This week on the Levy & Counsell Show, a fascinating conversation about required military service in Israel and what it's like raising children knowing they may very likely end up fighting in combat, living in an area with a high probability of experiencing a terrorist attack, and gun laws abroad (specifically in Israel and Great Britain) versus gun laws here in the U.S. Grab a drink and a sandwich, you're going to want to listen to this one in one sitting and come back here and comment.
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May '11
Re: Gun Control
What's the song at the end?
Re: Gun Control
The Clash, Guns of Brixton.
May '11
Re: Gun Control
Thanks, Yeti; I might have something more substantive later.
Aug '12
Re: Gun Control
One critical aspect is missing from the discussion I believe; one of the reason the second ammendment, limited government and individual liberty. While self protection is discussed, the discussion of liberty is not. I believe that the foundations of the US was under great suspission of organized government, and in favor of individual liberty. To secure a limited government, and ensure a tyrannical government didn't have the monopoly on firearms, the INDIVIDUAL retained these rights. Thererore you can site all the statistics you like, but the fact remains that individual liberty also encompasses the responsibility for ones own safety. Despite any myriad of studies and number of statist schemes to remove firearms from the individual, historically governments that have a monopoly on weapons haven't had a good record in securing liberty for the individual. I will choose to retain my guns and as much individual liberty as possible, despite the current political situation. If the government finds itself unable to defend our country, I would hate to be the invader that tried to enter the US, especially Texas.Cheers, Franciscus
May '10
Re: Gun Control
I personally would prefer a president with prior military experience, but I don't think most Americans care. The presidency has been reduced to a popularity contest, so experience of any sort isn't that important, as evidenced by Obama's reelection. I'd rather a president be a student of military history than anything, yet our current CinC obviously is not - to our detriment. It's great if someone served their country in uniform, but I don't know how beneficial it is to successful leadership as president. Think Carter. I think someone with prior service, especially one who has participated in a military conflict, understands the gravity of entering into another and the importance of the commitment and sacrifice of those we ask to defend us. I think prior service is a prerequisite for Secretary of Defense, but I'd also like the Secretary of State to be a career diplomat, but that's not a priority either in the current administration.
May '10
Re: Gun Control
As for gun control, my sons often play at the homes of children whose fathers are in local, state and federal law enforcement, so I know they have guns in their homes. I also know they are very responsible individuals. At the same time, I don't really understand people who have a stockpile of guns for the heck of it. Every other week there's some heartbreaking story about a child finding an unsecured gun and shooting and killing himself or someone else. Also, it is just too easy to acquire guns by illegal means in the US. I understand someone wanting them for home defense or hunting, but I wouldn't mind stricter and more consistent state gun laws to help weed out the crazies and gun runners.
Nov '11
Re: Gun Control
Gun laws and customs can seem to indicate something essential about a country.
But with its relative homogeneity and constant existential threat, Israel makes a special case from which one cannot draw broader inferences about gun laws, or anything else
Without being snide, one might say Britain's gun law is of a piece with its ubiquitous spycameras--a once great people cowering toward its own variety of Western decline. Also of a piece is the unconcern that leaders have experience of the military. Such unconcern was heretofore unknown anywhere, except recently in the America-protected West. The British should care that they don't care.
Conservative Americans consider our country exceptional, and are not troubled if our exceptional laws and attitudes--American principles--about guns seem to a British proceduralist uncivilized, rude, or unnecesary for liberty. We exceptional Americans are necessary--we have been necessary--for Western freedom these last hundred years or so, and we conservatives think our exceptional laws and attitudes about guns are equally necessary for us to maintain our necessary exceptionalism.
Our domestic gun violence (evolved coincidentially as yet another sad legacy of slavery!) is a price paid to keep ourselves, and the West, free.
Edited on December 11, 2012 at 7:26amFeb '11
Re: Gun Control
Mr Counsell, the people who shoot each other in DC and Chicago are largely culturally homogeneous, so that argument does not work.
Feb '11
Re: Gun Control
I was surprised that I didn't hear anything about the gun control practiced by the left-wing powers (prosecutors, courts etc) against the occasional Jew who actually uses his gun for self defense.
Re: Gun Control
Franciscus:
We didn't have time to discuss much gun politics because we spent much of it trying to convey how different gun law and culture are in the UK and Israel from in the US. Also, my argument for tighter gun control in the States was a medical one, not a philosophical one. But there were two points when I mentioned liberty (freedom):
A third point I should have made: Brits are less afraid of military and police personnel because their gun use is also tightly restricted.
Edited on December 11, 2012 at 4:19pmRe: Gun Control
Israel P:
I'm pretty sure that I put two facts in apposition to one another:
These facts are not mutually exclusive.
You didn't do this yourself, but as a side note, it's wrong to assume that people who appear to non-Africans to be ethnically homogeneous---that is, they all "look black" and share a nationality, even a religion---are in fact the same. Tribally, genetically, they are likely to be more diverse and segregated than similar sized European populations comprised of individuals who "look different": different hair and eye colours, different dress codes, etc.
Oct '10
Re: Gun Control
Damian, I cannot agree with your argument. The gun violence among inner city youths which you deplore does not take place in New York, another lcarge American city with very strict gun control laws. The police there have implented a very effective "stop and frisk" policy. If Chicago and Washington DC were to do the same, the youth gun violence would decrease dramatically, as it did in New York. Gun control laws do not authomatically eliminate deadly youth violence.
Also, you failed to discuss the increasing level of deadly knife violence occuring in Britain. This is another example that strong gun control laws do not by themselves eliminate or reduce youth violence.
Aug '12
Re: Gun Control
What an interesting podcast.
Damian - do you think that last year's (?) London riots would have played out differently if British gun laws were more like US gun laws (or even Israeli gun laws)? Better? Worse? Why?
Ethnic solidarity in neighbourhoods (eg Sikhs in Southall, some Turkish bits of North London?) seemed to be one thing that empowered people to guard their communities against looters and violence. Would you say these community ties were more important than access to guns?
Re: Gun Control
Al Kennedy:
I'm not sure which argument of mine you're disagreeing with. I certainly don't think gun laws would automatically eliminate deadly youth violence. And I refer twice in the podcast to the high level of non-gun-related violence in the UK.
My main claim is a modest one:
I think that (well enforced) gun laws can reduce gun-related deaths in general and I personally believe that that reduction in mortality and morbidity is worth the price in liberty; but I don't expect many people here to agree with me on that, and I can, at least partly, understand some of the cultural and philosophical reasons why.
The main thrust of what I was saying is however something that I think a lot of of Ricochetti can agree with: that it's not *just* guns that kill people; gun cultures do too.
Re: Gun Control
Zafar:
Thanks.
Interestingly, a lot of people would say last year's riots in London were triggered by a police shooting. I think if guns had been more easily available to civilians and if more police had been armed there would, almost inevitably, have been more bloodshed.
Your point about community ties is well taken. I saw several videos of local groups defending neighbourhoods against rioters, and it's probably not a coincidence that most of these felt or expressed some kind of ethnic solidarity. Of course, if more white/native Brits had lived in the areas affected by rioting, the demographics of that kind of solidarity might have been different.
Aug '12
Re: Gun Control
I believe you need to be careful when you speak of a โgun culture.โ What youโre really talking about is a culture of violence. Iโve lived in a โgun cultureโ all of my life and have participated in it for most of my life. I grew up around hunters and shooters and bought my first rifle when I was in sixth grade. I own a number of guns now and plan to buy more. I am not a violent person and the people I know who own guns are not violent people. They are a diverse group of teachers, lawyers, accountants, law enforcement personnel and other very ordinary people. We are all part of the American โgun culture,โ but we are not part of any culture of violence. When you start talking about controlling guns, youโre really talking about taking guns away from people like us who obey the law. That is going to have very little effect on those who do not live in our โgun cultureโ but rather who live in a culture of violence.
Re: Gun Control
I use the term "gun culture" deliberately neutrally. I think the situation Judith described in Israel is a "gun culture"; it is a gun culture that, despite the widespread possession and use of guns, leads to very few gun-related deaths. (There are also, of course, hugely destructive gun cultures elsewhere in the World.)
Aug '12
Re: Gun Control
Damian: Thanks for your last comment. Thatโs what I was driving at: the fact of gun possession does not by itself produce a culture where violence is widespread. Something more has to be going on for people to make the choice to use guns for violence. We need to keep that in mind as we discuss gun control issues. Too often, gun control is casually assumed to be a simple and obvious solution to a very complex problem, when it is nothing of the kind.
Thanks so much for your podcasts. I really enjoy them and appreciate your (and Judithโs) perspective.
Edited on December 11, 2012 at 4:34pmNov '12
Re: Gun Control
Damian and Judith, I love this podcast as I find both of you well informed and eloquent and because it is refreshing to steer my thoughts away from the navel-gazing that happens so often to US political junkies. I had a couple of mild objections to the discussion, though.
The first is a broad one about how American "gun culture" and gun crime should be viewed. Damian, once you control for crimes committed by the clinically mentally ill/disturbed and gang violence you will find the remaining population who make up the "gun culture," even collectors and "gun nuts" (you did not use that term, Damian) don't have a problem with gun violence at all. So I believe the proper way to look at gun ownership and use in the states, and what proper gun policy should be, needs to get to the bottom of those facts. A blanket statement about how US gun laws are misguided because of our cultural diversity, as you admit, is rather unthoughtful and unuseful.
(1/2)
Edited on December 11, 2012 at 5:47pmNov '12
Re: Gun Control
(2/2)
The second point is more niggling, regarding the swift boat "non scandal." John Kerry's military record, especially as he attempted to exploit is as a stellar credential, was indeed scandalous and worth a proper vetting, which it didn't even fully receive. Kerry's record in combat was not what he purported by a long shot, and his activist behavior upon his return, putatively on behalf of his brothers in arms, was downright shameful and disgusting. The attention this received in the 2004 elections was not a "non scandal." It deserved the attention it received. If anything, Kerry got off easy.
Edited on December 11, 2012 at 4:59pm