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Showing posts with the label gun violence

A good guy without a gun

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We've all heard and read the mantra of the National Rifle Association and their rabid supporters that says that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, the implication being that the good guy with a gun will shoot the bad guy with a gun. Crisis over. Not necessarily. James Shaw didn't have a gun when he rushed and disarmed a man with an AR 15 rifle who was shooting up the Waffle House in Nashville. The man had killed four people and seriously injured others. Who knows how many might have died if James Shaw hadn't had the courage to act? Maybe I've missed them but I haven't seen or heard any statements from the NRA or the usual suspects, including the tweeter-in-chief, lauding Shaw for his courageous action. Perhaps it's because once he got the gun away he didn't use it to shoot the attacker. Or maybe it's because he just doesn't fit the profile of the "heroes" in the fables they tell themselves.  James S...

Thoughts and prayers won't stop bullets

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So, here we are again. Another day, another massacre.   Once again, we see cynical politicians offering their "thoughts and prayers" for the victims of another mass shooting, often on Twitter . With one hand they send their sorrowful tweets and the other they hold out for their payoffs from the NRA for offering nothing but thoughts and prayers . No action. No sensible gun control. No universal background checks. No banning of assault weapons. They won't do anything to upset their masters. Thus, Congress, the only entity that might be able to stop or at least inhibit these periodic massacres of our fellow citizens, refuses to act, except to offer thoughts and prayers and moments of silence . And, thus, the massacres will continue. Tomorrow, next week, next month, there will be another one, and we'll be outraged and sad for a few days and then we'll just move on, accepting that there is nothing we can do to stop these events. Poll after poll show that a majority of ...

Our national shame

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If it is a day ending in y, it must be time for another mass shooting in America.  And what are the responses of our politicians, specifically the politicians running for president, to this carnage? Well, Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley have put forth plans for gun control. Bernie Sanders has been drafting one.  As for the Republican candidates, they all offer their "thoughts and prayers" to the victims, but no solutions, no ideas. They are waiting for God to fix it. The best headline of the week after the San Bernardino massacre was this from The Daily News of New York: God didn't make the problem; gun-worshiping humans did. And God won't fix it. On Earth, God's work must truly be our own. Meanwhile, "cowards who could truly end gun scourge continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes." They will all tell you what devout "pro life" Christians they are, but they refuse to do God's work in saving lives. They prefer to do the NR...

Deja vu all over again...and again...and again...

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I wrote this post just a couple of weeks ago. Sadly, I could probably repeat it every few weeks and it would be relevant to the day's news.  The top line on the graph has had a substantial number added to it in the past couple of weeks, most recently with the mass murders in Oregon yesterday. And the unacknowledged, and seemingly unending, war goes on. *~*~*~* The unacknowledged war Perhaps we need to reexamine our definition of what  constitutes war. Deaths from gun-related violence in this  country from 1989 through the end of last year outnumber  all the U.S. military deaths from wars  that this country  has been involved in since its founding. Does that not sound  as if we are engaged in a war within the borders of this  country? Moreover, this is a war that is waged in large part  against unarmed women and children.  I wonder if there is anything that could be done to stop this  war.  

The unacknowledged war

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Perhaps we need to reexamine our definition of what constitutes war. Deaths from gun-related violence in this country from 1989 through the end of last year outnumber all the U.S. military deaths from wars that this country has been involved in since its founding. Does that not sound as if we are engaged in a war within the borders of this country? Moreover, this is a war that is waged in large part against unarmed women and children.  I wonder if there is anything that could be done to stop this war.

And nothing ever changes...

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Hat tip to Daily Kos and Tom Tomorrow .

4,099 and counting

Since the massacre of school children and their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut shocked the consciences of Americans on December 14, 2012, at least 4,099 more people have been killed in gun violence in the United States. Many of them have also been children and often it is a case of children killing children. Like the five-year-old boy in Kentucky who  recently shot and killed his two-year-old sister with a rifle that his parents had given him as a gift. Think about that for a moment. A five-year-old with a working firearm. That had been given to him by his parents! What kind of parents allow a five-year-old to have a gun? Now, they and he have to live with their decision for the rest of their lives. But there'll be no legal consequences for them, because that is just an accepted way of life in their society. As far as the community is concerned, there are no lessons to be learned here. Just bury the girl and forget her. There have been many oth...

Shame, shame! Everybody knows your name.

One keeps thinking that the U.S. Senate cannot disgrace itself any further. Then it goes and defeats consideration of a very mild background check bill for people who are attempting to purchase guns. Even though a clear majority of senators voted for the bill, even though poll after poll show 90% of Americans want this to become law, a cowardly forty-five who are deep in the pockets of the National Rifle Association refused to let the bill proceed and so, under the arcane filibuster rules of the Senate, the bill was defeated. Since the massacre of school children at Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14, 2012, at least 3513 other Americans have died as a result of gun violence. Some 80 more will die today!  But those forty-five senators don't give a damn, as long as the NRA continues to fill their coffers. Here are the names of the disreputable forty-five, along with their Twitter handles, should you wish to send them a message regarding this vote. I certainly intend to. Sen. Lam...

The NRA's Congressman Brady

On Wednesday, President Obama offered his plan for requiring universal background checks, restricting access to some guns and high capacity magazine clips and other changes that are intended to help cut into the epidemic of gun violence in this country. Soon after, my email box received a statement from my elected representative in Congress, Kevin Brady, a Republican. His response to the president's proposals was straight from a script of National Rifle Association talking points. I want our children safe at school and our Second Amendment rights protected at home. Today's proposals do neither. Strong gun control laws in Connecticut didn't stop the Sandy Hook tragedy - and won't stop others like them in America. In fact, areas with the most restrictive gun laws historically suffer from higher rates of gun violence. As for the 23 executive orders, why did it take the deaths of school children, movie-goers and an attack on a congresswoman before the President finally...

One month later

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Yesterday marked one month since the slaughter of innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Since that day, 917 more people in America have been killed by gun violence. And since that time, debate has raged - rage being the operative word - across the television screens of the country, adding more heat than light to the issue of gun violence. There has been a spate of crazy people posting videos threatening to start killing people if anyone tries to take their guns . And then we have the truly delusional. Have you heard about the latest conspiracy theory by the gun nuts that the entire Sandy Hook incident was "performance art" , something dreamed up by the Obama Administration in order to soften the country up for the confiscation of guns? All those parental tears are just pretend. Those children are not dead! All those little coffins were empty. The Sandy Hook "truthers" are even going so far as to harass a man who helped some of the ...

Will it be different this time?

Since the massacre of tiny children and their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on December 14, the country has sustained its sense of outrage and grief over those senseless killings. There is a lot of talk about and impetus toward new action on trying to restrict the availability of military-style weapons to a public which has no business owning them. Their only purpose is to kill people. Their only valid use is in the military where killing the enemy is, in fact, the point. Vice President Biden is working with his group to try to get legislation written and passed through the Congress. God knows it won't be easy with the legislative clowns he has to deal with, but he's done it before, with the assault weapon ban back in the '90s. Perhaps he can do it again. Meanwhile, as Biden and his group work and the pundits pontificate and the gun nuts expostulate about how hammers are more dangerous than guns , (Yes, they really do say that!) the death count con...

The NRA exposed

Seriously, Wayne LaPierre? That's your contribution to the national discussion? The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun? How about just disarming them both? But, of course, that would make too much sense. The vice-president of the National Rifle Association had his week-long-awaited "news conference" yesterday at which he took no questions. He simply read a rambling, thoroughly unhinged statement in a quavery voice. It was a statement that blamed gun violence in America on everything except guns. Video games, violence in movies, song lyrics, people who want to control the easy accessibility of guns, the general culture and on and on. What he didn't say was that all those things he alluded to could apply to any other industrialized nation in the world and yet no other nation in the world has the problem with gun violence that we do. No other nation in the world has a Wayne LaPierre and an NRA. I think there may be a connection. Charles Blow ...