The wisdom and foresight of Tomfurbs and Trish here on H.A.

I think this whole argument gets too convoluted.

The stupidity of nations toward each other is not caused by private ownership of weaponry, but that private ownership is necessary because of said stupidity. For the most part, guns are about defense.

Now comes some historical context:

At the end of the 18th century, crime as we think of it today wasn't a big problem. The threat was invasion by foreign powers. It was a real threat that came to fruition in 1812 (the first & last foreign invasion of the of the contiguous United States). All the Europeans were doing it. That was how the colonies/states came to be. The whole idea of an armed populace was protection against despots, both foreign & domestic. The reason for the "well regulated militia" is that the US isn't supposed to have a standing army.

The only purpose of an army is to make war. Whether whatever war is justifiable is irrelevant to my point. The point being that without a war, an army has nothing to do. The immense appropriations necessary to keep a standing army tend to create a need to justify their existence. Hence the perpetual state of war & the constant search for newer & more ambiguous enemies.

Meanwhile, the idea of the militia that can be mobilized in times of emergency has been shunted aside, & now we have a populace that's still armed & has nothing to do. Well, they have their lives, but they have no use for the weapons in their homes. So now we have more justifying to do.

We're not an agrarian society anymore. We hunt for our food at the grocery store. An uzi's useless for blasting Bambi or Thumper, & most gun owners never set foot off the pavement. We have a standing army & most people don't even know what a militia is. There's the problem of urban crime, but we've created a standing army for that too. So now what? The only justification left is that the armed populace keeps the government scared.

It's the last defense against domestic despotism. The problem is that fear generates response, & the populace is outgunned by the standing armies. There's an "us v the world" attitude that permeates the entire confrontation industry & a large portion of the rest of the bureaucracy. A siege mentality promotes despotism, so the defense becomes a tool against itself.

I think this whole argument over guns is just a diversion, whether contrived or accidental. The real problem is our attitudes. We need a change in mindset. This paranoia has to stop. People's similarities far outweigh their differences, but we can't see that because we're too busy terrorizing ourselves over every perceived difference we can find or trump up.

@ Hippie that makes allot of sense. Just one thing. We are not necessarily out gunned by the armed forces. First point is that I am not certain that the whole of the armed forces would obey orders from a D.C. gone mad (i.e. Prez. orders the captain of a boomer to fire his missiles at a rebellious US city or state.)

There is also the fact that an army of armed citizens, the Mahdi Army in Iraq, has been able to pin down and make life hell for ours. There are other examples, the last Israel V Lebanon-HizbAllah war. The Viet Nam war is another one. It's call an asymmetric war. Our army is very afraid of such wars because it knows it is ill equipped to handle them. I could go on but I have made the point. A citizen army with Ak's and plastique and guts can beat a much more technologically advanced force.

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Originally Posted by hippifried

I think this whole argument gets too convoluted.
At the end of the 18th century, crime as we think of it today wasn't a big problem. .

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What do you mean by "crime as we think of it today?"

Sure we have a lot of crime in a lot of our cities, we a lot of gang violence, sex crimes, murders, and all that -but the same was true in our history. Depending how you view it this did get worse over time, but our population is also so much larger, and so much more urbanized.

It didn't even take the mayflower passengers a year to have to execute someone for murder. But since there were so few European-descendant humans around here at the time, that one murder also represents a huge chunk of the population. I haven't done the math, but I am sure if someone added up all the murder victims we have annually in the US in recent years, along with executed murders- both figures will represent a far smaller % of the total population when talking about today's society.

It is my personal opinion that population growth and urbanization are one of the larger factors (but not the only factors) in America's crime history. The idea that "crime didn't exist in history in the US in a significant level" (I am not accusing you of having this belief, just sayin' here) is wholly inaccurate when taking into consideration the 19th century (especially the victorian era).

There are probably a great many factors that are separately at work in America's past crime problems, but I find the idea that a strong government presence in high crime areas will "cure" such societal ailments as laughable. Do you know how many communities even today have tried merely "throwing more cops on the street" to try to resolve crime problems? has it ever cured a community in America of its crime problems when those problems were extreme before hand? Back then, it were the cities that first enacted reforms along the lines of arms regulations, law enforcement, crime response etc. but did that "fix" America's cities in the decades before WW1? No, if anything the crime continued to get worse as America's population not only increased, but became even more urban.

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The whole idea of an armed populace was protection against despots, both foreign & domestic. The reason for the "well regulated militia" is that the US isn't supposed to have a standing army.

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You say this like an armed populace was an intentional design component. The reason why the population was armed was because they had always been armed. This wasn't really a giant issue because it was so common, so normal- and I am using this word armed truly generically here as to include all historically known to exist arms from this era. There really was no such thing back then as a "military grade weapon", what determined what people or institutions had was a matter of logistics (cost, practicality etc). Sure, a civilian could go out and buy a cannon... but what would they do with it exactly? There are exceptions but I don't want to go way too OT here.

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The only purpose of an army is to make war. Whether whatever war is justifiable is irrelevant to my point. The point being that without a war, an army has nothing to do. The immense appropriations necessary to keep a standing army tend to create a need to justify their existence. Hence the perpetual state of war & the constant search for newer & more ambiguous enemies.

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Appropriations for a standing military really didn't balloon for most nations until the 2nd half of the 19th century. The militaries themselves were fairly cheap for quite a while, you have the personnel costs (pay, food, clothing and all that), equipment, facility expenses but not a lot else really.

The real costly part of standing militaries was the military tech revolution of the 19th century. Once industrialization were applied to military tech the rapid rate of progress made R&D costs, as well as manufacturing costs literally explode. Warships would become outdated before they could be constructed, artillery would be outdated by the time the design concept was finalized. By 1914 a lot of global powers were spending up to 20% of their GNP on military contracting of some kind (btw the most the US has ever spent in this fashion was 6%, and that was during the Cold War). In the 19th century the way the US got out of this, for the most part, is they kept most of their military tech R&D and manufacturing in the private sector, and let the American companies make whatever they wanted, for whoever they wanted (Germans, British, Japanese, Chinese). You'd be surprised how much in WW1 ordnance was American designed, and how much was used by both sides. The idea was "let the europeans go crazy over paying for developing this stuff, we'll buy what we need, when we need it and it'll be their pay covering the dev."

In Europe the arms contractors played this game of "indestructible armor one year, something to destroy it the next, repeat"- which required nations to stay on top with this insanity, not because of some war-fetish but because if they lapsed they'd find themselves wholly obsolete and, as a result, unable to face another nation. Most people really have no comprehension how much of a difference a years' worth of equipment made in combat, so effectively this was MAD (mutually assured destruction) in a pre-nuclear world, and the widespread belief, in the industry, in these governments, even in the general public was that the more deadly war is- the less likely it will occur (Maxim, Krupp, Bloch all privately believed this). Russia proved the theories on the subject were true, when the Russians and Japanese navies fought in 1905 they had nearly identical fleets, the Japanese were grossly out numbered, and the one defining difference was that the Russians' shells were not high tech enough to do the job. The Russians were totally extinguished, the Japanese lost not a single ship. So many Russians drowned (something like 16,000 of them) that even Russian civilians, to this day a hundred+ years later, lay reefs in the water when passing over where the battle occurred.

So why didn't MAD work after Russia proved the logic behind it? Was as simple as Germany thinking they had an advantage in 1914. Had nothing to do with some "lets find a way to use our army" logic, although that argument seems, to say the least, plausible in many American actions of the 20th century ('nam for instance).

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Meanwhile, the idea of the militia that can be mobilized in times of emergency has been shunted aside,

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That's why the Vietcong handed our asses to us on a platter? The Vietcong were MILITIA. Militia forces still work, but require the civilian population being entirely committed to dying for whatever cause it is, in sufficient numbers. Since we're talking about America the question is whether the American populus today would be complicit if invaded by, say, Canada (randomly selected for this example- do not read into it). I really have no idea if a militia resistance would form, using either their own guns or governmentally distributed ones in such a scenario. I think most Americans would be fine with an invasion as long as fast food chains didn't close and nascar & American idol continued without interruption.<sarcasm>

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Originally Posted by Tomfurbs

Man, the US has only been around for 200 years, and in that time it has had Civil War, genocide, major political corruption, numerous abortive foreign conflicts and is the only nation to drop Atomic arms in anger and use chemical weapons continuously throughout a war. You also have some of the most crime-filled cities in the world, and some of the worst literacy rates. And enough of its citizens believe the most reductive and literal interpretaion of Christianity to make religious fundamentalism a powerful lobby. It also has a primitive health care system and very ineffective means of coping with its poor.

I would argue that a country like that needs a few less guns and a little more govt. supervision, personally.

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I could go on with a lot of this but I will say, if America is exactly the way you say it is, having European style health care here will be a disaster.

Think about it for a moment, with such a powerful religious faction would you honestly expect contraceptive, fertility treatments, reproductive rights, std treatments, trans related medical treatments, and other socially volatile issues to be properly covered?

Using trans med issues as a single example, given what forum we're on, haven't we heard a great deal of horror stories regarding NHS's attempt to deal with trans patients ...in a nation without a strong fundamentalist christian faction?

We've had the gender clinic approach to treatment here before, it was a complete fucking disaster. The few asshats I've met who worked in America's gender clinics of the 60s-70s have far from impressed me.

We can't even get the VA operating right, and veterans are the only group in American healthcare that approach getting respect & priority. Maybe some day euro style healthcare will work here, but that sure as hell isn't today, next week, next month, or next year.

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Originally Posted by BrendaQG

@ Hippie that makes allot of sense. Just one thing. We are not necessarily out gunned by the armed forces. First point is that I am not certain that the whole of the armed forces would obey orders from a D.C. gone mad (i.e. Prez. orders the captain of a boomer to fire his missiles at a rebellious US city or state.)

There is also the fact that an army of armed citizens, the Mahdi Army in Iraq, has been able to pin down and make life hell for ours. There are other examples, the last Israel V Lebanon-HizbAllah war. The Viet Nam war is another one. It's call an asymmetric war. Our army is very afraid of such wars because it knows it is ill equipped to handle them. I could go on but I have made the point. A citizen army with Ak's and plastique and guts can beat a much more technologically advanced force.

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You're only thinking of the federal standing army being directed by the Pentagon. When it comes to domestic strife, there's all the other departments that are armed to the teeth & the local official paramilitary units too. The city cops, constables, sheriff's offices, state police, national guard, etc... Then you have the vast alphabet soup of the feds who are all armed enforcers. Hell, even fish cops & tree counters are packin' nowadays. If you look at the rules of engagement for domestic enforcement, just about everybody who draws a government paycheck can be considered a cop under certain circumstances. Most agencies maintain their own SWAT teams & other "special forces". there's a war mentality throughout the domestic enforcement & confrontation industry, & it keeps getting reinforced by fools in the domestic terrorism biz. They feed off each other.

As to the gangs turned militias in the middle east, that's all there is. Everybody with any power at all has consistently gone out of their way to make sure there's no organized state military or police force in either Lebanon or Palistine. The first thing we did in Iraq was disband the only thing that passed for a professional army. Same with the police force/s. The pros just moved to the militias. They end up with experienced troops with a purpose against a bunch of non-Arabic-speakers who haven't got the slightest clue what they're trying to accomplish or exactly who the "enemy" is.

We really need to get out of the war biz. We're not that good at it. We just have a lot of fire power. We can kick anybody's ass on the planet, as long as we know who & where they are. Then what? It's like a dog chasing a car. What's he gonna do if he catches it? It's all kinds of fun I guess while it's going on. Lots of glory & honor & flag waving & all. Then comes the military occupation, & the military has no idea how to do anything but make war. They don't make peace. They don't do diplomacy. We can't base our foreign policy on our ability to blow things up. When anybody else takes that approach, we call them terrorists. It's nonsense, & it should be obvious to all by now that it doesn't work. You can't win the peace unless yu win the hearts & minds of the people involved. You can't win hearts & minds without being polite. Physical assault is rude.

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Originally Posted by NYBURBS

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Originally Posted by Tomfurbs

Man, the US has only been around for 200 years, and in that time it has had Civil War, genocide, major political corruption, numerous abortive foreign conflicts and is the only nation to drop Atomic arms in anger and use chemical weapons continuously throughout a war. You also have some of the most crime-filled cities in the world, and some of the worst literacy rates. And enough of its citizens believe the most reductive and literal interpretaion of Christianity to make religious fundamentalism a powerful lobby. It also has a primitive health care system and very ineffective means of coping with its poor.

I would argue that a country like that needs a few less guns and a little more govt. supervision, personally.

You bet Europe has made mistakes. Hell, my country is among the worst. Why does America insist on repeating them?

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I agree we have had our share of bad history; much of that sordid past also involved government officials abusing their power. See that is where you and I seem to diverge in our philosophy. You believe in increased government supervision in order to solve social ills. I see it as a fundamental evil that concentrates too much authority into a small group of people. I'm not going to deny that one can make a forceful and sincere argument for your viewpoint, it's just something I disagree with on a very root level.

Btw, just so you understand... I'm not a fan of neo-cons, Bush, religious zealots, so on and so forth. I simply want to live my life as I see best, so long as it doesn't conflict with the rights of others, and with as little interference from the government as possible.

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Fair enough boss. You have made a reasoned case. Anyway, hope I didn't sound like a dick. My way seems to make sense to me. Your way seems to make sense to you. On we go.

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Originally Posted by SarahG

I could go on with a lot of this but I will say, if America is exactly the way you say it is, having European style health care here will be a disaster.

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What? Why? A Universal (European) health care and welfare system would overturn your country. (I am speaking, of course, from a nation that has been enjoying these things since the end of WW2).


Please explain to me how America is exactly not like the way I said it is?

You deny your awful literacy rates? You deny your shite health care and welfare system. You deny your terrible foreign policy since WW2?

Which bits do you not agree with, I am all ears.

(edited to compensate for my terrible spelling)

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Originally Posted by BrendaQG

A citizen army with Ak's and plastique and guts can beat a much more technologically advanced force.

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Respectfully, that has nowt to do with allowing citizens of a free country access to arms.

Edit: I'll say this again, because you might not have heard it the last time:

People who like to slam people's heads in car doors when they get their psych on should not be allowed anywhere near a loaded weapon.

I cannot think of a more prescient example of my case than that.

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Originally Posted by Tomfurbs

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Originally Posted by SarahG

I could go on with a lot of this but I will say, if America is exactly the way you say it is, having European style health care here will be a disaster.

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What? Why? A Universal (European) health care and welfare system would overturn your country. (I am speaking, of course, from a nation that has been enjoying these things since the end of WW2).


Please explain to me how America is exactly not like the way I said it is?

You deny your awful literacy rates? You deny your shite health care and welfare system. You deny your terrible foreign policy since WW2?

Which bits do you not agree with, I am all ears.

(edited to compensate for my terrible spelling)

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You seem to be confused with my post?

What I was saying was even if for arguments shake, all of your observations were spot on, it would show the great lengths to which NHS style health care would- as things in America stand today, be a huge mistake.

Like you said, the extremist Christians are here in such numbers that it constitutes a major political faction. That said, there really isn't any short term hope for socially volatile issues to get proper coverage in a NHS-style approach to health care here.

Do you honestly expect std patients, trans patients, gay patients, and reproduction rights issues to be properly cared for in an American NHS system?

Look at it this way, the UK is seen (rightly or not) as being more progressive when dealing with these social situations, and yet NHS has had one hell of a hard time properly caring for trans patients -in the UK- and that is without bringing into the mix the abortion issue in places such as Ireland (you must be familiar with abortion ships, they've visited Ireland in recent years because of the difficulty reproductive rights' patients have in that part of your system).

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Originally Posted by SarahG

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Originally Posted by Tomfurbs

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Originally Posted by SarahG

I could go on with a lot of this but I will say, if America is exactly the way you say it is, having European style health care here will be a disaster.

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What? Why? A Universal (European) health care and welfare system would overturn your country. (I am speaking, of course, from a nation that has been enjoying these things since the end of WW2).


Please explain to me how America is exactly not like the way I said it is?

You deny your awful literacy rates? You deny your shite health care and welfare system. You deny your terrible foreign policy since WW2?

Which bits do you not agree with, I am all ears.

(edited to compensate for my terrible spelling)

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You seem to be confused with my post?

What I was saying was even if for arguments shake, all of your observations were spot on, it would show the great lengths to which NHS style health care would- as things in America stand today, be a huge mistake.

Like you said, the extremist Christians are here in such numbers that it constitutes a major political faction. That said, there really isn't any short term hope for socially volatile issues to get proper coverage in a NHS-style approach to health care here.

Do you honestly expect std patients, trans patients, gay patients, and reproduction rights issues to be properly cared for in an American NHS system?

Look at it this way, the UK is seen (rightly or not) as being more progressive when dealing with these social situations, and yet NHS has had one hell of a hard time properly caring for trans patients -in the UK- and that is without bringing into the mix the abortion issue in places such as Ireland (you must be familiar with abortion ships, they've visited Ireland in recent years because of the difficulty reproductive rights' patients have in that part of your system).

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If fundamentalist christians acted the way you suggest in a Government-funded health-care system (a secular, state system) they would be in breach of all manner of ethical codes and liable for prosecution. An NHS doctor who refuses to treat a patient is commiting a crime.
As far as treating transsexuals in the NHS, GRS is free. I don't know to what extent they offer other services (psych care, hormones) gratis. Hormones wouldn't be free anyway because you have to pay for you prescription of any medication in the UK. All I can say is, despite the horror stories about the NHS the British media likes to run every now and then, the three times I have had need of it, I have received excellent care from NHS staff, and left the hospital/ GP's surgery without a whopping great bill.

Abortion is totally legal in Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK. As for the situation in Eire, I am afraid I couldn't tell you.

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Originally Posted by Tomfurbs

If fundamentalist christians acted the way you suggest in a Government-funded health-care system (a secular, state system) they would be in breach of all manner of ethical codes and liable for prosecution. An NHS doctor who refuses to treat a patient is commiting a crime.

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I am sure you're aware then that, under our current system doctors, pharmacists and other health industry workers can in many situations refuse to take part in any treatment, including prescription distribution, if they feel it is violating their personal belief system? This isn't about to go away anytime soon, if we had NHS tomorrow we'd still have large groups of radicals independently going "I'm not gonna be filling this slip for _fillintheblank_ (estrogen, contraceptive, whatever), it would violate my personal beliefs, go find another pharmacy." The systematic assumption is that if you go to the other pharmacies in your area, you'll eventually find one that doesn't care if you're gay, trans, or want to remove the chances of getting preg from the guy who raped you 12 hrs ago. This assumption also ignores that in some of these situations you have a race against the clock to get proper treatment before the situation gets worse. This is true for the rape victim wanting emergency contraceptive, this is true for the young transistioner who wants to get on HRT before T prevents their body from passing w/out FFS (obviously the later has a longer time table to work with, but it is nonetheless an ignored element of the equation).

Even if people are somehow forced to play by the rules, and the rules eliminate this refusal-to-treat clause in the situations that presently have them- you have another problem.

There is what I call selective-incompetence (like selective hearing) where medical professionals for whatever personal or institutional reason, treat certain patients improperly without violating any specific rules. To use an American example if you are a trans inmate, in most states you have to get hrt treatment if you've been getting it the normal institutional way on the outside (threw doctors, with a GID diagnosis, blood tests etc). But the prison can require inmates to go through the prison doctor to determine what specific drugs & dosages you get, and then that doctor could say "in their professional opinion you should be on 2mg a day estroidal and 50mg a day spiro" (when the patient requires 8mg of the first, and 200mg of the 2nd in order to keep from masculating). Thus you're getting hrt still, but it is such a trivial amount you might as well not be... its not gonna maintain whereever you are in hrt's work on your body, and if your testes are intact it for this patient in the example, start to reverse (aka de-transition) the inmate. This is done for discriminatory reasons, but it is also done to save money for the jail. There are a whole host of medical conditions that get short changed in prison because- in doing so, it saves the prison money and it is done with conditions where such malpractice will not result in direct death (as refusing insoline for a diabetic could).

Canada has NHS, and there, for the trans patient, you HAVE to pretty much go threw the NHS hoops & games because they are the only game in town, unless you are close enough to commute into the United States to use private medical care out of pocket (if you can afford it). Their customs are fairly good at blocking out internet hormones, so DIY is fairly limited. To get HRT in Canada you have to play a series of games with gender clinics, essentially the same way it is done in the UK with various minor differences. Sure, if you play by their games they will pay for srs (tho there are some rules on where you can go and who you can use for a surgeon). Why is this clinic system such a problem? These gate keeping games draw out the time it takes to transition, and sets the patient up to have problems... basically the system is designed to screw you, delay your progress, and hope that it will convince you to go away and put off your transition attempt. This may be insignificant if you're some middle aged transitioner with assets to pay for surgeries, but for someone who is young every year that is put off by gate keeping games of this nature, is a year where T does irreversible things to the body. Someone who transitions early enough will NEVER need FFS to pass. Say it is a two year wait, even two years will make a noticeable difference if it means transitioning at 18 instead of 16, or 22 instead of 20. Although it pays for SRS, few of these programs pay for the lengthy cosmetic procedures required to try to reverse a T-altered skull, and even if there was full range to have whatever surgery you want these procedures can only do so much.

The US, with its faults- and there are way too many, at least has enough leeway that a trans patient can, if their first doctor refuses to give them sufficient HRT dosages, go DIY or, seek out another doctor (or another, another, and another until a tolerant & competent one is found). This is not the case with the clinic system, and there have been cases in the last ten years where hospitals in Canada, under NHS, have kicked out trans patients strictly because they were trans. Unethical? Sure. Illegal? Probably (I would bet on it). Did anything happen over it? Not that I ever heard of, no one was fired, trans patients in question never got a settlement over it.

This brings me to my main point: mindsets. When a country is, within the medical community itself, tolerant and understanding of patients with unique needs then universal health care can go to great lengths to help the patient. There are countries in Europe with health care at great lengths better than anything the United States has ever had... and in these countries, because it is not stigmatized, because discrimination is not so widespread, trans patients can transistion -before- puberty where the situation merits it.

For NHS to work in America there needs to be drastic changes- changes eliminating these discriminatory practices in not just theory, but practice. Especially if NHS re-institutes systems we DID have before.

In our history in the states, in the 1950s-early 1980s, America's medical community only had gender clinics to deal with trans patients (the ones using the health care systems, not talking about people doing hrt with black market drugs or stolen birth control pills, back when BC pills had enough E to feminize). It was the only true game in town, so you had to play their games- and here, these "clinics" would look at trans patients and distribute treatments (therapy, hrt, surgeries) based on the information gathered on the patient.

They'd test you to see what your concept is of gender roles, relationships, etc. Essentially you had to embody, ideologically speaking, the stereotypical straight 50s housewife in order to have a hope of treatment (that is to say, you had to be straight, you had to be into girly interests like sewing, cooking, cleaning etc).

Then they'd put you before a board of "specialists" who would look you over and determine if you should transistion based on shoe size, height, weight, age, passability, mannerisms, and a whole host of other things. You could be denied hrt or surgeries simply by having feet "too big."

Then they'd require you to do RLE, before you get anything in treatment... but this RLE was not RLE in the modern sense. They required a twisted sense of "what being female is." If your therapist caught you wearing jeans, even if they were normal girl specific jeans, in public your RLE just got reset and you'd be lectured... if it continued to happen you'd be ejected from this system.

I have met and discussed with doctors who used to be apart of this system, they believe in such absurdities as the barbie defense (you're not trans if you never played with barbies when you were little), and even think giving hrt to a patient under 30-35 should be illegal. There are no shortage of gender clinic horror stories from this era of American health care history. Hell there are still random therapists who buy into this notion of trans care in this country, but at least now you can go somewhere, anywhere else when that happens. Going back to gender clinics would be a disastrous mistake in today's America, unnecessarily so.

I realize the general every day citizen is not trans. The general every day citizen isn't going to care or ever need to know about trans health care. It simply does not effect them or anyone they know. In America our health care crisis, and it is a crisis, is the cause of a disturbing statistic: medical problems are the leading cause for bankruptcy in the United States (not adjustable rate mortgages like the 4th estate would lead you to believe... even if mortgage is french for "death grip").

Someone can save everything (reasonably) they make, be as careful in spending as even the most die hard christian conservative may advocate for, and because they worked blue collar all their life w/out health insurance with an income just above the poverty line, lose every penny of it and whatever assets they've compiled just by needing some emergency surgery, cancer treatment, or other critical, unexpected, unavoidable medical situation.

But there are exceptions, specific types of patients with unique needs, and if NHS were to be instituted here -tomorrow- without first accomplishing major reforms of American health care ethics & society in practice (not just theory) then these patients with unique situations will be the trade off cost. Look at all the things we cannot get here to date for trans patients in our country that would be, arguably, less volatile. Nationally speaking: Job discrimination? Legal. Housing? Also. As is adoption law, probate law, marriage law. There are even problems as simple as sex recognition for postops. Sure some states are better than others, but that's cold comfort by someone who, for reasons out of their control, gets born as a trans citizen in Ohio where your BC can never be amended or replaced (even if the dr is drunk and clearly put down erroneous information- a GG whose doctor puts them down as male in ohio has to live with that BC for life as things currently stand, even if they are not trans, IS, or otherwise unique in their mental, physical, or dna existance).