Friday, December 21, 2012

guns, Guns, GUns, GUNs, GUNS!

Some time has passed now since the horrific massacre of students and teachers in Connecticut.  This brought out the discussion on guns and what we need to do to start curbing some of the incredible gun violence that goes on every day in America.  

Gun suicides (nearly 19,000 a year in the U.S.) outnumber gun murders (more than 11,000), and a gun in the home increases the risk that someone in the home will commit suicide. The reason is that suicide attempts with pills or razors often fail; with guns, they succeed. When Israel moved to have many soldiers store guns on base rather than at home, its military suicide rates plunged.
With the passage of time, we realize that our friends on the right are incapable of having an adult conversation about anything much less guns.  Prime examples being here, here and here.  We even have people wanting to arm everyone, although anyone who says that is also not serious about this debate!

There are others on the right who also like to turn it into a straw man argument about the left wanting to repeal the second amendment, and that is also ridiculous.   The 2nd amendment is already limited!  


Immediately after the shootings, the cowards at the National Rifle Association(NRA) immediately went silent, even shutting down their facebook page.   After a few days, they issued a generic press release wanting in on the debate.   Which is a major improvement from Columbine when shortly after that horrible incident, the NRA held a party near by where this was the head of the NRA's famous distasteful quote:


Nice, so it would also be wise to limit the input of the NRA, unfortunately they have alot of money to give to people like we have been discussing who then do as they are told and muddy the waters.  

The problem is, we are shooting each other all too often and it has nothing to do with "protecting ourselves". 

A Florida man defended his decision to shoot an impatient pizza customer over the weekend, citing the state’s infamous “Stand Your Ground” law.
Michael Jock, a 52-year-old resident of St. Petersburg, was standing in line behind 49-year-old Randall White at a local Little Caesars on Sunday when Jock grew angry over White’s complaints about the speed of service. The two began to shove one another, prompting Jock to pull out a .38 Taurus Ultralight Special Revolver that had been concealed on his person and fire twice, hitting White both times in the lower torso.

Let's also never forget Bo Morrison

As William Rivers Pitt writes in TruthOut, guns are big business and its killing us!


An 11-year old boy in Utah brought a .22 pistol to school with him on Tuesday. His parents apparently gave it to him "for protection" in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre. His teacher found out he had it after he put the gun to the head of a classmate at recess and threatened to kill her.

Only two weeks ago, on December 4th, 11 people were shot in one night in Chicago, but that news barely jiggled the wires, because at the time everyone was encompassing the murder-suicide perpetrated by NFL player Jovan Belcher, who shot his girlfriend to death in front of her mother before killing himself in front of his coaches in a parking lot. At the time, everyone said it was terrible, something that really makes you think, and Bob Costas went so far as to lament the deadly nature of America's gun culture during the national broadcast of a football game. He was roundly attacked for speaking out of turn, for "not having all the facts," and for generally intruding upon everyone's enjoyment of the game.

Between 2003 and 2010, 247,131 Americans died of gunshot wounds. Since 1982, there have been more than 60 mass shootings in America. In almost every case, the weapons used were obtained legally. The number of households with guns has been declining, with a few upticks here and there, since 1990, and yet gun sales went through the roof in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, which means more people aren't buying guns, but the people who buy guns are buying more of them.

The gun business in America is booming, despite the decline in households that own guns. As the Washington Post glibly noted this week, "The U.S. gun industry has been one of the brightest spots in the U.S. economy in recent years, even through the recent downturn. This year, it racked up $11.7 billion in sales and $992 million in profits, according to the research firm IBISWorld." Almost 17 million people applied for a background check to purchase a gun in 2012. More than 156 million people have applied since 1998.

Now that every state but Illinois has CCW and 17 million people are applying to purchase guns, is it too late to let everyone know that carrying a gun does not keep you safer?





 Let's hope that Joe Biden can hear better from his left side than his right! 









1 comment:

  1. Well, in a surprise to no one, Wayne LaPierre took the gun industry's dick out of his mouth long enough to blame the massive gun carnage in this country on everything except guns. Not that I was expecting anything different, I guess. I just don't know how these people can be so tone deaf. Silly me.

    ReplyDelete