🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@hansw

I cant speak to the legal correctness of what you said, but even if what you said is correct it still represents a gross violation of personal rights IMO.

As to the example of drinking a beer, that is interesting and would be curious to hear more about the specific law that makes that so.

@trinsec

> So far I don’t know how to respond to this. I’ve tried to let this concept sink in, but it’s so fundamentally different from what I’ve been raised with that I still don’t know whether I agree or disagree with this. :P

Well you are nothing if not honest and self reflective. So whether we agree on a topic or not I can at least say I respect you and your thought process, which is rare and important these days. So already your ahead of the game :)

> My gut response is kinda ‘Well, if you were allowed guns and are in a bad neighbourhood… then those bad hoodlums will have a bigger chance of carrying guns as well, escalating the situation and possibly putting you in a worse position.’

Well, yes and no.. criminals would not have legal access to guns. So while some may still get them the criminal element would be at a disadvantage when it comes to their gun supply than a law abiding citizen would. Therefore if a citizen is responsible and expects to be in a dangerous neighborhood they would almost certainly carry a gun with few obstacles. While their aggressor may carry a gun it would be less likely. So the good guy would have the upper hand.

> After all, isn’t USA having the most gun incidents per amount of people in the world?

While strictly speaking this is true it is also a fallacy in statistical logic. Consider the following counter example as to why:

Vaccines, by en large, save **far** more lives than they kill. But a very small fraction of people who take the normal round of vaccines will die from vaccines, but that number is much smaller than the number saved by vaccines, so overall we tend to agree most vaccines are a good thing and we say they save lives...

But guess what if you were to compare a country where vaccines are illegal to a country where vaccines are legal you could make the very real statement: "In countries where vaccines are legal you have the most incidents of vaccine deaths."... its the same statement as with guns, sure its true, but to draw the conclusion from that that it is an argument against guns or vaccines is a fallacy in logic.

> That said, I have a Norwegian buddy who owns over 20 rifles/guns, legally.. and Norway isn’t really known as a violent country. Okay, except for that one rightwing mad guy almost a decade ago.

Yup, plenty of examples of countries, people, or regions where you will find responsible gun ownership.

> USA has a serious mentality issue methinks. :P

This is absolutely true, and wont just result in more gun deaths but more deaths overall. When someone wants to kill someone, and they are mentally unhealthy enough to carry through with it, they will find a way with or without guns. As disturbing it is to say this, killing a person is a pretty easy thing to do, even killing lots of people, and you dont really need a gun to do it.

I often remark that living in the USA is like living in a mental hospital. In my view the overwhelming majority of the population, some 99% all have very serious mental health issues. Simply being around those sort of people tends to cause ones own mental health to be in jeopardy. I myself have a hard time keeping healthy mentally in the USA unless I isolate my interactions to my close circle of friends. But even then I take a chance on new people and new friends and add them to that circle which is always a big risk since more often then not they turn out to be unstable socially and mentally.

@dankmaximus @mur2501

@Hyolobrika

dewit I think was meant to be a light hearted way of saying "do it"

@dankmaximus @mur2501 @trinsec

@trinsec

Hahahah, well, to be fair, I can say the same about US politics. We have become so polarized we cant pass most laws and even have government shutdowns fairly regularly now.

Neither system is perfect and honestly a government is only as good as its people. If its people cant find a middle ground with which to agree on, even if it is not the ideal of any one side's view, then we shouldn't expect the government to be able to.

Sadly no one ever wants to own the problem as a problem caused by the people. Everyone wants to blame the government as if the government is some overlord separate from the people. The government is literally the manifestation of the people, and if you dont like what you see when you look at the government its best you realize that you (the population as a whole) are looking into a mirror.

@mur2501 @dankmaximus

@mur2501

Coalition politics strikes me as better than winner-take-all systems for the most part.

@trinsec @dankmaximus

@trinsec

> Mmm, I would say we have the same trend as USA. The large cities are usually more left-inclined. The rural areas are more right. My city is definitely left.

I agree with this part

> I'm sure the Americans would call us communists. 😋

Not many really. I think they would call you socialist (which is also an incorrect label), but not communist. I think many on the right however would sayu that socialism, and thus the netherlands, is a diluted form of communism (while that would be correct in describing socialism, as I said the Netherlands isnt socialist).

> Do keep in mind that American left and right aren't quite comparable to ours. What for us is left and right, is for them left and left.

This I would say is outright incorrect, the dutch right is not even remotely close to the american left. Left is left and Right is right, it is not relative. However I do agree that the dutch right/left and the american right/left have largely different priorities, but those priorities are still squarely on the left and right half of the spectrum.

For example the american right have a large focus on gun rights, the dutch right do not make this a priority. However the the dutch left has a much lower priotity when it comes to taxing the rich and giving a free tax pass to the middle class while the american left has a much higher priority when it comes to taxing the rich and reducing taxes on the middle class.

So on some topics the american left is **more** left than the dutch left, likewise on some topics the american right is more right than the dutch right. But no one on the dutch right would be considered left by american standards overall, though they may be closer to center on individual topics, but not overall.

@mur2501 @dankmaximus

@Demosthenes Thats very fair, and ive said something similar. Not so much that I expect violence, though it is possible, but that the response of the media to turn up the censorship to 11 is likely to incite violence more likely than it is to quell violence.

While I do agree the response is going to have a tendency towards provoking violence I am still not entirely certain the violent will become wide spread or approach the levels we saw from the left (I could be wrong). thought I do suspect there will be some minor isolated examples of violence and that it will be more common than it would have been if the media had responded differently.

@Demosthenes when trump was elected there was violence for days on end, by the third day it was still ongoing... Meanwhile it seems the incident at the capital had minimal isolated violence, almost all the murder and killing and serious injury was caused by police, and the violence quickly ended and hasnt continued into the next days... So seems hopeful so far it was an isolated incident.

@trinsec

They are all too damned stoned to go anywhere past their front doorstep :)

@Hyolobrika @dankmaximus @mur2501

@trinsec

> Democratically-inclined

Thats the wrong word by the way and has a different meaning than you intended. You meant Democrat-inclined.

California actually had succession on their ballot recently. It is an idle threat as the constitution does not give states the right to succeed, so they do not have the power to decide that, the federal government would have to grant it, legally.

@Hyolobrika @dankmaximus @mur2501

@trinsec

> would I feel as free to have an argument with him?

How free you **feel** is not the same as how free you **are**... you are just as free to argue with him, and you are just as free to not get shot (he would loose his right to carry a gun to even threaten it). So if your neighboor carried a gun you would have all the same freedoms (and one extra).. the fact that you have a bias against guns and feel a certain way doesnt change your freedoms. You owning a gun also has no effect on your actual freedom to argue with him.

> After all, it would not be a level playing field anymore if I wouldn't get a gun as well.

The playing field is already level even without you having a gun, because your neighbor has no legal recourse of any kind to use that gun in response to an argument.

> I know American friends who don't want a gun. But because the wife is black, the area they live in is racistic (gotten worse under Trump), they are considering getting one for her safety. Is that freedom? REAL freedom?

The right o be able to buy a gun if you happen to be in a situation where your life is at risk... yes of course that is freedom. What isnt freedom is me being in a Dutch neighborhood where **my** life would be at risk (and they do exist, though admittedly not many of them) and **not** having a right to defend myself with a gun and save my life, now that isnt freedom. Being told "sorry you just need to sit there and let the mob kill you cause guns are bad" is absolutely not freedom.

@dankmaximus @mur2501

@trinsec

That is my opinion entierly.. the USA was a great place pre-911 and had amazing freedoms (thought othe issues did need addressing as we covered).. post 911 I would take the Netherlands over the USA in a heart beat... but constitutionally the USA still has the netherlands beat, and in the specific ways I listed. Its just the USA has created so many anti-freedom laws that arent constitutional IMO that we really cant claim superior freedoms anymore.

@dankmaximus @mur2501

@trinsec

In general I agree with you, if you want to just measure what is a more pleasurable place to live in then the Netherlands beats america, I moved there for a reason. But I'd also say that is only polarization of america (last 1-2 decades), prior to that I would have picked the USA.

That said freedom by definition is being able to choose for yourself. You may think freedom to own guns is not a good freedom, you may think it puts peoples lives at risk or creates a more dangerous situation, but it is freedom all the same. Freedom doesnt have the requirement that it is good (though i do hold the opinion in this case it is a good sort of freedom). But by any definition it is freedom.

@dankmaximus @mur2501

@dankmaximus This right here, fuck the 99% of americans who voted for either of these incompetent fools.

@dankmaximus

*wouldn't

@trinsec @mur2501

@dankmaximus

Economics are not completely separate from law. So while it may be correct to say it is an economic problem that would separate the issue from the question of laws or freedoms.

@trinsec @mur2501