I actually applaud this response. It is MILES ahead of the Australian capacity to understand the working parts.
They only see the 'rock.'
You at least acknowledge that there is also a 'hard place,' even if you do disagree on the level of threat posed by that 'hard place' in comparison to shootings (mass or otherwise) from a purely actuarial or public safety perspective.
It also helps that, in the process, you don't claim that Canada has 'solved' mass shootings.
Never say 'Never'
There is a reason that people say, "Never say never." It is because past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
To 'solve' a problem is to create a guarantee that it can never occur again. When absolute terms like 'solve' become intertwined with an implied national self-superiority, the genuineness of the recommendation is compromised.
To even attempt to insert such absolute language into one's review of what occurred is a shameful over-reach and should be a source of cringey embarrassment whenever spoken of in those terms.
Australia is called the 'lucky' country, not the 'wise' or 'insightful' one, and that's apt.
Being an island, 10,000 miles from anything, made up of 70% dirt is more than half the battle. There are no bobcats, mountain lions, grizzly bears, black bears, stampeding buffalo or cougars in Australia.
Being a Commonwealth country where, rather than the individual being the apex predator, the Crown is, makes up the balance, because there is the perceived convenience of a paternalistic entity that is beyond question who can 'just ban it', or 'put them all in jail' or whatever one's imagination desires.
It's the equivalent of the lazy-minded American's "just nuke 'em all." It doesn't examine the impracticalities. It's a fictional trump card with no real-world application or realistic outcome.
This permits rash, even if fictional concepts, like 'banning' things. The reality of that is what happens with Cuban cigars, cocaine, marijuana or black caviar.
Technically, it's illegal, but, if you run in the right circles, someone knows a guy who knows a guy, and as long as you're from the right socio-economic circles, you'll never be locked up for possession.
Is Australia doing America better than America?
The reality is, Man Haron Monis did not take over the Lindt Cafe in Sydney with a meat cleaver. He took it over with an illegal weapon, and, if not for the 'luck' (not wisdom or skill) of the fact that he was of the mindset to talk, rather than use the weapon, no one would be using the word 'solved' in relation to this issue.
In any other alleged 'terrorist attack', there were masses of people dead before news organizations even knew to dispatch cameras (i.e. 9/11, Madrid train bombings, Canadian Parliament attacks, Drummer Lee Rigby, etc.).
Australia has one guy take over a cafe with a 'banned' gun, who is such a genius that he doesn't even bring a partner to take custody of the hostages in shifts, loses half his hostages just because he keeps nodding off while people slip out the door, and, 16 hours later, when he finally points the gun at someone, the police rush the premise, kill one the hostages themselves, and then come out bragging that their LAWS prevented a mass shooting and the whole world should look to them for advice?
"Oh we have the same problems you do, and look how brilliantly we solved them. By the way, here are some rose petals that you can throw before our feet while we approach you to share our wisdom."
Actually, Australia is not 'doing America' at all.
It's doing the UK, with a shitload of American imports (Holden, Ford, Apple, Amazon, Uber, etc.), and a lot of open land.
Hi, Mommy....I brought you flowers.
It's like when a child brings dandelions or soursobs to his mother, or teacher, and says, "Look! I picked you flowers, and you don't want to crush the kid's spirit. So, you just say, 'Thank you.'"
But then the kid sends you a bill, and a note saying, "You're welcome," and tries to take you to court for breach of contract because you won't pay, as if you ever had an agreement in the first place.
Then, you have reluctantly release a dose of reality on the kid, even though you'd have preferred that it didn't have to come to that and the whole thing remained cute and innocent like it started.
In America, 'Voluntary Amnesty' is pronounced 'Government Shakedown'
That so-called 'solution' a voluntary amnesty, also depended on mass public will to be compliant. That is absent in the United States. Did you not see the LA Riots of 1992? Are you not aware of the brazen drug trade in the US?
Since when has the threat of imprisonment stopped the American populous from doing anything? What do you think prohibition was?
There's your 'voluntary amnesty.'
In America, what Australians call a 'voluntary amnesty' is called a 'shakedown', an intolerably insulting act of the presumption of power - a glove slap, if you will (see David Koresh v. ATF).
You see, someone would have to go and collect those guns, from people who have no intention of turning them in.
The absolute authority in the US is the individual, and that's not just cultural. It's legal. The Bill of Rights doesn't define what whole CLASSES of people can do, such as knights, dames, barons, baronesses, dukes, duchesses, commoners, lords, ladies and the like. Those are classes or groups.
It legally establishes what the INDIVIDUAL is entitled to.
Collectively, those individuals do not defer to some supreme power, like a Crown. They will stand up for each other, with weapons, to prevent power from ever being that centralized. You want to see the Bloods and Crips unite? The KKK and the Nation of Islam? La Cosa Nostra and the Jewish Defense League?
Send American troops through their own home neighborhoods collecting guns that citizens have no intentions of giving up.
Even as we speak, guns flow through Australia despite its cocky, self-congratulatory rhetoric.
"And to the Republic for which it stands...."
See, Australia likes to imagine that it shares more in common with America than it actually does. It feels it understands what America is trying to do, but, America just needs a bit of advice about how to do it right.
Because of this, it talks a lot of shit about becoming a republic.
It hasn't figured out that, when there is no Crown, the authority of the Crown becomes the authority of the individual, who has no more right to ban you from having guns than you have to ban it from having them. Suddenly, the supreme ruler is not going to be some diamond-studded heiress admired by the rest of the world as a celebrity and a beacon to all humanity.
In a republic, that supreme ruler is going to be a collective of people like Bob Kattir, Barnaby Joyce, Pauline Hanson, Jacquie Lambie, Penny Wong, George Brandis, Bill Shorten, Tony Abbott, no longer inhibited by Westminster Rules.
There will be no governor general.
These people won't just be local personalities in the greater Commonwealth machine. The military will answer to them without external oversight. Complete sovereignty.
Australia might be surprised what it won't let its government ban under a 'President Jacquie Lambie.'
Suddenly, without all the jewels and the pomp and ceremony and history, you're not going to see any more reason to listen to them than you'll feel that they should see to listen to you.
That changes things. That's what 'equality' is. It's not just being able to marry or get a job. It literally means that no one is above the citizen and that no citizen is beneath the rest.
You're going to have to decide between that, and the current situation, where someone actually can 'just ban it' because society regards someone as superior. There is no superior who can 'just ban it' in an equal society.
The minute you hear an Australian say, "Trump is going to pass a law that....," you know you're talking to someone who is ignorant, thinks America has a king, and, as the Courts and Congress keeps showing the world, just because Trump wants something doesn't mean he gets it.
You are right to say that it's not the 'gun nuts' because it's not even about being able to USE the gun.
You would be right to say that Americans are not going to allow a central organization to require that the people accept a permanent state of military inferiority to law enforcement, waiting like sitting ducks for the wrong person to become in charge of that law enforcement body.
Not Anthony Weiner, Rod Blagojevich, Elliot Spitzer, Marion Barry, Rob Ford, Pauline Hanson, Dennis Hastert, you name it.
Had a great run of rulers that have not conducted themselves like such people. THAT'S GREAT!!!
Here's hoping that luck NEVER runs out, but we are talking about good fortune, during a brief history, in a remote location, that the vast majority of the world couldn't find on a map, run by a league of other nations with larger militaries and more experience.
However, the issue goes even much FURTHER than that.
The disposition of the American populous is that it will not allow itself to be locked up for simply POSSESSING the means to resist. Unfortunately, that means some people with poor judgment actually exercise those rights too. That might be a shock to you. That doesn't make it a shock to Americans.
If you haven't noticed, they know, and get on with it.
What Ethiopia can teach Australia
By Australian logic, Ethiopia 'solved' Australia's 'road safety problem' (as Ethiopia might self-servingly name it if they self-promoted like Australians do).
They just don't have fucking roads.
"Boom. Suck it. You're welcome. Will that be cash or credit, Australia?
Yours Truly,
Ethiopia"
RE: Why Australians Can't Understand the US Gun Issue