American Gun Culture

In our last lesson we talked about America and their right to bear arms. Farrah told us lots of interesting information about this, and in the following I want to summarize some facts.

Americans wear weapons because of different reasons.

One is the struggle against the British. People have guns to make sure that the government doesn’t go bad.

Another reason is the frontier life. People who live at the frontier have to protect them of their own because there is no police around.

Guns have the least support in urban and industrialized regions. In contrast to the people who live at the frontier, people in cities are not “alone”. If they need help, they will go to the police. They don’t need weapons, because everybody is helping each other.

At the end, we also talked about the shooting in Arizona and Farrah showed us a short video on “Youtube”.

In Arizona, a young man wanted to kill a democratic congress woman. After he shot her into her head, he started shooting into the crowd. Fortunately, the woman lives. Doctors say that she is in good condition for someone who is shot in head.

In my opinion people shouldn’t be allowed to wear weapons.

The danger of a rising China

I read an article the other day in the online version of "economist.com" and it talks about the rivals China and America.



I thought you might be interested because America is the greatest power of the world by now and maybe China will take up this position.


Basically what it talks about is that China will be able to take its place at the top without using arms. So far, things have gone well between China and America but pessimists believe that they are condemned to be rivals because they mistrust each other. It is also said that while China has focused on economic growth, American security has focused on Islamic terrorism and war in Iraq and Afghanistan.


It is also mentioned that China and America have a lot in common, for example both benefit from globalization.
So in my opinion they should work together instead of treating each other like enemies but the danger is that spats will sour relations between China and America.





Vocabulary:

spat (Zänkerei, Kabbelei): I often have spats with my brother.


condemn (verurteilen): Don't condemn people because of their appearance.


common (gemeinsam): We all have acommon goal.




Link:
http://www.economist.com/node/17629709