Gun violence is basically normalized is what he's saying
I agree. It has something to do with the settlement patterns and history. It doesn't really make sense to throw up charts with Cyprus and Serbia and Finland and try to make any points relevant to Obama's comments. Throw up a chart of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, if you want a good comparison.
We are a very violent society. Our nation's existence owes itself to a violent and illegal insurrection. Jeb Bush and Barack Obama seem to recognize this. Actually, outside this forum many grown-ups recognize this as well. I've had a number of real-life conversations with real-life people about this and most people think that the new normal is really the old normal. Of course, the guns have higher muzzle velocities now, and news travels faster now, but the basic pattern remains. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. N'est-ce pas?
That we basically value or are violent resonates with me.
For ex., I went out West in 2007 and 2009 and overall had a great time. Loved the trails, the hiking, the caverns, the canyons, etc. But I was, being from the northeast, a little surprised at how much the whole area really embraces their gunfighters, rogues, villains, self-made tough guys, shootouts, and overall violence. Several towns I was in regularly re-inacted brawls, killings, and shootouts for public spectacle. I guess it's kind of cool to see guys in Victorian garb yelling and shooting at each other with prop guns (hell yeah!), but it's certainly not a new idea that we have more of a fascination/admiration for that then we do, say, discovery, like the Moon landing. We love our violence in America. We also are a relatively new country in the overall scheme of things, so why we love violence is complex, but I think we have a more positive view of it than older countries who have Inquisitions and so forth as their history. IDK. I've already had my share of pomegranate liqueur.
