NZ is a socialist shithole. A nanny state that would take away your first and second amendment rights. Free speech is a massive problem.Disagree with Chairman Jacinda, and you will get a visit from the police, despite not having actually committed a crime.
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I’m from the UK. I’ve spent time in NZ, and traveled a lot of the South Island climbing and staying with locals. Free speech didn’t seem an issue at all.
I don’t plan on forming a militia so I don’t need an AR15.
You mention the police but the US prison population is 737 per 100k and NZ is 219.
Free speech isn’t an issue as long as you don’t criticise Jacinda. Watch out if you do. At least with an openly communist country like China, there is no pretense that you can say what you think about politics. NZ like many other western countries portrays itself as free and democratic, when it hasn’t been for a long time.
A free citizen doesn’t need to ask permission from their government to own a weapon, like a firearm. Alexander Solzhenitzyn who wrote on communist USSR, said the common thing about all the people that got arrested and sent to a gulag, torture or a firing squad, was that they allowed themselves to be arrested without a fight.
Maybe because after the communist govt got into power, they banned all private ownership of any kind of weapon, like firearms, swords, or bayonets.
No guns for the Chinese either. It didn’t go well for the peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square, when they wanted democracy.
Didn’t work out well for the Jews in Germany after Mr Hitler banned them from owning guns either.
None of these governments said they would start killing their own citizens when they took the guns, but we all know what eventually happened.
You’ve mentioned this twice now, have you got a source, it’s not something I’ve come across. I’m just having a hard time imagining this person as a dictator.
I don’t agree on your view over fire arms. Many countries have tighter controls than the US and are democracies. Over 1k people are killed by American police a year where the UK had a grand total of 3.
Also, this paper shows that the freedom to learn seems to be greatly stifled in America due to the much higher chance of being shot in school. That to me is horrifying.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-world-trnd/index.html
I can’t agree that guns equal freedom. My family gave up our guns after dunblane. It hurt but we’ve had no school shootings since. I’m not comparing US to China or Russia here, but other democracies.
Between the time of the Christchurch Mosque attack, and the latest NZ election, last year, there were several NZ youtubers that documented cases where people who criticised Jacinda’s policies, got surprise visits from armed police, despite no crime having actually been committed(general PO in NZ, I believe are not armed with guns, the same as in the UK too.) They were questioned about their political beliefs, whether they were Trump supporters.
crosstherubicon channel on youtube would be a place to start. He’s ex British, now a NZ citizen. There were plenty of others pre election, that showed impromptu visits by the police, I can’t tell you their names or channels off the top of my head but they came up in my youtube feed at the time. A lot of this stuff doesn’t stay up for long, channels or videos are often deleted by youtube if they are considered politically incorrect ie conservative.
Jacinda comes across as a nice woman, and she has plenty of popular support. When push comes to shove she makes unilateral decisions without consultation with the general public. Her policies are spot on with the New World Order. She is the Merkel of the Southern Hemisphere.
They took away most of the guns in the UK. The criminals choice of weapon is now the knife. So don’t pretend you don’t have a problem with violent crime in the major cities in the UK.
A lot of countries call themselves democracies. Take North Korea for example, the dynastic dictatorship . They call themselves the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Read my earlier post in this subject, regarding the corruption of democracy, its an illusion that makes people think they actually get a say in politics. Any policy that actually matters like a vote on mass immigration, never gets put to a vote because both major parties support it. Its happened in nearly all western countries.
When the State has a monopoly on violence, you don’t have freedom. They never give up their guns, why would they it would be against their interests. You are at the whim of a government, that might be relatively benevolent, for the moment. When things change, because it will eventually, you won’t be able to do anything about it.
What makes you think any of the great democracies in the world, even America couldn’t slowly become dominated by a tyrannical goverment? You have political movements like BLM, funded by billionaire 1% ers like George Soros, that also own powerful shares in MSM companies. They try and tell you white on black violence in the community is an epidemic, when the FBI stats actually say 90% of racial violence is black on white.
They say Police are racist, and need to be defunded or abolished. Even President elect Bo Jiden humoured this publically pre election, during the riots.
It won’t be long before Biden tries some gun grab against the second amendment. He has a long track record of being anti gun, as do most of the major democrats.
Remind me which country has the largest per capita prison population in the world, the Patriot Act, a million different alphabet agencies running domestic surveillance on their own citizens, a heavily militarised police force that shoot first and ask questions later, “free speech zones”, and an offshore prison with indefinite detention and torture of detainees in violation of the constitution. Because it sure ain’t New Zealand.
Pretty sure if you made online threats against Trump the FBI/Secret Service would pay you a visit too. Or they’d just put you on a watchlist and monitor everything you say and do online. The US government has far more reach and power than the USSR ever did.
The whole idea behind our government is NOT to have a genuine democracy so the tyranny of the majority doesn’t prevail.
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Bullshit
At colleges, not a government-sponsored policy
Where does the Constitution say it applies to foreign terrorists? When did they become citizens of the US?
People put up a fight here… and end up dead. What’s your point?
That happens in the US too.
I didn’t. You’re making arguments that the population being armed is better for democracy and I’m saying that isn’t the case. Again, I don’t know why you’ve gone to comparisons with Korea, China and Stalinist Russia. Wouldn’t comparisons with Canada, Australia and Western Europe be more useful and applicable to the USA?
We’ve had police since 1829. Even now the vast majority of police are unarmed in the UK. I’ve never been confronted by armed police. I’m not sure what measure you use to quantify freedom? I’ve put a few above in my links that I think are useful measures, what’s yours? Genuinely I’m interested in how freedom is measured for you.
Every American living in a state is a constituent of 3 members of congress and all are elected in a winner take all majority election. This system essentially precludes a third party with power. The only exception is if a third party has majority support in a concise geographic region or state. Even with 20 or 30% national support a third party could theoretically have no seats in congress if that support wasn’t consolidated in certain geographic strongholds (30% support is probably extreme and unlikely that said 3rd party would have no seats, but I’m just throwing numbers around).
Changing the voting system alone (ranked choice, instant runoff, approval voting, etc.), likely doesn’t change this reality because each election still only has one winner. If you look at countries where 3rd parties have seats in federal/national assemblies/parliaments/congresses, these countries have systems whereby a party can gain seats nationally by receiving a non-trivial minority everywhere even without winning a majority anywhere. This simply isn’t the case in the US. Winning 15% of the vote in every congressional district in the US gets you exactly diddly squat.
A large part of the problem is that the US (federal) system, while encouraging and even solidifying parties, doesn’t even explicitly acknowledge their existence. And without acknowledging the existence of parties, people don’t vote for parties, they vote for candidates. That seems good in many respects, but it also means that there isn’t an understood connection between the third party candidates in all of the states and votes for candidates that don’t win do very little of anything (other than perhaps signal to other voters the viability of someone in future elections).
I would venture to guess that somewhere between 30-50% of American voters are currently represented in Congress by 3 people that they strongly disagree with ideologically. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that most of these probably feel ideologically represented by some members of congress even if they are not technically constituents of those members. But that is more of a happy accident than a feature of a good design.
Ultimately, the US system was designed for a federal government with much less power than it has today. The original federal government had no power to tax income, didn’t provide healthcare, social security, education, subsidies, or environmental regulations (this list could go on). A government that doesn’t really represent you but also doesn’t affect you much is a bit of a nuisance. A government that affects you greatly but doesn’t represent you is a cause to war. The Declaration of Independence says as much.
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Tell that to Alexander Hamilton.
It is horrifying, but the problem goes way beyond “guns”. There are significant cultural, historical, socioeconomic, and demographic differences between the US and the UK that matter when discussing both the police deaths and the school shootings.
I don’t believe they equal freedoms either. They are a means to enforce and defend freedom though.
And freedom means responsibility too.
Don’t forget the bottle i.e. “glassings”.
Possibly, but all comparisons have serious faults. I’m the case of both Canada and Australia, both total population and population density are major factors.
Western Europe is still a mutli-nation zone with many different cultures and govts. I do t like this game, but if we’re going there, what about Switzerland? They have MANY firearms in private ownership.
Yes, which is remarkable and also one of the biggest cultural differences between UK and US. Much of our force has been armed going back 150+ years into the frontier.
I know we are talking hypotheticals here, but you don’t think we could make that change to our system? Putting in a law that allows a significant minority to hold seats would quite possibly change the outcome.
Or take it away.
True, but all I’m suggesting is that there’s better comparisons then the democratic Republic of Korea.
More 2a than the USA.
Easy there, no need to get personal.
This part of the discussion started with a comment that NZ is a socialist shithole. It honestly isn’t a shithole, it’s a great country. What I was trying to understand is why someone would view it so badly. Freedom came up, and I can’t see a measure that suggests Americans are more free, especially not due to guns. A lot more of you are locked up or killed in school so guns don’t equal freedom. It seems like a lot of mental gymnastics start once the idea of gun ownership gets involved and it becomes a very black or white argument.
Btw NZ seems to be the most free nation in the world right now. Imagine having a drink with friends and not worrying that you’ll kill your gran with a virus. I’m envious.
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Oh yes, most certainly!
Sorry mate. NZ is a great country. I think it’s completely viable to have freedom with different priorities. This is one reason I occasionally bristle at people suggesting we ban our guns or whatever have you because “x country did blah blah”… But at the same time you can’t then turn around and say that other democratic governments with different cultural histories are shitholes for not holding the same priorities as we do either.
No they don’t.
They’ve got several natural advantages to containing this stupid thing, but I’m jealous too.
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Have you considered that maybe Chairman Jacinda is concerned with every citizen’s view and wants to know what he can do to improve? so the police are sent to hear and collect your views.
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