Friday, June 27, 2008
Yeah, Right!
Jeff Goldberg feels comfortable with the Supreme Court's ruling on an individual right to gun ownership. And his reason for that is based on the high rate of gun ownership in... ISRAEL! Yeah, that's right. Israel. I mean, it's not like there are any significant differences between the United States and Israel. Completely analogous societies, right? Same sense of intense internal solidarity. Same mandatory military service as your first formative adult experience. Same proportion of active military reserves in the population. Same sense that your immediate existence is threatened by the 20+ hostile enemy states that surround you and one proto-state right next to you that vies for your nationhood and regularly acts out on its promise to see you wiped off the map. Oh, and then there's Iran. But I mean, other than that, THEY'RE VIRTUALLY THE SAME FUCKING PLACE!
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3 comments:
You are probably correct in that the main reason the citizens of Israel are allowed to be so well-armed is that they are surrounded by enemies.
But I think you miss Jeff Goldberg's point: They are well armed, but there isn't a lot of common gun crime in Israel: What mayhem there is, is political in nature. The argument gun-ban advocates make is that more guns=more crime. Places like Israel and Switzerland show that this is a false connection.
I think my point is that there is a much greater sense of solidarity in Israel. So to the extent that the gun lobby and other gun rights advocates chant that "Guns don't kill people, people do", I'm addressing characteristics of the people.
And nearly universal military training also has an effect on the people and how they relate to firearms.
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