Taking 60 questions across a handful of arbitrary categories and weighting them all equally is not a very useful methodology for this type of thing. It can help you differentiate Canada from Azerbaijan, but isn't going to be useful for comparing similarly-situated countries.
It is pretty authoritarian, heavy-handed and undemocratic, I just think people generally have trouble with that because Western countries are supposed to not be like that.
I mean were it a non-western country with this level of surveillance, in the open corruption, expectation to conform, number of unelected PMs, orchestrated suppression of political opposition, regulation of the press etc. we would have no trouble calling it worse things.
All PMs are "unelected", or at least not elected via a general election, beyond their election as an MP. There's a reason they're called a Prime Minister, not a president or similar. The UK doesn't directly elect the head of the UK government, and it never has. The PM is elected is the leader of the party that gains enough seats in parliament to form a government. Enough seats is determined by the simple question of "would the formed government have a reasonable ability to pass legislation in parliament, as is needed to conduct the business of government", nothing else.
This is the UK chosen form of democracy, the US may prefer a more direct form of democracy, but that's not without its issues either.
Yeah, I know. That's nitpicking. What I meant was the number of PMs who didn't have to campaign in a general election, at the very least not for a good while after taking office, I assumed that was clear.
These days I have a hard time telling the difference between either, because no one in a democracy will ever vote for crazy policies like having surveillance cameras pointing at themselves or having increasing harsher laws on freedoms both online and offline.
If so many important things are not up for the vote, is it really a democracy?
>>If so many important things are not up for the vote, is it really a democracy?
Exactly. For me, this is the myth of democracy. A party campaigns on a manifesto containing a few cherry-picked policies, aimed at appealing to enough of the electorate, to get them elected [quite often with less than 50% of the vote]
And, assuming they have an overall majority in parliament, this then means that every decision they subsequently make over the next 4 years is legitimised in advance because "you voted for this".
The only true democracy would involve regular referenda, whenever major new policies were proposed. This should be technically feasible with current technology. But, given the last time we had a referendum in UK the people didn't vote for the option they were meant to, I'm doubtful we'd ever see such a thing implemented.
I'd rather have that flavour of democracy than the one that voted someone like Trump into power. Hell, he's still managing to wreak havoc over there even post-potus.
That just seems like a joke to me. They literally have a House of Lords with hereditary positions which can alter the laws passed by the democratically elected House of Commons.
The House of Lords is becoming a joke (it's just a place an exiting Prime Minister sends their mates now), but hereditary peers were abolished in 1999. Also, the HOL often pushes back on the more extreme legislation the MPs try to get through the House of Commons.
But i agree the unelected nature of it is undemocratic. It should be replaced with a second elected house that can perform the same role of putting a check on the HOC.
Full HOL reform would be a good way to start the move towards a proportional representation electoral system in the UK. Make the reformed second chamber a PR elected house and give them a slightly longer/fixed period between elections to shield them from the chaos of a general election and party politics.
>Full HOL reform would be a good way to start the move towards a proportional representation electoral system in the UK. Make the reformed second chamber a PR elected house and give them a slightly longer/fixed period between elections to shield them from the chaos of a general election and party politics.
This is the best suggestion I've seen on HoL reform, ever. I mean, it'll never happen, but that really is a great idea, and would mean that the chamber would be clearly different from the Commons, which I've not seen another proposal making sense on this area.
No they haven't. They decided they don't want ranked choice voting (known in the UK as the 'alternative vote'). Proportional representation is a different system, which the minority Liberal Democrat party and others had long argued for and quite a lot of people regarded the substitution as a form of bait-and-switch. Additionally some had reservations about the scheduling of the referendum to overlap with local elections in parts of the UK.
It's quite odd to me how we "hand wave" individual rights using the term "democratic" as if there is something intrinsic and unquestionable about it. LIke, sure 60% voted "democratically" for a decision to go one way. But what about the other 40%?
Democracy is a very weird term, dictate of the majority can be a democratic. We should use very specific names, like independence of court system, accessibility of court/lawyer procedures, level of politically motivated crimes(those have a huge impact on people's willingness to act for all of this to improve), freedom of speech, freedom of movement, highly competitive democratic procedures, freedom of economic entrepreneurship, freedom of personal relationships, etc
Funny how the US score dropped in 2016. I don't put a ton of weight into these rankings, especially near the top because they are so subject to partisan politics. Depending on where you stand in politics, you could make an effective argument that the US democracy slipped in 2016. But you could also make an equal argument that Canada is far less democratic after the events of the pandemic, truckers protest, etc.
Personally I think that the US, Canada, UK, Germany, etc should all fall into a general "Western Democracy" category. Roughly speaking we all have the same rights, though details differ and depending on where you stand in politics you may place one above the other, but at that point it becomes completely subjective.
Bills like these erode our democracy and we have to be vigilant, we also need to realize that in any western democratic country, we are light years away from true authoritarianism.
You seem to be suggesting that authoritarian and democratic are exclusive attributes but this isn't the case. Authoritarianism (the degree of control vis a vis personal liberty) has absolutely nothing to do with democracy (the way decisions are made).
A dictatorship can be less authoritarian than a democracy.
> A dictatorship can be less authoritarian than a democracy.
While it is theoretically possible, I have a hard time coming up with an example where that is the case. What dictatorship is less authoritarian than democracies?
It's quite common, actually. An obvious and extreme example would be American slave states pre-civil war as viewed from the perspective of Black Americans.
There is a well known phrase, the "tyranny of the majority." It is in fact extremely common for a majority to oppress a minority within a democratic system -- often with severely authoritarian methods.
> An obvious and extreme example would be American slave states pre-civil war as viewed from the perspective of Black Americans
When you define a large mass of people as property and deny them the franchise, that's not oppression through democracy, because its not democracy at all.
The US government 1776-1865 is obviously democratic, and it's obviously possible (and again, not uncommon) for a democracy to engage in disenfranchisement. Your objection is a form of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy in that you are attempting to define democracy as a non-authoritarian system which is demonstrably false.
In any event it's not necessary to argue this point because there are no shortage of further examples which include authoritarianism exerted over non-disenfranchised demographics. Here are some further examples of authoritarianism within the USA:
* Japanese internment of 1940s
* Every historic invocation of martial law (more than a dozen)
* Every historic invocation of conscription
* Historic oppression of women, which continued well after the suffrage movement in a variety of ways
There are of course countless other examples throughout the history of democracies. Even a cursory reading can uncover countless examples, from contemporary democracies all the way back to its origins in ancient Greece. It is not uncommon for a majority rule system to impose authoritarian controls -- in fact, it is the norm. This is why we have concepts such as constitutional rights, which are specifically designed to balance against the authoritarian tendencies of majority rule.
Having grown up in, and subsequently emigrated from the UK, I would say that Britain is a weird place when looked at from a distance.
The class system has led to a society where the middle classes consider themselves the moral guardians of the working class, while looking up at the upper classes with a mixture of contempt and envy. Middle-class right wing readers of the Daily Mail and left wing readers of the Guardian are more similar in that regard than either would like to admit.
So (while coming from a different political place) both want to crack down on the evils of the internet to Protect the Children and, of course, to save the working classes from themselves (and protect their neighbourhoods: think of the property prices!).
As both Conservatives and Labour need their votes, authoritarian cracking-down on issue du jour is always a good vote winner. Today it's the internet, back in the 80s it was MDMA and rave parties, back in the 1800s it was gin palaces and gambling. Same thing though: Britain's self-appointed moral guardians and their representatives in the media and parliament wagging their finger at everyone else.
In the UK if you want to buy food in the supermarket you have to have a HD video camera pointed in your face (often two cameras). When all major supermarkets introduced these cameras a couple of years back no one even discussed it, or thought it was odd, because here there is no assumption of privacy.
I was telling a coworker recently that I always use a VPN while browsing the internet. He was genuinely confused, and was asking why I would care about privacy unless I have something to hide. And this isn't just one person. I've had similar reactions when I've told people I only use signal, or refuse to use cloud storage, or won't list employment history on LinkedIn for privacy reasons. I get that I have an extreme preference for privacy, but people in the UK don't even understand why someone like myself value privacy.
This attitude is also adopted by our leaders and businesses, who by various means, mass surveil the public, typically citing "safety".
The issue with the UK isn't just that our government don't value privacy, it's that as a people we don't even understand the value of privacy.
>stores have cctv to make sure people aren't stealing
Lmao, is this really that surprising? Shops have had CCTV for ages now.
Self-checkout has more obvious cctv because you're giving more power to the shopper; self-checkout is just one step away from allowing someone to just walk out with the product a la Amazon Fresh (which has a literal FIELD of cameras).
Businesses have CCTV for the same reason that people have cameras fitted to their houses. 99.99999% of the time things will be fine, but the time something isn't, it's sure nice to have the evidence.
The UK has most CCTV cameras per capita in the western world. But they're pretty much entirely private cameras, including in London.
The government has no real ability to gain access to those cameras beyond asking nicely, or getting an actual search warrant. Even then the police still have to visit the site with the CCTV camera, and mostly capture the footage by filming the screen of the CCTV system with their phone (I've talked to Met police officers about this, and seen the footage). Most of those cameras barely work, point in the wrong direction, aren't recording, are so fuzzy you can't see anything. So comparing it to China is an apples to orange comparison.
The idea that these CCTV cameras could be used by the state for surveillance is laughable. The police struggle to get hold of the footage for actual in-progress investigations where they have real leads, and pretty much know what the footage is gonna show them already. So there's not a chance in hell the state could ever hope to get some sort of live feed of this data.
I don't think so, they had extensive CCTV capabilities 30 years ago and your comical suggestion that none of it really works is not plausible.
Besides which, the cameras themselves are a form of social signaling to remind people they're being watched - essentially the modern version of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon.
Estimates 4.4 million cameras in London, only 20k run by councils.
> they had extensive CCTV capabilities 30 years ago and your comical suggestion that none of it really works is not plausible.
Perhaps you can provide some sources for your assertions?
> Besides which, the cameras themselves are a form of social signaling to remind people they're being watched - essentially the modern version of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon.
I got mugged just a short walk away from a tube station in London (after having lived here for 4 years already, pretty good track record ruined by my propensity for enjoying night walks early in the morning; won't be doing that again).
But the police didn't have any footage of the event. Not even a business had a camera pointed in the right direction.
Indeed. When I was attacked near Clapham Junction and had a bottle smashed on my head, the police said it was too much trouble/costly to pull the video footage.
A friend had his bike stolen from outside Sainburys. They have high resolution viedo of it happening but refused to shared it with the local police without a court order.
Similarly a friend that runs a bike shop near a Tesco can't get Tesco to share high resolution video of burgalars breaking into his shop. They have it but it's their corporate policy not to share it.
On the one hand I guess right now all this surveilence is siloed to some degree and so less likely to be abused. On the other these seem like perfectly ligitimate uses of video to fight crime.
>He was genuinely confused, and was asking why I would care about privacy unless I have something to hide...
That's so oft-repeated it's become a cliché when someone is making a disparaging impersonation of a typical Daily Fail[0] reader. "If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear!" said in a braying upper class Tory accent.
Of course, the ultimate irony was when David Cameron was PM and the Panama pepers came to light, exposing all his dad's shady dealings and secret offshore bank accounts [1]. Cameron's spokeswoman told the press "A family's finances are their own private affair" This kind of sums up what life in the UK is like. A priveleged ruling class, with utter contempt for the electorate; "Do as we say. Not as we do!".
[0] Daily Fail = The Daily Mail. A right-wing tabloid newspaper which is a by-word for the kind of zzz-elebrity gossip mixed with anti-immigrant "hanging's too good for them" ranting that [unfortunately] appeals to a large enough percentage of the British population, to keep the Tories in power, seemingly for the foreseeable future.
You have plenty to hide. Fortunately, nobody cares about you, at least not at the moment.
Put another way: the question of whether or not you have "something to hide" isn't yours to answer. Your user name is German; you should understand this better than anyone.
>I think that's a little harsh. Do you live in the UK?
I live in the UK and I agree with that. It feels like living in a country which is trying to commit national suicide.
Not helped by the fact there seems to be nothing we can do about it. We're so much a vassal state to the USA that we don't even get to decide our own policies. So maybe better to say "It feels like living in a country which is being ordered to commit national suicide".
>Respectfully, I don't think you can blame the US for electing Tories who are swerving towards the cliff...
No. I don't blame the US for Brexit or the Tories. But, as if those were not bad enough, there are the endless foreign policy decisions where the UK just immediately follows whatever the US does, even if it is economically suicidal.
> endless foreign policy decisions where the UK just immediately follows whatever the US does
That more the result of stupidity and Napoleon syndrome than some magic hold the US has over the UK. The UK, in particular our government, still wants to believe we're a geopolitically important country capable of projecting power and influencing the world. While there's some small element of truth in that belief, our actual relevance on the world stage is far small than our government wishes it was, and is only getting smaller thanks to wonderful incompetence of past 10 years of government.
>Either way, it’s not the fault of the US if the UK acts as a vassal state...
Maybe not totally. But history is litttered with unfortunate "happenings" to countries which refused to ask 'How high? when the US said 'Jump!'
It's only in the US and amongst a self-deluding swathe of British society that this "relationship" is seen as one of equals. The reality is that we're sucking up to the playground bully because we've seen what he does to the kids who won't hand over their dinner money. And we're trying to kid ourselves we're best buddies.
>> UK just immediately follows whatever the US does, even if it is economically suicidal.
>>What is a good example?
Well, the best example is playing out in Eastern Europe at the minute.
But there are plenty of others, including needlessly antagonising China and sabotaging our previously beneficial economic relations, because the US is spoiling for a fight with China. Ergo UK must do likewise.
I had money disappear out of my NatWest account several years ago, when I lived in the UK. No transaction was present to show where it went. Nobody at the bank would speak to me about it, not to this day. I'm talking making it obvious that they didn't want to speak to me about it. That was one of many incidents where I was blatantly ripped off. Nobody there cared one bit.
EDIT: thanks for all the replies! That means something to me, I'll see if I can't get this sorted out. It's just weird that even the NatWest Twitter customer support account ignores my DMs.
I've heard this can happen where money laundering is suspected. Apparently the banks aren't allowed to tip off the account owner that they're being investigated, with the result that the account owner's subsequent interactions with the bank become kafkaesque.
AML rules are sadly very Kafkaesque. Having worked in finance for over a decade I've done enough compliance training to know that, yes, if money laundering is suspected you literally are not allowed to help the customer. You're not even allowed to tell them WHY you're unable to help. Failing to do so can make you, personally (the worker), criminally liable.
Telling the client "I'm sorry, your account is frozen pending an investigation" might land you in jail. You literally MUST lie to them and feed them a bunch of bullshit.
It's a shitty system, but interestingly, one that was developed by the EU, not specifically the UK.
Your options are; wait until some nameless government agency realises they've made a mistake, and releases your funds, or start a lawsuit and spend lots of time and money fighting to get your money back.
Punishment as part of a secret investigation, that you're not notified of or have a chance to defend yourself against in court, sounds rather undemocratic*.
*This word is sadly misused to mean "any unjust system of government". E.g. it is perfectly possible to have a constitutional monarchy, the antithesis of democracy, that respects the right to a fair trial and to face your accuser. Conversely, things people vote for are routinely dismissed as "undemocratic" - in that case, it gets called "populism". As far as I can tell, the words, as (ab)used, have nothing to do with the method of government, and everything to do with the outcome.
>It's a shitty system, but interestingly, one that was developed by the EU...
Ahem. As with most of these things. AML and KYC actually originated in the US. And [as ever] was then adopted by other countries. The present setup was a G7 creation. Not specifically EU. I'll let my learned colleague ChatGPT elaborate:
The first country to propose anti-money laundering (AML) rules is difficult to pinpoint with certainty as different countries developed their AML laws at different times and for different reasons. However, one of the earliest examples of an AML law is the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) of 1970...
The "Know Your Customer" (KYC) rules originated in the United States in the 1970s, along with the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) of 1970....
Other countries began developing their own AML laws in the 1980s and 1990s, with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) established in 1989 to coordinate international efforts to combat money laundering...
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is the global standard-setting body for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) policies. It was established in 1989 by the G7 countries, and its recommendations have been widely adopted by countries around the world....
On the other hand, US didn't get contactless payments until much later than everyone else and as far as I know still does that thing where a credit card is pressed against some paper to capture the number; I haven't even _seen_ this done in person (I've never been to the US).
> It's a shitty system, but interestingly, one that was developed by the EU, not specifically the UK
As much as, for the dismay of the average hacker news Joe, don't pray to the holy EU altar, I suspect sure those guidelines were sketched by FATF, an American institution at heart, ironically where such measures are not applied.
The AML framework is xenophobic and goes against things we consider basic rights like being innocent until proven guilty. However, it is not only ignored but applauded by the most progressive crowds that think its defending their countries from barbaric $place_from_the_east_or_south.
If a bank takes your money and won't tell you why, that lawsuit should be to get your money back and treble damages. As long as you can get in front of a jury, the jury will be very sympathetic....
Hopefully that's what happened, then perhaps there's a small chance I can find out what did happen and maybe even see that money again. But it was more than 10 years ago, I think.
>Well it's possible someone tried to make me look suspicious.
You don't need to have done anything suspicious. I've been a victim of this myself. Several years ago, I had a Shares ISA [0] account, into which I invested a couple of hundred £££ every month out of my wages.
After about 5 years I was out of work and needed to cash it in. But, when I tried to withdraw the money, I got hit with an "Unexplained Wealth Order" [or somesuch term], telling me that under AML I needed to fill in some disgustingly intrusive form explaining where I'd got this sum of money from [it was only a few thousand £££, not a fortune]. And, as I said, this was from the savings company which already knew exactly where the money had come from. As they'd watched it build up in small amounts over the previous 5 years or so.
I refused to comply with their AML/KYC. It then took me at least a few months and several letters, threatening them with legal action before they finally agreed to just close my account and return my money.
I also closed my eBay account when they started asking for people to upload scans of their passports to verify their identity.
These companies can fuck right off, as far as I'm concerned. AML/KYC is disgusting and I just wish more people would make a stand and refuse to comply with it.
It was a long time ago, but I think I remember something about an Unexplained Wealth Order. It could be that my explanation wasn't good enough for them. I need to chase this up again.
I worked as a consultant (permanent position) and had expenses that frequently needed to be refunded by the company. Perhaps they thought this was money laundering??
I think this is related to corruption - of which I am a target, which started in South Africa (where I'm originally from and have now moved back to), which seemed to spread to the UK when I moved there. I can't get anything in black and white either.
This is the country where the health service, transport department, fire brigade (amongst a whole host of other government departments and public bodies) are allowed to access your complete internet history *without a warrant*.
A bit harsh, but doesn’t miss the point entirely.
The first time I was in London I was shocked at the number of in-your-face surveillance cameras. Now I grew numb, but it’s still bad, actually worse. An estimate puts their number to 1 camera for every 10 people.
The UK is a good demonstration of why the US constitution is important. They have substantially weaker rights to freedom of speech, right to bear arms, and protection from unreasonable search and seizure. Of course the United States has tried hard in many cases to weaken or get around these protections, but it seems reasonable to say that Americans are still much more protected than citizens of the UK.
Most Americans misunderstand what their freedom of speech actually entitles them to. What your freedom of speech actually covers is represented via other legislations over here. And much as I think our government is a farce, we do have access to tell our politicians that. Frankly, if recent politics have taught us anything, it’s that freedom of speech doesn’t protect us from a shitty government being formed.
- right to bear arms
I’m glad we don’t. It’s a fucking stupid right in our modern age. How many shootings do you guys need before you wake up and join the rest of the civilised world with tighter gun control. And for what it’s worth, you can own guns legally in the UK. We just don’t allow unhinged people to roam the streets with guns.
- protection from unreasonable search and seizure
We have that in the U.K.
Given all the problems the US police force suffer from, you’re really not in a position to be gloating about protections from crooked cops.
Don’t get me wrong, the US does get a lot of things right too. But I wouldn’t say it’s ahead of the U.K. (nor most of Europe) in terms of rights. Roughly equivalent perhaps, but not so far ahead that we should all be modelling ourselves after you.
Let’s say americans don’t understand what their rights to speech mean. It doesn’t matter since you didn’t repudiate the fact that they may have stronger speech rights.
You are glad that you don’t have the right to bear arms. But that does not seem to me to refute that a constitution is important to prevent erosion of rights or that the US is ahead in terms of rights. Just that you personally don’t care about that right.
Finally, you state that in the U.K there is also a protection from unreasonable search. Fair enough. But is it stronger than what is in the US? Is it protected in form of a constitutional right or just a law that can be repealed at any time?
The strongest argument is that despite these apparent constitutional guarantees, it has not prevented police from infringing on these rights. I would agree. But that seems to me to be an issue of enforcement. Not having these would mean there would be no legal basis to change police behavior, only a social impetus. That may be enough but I would like to have both options.
What is "unreasonable", and regardless of the theoretical protections, are you at risk and do you have any practical recourse?
The scale of Civil Asset Forfeiture in the US suggests to me that large sections of US society are at risk and have no practical recourse.
Does the US having a written constitution actually help its society to retain their rights, or is it a fig leaf covering the rights you've already lost in practice, and an entitlement preventing society from changing rules that benefit those with power who exercise "rights" that ought not be so set in stone?
In the UK, Parliament has stated its intent to abide by the European Convention on Human Rights. It's true that one parliament cannot bind the next -- at any time, the UK parliament may decide to repeal everything and change even the foundations upon which our country's laws are built. The checks and balances in the system (including the House of Lords) protect us from the over-reach of a poor choice of government. Even with a large majority, and a stated aim of repealing the Human Rights Act, the current government has found itself unable to dismantle the our protections to the degree it would like.
I don't think you can argue that the US constitution gives you an inherent advantage in maintaining your rights.
Legislation doesn’t guarantee rights. If the same body trying to violate your rights with a bill can just pass another bill to repeal your rights, your rights are not protected. Two things are required to guarantee rights from a government: a constitution or charter that is extraordinarily difficult to modify, and a court system whose decisions can’t be overturned by the elected government, neither of which the UK has.
> a constitution or charter that is extraordinarily difficult to modify, and a court system whose decisions can’t be overturned by the elected government
Remember Brexit? It took them almost four years to achieve after the referendum, in part due to decisions by the constitutional court.
This is just a hypothetical destination at the end of the day.
For example the POTUS gets to appoint judges which has lead to the courts becoming increasingly partisan. And Trump did a pretty good job of abusing his power left right and centre without any repercussions.
Whereas on the flip side, UK politicians have been taken to court over the lawfulness of various decisions (such as “brexit”) and PMs forced to step down over incidents far less serious than anything that has resulted in POTUS impeachments.
And as much as the US constitution guarantees rights, the constitution can be changed. In fact 2 of the rights described here are amendments themselves.
We can all argue about which political system offers greater safeguards but ultimately it’s all just theoretical debate. A bad actor with sufficient support in either political system could do serious damage to the rights of their citizens.
So I think it’s a
erroneous to distil the argument down to such a simplistic model and then argue that America is somehow more free than the U.K. because of it. A more valid argument would be that we are roughly equivalent in a subject that is clearly very complex.
In the US our rights are mostly protected by one’s ability to pay for legal protection.
I don’t know how it works in the UK.
Having rights is all well and good, but in the US we’ve see. countless cases of government infringing on those rights requiring government to resolve them (via legal proceedings).
>rights to freedom of speech, right to bear arms, and protection from unreasonable search and seizure...
The trouble with this is that, while it's fine in principal [I'm a firm believer in the old agage "People shouldn't fear their governments. Governments should fear their people" ] it doesn't really stand up to reality.
The people who enshrined the "Right to bear arms" into your constitution envisioned it as a way to keep govenrment in check. If "The Man" has a musket he can oppress me. If I have a musket too, he can't.
Unfortunately, in the 21st century, "The Man" is always going to have a shitload of bigger, more lethal "muskets" than you and could swat you like a fly if he felt like it.
All the right to bear arms does is lead to a situation where your streets are full of guns, violent crime is rampant and your police force is armed to the teeth and more akin to a paramilitary army than your friendly neighbourhood bobby. So that every encounter --even for the likes of a trivial motoring offence, which would be a 5 minute telling off, a bit of grovelling and possibly a fine, anywhere else in Europe or UK-- has the potential to escalate into an armed stand-off or a shooting.
It's just amazing that so many Americans can simply not see this and still have that almost evangelical belief that the microscopically small chance that they could overthrow some future government if it got out of hand [spoiler alert: you couldn't!] is worth the trade-off of living day to day in a society awash with guns, violent crime and mass shootings.
> Unfortunately, in the 21st century, "The Man" is always going to have a shitload of bigger, more lethal "muskets" than you and could swat you like a fly if he felt like it.
I think you should study how it went down in Afghanistan. This argument simply doesn't hold up to reality.
And we're talking about a civil war where using mass destruction weapons like bombardment is much more likely to be out of the question. Additionally it is much harder to differentiate friend from foe.
Do you have any idea as to what would happen if you decided to take down "The Man" as the grandparent post has it, with your Walmart AR15?
Some kid in a bunker in Utah would take his hand off his dick long enough to pilot the drone right down your chimney, and blow you, your family, your gun, your dog, your truck, and about 100m radius worth of your neighbours into snotters, jam, and gravel.
>I think you should study how it went down in Afghanistan. This argument simply doesn't hold up to reality...
That's a different scenario. It's a lot easier [relatively speaking] to foment an uprising against an external enemy in the cause of "ridding your country of the invader". than it is against "the enemy within".
You've only got to look at all the unpopular laws that get passed year after year [and not just in the US]. When the possibility of <unpopular law> is first broached, there are dark mutterings that "People won't stand for it!". Then <unpopular law> comes into force, a couple of isolated people resist and get fined or imprisoned and, before you know it, <unpopular law> is an accepted part of "the system" --even if many people don't agree with it.
You've also got to bear in mind that, when <unpopular law> is implemented by your own government, they will sell it as being for the national good. No government is ever going to say 'We're doing this coz we're bastards and want to oppress you!'. It'll be for "national security" or "anti-terrorism" or "to protect the children". And it will fool enough of the people, so that the ones who do "make a stand" won't only be doing so against "The Man" but against most of the rest of the general populace too. They'll see you as being "unpatriotic", a "terrorist sympathiser" or a "defender of paedos" for taking a stand against said law.
Also, oppression is incremental. It's very rare that a country's government moves from [perceived] democracy to [perceived] tyranny over night. And, there again, even amongst the people who would conceivably rise up, everyone will have their own individual "red line" beyond which they'll feel aggrieved enough to act. And who wants to be the first to stick their head above the parapet?
Well I agree that in many cases people "standing up" to the goverment is nothing more than a LARP and that they are smart enough to slowly boil the frog instead of pushing too hard all at once.
But still, having guns puts a good guard against extreme situations where the boiling frog tactic doesn't work so much - e.g. forceful installation of a communist dictatorship. It won't guard us against slow deterioration but it can serve as a safe guard against hostile takeovers.
> some future government if it got out of hand [spoiler alert: you couldn't!]
You absolutely could if the country had any significant portion of the population against the government. The military will quickly go into a state of disarray if half of the members are being told to kill their own families.
> to day in a society awash with guns, violent crime and mass shootings.
But it’s not “awash”. I’ve been in the US for >50 years now and have never seen any gun-related crime and only know one person who was robbed in the 80s in New York by a guy who just said he had a gun. I’ve have however seen violent crime involving fists, bats, clubs, brass knuckles, and knives.
This is why when it comes down to it, Americans don’t want to give up their guns. The mass shootings are tragic, but the probability of being impacted by one is so small that people don’t think it’s worth giving them up.
> The military will quickly go into a state of disarray if half of the members are being told to kill their own families.
But this would still be true if the families are fighting with pots and pans. And if your enemy is a drone flying at 10000m it really makes no difference if you're fighting with an AR-15 or a pan.
And British people don't want to make that trade off. It's odd to use our gun laws to say we're oppressed by an undemocratic system when the vast, vast majority of people simply don't want the person standing next to them at the till in Tesco to have a pistol under their coat.
The timescale at which a disarmed populace becomes a problem is decades to centuries. It's all fine and dandy while you like your government. How long do you think it'll stay that way?
There are people alive who remember being herded into boxcars in Germany, in 2023 a well-run social-democratic beacon of progress and industry in Europe.
This is a bit disingenuous I think. I worry people will infer that young children are at risk from random violence. That's not true.
That stat goes from 0-19 years of age, and the vast majority of deaths are in the older segment. Like everywhere in the United states, it's young Black men killing other young Black men as part of organized crime or over matters of honor.
If you're a parent and not participating in that world, you and your children have nothing to fear.
"Mass shooting" (in the advocacy-numbers sense you're using it) is generally taken to mean three or more people hit by stuff that came out of a gun (framgents, ricochets count too). It is not "three people shot", much less "three people dead". When using this statistic, the average number of people killed is about one per "mass shooting".
What's more, most of these shootings are among people who are participating in organized crime in bad parts of cities. It's not random, innocent people getting shot. The random, innocent people getting shot ones are the ones that are profitable to put on news streams, though. They are exceedingly rare.
Using reasonable definitions of "mass shooting", the number so far in 2023 is 1-3.
Your tradeoff, of course, is that you have no freedom in the US because you live with a gun pointed at you at all times, blanket surveillance, free speech only if it matches what your government approves of, and no rights.
In the US you can be shot and killed by the police at any time, for any reason. You don't have any rights to retaliate.
If you look at homicide rates, London's is ~half of e.g. New York's, but the countries are really, really different in a lot of ways. It would make more sense to compare the U.S. to the European Union than to the U.K. Compare the U.K. to Massachusetts or something. The U.K. doesn't have a long land border with a violent, half-ruled-by-gangs developing country, doesn't have large rural areas, etc.
The available evidence suggests that magically removing guns from the U.S. overnight would make a dent in homicide rates, but not by all that much (I would estimate ~20%, charitably). Americans murder much more than average not because they have access to guns, but access to guns does make them a little more effective at murdering.
An aside, but it's always interesting to me that people are specifically interested in instances where a lot of people die together. I mean, who cares?
> An aside, but it's always interesting to me that people are specifically interested in instances where a lot of people die together. I mean, who cares?
The friends and families of those victims probably care.
I can’t say I’d be too happy if my daughter died at school from a completely preventable school shooting.
...right, my point is it's confusing that people seem to care more when a bunch of people are killed all at once. Is 30 people killed all together somehow more than 30x as tragic as 30 independent one-offs spaced throughout a year?
The US made Mexico what it is and is entirely responsible for that.
If the US didn't want Mexico to turn into a 'half-ruled-by-gangs developing country' they shouldn't have let the CIA go full hog there and in Latin/Central America.
And that's the thing, so much of the violence and shit that America is facing today is a direct result of blowback from things the US did.
Imagine how much gun crime America wouldn't have if it didn't blow trillions of dollars on some dumb wars in the middle east.
Imagine how much gun crime America wouldn't have if it toss a bunch of their young men into an agent orange meat grinder in South East Asia.
I mean, you might be right about Mexico! I don't know the details. The fact of the matter is that Mexico is the way it is, and that has effects on violence in the U.S.
You seem concerned with blame (normative statement), but I'm just making a descriptive statement (how it actually is right now).
As for foreign wars increasing violence domestically in the U.S., I don't buy that. Most of the murdering in the U.S. is some cultural thing to do with young black and brown men that we haven't figured out yet (because it's essentially impossible to talk about it, much less do research on it).
Ah yeah, knifes are a sticking point. London's laws are 3 inch or smaller non-locking knifes are legal. Over that, you gotta have a valid reason. Having just bought it is a valid reason, as is being a sushi chef. But the general public is no longer allowed to just carry a knife within London city limits for no reason.
Being a sushi chef on the way to work might be a good reason to have a fixed bladed knife but being a sushi chef stopping off at the pub on the way home from work would not be.
It's also worth noting that that is just for posession.
Anything used as an offensive weapon, be it a < 3" friction folding knife or a ballpoint pen or can of hairspray, is covered by a different law.
> being a sushi chef stopping off at the pub on the way home from work would not be.
How does that make sense? Why shouldn't a sushi chef be able to go straight from work to meet up at bar with friends without being being guilty, until proven innocent (this is the UK not eh US) of being a potential murderer?
You're not "guilty, until proven innocent" of being a potential murderer.
In that scenario you'd be guilty of carrying a fixed bladed knife without a good reason.
You don't have a good reason to have a sushi knife on you in a pub because you could have just gone straight home or left it at work. That it might be inconvenient or take extra time isn't going to be seen as an excuse.
You might be the nicest person in the world but by incompetently bringing a big sharp knife into a pub someone else with less scruples might be able to make use of it.
Anything you do with that knife, that you just happened to have on you and definitely didn't bring to intimidate people, in a pub where you're clearly not at work as a sushi chef, would be covered by completely different laws.
The incapacitating kind of pepper spray is treated as a Section 5 ‘Firearm’ in the UK, and would land you in a world of trouble.
You can get unpleasant smelling / badly staining / hard to remove spray which acts as a deterrent by making an attacker easily identifiable, but that’s about it I believe.
You’re missing the point. We don’t need a surveillance society to achieve societal goals. But the UK made that choice. What does that say about the UK?
The mere presence of a potential harm does not justify all means to correct the harm.