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Post by ngatimozart on Dec 15, 2012 8:18:29 GMT 12
I see another nutter in the USA has nutted off and massacred 27+ people including at least 18 kids aged between 5 - 10 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Media reports state that the nutter shot and killed his own mother who was a teacher at the school, then students in her class. They also think a second shooter may have been involved and an individual has been arrested. My thoughts and prayers are with the families, friends and those who have responded to this tragedy. May those who have died, except the nutter, RIP. May those who have been wounded recover well. This is going to reignite the debate on the US gun laws and again there will be lots of wringing of hands and words said but nothing substantive done. It is something that the US population in general is going to have to come to terms with one day, what is more important. Availability of and rights to use firearms or human lives, i.e., the individuals right to live as enshrined in the US Constitution.
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Post by suthg on Dec 15, 2012 8:37:28 GMT 12
Yes, very sad indeed. Sometimes I wonder what their legislation does for the general population. It certainly does not stop these errant crazy people slaughtering innocent victims.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 15, 2012 13:05:31 GMT 12
This latest mass-shooting in the gUnhappy States of America yet again shows up their ludicrous interpretation of an ammendment to the US Constitution, drafted in an era of the emerging republic, when the wording called on the right to keep and bear arms to maintain an effective militia. Of course the meaning has since been twisted and translated to maintain the right to keep and bear a semi-auto pistol fitted with 30 round magazine and laser sight, or the God given right to carry a loaded Kalashnikov* in your pickup truck (* delete whichever is non-applicable, insert assault weapon of choice at this point).
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Post by ams888 on Dec 15, 2012 13:09:00 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 15, 2012 14:03:16 GMT 12
Editorial: Death in ConnecticutTHE NEW YORK TIMES | Friday, December 14, 2012EACH SLAUGHTER of innocents seems to get more appalling. A high school. A college campus. A movie theater. People meeting their congresswoman. A shopping mall in Oregon, just this Tuesday. On Friday, an elementary school classroom.
People will want to know about the killer in Newtown, Connecticut. His background and his supposed motives. Did he show signs of violence? But what actually matters are the children. What are their names? What did they dream of becoming? Did they enjoy finger painting? Or tee ball?
All that is now torn away. There is no crime greater than violence against children, no sorrow greater than that of a parent who has lost a child, especially in this horrible way. Our hearts are broken for those parents who found out their children — little more than babies, really — were wounded or killed, and for those who agonized for hours before taking their traumatized children home.
President Obama said he had talked to Governor Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut and promised him the full resources of the federal government to investigate the killer and give succor to his victims. We have no doubt Mr. Obama will help in any way he can, for now, but what about addressing the problem of guns gone completely out of control, a problem that comes up each time a shooter opens fire on a roomful of people but then disappears again?
The assault weapons ban enacted under President Clinton was deficient and has expired. Mr. Obama talked about the need for “common sense” gun control after the movie theater slaughter in Aurora, Colorado, and he hinted during the campaign that he might support a new assault weapons ban, presumably if someone else introduced it.
Republicans will never do that, because they are mired in an ideology that opposes any gun control. After each tragedy, including this one, some people litter the Internet with grotesque suggestions that it would be better if everyone (kindergarten teachers?) were armed. Far too many Democrats also live in fear of the gun lobby and will not support an assault weapons ban, or a ban on high-capacity bullet clips, or any one of a half-dozen other sensible ideas.
Mr. Obama said Friday that “we have been through this too many times” and that “we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”
When will that day come? It did not come after the 1999 Columbine shooting, or the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, or the murders in Aurora last summer.
The more that we hear about gun control and nothing happens, the less we can believe it will ever come. Certainly, it will not unless Mr. Obama and Congressional leaders show the courage to make it happen.www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/opinion/death-in-connecticut.html
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Post by FlyingKiwi on Dec 15, 2012 18:13:25 GMT 12
I'm sure there will be people out there arguing that the solution is to give all school kids guns so they can defend themselves when this happens.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 15, 2012 21:14:54 GMT 12
From the Los Angeles Times....Let's get politics out of our gun lawsBy JOSePH SERNA | 1:53PM - Friday, December 14, 2012A young girl at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, after a shooting there Friday. — Photo: Melanie Stengel/Associated Press/December 14, 2012.IT SEEMS to happen so often now that everyone knows what’s to come.
The shooting, followed by identifying the victims, identifying the shooter or shooters, then asking why. The media coverage lasts days or weeks but rarely, if ever, months. That’s because the hardest questions take the longest to answer, and time after time, politicians are afraid to ask them.
What could have been done to stop this? Or what could be done to prevent these things from happenning again?
Perhaps nothing. Maybe the shooter was an upstanding citizen, sane by medical standards and legally permitted to own the weapons he used to kill 28 people, including 20 children, in Connecticut. Perhaps it’s a situation like the Virginia Tech shootings, where Seung-Hui Cho was mentally disturbed and managed to get guns to slay 32 people.
But asking lawmakers at the state and federal levels to look at their laws — asking if there’s anything that can or should be changed — is not political. To argue that looking at gun control now, after so many shootings, is wrong would suggest that what we have in place is perfect. Maybe it is, but if 20 dead children — many of them kindergartners — isn’t enough to make our leaders ask, “Is every law in place being enforced the way it should be, or is there something that should be changed?,” then what is?
President Obama fought back tears Friday afternoon when he discussed the shootings.
“This has happened too many times,” he said. “We’re going to have to come together … there needs to be some meaningful action, regardless of politics.”
Maybe there’s no clear answer, but the only way to know is if lawmakers are brave enough to ask the question.www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-connecticut-shooting-gun-control-20121214,0,5571470.story
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Post by Bruce on Dec 15, 2012 21:55:13 GMT 12
Lets not forget however that the ready availability of firearms is not the only issue that needs attention here. Why is it that young Americans seem to have this all consuming desire for violence and revenge? Why are they going off the rails? Violent video games etc may be one factor, but I don't think its that simple. When you look at the American love of litigation, "dont get mad, get even" and the whole culture associated with "being wronged" it is actually a worry. The US constitution has a clause that every citizen has a right to PURSUE Happiness, which has been taken to mean a right TO happiness, a very different thing. If you aren't happy with life, you have been wronged and have to seek revenge. We are fortunate in NZ to have a culture of community, and although relations between groups within that community are sometimes stressed, as a whole it isn't in our culture to take hostility to the level we have seen so many times in the US.
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Post by bell407 on Dec 15, 2012 22:28:04 GMT 12
I don't think guns are the issue in these cases, another site I go to had interesting stats that most if not all of the recent mass killers in the USA have been or were recently on medication for mental illness. One of the members of the forum used to be on the same type of meds and says he had dark thoughts of suicide and the urge to hurt people as soon as he started taking them and for a time after he stopped them.
Another interesting point was that the USA treats their mentally ill very differently to how we do here, it is a subject that most people do not talk about and there is a shame on those with any mental illness, they also claim that the cost of treatment prohibits most people from seeking help ether for themselves or for their family members. Possibly free or subsidized mental health care would be better, possibly redirect money they give to the UN and use those funds instead to look after their own.
So, as I said I think the larger issue at hand is the treatment and support of those suffering from mental illness. Not gun control, criminals and nutters will always find a way to kill, would the World be calling for car control if the last 30 mass killings were carried out by a mad man in a car smashing into kids crossing the road and randomly running people over like that nutter in the UK with his van?
These are all inanimate objects and have no evil power over people who come into contact with them, they do not cause crime and they do not make the people commit crimes, they are tools which are used to both conduct criminal activity and to defend against it, but one could just as effectively kill or maim with a car, golf club, knife anything, we don't blame drunk driving on the car, we blame the driver, not the tool, we don't say the tools built the house, we know a builder built the house, not his tools, we should not focus our efforts on the guns used in crimes, but rather the criminals who choose to misuse them and those with mental health issues as I'm certain this nimrod would have had, (Who else can look at little kids through their sites and pull the trigger but a broken individual?)
Just remember, of a country with a population of over 360 million and an estimated gun ownership of over 190 million 99% of legal gun owners in the USA do NOT use their guns for criminal purposes, unfortunately that does nothing to ease the pain and suffering of those caught up in these terrible and tragic events, and I hate that the little bodies aren't even cold yet and people are arguing about guns, these debates and any decisions made need to be objective and without emotion. It is too soon, everyone will be emotional regarding this horrible tragedy. Emotional law making is never good.
I do believe the only way to minimize damage done by these nut bags is for there to be armed people at the schools, either security or police or even better teachers, remember, the only people present during these massacres are the perpetrators and the victims, if there was an armed teacher or someone else there it is possible that they could have ended this idiot very soon into the carnage.
More laws are not the answer, criminals and nutters do not abide by the law, only the law abiding follow the law, unfortunately it is not the law abiding we have to worry about, it is those who choose to disregard the law, the proof in this is that all of these mass shootings have occurred in "gun free zones" places where it is against the law to have a gun, I mean if laws worked, surely there would be no murder at all, no drug dealing, no assault, but as I said, there are people who choose to disregard the law, these people can only be stopped with force, fight fire with fire. If making things illegal solves the issue then what is going on with drugs? Last I looked meth, crack, cocaine, etc. are all illegal and still all over the streets, rape and murder are illegal and still occur too often, we need to find the root of the cause and tackle from there, not the tools, they don't cause these crimes.
More restrictive gun laws will have zero impact on crime and on these shootings, the only people who will be hindered or affected by more gun control are the ones we don't need to worry about, the law abiding gun owners, as they are the only ones who will obey any laws but they are not the threat, the criminals and nut jobs are and they don't care about the law.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 17, 2012 22:31:53 GMT 12
From the Los Angeles Times....There's no safety in our vast numbers of gunsEven as the toll of violence mounts, Americans' love of firearms keeps growing and lawmakers remain cowed by the gun lobby.By STEVE LOPEZ | Sunday, December 16, 2012IN 2009, when I was trying to figure out why gun sales were so brisk, I visited a couple of gun shops in Riverside and Corona.
Back then, part of the reason people were arming themselves, they told me, was that President Obama had recently taken office, and they feared that he would crack down on gun ownership. A Riverside gun shop owner said he wasn't sure whether or not Obama was a Muslim, and if by chance someone took a shot at him, there could be rioting. People wanted to make sure they were armed and ready for war.
In Corona, another gun shop owner told me that "once private gun ownership is eliminated, there's nothing to stop the government from doing what it wants to do."
He seemed pretty sure we were headed in that direction, but gun ownership is never going to be eliminated in this country. We love guns. We have more than 300 million of them, which is nearly one for every man, woman and child. In 2010, nearly 5.5 million firearms were manufactured in this country, 95% of them for the U.S. market.
And our support for guns just keeps growing. In 1969, Gallup reported that 60% of Americans supported a ban on handguns. In 2011, a Gallup poll found that only 26% wanted a ban.
It doesn't matter how many thousands of lives are lost (between 2001 and 2010, about 270,000 U.S. residents died in shootings, including homicide, suicide and accidents). And it doesn't seem to matter how many mass killings there are, like the one Friday at the elementary school in Connecticut.
This year, there were mass killings at a mall in Oregon, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and a movie theater in Colorado.
We shudder at the horror, we call for prayer, we say something's got to be done, and then we move on.
In 2010, a week after U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was severely wounded and six people were killed by a shooter who fired 31 rounds into a Tucson crowd, thousands of people attended a Tucson gun show. Some of them purchased semiautomatic handguns like the one Jared Loughner used on Giffords and the others.
In this country, you can legally buy assault weapons. What does that say about us?
Think about it. We have a national legislative body that fears the clout of the National Rifle Association more than it worries about the consequences of allowing people to buy weapons designed for war.
There used to be a federal ban on assault weapons, but it died in 2004. And Congress has not found the will to reinstate it. On Friday, referring to Connecticut, President Obama said it was time for "meaningful action," but he didn't explain what he meant by that.
State Sen. Leland Yee (Democrats-San Francisco) used the Connecticut shooting to remind Californians on Friday that a gun control bill of his died this year in Sacramento. California has a ban on automatic weapons, and SB 249 would have closed a loophole that makes it possible for gun owners to use devices that allow weapons to be quickly and easily reloaded. But a legislative committee suggested the matter should be reviewed administratively, by the attorney general, rather than legislatively.
The gun lobby had pulled out all the heavy artillery against SB 249, which was supported by the California Medical Association and the California Nurses Association. Yee said he was flooded with racist, vulgar and derisive comments and caricatures, and that some of his critics told him to go back to China.
Yee told me he thinks most gun owners are responsible people who respect the power of their weapons and don't abuse that deadly potential. But in its zeal, he said, the gun lobby lets deadly weapons fall into the hands of less-responsible citizens.
"For God's sake," Yee pleaded, "how many people have to die before you come to your senses?"
I checked Friday with Annie Get Your Gun, the Corona shop I visited in 2009. Owner Jerry Fried told me sales are up about 35% this year over last, with customers buying firearms for home protection or recreational shooting. His wife, Annie, said it's been particularly brisk during the holiday season.
"People are buying Christmas gifts," said Annie, who noted a run on rifles.
I also dropped in to Turner's Outdoorsman in Pasadena. Several customers had taken numbers, like you do at a deli, and were waiting for their turn at the gun counter. A sign warned that it was the last day to buy a gun and have the paperwork completed before Christmas. I flipped through the store's holiday flier and counted 114 discounted guns, rifles and shotguns.
A shopper who declined to give his name said he was getting his wife a gun for Christmas, and that she'd be using it for recreational shooting. He hadn't heard about the massacre in Connecticut, but I told him a few details and asked if he thought the latest tragedy might bring new calls for more gun control.
"Whether a gun is legal or not, if bad guys want to get it, they'll get it," said the shopper. "You can legislate all you want, and it's not going to stop the bad guys."
I suspect he's right, but that doesn't mean we're helpless to do the things that might make us a little safer.
The vast majority of gun violence does not involve people with mental health issues. But when mental health services are in short supply for many people, guns are nearly as easy to buy as garden tools, and violence is used to sell music, movies and video games, the shocking thing is that we don't have more tragedies like Connecticut.
When I left the gun shop in Pasadena, I noticed that right next door is a place called My Gym, a children's fitness center.www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1216-lopez-guns-20121216,0,4562115.column
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 17, 2012 22:45:00 GMT 12
From the Los Angeles Times....It's time to target gun violenceAmericans should finally take action to protect our communities and children from high-powered weapons.By GEORGE SKELTON - Capitol Journal | 7:48PM - Sunday, December 16, 2012Assault rifles are on display at a Texas gun shop. — Photo: Associated Press.SACRAMENTO — It was a Christmas a very long time ago that my dad gave my brother and me our first guns. And a stern lecture.
Always assume the gun is loaded. Don't load it until you're ready to shoot. Never point it at anything you wouldn't want to hit. Don't touch the trigger until you want to fire.
The gun is a killing tool. Respect it.
He gave us Remington bolt-action, single-shot .22s.
Single shot, he said, so we'd learn to hit the target on the first trigger-squeeze. No wasting ammunition, spraying the field with carelessly aimed, dangerous lead.
And another thing: Always keep those guns clean. I grew up savoring the smell of gun solvent and delighting in the smooth gliding mechanisms, the beauty of the glistening steel, the handsome wooden stocks.
So I get it. I get the mystique of firearms and the emotional attachment to them.
What I don't get is anyone's need for — or obsession to possess — a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds. Neither do I get the objection to registering guns or licensing owners. Or requiring a license to buy ammunition, for that matter — not when a slight inconvenience could save lives.
Does anyone still think that the Nazis or Commies are going to march into America, grab the documents, seize all our weapons and occupy us? If so, these warped people really should not be allowed to own guns.
On that long-ago Christmas morning, living on our small orange ranch in rural Ojai, we could walk out behind the garage that also served as a packing shed, stack up some logs and fire away.
America — especially California — has changed dramatically since then. A lot fewer people today live where there's open space enough to shoot off weapons without endangering the family next door.
Ours was a hunting culture. We could drive a short distance in any direction to good quail habitat. Actually, my brother and I could walk to a covey or two.
Guns weren't especially thought of as protection, except perhaps for chasing off coyotes drooling over our free-ranging chickens.
Today, in suburban California, there are few hunting opportunities unless you belong to a distant, expensive club. Hunting is on the decline. In 1981, roughly 543,000 hunting licenses were sold in California. Last year, the number was 282,000.
While far fewer people are hunting, gun sales are soaring.
Last year, there were a record 601,000 state Justice Department background checks of gun buyers, according to the attorney general's office. Many buyers were purchasing multiple weapons. This year, the background checks are expected to total nearly 800,000.
What all that means is this: the broad support for healthy, recreational gun ownership that my generation grew up with has faded.
It has been replaced with a narrower gun worship based on a fear of other humans. And it's not complete paranoia. Too often powerful weapons are the instruments of some nut job seeking — who really knows? — a kind of revenge.
It's not healthy for any of us.
Much is different from that Christmas of decades past.
Movies then were not loaded with gratuitous violence. There weren't video games that glorified killing.
Hollywood and the entertainment industry can claim these have no affect on people's behavior, but that's nonsense. If video didn't influence conduct, marketers wouldn't advertise on TV. Theaters wouldn't run popcorn ads.
Nobody back then contemplated 30-round magazines. An assault weapon would have been considered an unnecessary squanderer of costly ammo.
Which brings us to the mowing down of 20 first-graders, four teachers, a psychologist and the principal at that suburban Connecticut school.
Besides the massacre, two little things particularly grated.
One was White House spokesman Jay Carney, in the hours after the mass killings, declaring that there'd be a day in the future to discuss strengthening gun controls, but "I don't think today is that day."
Yeah, well, it seemed like the logical day to me.
The other irritation was the common refrain among politicians and commentators that "No words are adequate."
No? How about: "This is unacceptable."
Thank you, President Obama, for saying that Sunday night. "We can't tolerate this any more," he told a memorial service. "We must change."
Slaughtering 6- and 7-year-olds at school. Christmas shoppers in a mall. Moviegoers in a theater. Mass killings — plain and simple — should not be regarded as acceptable in America, 2nd Amendment or not.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Democrats-California) put it this way Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press": "The [gun] rights of the few override the safety of the majority? I don't think so."
So what can be done about it?
Obama and Congress could start by reinstating the national assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. Feinstein, who sponsored the ban 1993, announced that she'd push it again next year.
Washington should also adopt the rest of California's toughest-in-the-nation gun control laws, including a magazine capacity of 10 rounds.
California's firearm mortality rate has declined to a new low and is lower than that in the rest of the nation, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Another thing that's unacceptable: The gun lobby claiming that gun controls don't — can't — work. Because if that's true, then we really need to start talking about amending the 2nd Amendment.
We're not going to arm little kids in their classrooms. Or their teachers. That's also unacceptable.
Keep up this gun violence and someday the only acceptable privately owned firearm will be a single-shot .22. It's still my favorite.www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cap-guns-20121217,0,1620009,full.column
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Post by bell407 on Dec 17, 2012 23:17:30 GMT 12
Unfortunately, I think arming the teachers who want to be armed, and training them is the only option, even if a gun ban came into affect tomorrow, there are still 300 million of them out there, it will take at least 100 years before these guns are worn out or no longer able to fire.
In my personal experience armed teachers are the only way to secure peace in a school, it was a necessity at my primary and my high school in South Africa and many children were kept safe because some teachers and parents were armed and able to stop a killer in his tracks, only happened a few times that I'm aware of, but it worked, then after a while the army was called in and for a few months we had fully armed troops walking the school grounds, guess what, not one person attempted to attack the school during that period, I reckon that's because the school was no longer a gun free, target rich environment, and the attackers knew they weren't the only ones with guns.
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Post by JDK on Dec 18, 2012 7:54:42 GMT 12
In my personal experience armed teachers are the only way to secure peace in a school, it was a necessity at my primary and my high school in South Africa... Thankfully, for most of us, neither South Africa nor the USA are norms for society or risk. Both my parents were teachers, and have taught in three countries - the idea of arming them horrifies me and would them, sorry. In my personal experience, a functioning civil society is the best defence of its citizens and society. Regards,
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Post by ngatimozart on Dec 18, 2012 11:35:23 GMT 12
In my personal experience armed teachers are the only way to secure peace in a school, it was a necessity at my primary and my high school in South Africa... Thankfully, for most of us, neither South Africa nor the USA are norms for society or risk. Both my parents were teachers, and have taught in three countries - the idea of arming them horrifies me and would them, sorry. In my personal experience, a functioning civil society is the best defence of its citizens and society. Regards, I agree too. Arming teachers is just going to exacerbate the problem. For example, IMHO, you'd have kids killed and wounded in the crossfire and are the teachers going to be sufficiently trained? No. Yes, JDK, a functioning civil society is the answer.
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Post by baronbeeza on Dec 18, 2012 13:09:34 GMT 12
for a few months we had fully armed troops walking the school grounds, Obviously to many here that is just unthinkable. It is a very sad state of affairs when any country looses all control of law and order to get to that point. I have lived and worked in many in Africa and while we may expect it from what are really 3rd world banana republics you would think a civilised country could do better. The US as a country has possibly been setting itself up for many of the domestic and international issues it finds itself confronted with. The politicians may need to look a little further than just gun control. Personally I cannot see a need to have access to such a number and type of weapons but it has to come back to the mentality of both the shooter and the environment. I am of the cowboys and indians generation... our kids games and general living environment seems so peaceful compared to the world we find ourselves in just a few decades later. Why can't everyone just get along with each other ? Perhaps that doesn't suit the arms industry. We made do with a bit of 3 x 1" wood.... no money in that these days.
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Post by ngatimozart on Dec 18, 2012 13:17:16 GMT 12
for a few months we had fully armed troops walking the school grounds, Obviously to many here that is just unthinkable. It is a very sad state of affairs when any country looses all control of law and order to get to that point. I have lived and worked in many in Africa and while we may expect it from what are really 3rd world banana republics you would think a civilised country could do better. The US as a country has possibly been setting itself up for many of the domestic and international issues it finds itself confronted with. The politicians may need to look a little further than just gun control. Personally I cannot see a need to have access to such a number and type of weapons but it has to come back to the mentality of both the shooter and the environment. I am of the cowboys and indians generation... our kids games and general living environment seems so peaceful to the world we find ourselves in just a few decades later. Why can't everyone just get with each other ? Perhaps that doesn't suit the arms industry. We made do with a bit of 3 x 1" wood.... no money in that these days. hear hear
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Post by JDK on Dec 18, 2012 13:46:34 GMT 12
I've travelled a fair amount in the US, and like most places, the view of it from overseas is both polarised and extreme; daily life for 'people like us' there is pretty familiar, overall. Not as we see it in the media. I've some very good American friends, from one extreme to the other in the gun issue in the US. The pro-gun conversation tends to be like an atheist vs an evangelical non-resolvable gulf of view.
I'd add that I've never felt any more at risk in the US that anywhere else, at times; but then I've been able to avoid 'the bad places' most countries I've visited. However it's notable that you don't have the more guns than people awareness in the background when in Canada.
But the gun issue is one reason we ruled the USA out as a place to live, and the increase in armed police in the UK was one reason I found the UK less advantageous as a place to live as well.
Just a few personal thoughts.
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Post by corsair67 on Dec 18, 2012 13:56:21 GMT 12
Kentucky, 12/15/2014: Teachers at Lee Harvey Oswald Memorial High School prepare to break up a playground fight that broke out between the nerds and the football jocks at 12.45pm this afternoon.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 18, 2012 20:05:01 GMT 12
From the Los Angeles Times....Newtown's martyred children and the cold hearts of the gun lobbyBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Monday, December 17, 2012Shooting of Newtown's children steals innocent joys of Christmas. — Cartoon: David Horsey/Los Angeles Times/December 16, 2012.I CHOKED UP repeatedly while watching and reading the stories about the slaughter of the innocents in Newtown, Connecticut, and, throughout the mournful weekend, I pondered the question raised by everyone from stricken parents to mayors and senators on the news talk shows: What will be done to prevent similar sick-minded gun rampages in the future?
My early conclusion: Nothing.
Narrow political interests and the perplexing nature of the crime make inaction nearly certain. This has proved true after the 15 other multiple-shooting rampages of 2012, and it has been the case with all the other terrible incidents in past years. Yes, this time the tender age of most of the victims makes it especially horrific, but, though many hearts have been broken, the cold hearts at the headquarters of the National Rifle Assn. remain in deep freeze.
Even as the children of Newtown are laid to rest, the leaders of the NRA will not soften their absolutist stance for unfettered access to all types of firearms and, as a result, neither will the majority of Republicans in Congress who are in their thrall. Chances are slim-to-none that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will take rational steps toward managing the millions of guns in America, such as banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips, as well as requiring background checks for all gun sales. Gun policy in the United States will continue to be dictated by extremists whose paranoid fear of black U.N. helicopters and the federal government far exceeds their concern about the shooting deaths of school kids or moviegoers or Christmas shoppers at a mall.
These 2nd Amendment zealots will argue that Connecticut’s comparatively strict firearms laws did nothing to stop the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and they will be right, but maybe that means the laws should be more strict. The guns that Adam Lanza took with him to shoot down 6- and 7-year-olds and their teachers were purchased legally by the first of his victims, his mother. Lanza’s primary weapon was his mom’s assault rifle, but I expect pro-gun folks to talk as if he could have done equal damage with a baseball bat. Every proposed limit will be treated as an assault on freedom. Even the experience of Australia, where no mass shootings have occurred since very tough firearms laws were passed in 1996, is already being discounted on gun-rights websites.
Attention will be steered away from guns toward other pertinent issues — most prominently, the adequacy of mental health treatment in the United States. Cuts to state and federal mental health budgets will be decried. But mass shooters are generally not people who have been enrolled in treatment programs, nor do they come from among the mumbling, delusional street vagrants who wander our city streets. Most often, they simply walk out of dorm rooms or their parents’ basements with guns blazing. What are we to do when evil is so anonymous and unpredictable? Can we lock up every brooding loner in America? Can we demand a 911 call from every parent with a sullen boy holed up in his bedroom?
How about putting well-armed police officers in every school in America? Would that help? And after the schools are secured, what about the shopping malls and movie theaters and college campuses? Should they too be turned into armed fortresses? How much liberty must we all give up to protect the freedom of those who want to amass an arsenal?
A tearful President Obama has said it is time to take “meaningful action,” but that is far easier said than done when there is so little will to make a cure for this plague a national priority. Perhaps the photographs of Newtown’s dead children should be displayed prominently at every congressional hearing, at every community gathering, at every NRA meeting called to deal with this issue. Broken hearts may open closed minds.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-martyred-children-20121216,0,7369909.story
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 18, 2012 20:31:31 GMT 12
Editorial: Gun laws wreak high costThe Dominion Post | 5:00AM - Tuesday, 18 December 2012NOT SINCE loner with a grudge ran amok in the Scottish town of Dunblane in 1996 has a senseless act of violence caused as much distress as Friday's shooting in a Connecticut primary school.
The horror on the face of the normally restrained United States President Barack Obama as he offered his condolences to the families of the dead was mirrored in homes around the world. The shooting of twenty 6- and 7-year-olds and seven adults by 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza was an incomprehensible act. Apart from his mother, there is no suggestion that Lanza knew his victims.
The killing spree, just the latest in a long line of such incidents, highlights again the lunacy of American gun laws. (It also highlights the risks New Zealand runs by continuing to permit ownership of military-style semi-automatic weapons that serve no useful purpose.)
More Americans die of gunshot wounds in the US every six months than have died in the past 25 years in terrorist attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. An attachment to an outdated amendment to the US Constitution and a powerful gun lobby are putting Americans in peril.
Two-hundred years ago in a patchily policed frontier society uncertain of its place in the world, the right to bear arms — the second amendment — was a necessary evil. Citizens had a right to defend themselves and their hard-won freedoms.
Today, however, that right is a historical anomaly. Statistics show guns present a greater danger to their owners than those they are intended to protect them against. Not that the gun lobby would ever admit that. It has responded to the Connecticut shooting in the same way as it has responded to every other gun massacre — by attempting to deflect responsibility towards others.
The National Rifle Association has yet to comment, but the Gun Owners Association, which represents 300,000 gun enthusiasts, says the fault for the killings lies not with lax gun controls but with lawmakers who have banned guns from schools in Connecticut and most other states.
"Had a few of us been available with guns at the Newtown school, most of the victims might still be alive," wrote Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt.
Mr Pratt is as ignorant as he is insensitive. Stationing gun-toting volunteers at every school would not only be impractical, it would increase the risk to students and teachers.
The gun lobby is no better able to vouch for the sanity of its members than it is able to vouch for their judgment. Lanza was taught to shoot by his mother, a gun enthusiast who was the legally registered owner of the handguns and semi-automatic rifle he used to conduct his killing spree.
Had it been more difficult for her to obtain weapons, not only might she still be alive, so might 20 young children and their teachers.
Several of the latter sacrificed their lives to give their charges a chance to escape. Their extraordinary bravery deserves to be commemorated with changes that tackle the root cause of the problem, not industry spin.www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/editorials/8091049/Editorial-Gun-laws-wreak-high-cost
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