Mass shootings

[GMDino]

(02-23-2018, 11:14 AM)Wyche Wrote: Echoing some sentiments already stated here....this thread definitely HAS been enlightening.  Not only from an educational standpoint, but also noteworthy is that I find that most of us are really rather close in our beliefs about gun control....if you honestly stand back and look at it, removing partisan rhetoric (which is the MAIN problem in my opinion, but I digress....)  What I'm about to delve into, honestly has nothing to do with school shootings.  It's more about gun violence in general.

Having said that, I wanted to throw out something that came to me as I watched "Hate thy Neighbor" last night.  I'm wondering what some of your thoughts are about my casual observation.  As I watched the show, with all of the different cultures and viewpoints clashing, many of the participants armed, I thought about this thread.  What mainly came to mind was the alluding to Swiss and Australian gun laws and the violence statistics associated with them.  It occurred to me that maybe a part of all of this was the huge differences in their societies and ours.  So I looked up some numbers.  When you think of America, you think of the large "melting pot".  A whole bunch of different views, cultures, traditions, ethnicities, and sub-societies....if you will....trying to assimilate into one homologous society.  There's always going to be some clashes, it's just human nature.

What I found was what I thought I would find, albeit not as lopsided as it ultimately wound up being.  There's a rather large discrepancy in the population demographics between the two and us.  Australia is 90% white, 3% Aboriginal, and 7% Asian.  Switzerland is 94% white, and the remaining 6% was listed as "other".   Here, we are 72.4% white, African-Americans 12.6%, Hispanics 16.3%, Asian 4.8%, etc....from the 2010 census.  Here, we also have a rather large gang problem, while Australia is mainly biker gangs, and there was very little info on Swiss gang activity.  So, with all of these numbers taken into consideration, is it possible that having an overwhelming percentage of the population being able to readily identify with each other, versus a litany of backgrounds in another population has a bearing in any of this?  In other words.....maybe they have more in common with each other, so there's less of a chance of vehement opposition in viewpoints that could wind being a violent confrontation.  Do they even have "hate crimes" in these countries? Something to ponder, or no?

Of course, maybe their media and politicians don't fan the flames of division to push an agenda and get votes.

Culture, and the mix of cultures, clearly plays into it.

But also America has always thought that being "tough" to settle disagreements is the main way to go.  That's part of the generic "American culture" that feeds into others in my opinion.

Add in black on black crime and white on white crime and other on other crime and I don't know if different cultures clashing is a big part of it or not.

I do know that it is an issue that will take a generation at least to straighten out .