Weak Gun Control Laws Show America is Crazy, Numb to Violence
By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
Wanna get fired up?
Check out the Chat Room and its four disparate views on the gun control debate. I most closely agree with Tom Mauser, who came by his credentials the hardest way imaginable—he lost a son at the Columbine slaughter 10 years ago. He writes about America's inconceivable numbness to mass gun slayings.
What he says is all too true: If 25 people are slaughtered all at once by a lone gunman, the event may stay in the news cycle for a couple of days—maybe longer if the victims are children. But if a gunman slays one or two adults at a holdup in an inner-city neighborhood, it merits minimal coverage in local news outlets these days. How have we become so inured to gun violence that it takes a mass killing to grab our attention? He writes:
Gun violence has become our domestic terrorism. We lose nearly 11,000 to gun homicide each year, and three times that number are injured. But that's not enough to stir most Americans into action.
Too many Americans are influenced by the excuses and slick clichés of the gun lobby. You've heard them all—"Guns don't kill people, people kill people"; "One more gun law won't make a difference." But excuses and clichés don't solve problems. Meanwhile, the gun lobby just keeps offering up the same, tired old solutions: more guns, no new gun laws, fewer gun restrictions, and more punishment. We've been there and done that, yet still have a shameful gun violence problem.
Bravo, Tom Mauser. I was in England in 1998 when two U.S. Capitol policemen were slaughtered by a gunman who snuck inside the Capitol building with a weapon and opened fire. A British TV correspondent reporting from the scene said that not even this unthinkable crime would prompt Americans to increase gun control laws (implying that in England, where gun ownership is much more restricted, such a crime would lead to even tougher regulations). We sit idly by while the gun lobby lulls Americans into ignoring the rising cacophony of gunfire ricocheting through cities and towns, across school yards, to the hilltops and beyond. Other countries watch us and think we're crazy, because, guess what, we are!
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Tags: guns | lobbying | crime | law
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Reader Comments
the second amendment wasn't to have a gun to defend ourselves from ordinary criminals
The point of the second amendment is not so law abiding citizens can defend themselves from everyday robbers and rapists, and gangsters. No the second amendment was made so that the government cannot become totalitarian and rob us of our freedoms.
Mardi of XX says that you can do a lot more damage with a gun than you can with you bare hands, this is not true, if i grabbed your head with my bear hands and smashed it repeatedly into a brick wall, it would do more damage than any gun with the exception of a 50 cal rifle perhaps. guns only make the job faster and easier, they make a person irresistible.
this is why a gov't loves its people to be unarmed. it makes them irresistible, 100 soldiers with guns are able to make a mob of 5000 or more citizens drop to submission. if the mob or 5000 civilians went up against the 100 soldiers however, they would stand a good chance. (btw, the total us population vs. the number of people in the U.S. military is about 1000 to five, including all women and children, and liberals.)
do guns contribute to crime and how drastic the crimes are? maybe. i personally believe that if a person didn't have a gun, he would just use a knife, and if they didn't have a knife, they would use a pipe or crow bar. if someone has evil intentions, they will find a way to carry them out.
but enough about using guns to defend urself from everyday criminals everyone! the second amendment makes it possible to defend ourselves from the criminals and liars that run our government, dem, GOP, lib, ind, and any other party alike.
How stupid are you?
I'm an Australian and can not believe that the US has not brought in tougher gun laws. For those of you that have commented on the crime rate increasing in Australia since we changed our gun laws, I can tell you that any increase is not from the gun laws changing. It is from increase in population and the changing of society. The increase in crime here has not been dramatic. Very few Australians own guns unlike the US. Australia is a hell of a lot safer country than the US.
For those of you who say it's not the gun that kills people but the person behind the gun. Well it is the gun that kills people. Someone could not do the same damage to one person with their bare hands compared to what they can do with a gun. Also we will never be able to totally control people with mental health issues and people that are emotionally unstable, but you can control those people getting hold of a weopon that can kill someone. How many of your children need to die before you will wake up to yourselves?
As a child I saw the US as our big sister country. If we ever got in trouble we would have the US to protect us. You were our friends and allies.
You have disappointed me so much. Use your heads, be the country you should be.
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