@elnerdo said:
Or perhaps any burglar who breaks into someone's house and falls from the stairs in that house because it was a bit slippery and dark inside. Serious injuries as a result but hey, sue the house-owner to make his working area so dangerous. And win, of course...
When did that happen? Ever. I've heard of a few cases where a mailmen's sued because a porch step caved in when he stepped on it and he broke his ankle, but never anything like that.
See http://www.wfsb.com/Global/story.asp?S=1642559, burglar sued owner for shooting him. Still have to say that US is better than UK in this regard, jury didn't give him a penny. In UK, similar incident (much published case of Tony Martin, shot one burglar, wounded the other) landed the shooter in jail. Other burglar won the right to sue for damages, but he didn't get nothing either (dropped the claim after shooter counter-sued).
Almost same thing here in Finland, rancher rising minks, etc (for furs) shoots at some animal activists (trying to release the animals) with shotgun and ends up fined heavily.
Then again, a country that votes a movie-star for president and a terminator as governor doesn't seem to care much about intelligence, but just about appearances. As long as things appear to be okay, there's no problem. No matter what's going wrong all the time, just cover it up and keep quiet about it.
...So I won't say anything there, but I think that you are terribly misinformed.
About what? That voters seem to care more about the image of the canditate than about his/her qualifications for the job? I mean Arnold hadn't served a day in public office before starting as a governor...
Not that this affects only US, rest of the world IMHO are the same, voters can't be bothered to study issues and so they make their choice on image alone...
I tried to get a good chart online about teenage pregnancies, but there were too many gaps of information to compare countries. I DID Find that The USA's teenage pregnancy rate halved between 1995 and 2000.
Hmm, http://www.teenpregnancy.org says that pregnancy rate dropped 33% between 1991 and 2003. Anyway, US still leads the pack in those pregnancies, but it's lowering them slowly but steadily.
I found following country comparisons (dates from 1996):
US - 83.6 per 1,000
France - 20.2 per 1,000
Sweden - 25.0 per 1,000
Canada - 45.7 per 1,000
Britain - 46.7 per 1,000
I've never heard of a parent shooting a child because they came home late and thought it was a burglar. And that seems like it woulda been headline news.
It seems not, see the story about Forrest E. Johnson in Houston Chronicle (www.chron.com, select Archives, and search for "Forrest E. Johnson" 2004-2005, story dated 09/28/04). Father comes home, sees the door open, gets a gun and enters, shoots "intruder" inside then realizes it's his son visiting from college...
The reason the US doesn't have as strict gun control laws as Europe is because of that whole 'freedom' thing.
Yeah, us outsiders have often hard time understanding american culture when it comes to guns (and goverment). Wasn't it important point of "gun freedom" to be able to defend against goverment, if necessary, and to be able to make armed revolution possible??
It gives people a peace of mind if they have a gun. They know that if someone breaks in their house while they're there, they can shoot his head off and protect themselves/their children. <FONT face="Arial Rounded MT Bold">
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<FONT face="Times New Roman"> People should also be educated with the correct use and storage of those guns, that might make the price of that peace of mind (around 30,000 firearms related deaths per year) more worth it. It's really easy to make fatal mistake with guns, there's no calling back of the bullet after it's out the barrel. CS spray and Tazers would be IMHO better home defence weapons... </FONT>
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</FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman">But even so, it breaks laws and there are plenty of paranoid mothers out there who need to see that company fined for showing her children pornography.</FONT>
As rsynnott said: "America's ethical/moral paradox is huge", there's a lot of problems with showing anything even remotely suggesting sex, but less or no problems with showing violence to children.