Politically Charged Violence - Who's Responsible?

[dreadgeek]

[quote=afixer;263740]ftr...the political climate has been and always will be ripe for such actions.
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some of our forefathers came to this land to escape political tyrannies elsewhere.
that didn't work out so well for the native folks here.

I love my country but our government is flawed in that as a nation we take action and even have laws that would allow for the taking of any human life.
when I say this I mean we send our soldiers abroad to kill for our country and we have capital punishment on a federal level.
so how are we as a nation any different?
it's never okay to take someone's life.


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I'm curious about something. Do not other nations also send their soldiers to kill others? Can you name a nation that was a power in, say, 1900 that didn't send its armies forth at least once last century? Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Japan all sent their armies forth for the purpose of conquest or to maintain their empire or to comply with a treaty obligation. Yet, the only nation on that list with a death rate from violence even *remotely* approaching the United States is Iraq and there is a real, honest-to-goodness low-intensity war being fought there.

In answer to your question of "how are we as a nation different" it is this...the United States has a population of around 300 million and there are approximately 270 *million* guns in private hands--that isn't counting the weapons in the hands of the police or the military. Now, I'm not saying we should abandon the Second Amendment. I *am* saying that before we try to portray the United States as a nation that is uniquely iniquitous in human history, we might want to consider other factors.

In a nation awash in firearms we might want to keep our political rhetoric polite. A nation not awash in guns can afford (but probably shouldn't encourage) to have different parts of the body politic portrayed as enemies of goodness, family and puppies.

Cheers
Aj