• shalafi@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    You forgot abortion bans.

    I keep saying, America doesn’t have a gun problem, America has a culture problem. And our culture is very, very ill.

    Love this passage from Discworld about a new idiot taking over the “cops” in that world. (And if someone accuses the author, Terry Pratchett, of conservative thinking, imma choke on my beer). 😆

    Swing, though, started in the wrong place. He didn’t look around, and watch and learn, and then say, ‘This is how people are, how do we deal with it?’ No, he sat and thought: This is how the people ought to be, how do we change them?’ And that was a good enough thought for a priest but not for a copper, because Swing’s patient, pedantic way of operating had turned policing on its head.

    There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate.

    Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers - say, three per citizen.

    Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day.

    Some citizens took the not unreasonable view that something had gone a bit askew if only naughty people were carrying arms. And they got arrested in large numbers. The average copper, when he’s been kicked in the nadgers once too often and has reason to believe that his bosses don’t much care, has an understandable tendency to prefer to arrest those people who won’t instantly try to stab him, especially if they act a bit snotty and wear more expensive clothes than he personally can afford. The rate of arrests shot right up, and Swing had been very pleased about that.

    • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      I’m not going to call him conservative but he is a fantasist that weaves common talking points into his work for comic effect, I’m not going to base my opinions on jokes made in ya fiction.

      There are a lot of examples of weapons restrictions in countries round the world including the one I live in, here having a gun will get you significant prison time so if criminals do have one they keep it very well hidden and certainly aren’t going to start popping off shots or waving it around in a mugging, burglary, fight or other situation.

      Do you know how many times I’ve been warned not to hang out in front of a club because the bouncer had an argument with a guy who threatened to come back and shoot the place up? Twice, want to guess which country I was in both times? I’ll give you a clue it was the only country I’ve ever seen someone pull a gun when yelling out their car window in a road rage, only country I’ve ever had to use a different launderette because the regular one had been shot up, only country where I’ve been in a bar and two people started arguing and everyone started leaving…

      You’re normalised to it so you don’t understand how much it negatively affects your life, a good example is that you’re scared of not having a gun - that makes no sense here or any of the places I’ve visited where guns are sensibly restricted.