. Most gun deaths in America are suicides or murder-suicides.

People buy guns because they're the easiest way to kill strangers, but they usually just use them to off themselves and their loved ones.

Low Information Voter 1y ago

Small-calibre handguns are quick, sure, but far from certain and painless. Small calibre rifle attempts not-infrequently fail, too.

Time series data doesn't support the corona-girl-guns-suicide thesis. US suicides declined sharply during COVID, and then resumed their long-term upward trend.

https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html

~95% of suicide attempts still fail (or were never intended to succeed).

Men are still 80% of completed suicides.

Laeserin 1y ago

Men are the majority, but womens' numbers nearly doubled and the lethality of their attempts has increased.

Remember that suicide is actually episodic, with most people moving from the impulse to kill themselves to killing themselves between 3 minutes and 8 hours, so convenience and lethality is a factor in how many die. That's why rural people are less likely to report suicidal thoughts, but more likely to die by suicide (they have guns and rope, at hand).

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db509.htm

Also, the sort of person purchasing firearms has changed, since the lockdowns. They are, for lack of a better definition, increasingly emotionally-unstable women, who buy guns because they are scared of men. Guns are marketed to them like comfort animals.

Been raped or you know someone who has?

Buy a gun.

Getting stalked?

Buy a gun.

Break-ins in your neighborhood?

Buy a gun.

Car-jackings up?

Buy a gun.

Trump lost the election?

Buy a gun.

Trump won the election?

Buy a gun.

Too many immigrants wandering around?

Buy a gun.

This is the first time, in the history of the world, where men have decided it's a good idea to load terrified women up with firearms.

I'm sorry, but I see this as a massive dereliction of duty, on part of the men. Women should not be living in fear, like this.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2785592

Low Information Voter 1y ago

Gonna sound cold, but I see this as a hopeful development, and I wish Australia could join the experiment.

A younger friend and former colleague of mine grew up painfully white and privileged, and during her teenage years she studied all the crime stories she could find, especially rapes. Developed a minor social media following as an influencer. Drank her own koolaid and became a near shut-in by age 20, fearing that all the boys in her uni class were following her.

Her story becomes unusual in that she then realised she was self-harming by cultivating this very fashionable fear, and started exercising her formidable will to diminish the neuroses she had previously cultivated so assiduously.

She now works for our Federal govt, and if I recited her political beliefs most of Nostr would excommunicate me just for knowing her. Yeah, she's pretty Woke. She's a high-functioning alcoholic and now very overweight. Can't keep a boyfriend. Has never been the victim of a violent crime.

Wants a kid, and would be an absolute trainwreck of a mother.

Compared to millions like her, she has remarkable insight and self-awareness, and she does NOT blame men for her suffering. I don't want anything bad to happen to her.

But the millions like her... if they commited suicide, average parenting and future national culture would be markedly improved.

Laeserin 1y ago

I think it's unfair to demand women be like men, for decades, and then blame them when some of them eventually go a bit insane.

Womens' intense need for safety and security is the basis of pairbonding and nestmaking, and it protects them from harm or capture.

Married women are the safest, because their mates tend to be better behaved, they engage in less risky behavior, they live in safer neighborhoods, and they are inconvenient targets for strange criminals. Making women terrified of marriage, in particular, has been a disservice. Feminists decried this as "the devil you know" tactic, but obfuscating where real danger was most likely, left women simply alone and afraid of all men, which sometimes warped their minds.

Low Information Voter 1y ago

100%.

I don't have a solution, though. I don't want to restrict young womens' choices of belief or lifestyle.

Platforms without engagement-maximising algorithms should help (although my friend started with paper). Importing emotionally-healthy women from other cultures, too..

But otherwise I think we're just going to have to watch this trainwreck unfold, and trust differential fertility will take its course.

(Sadly, federally-funded universities give the Woke a second chance to reproduce their maladies. Defunding that would help.)

inpc 1y ago

Sorry for the curveball but what if anti woke also turns into a mind virus, then what?! I mean it’s all just memes really.

I struggle to keep of with all the ideas, things, habits and planetary spacecraft described as woke.

Other than that, this is an interesting conversation. Carry on…

Low Information Voter 1y ago

Its mind virii all the way down :p

If Woke were COVID19, 80s-90s "Christian Conservatism" would be SARS

MichaelJ 1y ago

What is probably needed is a restoration of cultural mores governing interactions between the sexes. Right now there basically aren't any. Chivalry? Respect? Common decency? None of those are a guarantee.

That doesn't require anyone forcing anyone into anything else, but it does require a strong cadre of virtuous role models to set the example (and fashions, to some degree) that everyone else will follow. It's a generational project.

Josua Schmid 1y ago

Yes. The Swiss army rifle at home is a remote insurance for war and a sign of trust from the state to its people. It’s not for self-defense.

Nick Lewis 1y ago

Here in the UK guns are either something the army, police or farmers use for different reasons but under very very strict regulations. We used to have an air rifle for the scouts target range up at the local activity centre. That’s it. The thought of going to a shop and buying one of those, a couple of them and seventeen rounds of bullets please, is just very alien to us.

Then last night I saw a video on YouTube shorts showing a bunch of people dressed up to look like the hitman who killed the insurance company CEO.

Again, just strange. Disturbing for sure.

Low Information Voter 1y ago

Winston Churchill lost his Cabinet seat in 1929 after he called for striking miners to be suppressed with machineguns. Because there was a shop selling automatic rifles only 500m from the picket lines, and the miners could have easily armed themselves.

The British today are very alien to their recent ancestors. Australians, too, I think we're at most a generation behind.

Will be interesting when our elites stop slavishly imitating their American peers and realise they can do anything, with as little effective public pushback as in the PRC...

ChipTuner 1y ago

> thing but now it’s spread to the US. Conservativism has changed and morphed into all kinds of things. Eg. Pick up trucks, who knew?

What do you mean by this? Pickup trucks have been around since the 40s here.

inpc 1y ago

But as a conservative political signifier? Maybe that's my view twisted by media, happy to be wrong on this, here the perception is that huge pick up trucks are more a conservative choice. Maybe because the word shares truck 3 letters with a certain celebrity politician? I'm not in the US but I was in Ohio back in 2022 and it was pretty mad seeing massive signs in peoples' gardens saying "God, Guns and Trump" often with a huge pick up truck in the drive.

In the UK the Conservative Party's main USP appears to be fraud, they were doing a lot of it! That seems far flung from holding on to some idea of 'Traditional Values'.

ChipTuner 1y ago

Well, I'm partial. Conservative and worked in automotive, specializing in light duty pickups, made me a living for over 7 years.

We use our trucks to work. My customers mostly worked the hell out of their rigs, made a living with their bodies and equipment. The truck came first, the symbol of a cultural or political affiliation, came secondary.

ChipTuner 1y ago

I can't speak to the suburbanites that have a half ton pickup and use it to pickup groceries.

Daniel Wigton 1y ago

I think you are disregarding the sheer size of tvs you can get from Costco.

ChipTuner 1y ago

Fantastic point. I went into a walmart for the first time in like 10 years and they have 90" 4k LGs for like $400. I live under a rock lmao

Robertrobert 1y ago

Take a road trip across America! It will do wonders for you.✌️

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