In today's New York Times, Bob Herbert writes:
According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, more than a million people have been killed with guns in the United States since 1968, when Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were killed. That figure includes suicides and accidental deaths. But homicides, deliberate killings, are a perennial scourge, and not just with guns.To read the rest, click here.
Excluding the people killed in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, more than 150,000 Americans have been murdered since the beginning of the 21st century. This endlessly proliferating parade of death, which does not spare women or children, ought to make our knees go weak. But we never even notice most of the killings. Homicide is white noise in this society.
The overwhelming majority of the people who claim to be so outraged by last weekend’s shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others — six of them fatally — will take absolutely no steps, none whatsoever, to prevent a similar tragedy in the future. And similar tragedies are coming as surely as the sun makes its daily appearance over the eastern horizon because this is an American ritual: the mowing down of the innocents.
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10 comments:
Glock sales are apparently booming--gun buyers are afraid that they'll be taken off the market.
We live in a really sick society.
I don't think the fact that guns are being sold in this country is the root of the problem. Violence is a social problem. Where there are no guns, there is knife violence. The people who seem to have most of the guns in this country are crooks and the government. If cops can have guns, the common people should have access to guns. Democrats seem to protect the state by taking the guns out of our hands - though on a lot of other issues they seem to be protecting social liberties. Through the constitution we're guaranteed the right to bear arms and form militias to keep the government accountable and overthrow any unjust leaders (not that we've exercised this right, because we still believe voting makes a difference and the institutions are happy that we do) - but instead guns are being used to hurt innocent people.
Yes, statistics (wherever those come from) show that there are lower murder rates in countries with stricter gun control laws - but it would be fallacious to assume that there is a direct correlation between high murder rates and more lenient gun control laws in the United States. There's greater income inequality (they scored far worse on the gini index) in the US than Australia or the UK where there are very strict gun control laws and lower murder rates overall. I think it's a bit more complex than simply makin' it harder for someone to buy a gun in this country. Gangsters will always have their glocks, regardless of the laws.
I don't believe that a mentally unstable person should have access to a gun. It should really fall upon the gun dealers responsibilities to make sure messed up people don't use their guns to hurt people (or buy the guns in the first place). I don't think the rest of us should be punished and have our rights revoked (like always) because of situations like these.
I think a better solution would be to make gun dealers more responsible in who they give guns out to by holding them accountable for the tragedies that may ensue, and to practice gun safety in this country. Everyone should know how to safely handle a gun - or accidents can (and do) happen.
And if there are people desperate enough to take action like that young man did (and we believe the media when they tell us that this 22 year old took these people out... another argument), maybe someone should have been paying attention and reaching out to people like that. Social programs at schools that talk about violence or anger issues could probably make those angry kids feel less lost, and less alone - and maybe they won't end up feeling like they have to go out and kill people. Will stricter gun control really fix the problem, or are we just treating a symptom? You know where I stand.
I'll end it with a quote: "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."
-S.
I dunno - a Glock with an extended magazine - 33 rounds - versus a knife?
Gimme the knife.
Maybe the nine-year-old would still be alive.
(PS - he bought the ammo at Walmart.)
3:52, you attribute crude correlative arguments to those who advocate greater restrictions on gun availability. The “gun control” crowd need not use such arguments; hence you are simply committing a straw man fallacy.
No doubt it is difficult sorting out cause and effect in this regard, if one seeks anything approaching certainty or even high probability. But, given the pattern of gun violence and gun availability in the industrialized world, the burden of proof is not on those who seek gun control; surely it is on those who resist it. We are awash in gun violence in this country. That is not true elsewhere.
Perhaps you will appeal to the 2nd Amendment. I have always found that to be a weak appeal, given the history and nature of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. (Any three-fifters out there?) There is no reason whatsoever to suppose that it is a core value of this nation that citizens should be allowed to be armed to the extent that, say, police are. Such talk is nonsense.
You write, “If cops can have guns, the common people should have access to guns.” This is a bald assertion. It requires some sort of rationale, but you seem to provide none. What could the rationale possibly be? There are numerous nations where, generally, citizens do not have access to guns, police do, and things seem to work out just fine.
The gun control crowd has common sense on its side. You people have at most tradition. Some traditions need to change or be eliminated. Gun availability is clearly such a tradition.
As Eddie Izzard said, to the argument that "guns don't kill people; people kill people"--well, the gun helps, doesn't it? It isn't the noise they make.
I find it interesting that the rhetoric has automatically turned again to the gun control issue instead of finding a way to render psychiatric help to mentally ill individuals. Unfortunately, we live in a society that has a very negative view of mental illness even though it seems like every other commercial is touting psychotropic drugs these days. It's apparently okay to be depressed or suffer from anxiety, but most people have no understanding of what life is like for people who suffer from more serious illnesses such as schizophrenia or bi-polar disorders. We would be much better served as a society if we invested the money, time and energy spent on the gun control issue into psychiatric services for those that need it. Nineteen million dollars is a lot of money (this is what has been spent on lobbying by both sides since 1989).
I don't think banning guns entirely is the answer and with the political clout/money that the NRA has invested in the Republican party, it will never happen anyway.
I have personal experience with guns because I grew up in a hunting family and was a member of the NRA for many years. My family took gun safety very seriously and I was required to take a hunter's safety course when I was 14. Hunting may seem like a frivolous "tradition" or hobby to many, but for my family, it put food on the table. What we shot, we ate. So, I do not feel that it is fair or right to take guns away from the populace as a whole because of the misguided actions of a small portion of the population.
The problem is that it is all or nothing when it comes to gun control. One side wants to take them away entirely and the other side wants no limitations whatsoever. I think reasonable regulations are justifiable. I am in favor of waiting periods because someone needing a gun right away probably does not have good intentions. I think there should be better screening of people before they are allowed to purchase a gun. How to balance privacy issues is an issue here. Certainly a person who had been institutionalized should have been flagged against being able to purchase a gun or ammunition. And, don't get me started on assault weapons.
2:55, comments have focused on "gun control" largely because of 3:52's absurd commentary, which cried out for rebuttal. Contrary to your assumptions, 2:55, many of us "gun control" types fully support reforms in the care of the mentally ill. Some of us are old enough to remember how things got to this sorry state: it was during the Reagan Administration. We were told that, were the state to stop caring for the mentally ill, private entities would take up the slack. Well, it didn't happen, just as we predicted. We need to reverse that great and shameful Reagan error, the spilling of the mentally ill out into the streets, cared for by no one.
It's not one issue or the other - it's both - or more - combined. Sheesh.
I should have been more clear, I wasn't referring solely to the comments on the blog, but to what I have been seeing on the news and internet sources.
I am also irritated by the threatening language that has been spouting from the mouths of prominent politicians and their supporters lately, comments such as “Don’t retreat, reload” and the like. So, if people don't agree with you, you have the right to enforce your opinion in a violent way? Great, just great. It shows such a disregard for human life and then these same people turn around and then vehemently oppose abortion. It doesn't make sense to me.
I did not know that about the change in mental health care during the Reagan administration. I was buying unicorn stickers when Reagan was president, so not really focusing on political issues at that time. :-)
Yes, and unicorn stickers are the other reason that things suck as they do. --BvT
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