Do people carry guns in zoos in the USA?

Zooplantman said:
Wish I could explain it but I don't understand it either.
And many gun fans own several, even dozens of weapons. I guess it is like people who can afford it own many fancy cars.
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I can understand the necessity for the carrying of firearms by law enforcement, the millitary and by hunters with legal permits to hunt game but I can't understand the obsession with civilians owning deadly assault weapons.

I can understand why the Kurdish people take such pride and intent in arming and training themselves with such weapons as they are in constant danger of attack and being subjected to genocide at the hands of either ISIS or several regional powers that surround them on all sides.

I don't think the citizens of the United States are in such danger and if they feel that they are then this is merely the result of widespread mental illness and ignorance in large part fueled by a media engineered narrative of constant hysteria and messages of American exceptionalism.
 
Onychorhynchus coronatus said:
I can understand the necessity for the carrying of firearms by law enforcement, the millitary and by hunters with legal permits to hunt game but I can't understand the obsession with civilians owning deadly assault weapons.

I can understand why the Kurdish people take such pride and serioussness in arming and training themselves with such weapons as they are in constant danger of attack and being subjected to genocide at the hands of either ISIS or several regional powers that surround them on all sides.

I don't think the citizens of the United States are in such danger and if they feel that they are then this is merely the result of widespread mental illness and ignorance in large part fueled by a media engineered narrative of constant hysteria and messages of American exceptionalism.
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I agree with most of what you said. I heard someone in the USA telling me “Lucky you did not get shot” while coming into his house without knocking but with saying Hi. A reaction that I would never hear anywhere else, usually you hear “who is it?” If you don’t announce yourself and there is no such thing as shooting intruders.

However, there are many dangerous places in the US, as in other countries, the difference is with that for example people would carry knives in other dangerous parts of the world, which are less likely to “kill by error” if it makes sense.

Also, according to Wikipedia, the number of firearms per capita has doubled in the US between 1968 and 2018, making the country first by quite a margin with 88.8% of citizens having firearms. This is not accurate as the statistic takes 300million known firearms and compares it to the actual population. So, no, not 9/10 houses in the US have guns but there are enough guns in circulation for that particular number of houses.
Serbia comes second with 58%.

It is a bit off-topic but I thought the numbers were interesting and worth sharing.
 
Rayane said:
I agree with most of what you said. I heard someone in the USA telling me “Lucky you did not get shot” while coming into his house without knocking but with saying Hi. A reaction that I would never hear anywhere else, usually you hear “who is it?” If you don’t announce yourself and there is no such thing as shooting intruders.

However, there are many dangerous places in the US, as in other countries, the difference is with that for example people would carry knives in other dangerous parts of the world, which are less likely to “kill by error” if it makes sense.

Also, according to Wikipedia, the number of firearms per capita has doubled in the US between 1968 and 2018, making the country first by quite a margin with 88.8% of citizens having firearms. This is not accurate as the statistic takes 300million known firearms and compares it to the actual population. So, no, not 9/10 houses in the US have guns but there are enough guns in circulation for that particular number of houses.
Serbia comes second with 58%.

It is a bit off-topic but I thought the numbers were interesting and worth sharing.
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Well, some fear in Americans isn't that crazy. If you haven't noticed in the past few years people have burned down and destroyed buildings, attacked places of worship, and even invaded our own capital. During the recent riots, some people did need or feel as if they needed weapons to protect themselves from people or police. As I said before the Black Panthers were a group of vigilantes with firearms who protected African Americans from the police. Now all these situations could require guns but they are problems we can handle and eliminate the need for guns. That large jump in guns you referenced was partially helped by LGBTQ members and African Americans purchasing guns to protect themselves.... from other people with guns. It's a vicious cycle and some people will never feel safe even if guns are made illegal. So I guess at the root of this it's America's distrust of other Americans that causes our need for guns. That's at least how I have interpreted it but some other American zoochaters may have other reasons.
 
Westcoastperson said:
Well, some fear in Americans isn't that crazy. If you haven't noticed in the past few years people have burned down and destroyed buildings, attacked places of worship, and even invaded our own capital. During the recent riots, some people did need or feel as if they needed weapons to protect themselves from people or police. As I said before the Black Panthers were a group of vigilantes with firearms who protected African Americans from the police. Now all these situations could require guns but they are problems we can handle and eliminate the need for guns. That large jump in guns you referenced was partially helped by LGBTQ members and African Americans purchasing guns to protect themselves.... from other people with guns. It's a vicious cycle and some people will never feel safe even if guns are made illegal. So I guess at the root of this it's America's distrust of other Americans that causes our need for guns. That's at least how I have interpreted it but some other American zoochaters may have other reasons.
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Nope. Hallucinogens in the water supply. Probably put there by aliens. Only rational explanation
 
Westcoastperson said:
Well, some fear in Americans isn't that crazy. If you haven't noticed in the past few years people have burned down and destroyed buildings, attacked places of worship, and even invaded our own capital. During the recent riots, some people did need or feel as if they needed weapons to protect themselves from people or police. As I said before the Black Panthers were a group of vigilantes with firearms who protected African Americans from the police. Now all these situations could require guns but they are problems we can handle and eliminate the need for guns. That large jump in guns you referenced was partially helped by LGBTQ members and African Americans purchasing guns to protect themselves.... from other people with guns. It's a vicious cycle and some people will never feel safe even if guns are made illegal. So I guess at the root of this it's America's distrust of other Americans that causes our need for guns. That's at least how I have interpreted it but some other American zoochaters may have other reasons.
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Yes and what is the common denominator of all of those mass atrocities whether they have occurred in schools, places of worship or in public places ?

Basically the sheer availability and ease of purchase of frighteningly high powered assault weapons, the highest levels of mental illness in the world, mass media engineered to fuel a pressure cooker climate of fear and a society totally in the grips of fear of the other.
 
Zooplantman said:
Nope. Hallucinogens in the water supply. Probably put there by aliens. Only rational explanation
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My money is on the reptilian pedophile communist illuminati, they seem like the most likely culprits of this heinous act.

Damn reptiles, we should all stop tacitly supporting their evil plans for world domination by boycotting reptile houses at zoos and cutting funding for iguana conservation projects.
 
Onychorhynchus coronatus said:
Yes and what is the common denominator of all of those mass atrocities whether they have occurred in schools, places of worship or in public places ?

Basically the sheer availability and ease of purchase of frighteningly high powered assault weapons, the highest levels of mental illness in the world, mass media engineered to fuel a pressure cooker climate of fear and a society totally in the grips of fear of the other.
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exactly, they're in fear so they all buy guns. Now they can't be separated from their guns. It's a vicious cycle.
 
Zooplantman said:
And many gun fans own several, even dozens of weapons. I guess it is like people who can afford it own many fancy cars.
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That's exactly the impression I get. But at least, although it is perfectly possible to kill and maim people with fancy cars, the fancy cars do not have killing and maiming as their primary function.

The Dunblane school massacre happened a month before my twelfth birthday. As a direct result of those deaths (I just checked - it was 17 victims, plus the perpetrator, who died - a tragic number but tiny compared to the sum total of school shooting deaths in the US), gun laws in the UK were vastly overhauled and handguns for private citizens were no longer permitted, with only a very limited set of exceptions (even our 2012 Olympic shooting team had problems getting permits to train - they were having to train in Northern Ireland, where laws were a little different from Great Britain, for a long time). It was already not common for Brits to have guns in 1996 (I'm quite sure I'd never seen a gun outside of an airport or a museum at that point). It became almost unheard of.

Every time there is another incident in the US part of me expects a similar reaction, but it never comes.

In the UK, it's unbelievably rare to even see a gun in normal life. Actually, a zoo is one of the few places you would reliably even know there was one to hand (in case it is needed to save human lives during an animal escape). Unless you're involved in sport shooting of some kind you would probably only see them when carried by airport police (here, of course, even most police officers don't carry them - only certain specialist teams).

I love the US, in so many ways, but there is such a cultural gulf on gun issues that it can be hard even to discuss it sometimes - the starting positions are often so completely disparate. This thread actually demonstrates it quite well - it's not just that we don't understand the reluctance to get rid of them, we struggle to understand why so many have clung onto them to start with.

I'm also aware that posts like this come off a bit sanctimonious, but... it's hard when something has by general consensus been considered too dangerous to allow in your country for most of your life but another country keeps allowing it and keeps losing large numbers of innocent people to it.
 
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Westcoastperson said:
exactly, they're in fear so they all buy guns. Now they can't be separated from their guns. It's a vicious cycle.
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Yes. This, as far as I can tell from the outside, is the real reason the US can't easily get rid of guns. It's all the guns.

They can't have unarmed police, because everyone has guns. Millions of people feel unsafe because of all the guns, so buy more guns.

I don't know how you break that cycle, but I hope someone can find a way.

I remember signage and security on the way into Georgia Aquarium, on the very last day of my most recent US visit, was a stark reminder - they were having to go to a lot of lengths to make sure guns didn't get in there.
 
Maguari said:
That's exactly the impression I get. But at least, although it is perfectly possible to kill and maim people with fancy cars, the fancy cars do not have killing and maiming as their primary function.

The Dunblane school massacre happened a month before my twelfth birthday. As a direct result of those deaths (I just checked - it was 17 victims, plus the perpetrator, who died - a tragic number but tiny compared to the sum total of school shooting deaths in the US), gun laws in the UK were vastly overhauled and handguns for private citizens were no longer permitted, with only a very limited set of exceptions (even our 2012 Olympic shooting team had problems getting permits to train - they were having to train in Northern Ireland, where laws were a little different, for a long time). It was already not common for Brits to have guns in 1996 (I'm quite sure I'd never seen a gun outside of an airport or a museum at that point). It became almost unheard of.

Every time there is another incident in the US part of me expects a similar reaction, but it never comes.

In the UK, it's unbelievably rare to even see a gun in normal life. Actually, a zoo is one of the few places you would reliably even know there was one to hand (in case it is needed to save human lives during an animal escape). Unless you're involved in sport shooting of some kind you would probably only see them when carried by airport police (here, of course, even most police officers don't carry them - only certain specialist teams).

I love the US, in so many ways, but there is such a cultural gulf on gun issues that it can be hard even to discuss it sometimes - the starting positions are often so completely disparate. This thread actually demonstrates it quite well - it's not just that we don't understand the reluctance to get rid of them, we struggle to understand why so many have clung onto them to start with.

I'm also aware that posts like this come off a bit sanctimonious, but... it's hard when something has by general consensus been considered too dangerous to allow in your country for most of your life but another country keeps allowing it and keeps losing large numbers of innocent people to it.
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I don't know if it does come off as sanctimonious actually, sounds more like common sense to me.

It seems like most countries including those which would have far greater justification for allowing civilians to own guns (given risks of conflict in neighbouring countries spilling over, high rates of crime etc) have either created strict legislative measures that enforce responsible gun ownership or banned guns in private hands completely.

Also, the United States problems with guns are hardly just a domestic problem and these weapons have for decades been sold to Mexican drug cartels which commit extreme violence against Mexican citizens South of the border (and traffic narcotics that ultimately is fueled by an insatiable consumption of and demand for these drugs in the USA).

This is a big problem and the world has largely reached a consensus on the issue which apparently many lawmakers , policy makers and citizens of the United States do not seem to share / agree with (kind of like climate change and millitary interventions) or be willing to address.

I think it is very much an embodiment of an incredibly toxic attitude of American exceptionalism.
 
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ChIkEn NuGrEt said:
They could use “man catchers” like in Japan.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjkgbfk96bvAhUOVc0KHdN7Bk8QwqsBMAB6BAgLEAg&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEYbF7XCzAs&usg=AOvVaw1x-nMTCtoR_qHl5_njFvnf
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Maybe they just need some tactical training from Erran Morad (they would probably feel more at peace with themselves too and spend less money on guns) ?

Type "Erran Morrad Teaches Daniel Roberts How To Survive A Beheading- Who is America ?" on youtube


 
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We will never get rid of guns because the "right to bear arms" is written into our Constitution (2nd Amendment). You cannot ban something that the nation's Constitution guarantees. The only way to get a large scale ban would be to repeal the 2nd Amendment, which requires a two thirds majority of Congress, and that will never happen. I am not saying I agree with it, I am just saying that is how it is. If it's any consolation to those of you from other countries, I am an American and I don't understand our gun culture either.
 
Arizona Docent said:
We will never get rid of guns because the "right to bear arms" is written into our Constitution (2nd Amendment). You cannot ban something that the nation's Constitution guarantees. The only way to get a large scale ban would be to repeal the 2nd Amendment, which requires a two thirds majority of Congress, and that will never happen. I am not saying I agree with it, I am just saying that is how it is. If it's any consolation to those of you from other countries, I am an American and I don't understand our gun culture either.
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I don't think that there will ever be a large scale banning of sale or possession of firearms either for the reasons you suggest in your comment.

So I think that the USA will continue to suffer from massacres and school shootings on a weekly basis while continuing to refer to itself as "the greatest nation on earth" and pretending that it isn't a dystopia / failed social experiment.

Don't mean that to come across as anti-american or whatever but I'm just not a believer in any of the attitude / culture of exceptionalism that pervades the USA which is as alien to me as the gun culture.
 
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Rayane said:
I agree with most of what you said. I heard someone in the USA telling me “Lucky you did not get shot” while coming into his house without knocking but with saying Hi. A reaction that I would never hear anywhere else, usually you hear “who is it?” If you don’t announce yourself and there is no such thing as shooting intruders.

However, there are many dangerous places in the US, as in other countries, the difference is with that for example people would carry knives in other dangerous parts of the world, which are less likely to “kill by error” if it makes sense.

Also, according to Wikipedia, the number of firearms per capita has doubled in the US between 1968 and 2018, making the country first by quite a margin with 88.8% of citizens having firearms. This is not accurate as the statistic takes 300million known firearms and compares it to the actual population. So, no, not 9/10 houses in the US have guns but there are enough guns in circulation for that particular number of houses.
Serbia comes second with 58%.

It is a bit off-topic but I thought the numbers were interesting and worth sharing.
Click to expand...

Those statistics are very revealing and definitely worth sharing, I didn't know the US was first in number of firearms owned by capita but doesn't suprise me.

I think its quite telling that the country that came in second to the USA was Serbia, a country that has historically been embroiled in civil war, secretarian violence and genocide.
 
Arizona Docent said:
We will never get rid of guns because the "right to bear arms" is written into our Constitution (2nd Amendment). You cannot ban something that the nation's Constitution guarantees. The only way to get a large scale ban would be to repeal the 2nd Amendment, which requires a two thirds majority of Congress, and that will never happen. I am not saying I agree with it, I am just saying that is how it is. If it's any consolation to those of you from other countries, I am an American and I don't understand our gun culture either.
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They wouldn't need to repeal it though, just remove a comma. All constitutional arguments on gun rights deal with a "misplaced" comma on whether it allows citizens to bear arms or only allows the states to have a citizen militia (in practice this is the national guard).
 
Neil chace said:
They wouldn't need to repeal it though, just remove a comma. All constitutional arguments on gun rights deal with a "misplaced" comma on whether it allows citizens to bear arms or only allows the states to have a citizen militia (in practice this is the national guard).
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So basically an enormous amount of human lives and suffering rest on a single symbol of punctuation ?

That has to be the most deadly bit of punctuation in human history.
 
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