Our current lack of health insurance for all is a national disgrace. But so are our handgun laws -- or lack of them.
You'd think you might have heard a bit more about our heedless national pistolero mentality in the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the tragic shootings at Fort Hood this week. But no such luck. How many times have we seen this movie before? It's only the locations that change.
There was only scant mention in all the coverage that suspected mass murderer Nidal Hasan had bought his lethal cop-killer handgun at "Guns Galore" in nearby Killeen, Texas. How charming.
Why is it that comic Stephen Colbert seems to be the only one on national TV who regularly reminds us about this country's twisted love of handguns? (Colbert keeps his piece, "Sweetness," under his anchor desk, occasionally taking it out to smooch its barrel).
Something I've written in my newspaper columns about for years bears repeating here:
Any country with as many mentally ill people as the U.S. that allows virtually unlimited access to handguns is on a suicide mission.
Gun sickness is our most pressing national illness.
I live within sight of the Canadian border, and Americans who visit Canada are often surprised at how serious Canadian customs officials regard guns -- specifically, bringing them into relatively handgun-free Canada. Where are these people's priorities, they seem to be saying?
(Note: Canadian customs can -- and does -- turn people back at the border who have a DUI conviction. Again, different national priorities).
Canadians recognize handguns as a direct threat to civilized society, unlike here, where the NRA and the gun-toters evidently believe we're living in Tombstone, Ariz., circa 1885.
How many more mass shootings and troubled-loner gun sprees (what the New York Post calls "Slayfests") can we afford before we finally get serious about gun control? How much longer will network TV news continue to soft-peddle and play down this most basic issue?
I don't really care that much about what drove Hasan to apparently murder all those soldiers, which has been the prime focus of nonstop cable news. The fact is, he did. What I DO care about is how easy it was for him to get the means -- a lethal gun -- to do it.
Not to belabor the Canadian issue -- we Americans are, after all, the noisy, gun-toting downstairs neighbors -- but re-entering the U.S. after living in Canada for several years (which we did) was a maddening experience.
We lived a major metropolitan area, Montreal, for seven years. And even in the more disadvantaged parts of that city, you feel safe. You never feel you might get shot, either by a handgun-toting robber or a troubled loner.
Coming back into the United States you lose that peace of mind. It's like a slap in the face.
Don't believe me? Ask anyone else who's lived in a developed country in which handguns are restricted and can't be bought as easily as cigarettes.
We have millions of sick Americans who need health insurance. But there are even more of us who live in danger of being shot by an easy-to-obtain weapon. It's way past time for the media to pay attention to THIS life and death issue.
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David A. Love: The Real Red Flag Raised By Fort Hood
As a repository for violence, the military is not dealing with untreated mental illness among its ranks. The fact that Hasan was a mental health professional underscores the problem.
Carol Smaldino: Veteran's Day Special: Coming Down to Earth with "Occupation: Dreamland"
The massacre at Fort Hood is a stark reminder of the need to guard against becoming numb against the horrors our soldiers face in war. Fortunately, the film "Occupation: Dreamland" fills that void.
OK, so how's that well-regulated militia unit you're part of working out for you?
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed".
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" is a dependent clause, it can't stand without the sentence "The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed". The Supreme court ruled as much in Heller vs DC.
Everyone who isn't a convicted felon has a right to own a handgun, if you don't like it, move back to Canada, or better yet, the UK.
One more thing, there have been killing sprees with knives.
On June 8, 2008, a man killed seven and wounded ten in the Akihabara district of Tokyo.
Also in Japan on the same date in 2001, a man with a history of mental illness killed eight children and wounded fifteen students and teachers in the city of Osaka.
According to the logic of the liberals posting comments about this story, the Japanese aren't sane enough to own metal knives.
Your view, the same one that many of your readers share, says volumes about the way liberals think, they down upon others as a mob needing to be controlled and restrained.
Common mistake. It is not a clause at all. It is a phrase. Clauses have subjects and predicates. Predicates have finite verbs (AKA action verbs). "being necessary to the security of a free state" is a participial phrase modifying the noun phrase "a well regulated militia". Together they create an absolute phrase. Absolute phrases stand outside the grammar of the main clause and do not modify the subject of the clause; instead they act adverbially in a non-restrictive fashion to apply to the entire clause. As such, the first thirteen words of the 2nd Amendment do not create or restrict the right to keep and bear arms, but rather show an important reason why the right shall not be infringed.
Da mn, Sam! Are you sure you weren't a grammer teacher in another life???
Old SF MJT
Handgun Crowd Returns Fire Post Fort Hood -- No Surprise Here
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mann/handgun-crowd-returns-fir_b_354049.html
There seems to be a double standard around here. It would be nice if WE were allowed to take the gloves off, but that will never happen.
Some people have no idea what the word 'liberal' means.
We have a lack of handgun laws? What does that mean, it's not illegal to own a handgun?
Ever hear of NICS?
I live in NJ. There are enough gun laws here to choke a horse. This doesn't seem to have any effect in places like Camden (twice voted 'most dangerous city in the US), Trenton, Newark, and a half dozen other NJ cities, where you wouldn't be caught dead in broad daylight, let alone after dark.
Jersey's laws are working quite well and saving many lives.
An analysis of homicides committed with the use of firearms is useful only if there exists interest in reducing the number of homicides committed with firearms without concern as to whether homicides are instead committed with other implements.
Do you believe it preferable for individuals to be murdered through the use of implements other than firearms?
You just can't rap around the fact that the states I mentioned (AL, PA, KY) have large rural populations where law enforcement response time is lengthy and those populations need a way to protect themselves, as your own stats prove. Stop trying to compare NJ to the rest of the nation when it's like comparing an egg (NJ) to an elephant (AL) just based on the land mass and cop per square mile.
Interestingly the gun death rate is highest in some of the most regulated places i.e. Chicago, Washington D.C. New York City had more gun deaths than almost all the states cited above and it has major restrictions on guns.
Guns don't kill people people kill people. It's like global warming, you don't know all the facts but have your mind made up.
BTW, my own grandmother was shot to death long before I was born when my mom was 15. Her mother's boyfriend shot her and then shot himself. This was in the 30s, so this has been a huge problem in our society for a really long time. If he hadn't had a gun, I think all our lives could have been a lot different.
As far as I'm concerned, far too many Americans are just nuts and all these guns floating around are just obviously a HUGE problem! Is it worth the anxiety to enable anyone to own a gun? I don't think so!
Exactly. One problem. The gangbangers down the street didn't buy their guns legally. They didn't go to a gun store, or go through a background check. They buy stolen guns. No checks, and they don't have to pay retail.
Gun laws don't have much effect on people who constantly break the law (aka criminals).
"If he hadn't had a gun, I think all our lives could have been a lot different."
What about knives in the kitchen? should those be banned to? Obviously, I'm not trying to make light of your grandmother's death, and I believe murder in all forms to be a horrible thing, but I don't believe you're being intellectually honest here. Guns are not bad, people are bad.
I'm not sure where you live, but where I live in St. Louis, Missouri--consistently voted one of the most violent cities in the country--I have absolutely zero fear of getting "shot by some gang member just driving down the street." I know it may come as a shock to you, but gang members don't just drive around city streets picking off random bystanders (not to mention, if they did, you'd have a much better chance of survival armed with a gun as opposed to a cell phone with a 9-1-1 speed dial).
I'm not trying to get guns outlawed, I realize that's impossible with current attitudes. I just wish people would take some sort of a peace vow and be part of the solution. The fewer guns there are, the fewer people will be killed by them, and that's the truth.
I rest my case.
The fact is, this guy had a religious/ideological/psychological beef with people and likely would have done serious damage with or without a gun. He could just as easily have built a bomb and killed the same number of people.
The whole "cop-killer" thing makes me laugh. Anyone familiar with firearms will tell you that the 5.7mm is significantly less lethal than the more common 9mm or other larger caliber handgun loads. Its a bit of a gimmicky gun designed to penetrate body armor (with very specific ammunition) in a small and lightweight package. But aside from that feature, it's little different than a .22 magnum, which is really a round to hunt rodents. Any gun is lethal enough if aimed in the right spot or if you hit something with enough bullets. In all likelihood, the large death toll probably resulted from (1) a large, concentrated number of unarmed targets, (2) his carrying lots of ammunition, and (3) the probability that many servicemembers tried to charge him instead of running away as civilians do.
First, I agree that the Fort Hood could have done "a lot of damage" with or without a gun. But do you really think he could have killed or severely injured 43 (!!) people with a knife, before someone could stop him?
Second, it is untrue that handguns are as common or as easy to get in my country as in yours. There are no franchises of Guns Galore in my country. I wouldn't even know where to buy such a weapon. That is pure fantasy.
The difference is the U.S. has more guns than any nation on earth and the weakest gun laws, BY FAR, of any industrialized democracy.
The result, astronomically high gun death rates, is predictable and will not change till the NRA is run out of Washington.
We do have far more guns than any other industrialized Democracy, but that's a direct result of having far more PEOPLE than any other industrialized Democracy. Switzerland has more guns per capita, and they're guns of a type that are illegal for Americans to own.
Our gun death rates are also in no way "astronomical". They are, however, deceptive. Conflating murders, suicides, and even self-defense shootings into a single statistic renders that statistic meaningless.
Nice try with the typical gun control mongering.
"soldiers are already trained to use firearms to kill people."
Yes, and that's what makes a deranged soldier do dangerous. The DC sniper, who was executed tonight, was a veteran of the First Gulf War. Most of the worst mass murderers in US history have been war veterans or active soldiers. Live by the gun, die by the gun.
Yeah, that's worked great for America up to this point.