Yes, there's something terribly wrong and it's much deeper than easy access to guns

at least once a day, i read something that gets my blood boiling and i often think, gee, maybe i ought to post that on the blog... yeah, right... i don't seem to be getting very far on that one...

well, today, when i read the latest horribly superficial and denial-ridden analysis of the latest in the never-ending parade of mass-slaughter incidents in my country, i simply couldn't let it go unchallenged... and, yep, you guessed it, almost the entire focus was on easy access to guns...

summing up steven rosenfeld via alternet...

...access to guns exacerbates violence...

well, yes, i don't think there's any doubt about that but where, ferchrissake, is the discussion of where all that damn violence is coming from...? but, ya know, that's not all such hard a question to answer... all it takes is opening your eyes and looking around... 

in the u.s., violence permeates the very air we breathe... it's in the movies, in sports, on television, seeded all through popular music, is the theme for countless widely played video games, on and on... the look, the feel, the attitude of barely suppressed violence struts around our streets with shaved heads, tattoos, piercings, male and female, in the malls, in the bars, and, yes, even on the playground... and i don't need to go into all the details of where and how violence manifests itself because it's visible everywhere...

i go to the gym several times a week as i'm sure some of you do too... general gym protocol seems to require loud rock music playing in the background... i'm not anti rock music to be sure but i'm appalled at how much of it involves anger, yelling, screaming, and implied if not outright violence... in-your-face aggression is more often than not the norm...

then there's the utter militarization of our society... fighting in endless wars, local police departments equipped like special operations hit squads, "support our troops" stickers, themes, and celebrations everywhere, assassinations by drone, u.s. military support to some of the most repressive and violent regimes on the planet...

i won't even mention income inequality better suited to a failed state, mass incarceration, stratospheric student debt, structural unemployment, and starving retirees...

in short, anyone who thinks that gun controls will fix anything is sadly mistaken and is only confusing the symptom with the cause... we have a very, very sick society, my friends, and, if denial about anything needs to be faced, it is that...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Now, HERE's an idea I can get behind - getting rid of toy guns

symbolic gesture or not, this makes sense to me... i've never been able to stifle my distaste for toy guns and, yes, you gamers out there, controllers on those violent video and computer games are directly analogous to guns...

Venezuela calls on children to lay down toy weapons in exchange for toys.

The toy exchange program comes at a time when the homicide rate in Venezuela has tripled in less than 10 years.

Deborah Lutterbeck reports.

SOUNDBITE: National Crime Prevention Director Edwin Rojas, saying (Spanish):
"This is an activity intended to give a lesson: we are exchanging toys of a belligerent nature, toys that have a violent connotation, for educational toys or sporting goods. We're fundamentally hoping to facilitate and make parents and their families aware that violence is often generated through the stimulation provoked by violent toys."

"the stimulation provoked by violent toys"... < profmarcus pauses to adjust his tin-foil hat > why do you think violent toys are so prevalent...? hmmmmmmm...?

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Stats to make you proud - NOT!

i would be both ashamed and embarrassed to share this with my friends in other countries...

The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.

U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said.

"There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people," it said.

what is it about guns...? i honestly do not get it...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

A European view: 240m guns in America, considerably more than there are adults

oh, yes, let's not question the right to bear arms, any arms, regardless of destructive power... after all, the business of america is business, and there's no bigger business in the world than the u.s. arms and defense industry...

Cho Seung-hui does not stand for America's students, any more than Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris did when they slaughtered 13 of their fellow high-school students at Columbine in 1999. Such disturbed people exist in every society. The difference, as everyone knows but no one in authority was saying this week, is that in America such individuals have easy access to weapons of terrible destructive power. Cho killed his victims with two guns, one of them a Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistol, a rapid-fire weapon that is available only to police in virtually every other country, but which can legally be bought over the counter in thousands of gun-shops in America. There are estimated to be some 240m guns in America, considerably more than there are adults, and around a third of them are handguns, easy to conceal and use. Had powerful guns not been available to him, the deranged Cho would have killed fewer people, and perhaps none at all.

[...]

More bleakly terrible is America's annual harvest of gun deaths that are not mass murders: some 14,000 routine killings committed in 2005 with guns, to which must be added 16,000 suicides by firearm and 650 fatal accidents (2004 figures). Many of these, especially the suicides, would have happened anyway: but guns make them much easier. Since the killing of John Kennedy in 1963, more Americans have died by American gunfire than perished on foreign battlefields in the whole of the 20th century. In 2005 more than 400 children were murdered with guns.

< listens for comments from our elected representatives and hears only crickets chirping >

several readers, writing to germany's der spiegel, capture my thoughts exactly...

franziska müller from mörlenbach

Those who live in a functioning democracy shouldn't need weapons...

stefan schmitt...

It's too bad, that a great country like America has been led astray by its government and a few starry-eyed, foolhardy people.

georg addison...

Every act of violence should be condemned to the fullest. In Iraq dozens of people die every day through acts of terror. Where is the outrage from the US government and the population? In Africa people die from civil war, sickness, thirst and hunger -- where is the outrage from the US citizens? I love the USA, but their president, Mr. Bush has ruined the country's good reputation.

thorsten schnittke...

America has lost touch with reality...

volker lauterbach...

[W]hat constantly astonishes us is the vehemence with which the right to own a gun, even after such a crime, is defended. The arguments that are constantly produced (people, not guns, kill people) disguise the fact that it is people with guns who kill people.

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Allowing guns in schools is total raging wingnut insanity

reading this kind of serious mental derangement makes me crazy...

"The latest school shooting at Virginia Tech demands an immediate end to the gun-free zone law," Gun Owners of America president Larry Pratt said in an e-mail. "It is irresponsibly dangerous to tell citizens that they may not have guns at schools."

or this...

The murder of innocent victims is a disgrace, and our condolences go out to those who have lost loved ones in the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech.

More than one year before Monday's unprecedented shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, the state's General Assembly quashed a bill that would have given qualified college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus. Could one legally armed citizen have made a difference at this tragic event?

We also need to ask the question: Do laws prohibiting firearms in certain places really prevent homicidal tragedies?

There is a striking paradox associated with mass murders. They are far more likely to occur in areas that have been designated as gun-free zones.

i have never owned a gun nor have i ever considered owning a gun... even the sight of guns makes me deeply uncomfortable... while i respect the 2d amendment, i have no tolerance for arguments in favor of gun ownership... the fact that anyone would WANT to own one, with the sole exception of hunters, eludes me... i don't advocate a prohibition on gun ownership, but this notion of everyone carrying a gun, to me, is evidence of a deeply diseased society, and i want no part of it...

(thanks to think progress...)

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

"Arm friends, attack enemies and rely on violence rather than dialogue" - facing the truth about Blacksburg

buried on page A19 of today's wapo...

Officials, newspaper columnists and citizens around the world Tuesday described the Virginia Tech massacre as the tragic reflection of an America that fosters violence at home and abroad, even as it attempts to dictate behavior to the rest of the world.

From European countries with strict gun-control laws to war-ravaged Iraq, where dozens of people are killed in shootings and bombings each day, foreigners and their news media used the university attack to condemn what they depicted as U.S. policies to arm friends, attack enemies and rely on violence rather than dialogue to settle disputes.

when you read and listen to all the incredibly shallow spoutings that are taking place in the u.s. about monday's horror at virginia tech and then read what the rest of the world is thinking, it's more clear than ever just how terribly sick our country is... look at this from argentina, which, from first-hand experience i can assure you, is not a paragon of national peace and serenity...

"Massacre in the Paradise of Weapons," declared the headline in the Buenos Aires daily newspaper Pagina/12. In an accompanying article, Dario Kosovsky of the Argentine Network for Disarmament said he believes students who commit mass murder are following the example of the U.S. government, which advocates "the use of violence to achieve liberty."

Pagina/12, 17 April 2007, front page

The headline reads, "The American Nightmare." The cartoon has Bush saying, "In light of what's happened in Virginia, we recommend that people don't go to the University." The article listed under the photo says, "Living in an Armed Society."

now that we have at long last entered a serious national debate on iraq, look at what a wonderful opportunity the terrible carnage at blacksburg provides us to move that debate to a level of serious national self-relection...

"It is a little incident if we compare it with the disasters that have happened in Iraq," said Ranya Riyad, 19, a college student in Baghdad. "We are dying every day."

"They are always saying that the Arabs and Muslims are behind the terrorism and the killing," said Hussein Kadhum, 26, a traffic policeman in the heavily Shiite city of Najaf, south of Baghdad. "But America has terrorism and they are exporting it to us. We did not have this violence in the Saddam era because the law was so tough on guns."

will we take advantage of this opportunity...? i think the answer is readily apparent to anyone who has followed the ceaseless television and newspaper coverage of monday's rampage...

on a poster he did for earth day in 1970 the late walt kelly's cartoon character pogo said it best...

....

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments