Zimmerman Case

[Duel of Fates]

This is what you get when you try to legislate "utopia".

[(SWGO)Kren]

I just don't see how you can avoid encouraging people to seek out violence. It seems to be a natural consequence of the laws. If you take away a disincentive (potential for legal action because of excessive force), that's the same thing as adding an incentive.

The case still serves my point well enough - the laws are atrociously written.

Humans as a species have used violence, created weapons, used our thoughts to organise our intentions to hurt others and kill animals for food to become the top predators on this planet.

The environment you live in has an influence on an individual’s capacity for violence in terms of fight or flight. Having the ability to defend yourself through training, the use of weapons can assist and individual to remove themself from a situation but equally so and depending upon that person it can also create a situation which could have been avoided if a weapon was not available to use and laws to support such actions in place.

If you are setting up groups of individuals to act as watchmen, home owners etc. who have the ability to defend themselves via a deadly weapon it empowers that individuals ability to confront someone as they have the means and capacity to do so. As you guys live in a society that advocates weapons via the constitution it gives society a means to utilise these for pleasure (shooting ranges), to defend against or use as a means of attack. Because they are now an integral part of society consequences will ensure by the misuse of weapons. The Zimmerman Case is just the tip of the iceberg.

In essence violence is being used to combat violence which creates more violence and you become locked into a cycle which is very hard to break. The problem ahead for the US is massive I'm afraid. If it is not tackled then society within the US will overtime start to collapse.

In the US you have the added issues of drugs, prostitution, extortion, gang culture, gambling, trafficking etc. which creates corruption. Once weapons are added to the mix then violence is often a direct outcome with deadly consequences. There no quick fix for resolving this as in my opinion control has already been lost and containment via the use of laws is what is being used in an attempt to keep people safe which are failing on a more regular basis. Criminals can use the same laws that protect law individuals to reduce a prison term or overturn a conviction and then they are back on the street causing more issues for law enforcement agencies.

There are fixes but again it would mean turning inwards and the task ahead is immense, alterations to the constitution, the ability to buy weapons, changes to the law, the use of the military on US soil to combat the current range of issues etc. The US has prisons housing thousands of prisoners, more prisons would be needed or other radical measures to stamp out violence to passed by the government etc. Before it gets better it would get worse because it has been allowed to get out of control. Given the country is so young it has risen and fallen very quickly in a lot of areas, look at Detroit and how much debt it is now in, think of the crime in that city alone.

In addition to all of the above the US acts as the world Policeman but by doing so and spreading themselves so thin across the world the issues at home increase and what you are trying to protect and serve is self-imploding in front of your very eyes. The liberty you fought for it now being consumed because you are trying to be everything to all people.

Add a couple of natural disasters to the mix and if will make the work even harder.

How much effort does the US want to invest in overcoming issues at home associated with violent crimes and the underlying causes of them before you cannot reverse it?

Look back in History to Empires and how they crumbled because they lost their way and collapsed. It should serve as a lesson but can the US learn it before you fall into the Abyss?

Kren

[Bryant]

Lol Kren. People in Europe really are clueless that they're on the titanic.

[(SWGO)Kren]

Lol Kren. People in Europe really are clueless that they're on the titanic.

...and who colonised America...Europeans.

[Duel of Fates]

Just the ones that were escaping religious and political persecution, fed up with the old ways.

[(SWGO)Kren]

Just the ones that were escaping religious and political persecution, fed up with the old ways.

And yet the very things they were escaping from were and still are being repeated in the new world today, the old ways are now the new ways.

[MATTHEW'S_DAD]

There's no escaping human nature. We seem to want to destroy ourselves or each other.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We are a very diverse nation and all things considered I would say we handle our diversity quite well. I don't think any European countries have any room to criticize the United States until they have experienced it for themselves.

Racism is a business here in the states and without it the professional race baiters would go broke. It is in Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson's best interest to promote racism and to fan the flames. It keeps the money flowing. Because of this, I give zero weight and zero credibility to anyone who claims racism anymore, chicken little syndrome. It's a two way street and traffic in both directions equaled out when we elected our first "black" president.

Some people just hate each other and that's all there is to it.

[haasd0gg]

The Brits have racism too. I'm something of an expert, having seen the movie and all...

[(SWGO)Kren]

There's no escaping human nature. We seem to want to destroy ourselves or each other.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We are a very diverse nation and all things considered I would say we handle our diversity quite well. I don't think any European countries have any room to criticize the United States until they have experienced it for themselves.

Racism is a business here in the states and without it the professional race baiters would go broke. It is in Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson's best interest to promote racism and to fan the flames. It keeps the money flowing. Because of this, I give zero weight and zero credibility to anyone who claims racism anymore, chicken little syndrome. It's a two way street and traffic in both directions equaled out when we elected our first "black" president.

Some people just hate each other and that's all there is to it.

Yep Human nature is bad however it's how we learn from our mistakes that defines our future. If the mistakes made cannot be overcome and rather they are embraced then what is ahead in the future becomes very dark indeed. Duel indicated people fled to the Americas because of persecution and yet what could have drove some people away from Europe is alive and kicking today in the US, so where was the escape?

I'd say European counteries have the ability to be critical of the US in much the same way as the US is of Europe. You guys escaped the old world, formed the new world and it was to be the land of free, how has that worked out?

Racism is rife and by the election of a Black President does not mean that is equalled out. You are saying that if a person is racially discriminated against that they are simply playing the 'race' card, really? It's what I said on my previous post (clueless europeans) about corruption etc and as you state all of this greases the wheels of the economy so it must be alive and kicking or did I miss something?

http://charlotte.cbslocal.com/2013/05/2 ... -be-cured/

So because people hate each other, that's it, no hope, no way to overcome this by any means?

[Mandalore]

The crime rate in the United States is down by about 10-20% off its peak between the 70s and early 90s. Solid economic growth through pretty much every quarter since the crash. However, this whole federal system has gotten out of hand. Truthfully you could probably condense the 50 states into 10-15 mid-level government styles. Arguably you should decrease the level of representation but seeing as minorities are already under-represented democratically on the national stage that might not be the best move.

While the crime rate in America is significantly higher than in Europe a good part of that problem would be the the fact that America's urban centers in terms of overall population and number of centers blows away European countries. For example Metro-Detroit has a population of about 3 million and is only the 12th most populous metro area in the states. Conversely Belfast and Edinburgh, both capitals of their regions in UK have 600k and 800k population in their urban area zones. It's difficult to compare the US to European countries simply because the US is so much larger geographically and population wise and has a host of issues that Euro countries just don't have to deal with. For example, not only do we have some of the worlds largest urban centers, we then have tracts of agrarian land where just a few states combined are larger than any of the EU countries. I'm pretty sure that Texas by itself is bigger than every EU country, unfortunately however it's population density is about half that of Germany and geographically it's about 1.5x larger than Germany. If Germany were state, it would rank sixth in population density, behind the smaller states like Delaware. Having a dense population helps immensely as it focuses money and cuts drastically down on the price of services that the government usually provides such as police officers. The US averages 256 police officers per 100,000 people in comparison to Germany's 300 per 100,000. Geographically this works out to .21 police officers per square mile in the US and 1.78 police officers per square mile in Germany.

Then you have the issue of immigration. By the recent 2010 stats, 6.1 million people in Germany were born outside of it with Germany having the most first generation immigrants of EU nations. That's only six years of immigration for the United States. And obviously first generation immigrants are more likely to be in one of the lower classes of society and (should, but I don't know the statistics) correspondingly be more apt to commit crime. However I will say that in the long run immigration is an incredibly beneficial thing, 1st, second, and third generation immigrants are over represented in entrepreneurship.

It's actually pretty incredible that the US stays in the same league as you lucky EU countries when it comes to most things. Don't worry though if you guys get out of hand again we'll come and kick your asses for the second or third time.