Gozit

I agree with HumphreyC, the career stuff can be fended off, but any family issues arise and it could be a different ball game.

TMR

I'm sorry to resurrect an old thread, but this latest school shooting has really gotten to me. I trawled the US media trying to find any semblance of a popular argument for banning guns - none whatsoever.

I know a bunch of you have taken America to heart and now own a small arsenal yourself. I just couldn't live in a country that thinks this is acceptable in light of these repeated and devastating incidents.

School shootings in UK --> ban on handguns. No more school shootings. In fact, one of the lowest rates of gun homicide in the world. Data

It isn't hard, is it?

TMR

I think they will when taken as a whole. We only live once and I think we have a better quality of life here. Opportunities come and go, but nobody lay on their deathbed wishing they'd worked more.

And like I suggested in the post above, we don't have to worry about our kids getting shot up anywhere.

mrlion

With all due respect you seem to be implying that it's not ok for decent people to choose to move to America. Whilst that's certainly a defensible position, articulating it on a US expat forum is just trolling.

TMR

No offence intended. This latest shooting just riled me. The situation is beyond parody now.

hoffage123

I have been following this thread, and I can't quite believe it has gotten to 31 pages. We aren't a counselling forum, so I don't know how much more anyone else can add without being repetitive.

Come or don't - your choice at the end of the day. Every country has pro's and cons. Hope it works out for you either way.

Best,

Hoffage

Hiro11

31 pages of "I hate America". Ok. Got it. Please find a hobby.

RoadWarriorFromLP

You're quite impatient. Incidents such as this invariably produce a lot of "stop the madness" opinion pieces. (Here's one example: The question America must face on shooting (Opinion) - CNN.com)

Unfortunately, the kid decided to have his fun on a late Friday morning, Pacific Time, which is early afternoon on the East Coast. If he had a media consultant, then he would have known that Friday is not an ideal day to bring maximum publicity to one's story.

A lot of opinion writers take the weekend (or at least Saturday) off, so you won't be hearing from most of them until Sunday at the earliest. Most of the commentary will probably be produced on Monday and Tuesday. As you are 5-8 hours ahead of that, you may not see it until Tuesday or Wednesday.

Sally Redux

TMR

I read that and it's a great piece. Then I saw the comments below, 75% of which are full-on second amendment. You think anything will ever change?

mrlion

TMR you're living proof that there are knuckleheads all over the Internet who feel compelled to continually spout whatever their opinion is while pretending to have a discussion.

I call 386 on this.

xkcd: Duty Calls

Sally Redux

At the end if the day, they have to want to change it.

The size of the country allows flight to the suburbs where wealthier people feel a certain immunity. If their kid gets shot in the face it has to be put in the context of the 2nd Amendment.

If my son takes citizenship he will have a voice, other than that I can't do anything.

Sally Redux

We heard you the first time.

FlaviusAetius

Probably not, as the number of gun owners in the US is probably in the following range:

"Number of guns and gun owners in USA. Most estimates range between 39% and 50% of US households having at least one gun (that's about 43-55 million households). The estimates for the number of privately owned guns range from 190 million to 300 million. Removed those that skew the stats for their own purposes the best estimates are about 45% or 52 million of American households owning 260 million guns)." How many gun owners are there in the United States of America

If 52 million households have at least one gun, and there are up to 260,000,000 guns floating around in the country (an average of 5 per household?), many will see that the number of nuts who use them to commit atrocities is, by contrast, almost vanishingly small.

That number of people see nothing wrong with owning their guns since they do nothing wrong with them and, since they vote, only politicians in extremely safe liberal areas will stand on the gun control soap box to massage their liberal base. It seems the British Ex-pats site is one of those areas.

RoadWarriorFromLP

Just so long as there are white majorities in the Southeast, no.

Guns have morphed into a cultural issue, with the Republicans championing the cause of the white man defending himself against the not-so-white man.

This is essentially part of an extended backlash against the civil rights movement and school desegregation that has early roots in the late 40s, but really began to gather steam in the 70s. The racial issue has burdened this country from the very beginning, and it's far too entrenched to just vanish overnight, particularly in a federal system that accords disproportionate political power to those regions of the country.

At the same time, there are a lot of people who grew up with guns and have never had a problem with them. Imagine if someone told you that you should be forced to give up alcohol because there are others who can't handle their drink. You might be annoyed by that, too, particularly if you believe that the would-be prohibitionist is sneering at you (which he probably is.)