Denis Smith, retired from the Ohio Department of Education and now a freelance thinker and writer, opines on the language that is commonly used to describe a mass shooting.
Republicans offer their “thoughts and prayers.”
Democrats want to talk about gun control.
In the meantime, we will have to settle for thoughts and prayers, as American stockpile more guns for the next incident when a good man with a gun is ready to stop a bad man with a gun (except it didn’t happen in Las Vegas, since the gunman was 32 stories high in a hotel), and it didn’t happen in Texas, where gun possession is legal for everyone except the shooter, who had been given a bad conduct discharge from the Air Force for his violent behavior.
To understand guns and violence in the U.S. from an international perspective, look here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The N.Y. Times ran a piece showing who the Congressional recipients of the NRA’s largess were (see excerpt below). The tops of the Senate and House lists were overwhelmingly Republicans. (Why am I not surprised?) Interestingly these are people you could ordinarily count on for an anti-gun law vote, but when the NRA is putting up bills to allow the mentally ill to buy guns, you have to lock down every vote.
“All of these representatives are Republican. The highest ranked Democrat in the House is Sanford Bishop, who ranks 41st in career donations from the N.R.A. Among the top 100 House recipients, 95 are Republican. In the Senate, the top two Democrats are Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who rank 52nd and 53rd — behind every Republican but Dan Sullivan of Alaska.”
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From The Onion:
https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1820163660
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Don’t know much about “we” — the language I use in response to mass shootings these days can’t be used in this forum but the gist of it is that people can take their Thoughts And Prayers (TAPs) and shove them where the ☀️ don’t shine, because that is where their 👥 are at …
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I am getting sick of, “warm thoughts and prayers” wherever there is another mass shooting.
Something can be done to stop these murders and ‘warm thoughts and prayers’ doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Trump sends ‘warm thoughts and prayers’ whenever the killing is done by a white person.
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Unless we change the politics in this country, we will continue to say the same pathetic things at the end of a mass shooting. We have to vote for those that will support sensible gun laws.
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Thoughts and prayers don’t change anything
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yup
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So well said, Jon. My feelings exactly.
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A discouraging sentence from the linked Vox article: “That helps explain why Americans’ support for the right to own guns appears to be rising over the past 20 years even as more of these mass shootings make it to the news.” If a huge chunk of the American population values guns more than human lives, nothing ever will be done. To end this madness, it will take a huge upheaval from the general population to say enough is enough. Ban these assault rifles, ban semi-automatics, make it harder to buy guns, limit the ammunition capacity of the guns. If I had my way, I would repeal the 2nd amendment and ban all guns but hunting rifles. In reality, we can’t even ban bump stocks (which are selling briskly) let alone semi automatic assault style rifles. Now after this latest church massacre, the pro gun people are hyping the fact that two good guys with guns stopped the maniac from killing more people. We still have 26 humans (men, woman, children, toddlers and a fetus) who were butchered with bullets and 20 more with grievous injuries. In a matter of a few minutes this maniac managed to shoot almost 50 people. So we should do nothing and just depend on some good guy with a gun?! This is the formula for total insanity and continuing massacres. I feel like a stranger in a foreign land when it comes to guns. I don’t get why guns are more important than humans.
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Every time there is a mass murder, gun sales go up.
If I were a tourist in another country, I would avoid the US. Too dangerous.
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I remember reading years ago about a doctor in Cambodia who survived by pretending that he was a peasant. He had to watch is wife suffering during childbirth because if he showed any medical knowledge both of them would have been killed. He came to the US and was killed on the streets of California by someone with a gun.
How horrible to have survived the Khmer Rouge and then be killed here.
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A few of my friends who used to love to vacation in the U.S. now no longer even consider it. Two reasons: they fear a country that could elect someone like our Dear Leader and do nothing about gun violence. My wish would be for doctors and scientists from other nations to start boycotting medical conventions. That would have a noticeable economic impact. Imagine a convention that normally has 20,000 attendees with only 12,000.
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Every time that politicians start mouthing off about “gun control”, which is really a code for “gun confiscation”, weapons and ammunition sales increase. When Obama was elected, gun stores did a “land office business”, and ammunition factories ran around the clock. A gun store owner, I know (Huntsville ALA), had a six-month back order on ammunition. He posted a 4×6 poster of Obama in his store, because Obama was his best salesman.
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What Explains U.S. Mass Shootings? International Comparisons Suggest an Answer
The Interpreter
By MAX FISHER and JOSH KELLER NOV. 7, 2017
The top-line numbers suggest a correlation that, on further investigation, grows only clearer.
Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the global population but own 42 percent of the world’s guns. From 1966 to 2012, 31 percent of the gunmen in mass shootings worldwide were American, according to a 2015 study by Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama.
A 2015 study estimated that only 4 percent of American gun deaths could be attributed to mental health issues. And Mr. Lankford, in an email, said countries with high suicide rates tended to have low rates of mass shootings — the opposite of what you would expect if mental health problems correlated with mass shootings.
Whether a population plays more or fewer video games also appears to have no impact. Americans are no more likely to play video games than people in any other developed country.
Racial diversity or other factors associated with social cohesion also show little correlation with gun deaths. Among European countries, there is little association between immigration or other diversity metrics and the rates of gun murders or mass shootings.
America’s gun homicide rate was 33 per million people in 2009, far exceeding the average among developed countries. In Canada and Britain, it was 5 per million and 0.7 per million, respectively, which also corresponds with differences in gun ownership.
Americans sometimes see this as an expression of deeper problems with crime, a notion ingrained, in part, by a series of films portraying urban gang violence in the early 1990s. But the United States is not actually more prone to crime than other developed countries, according to a landmark 1999 study by Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins of the University of California, Berkeley.
Rather, they found, in data that has since been repeatedly confirmed, that American crime is simply more lethal. A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process.
They concluded that the discrepancy, like so many other anomalies of American violence, came down to guns.
More gun ownership corresponds with more gun murders across virtually every axis: among developed countries, among American states, among American towns and cities and when controlling for crime rates. And gun control legislation tends to reduce gun murders, according to a recent analysis of 130 studies from 10 countries.
Skeptics of gun control sometimes point to a 2016 study. From 2000 and 2014, it found, the United States death rate by mass shooting was 1.5 per one million people. The rate was 1.7 in Switzerland and 3.4 in Finland, suggesting American mass shootings were not actually so common.
But the same study found that the United States had 133 mass shootings. Finland had only two, which killed 18 people, and Switzerland had one, which killed 14. In short, isolated incidents. So while mass shootings can happen anywhere, they are only a matter of routine in the United States.
As with any crime, the underlying risk is impossible to fully erase. Any individual can snap or become entranced by a violent ideology. What is different is the likelihood that this will lead to mass murder.
In China, about a dozen seemingly random attacks on schoolchildren killed 25 people between 2010 and 2012. Most used knives; none used a gun.
By contrast, in this same window, the United States experienced five of its deadliest mass shootings, which killed 78 people. Scaled by population, the American attacks were 12 times as deadly.
In 2013, American gun-related deaths included 21,175 suicides, 11,208 homicides and 505 deaths caused by an accidental discharge. That same year in Japan, a country with one-third America’s population, guns were involved in only 13 deaths.
This means an American is about 300 times more likely to die by gun homicide or accident than a Japanese person. America’s gun ownership rate is 150 times as high as Japan’s. That gap between 150 and 300 shows that gun ownership statistics alone do not explain what makes America different.
The United States also has some of the world’s weakest controls over who may buy a gun and what sorts of guns may be owned.
Switzerland has the second-highest gun ownership rate of any developed country, about half that of the United States. Its gun homicide rate in 2004 was 7.7 per million people — unusually high, in keeping with the relationship between gun ownership and murders, but still a fraction of the rate in the United States.
Swiss gun laws are more stringent, setting a higher bar for securing and keeping a license, for selling guns and for the types of guns that can be owned. Such laws reflect more than just tighter restrictions. They imply a different way of thinking about guns, as something that citizens must affirmatively earn the right to own.
The United States is one of only three countries, along with Mexico and Guatemala, that begin with the opposite assumption: that people have an inherent right to own guns….
“In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate,” Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”
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Quote from article: “A 2015 study estimated that only 4 percent of American gun deaths could be attributed to mental health issues. And Mr. Lankford, in an email, said countries with high suicide rates tended to have low rates of mass shootings — the opposite of what you would expect if mental health problems correlated with mass shootings.”
……………………………….
Trump: Texas shooting result of ‘mental health problem’
Tokyo (CNN)President Donald Trump said Monday that he believes the Texas church shooting was caused by a “mental health problem,” not an issue with gun laws in the United States.
“Mental health is your problem here,” Trump said, noting that “based on preliminary reports” the shooter was “a very deranged individual.”
“This isn’t a guns situation,” Trump said. “This is a mental health problem at the highest level. It’s a very, very sad event.”
“A very, very sad event, but that’s the way I view it,” Trump said.
Check out this story on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/05/politics/trump-texas-shooting-act-evil/index.html
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Trump is a poorly informed mental midget that talks a lot and says many incorrect things.
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How about things like this that occur?
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Honolulu Star-Advertiser
ACLU of Hawaii warns residents traveling to Texas
Star-Advertiser staff
May 9, 2017
Updated May 10, 2017 7:44am
“Hawaiʻi residents traveling to Texas need to be prepared for illegal harassment and racial profiling by local authorities when they get there,” said Mateo Caballero, legal director of the ACLU of Hawaii in the press release. “Hawaii is the most diverse state in the U.S. and we pride ourselves on the multitude of cultures represented on our islands. It is a sad day when we feel it necessary to advise our residents that it is precisely that diversity that makes them vulnerable to racial profiling and constitutional violations if they travel to Texas.”
http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/05/09/breaking-news/aclu-of-hawaii-says-residents-should-beware-if-traveling-to-texas/
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Hundreds of people from Honolulu were standing on the sidewalk with signs that read, “Welcome to Kenya.” This was for Trump’s benefit as he was stopping over on his way to Japan. The people wanted to remind him of the whole birther charade Trump carried out under Obama.
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retired teacher, loved the sign, “Welcome to Kenya”. Seth Meyers does a comical take on it.
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Trump Travels to Asia as Russia Probe Escalates: A Closer Look
Late Night with Seth Meyers
Published on Nov 6, 2017
Seth takes a closer look at how Trump can’t seem to escape the escalating Russia investigation, even when he is abroad in Asia.
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I hope somebody explained this to Mr. Trump: chances are he thought Kenya was located somewhere out there on the way to Japan…
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I think foreign tourists should be warned about gun violence in the US and given a list of states where it is legal for anyone to carry a gun.
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Bahrain, Bermuda, and the United Arab Emirates have all issued warnings about travel to the US in response to the many reports of police officers shooting unarmed people of color
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I used to work for the US State Department. When a person from a country, for which the USA requires a visa, makes the application, the applicant can make any inquiry, relevant to his visit. If a particular area is especially dangerous, the traveler is provided with appropriate warnings.
In 1980, in the Miami area, foreign tourists were being targeted by gangs. Anyone with a rental-car license plate was in danger. Foreign tourists received appropriate warnings.
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I rented a car in Miami during the 80’s after the license plates had been changed so as to not advertise they were from rental cars. At least, I read that the plates were changed.
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With every new mass shooting, I’m increasingly convinced that there is literally no amount of slaughter that would cause Republicans in the Senate and the House to consider meaningful new gun regulations.
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FLERP! Unfortunately, I don’t believe there are many Democrats in Congress who would support gun regulations either. There are just too many people in this country who LOVE and demand more and more guns. The NRA has control of Congress and people are buying the idea that they need guns for protection. The NRA spreads fear and people are buying into whatever the NRA says.
Facts don’t matter. The more guns, the more killings. Guns do kill people. It’s stupid to believe otherwise.
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There are some Democrats (not many) who support gun rights, and are living up to their oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. see http://dailysignal.com/2016/02/18/four-pro-gun-senate-democrats-silent-on-voting-for-obamas-supreme-court-nominee/
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There is one can’t say it.
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@Flerp: Politicians are more afraid of getting “slaughtered” at the polls, when they are up for re-election, than they are afraid of Americans getting slaughtered. Most (not all) gun owners vote, and they vote for politicians who support gun rights.
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This is in an email from the White House. I can always count on something stupid to come from the WH.
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And Rich Lowry of the New York Post remarks the two by-standers, Stephen Willeford and Johnnie Langendorff, who chased down and confronted the shooter, show that in many parts of the country, “a gun isn’t an optional extra layer of self-protection, but a necessary first defense.” Ultimately it was the sharp shooting of Willeford and the selfless act of risking life and limb of both men that stopped the killer before he could do more harm.
The White House info@mail.whitehouse.gov
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Guess what? Contrary to the NRA, guns do kill people. Here is proof.
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The news of the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history is heartbreaking and it is terrifying that two of the deadliest mass shooting incidents in modern U.S. history occurred in the last 37 days.
58 killed – October 1, 2017 – Las Vegas, Nevada
49 killed – June 12, 2016 –Orlando, Florida
32 killed – April 16, 2007- Blacksburg, Virginia
26 killed – December 14, 2012 – Newtown, Connecticut
26 killed – November 5, 2017 – Sutherland Springs, Texas
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Stating that guns kill people, is like stating that pencils misspell words.
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Charles,
Isn’t it great about the Democratic sweep in Virginia?
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Isn’t it also wonderful that hand grenades, tanks, drones, AK-15 rifles, bazookas (what are they?), and all the creative inventions made by corporations supporting the military never kill anyone? Wow. I think you’re on to something. Doesn’t make sense but keep thinking it and maybe someday we’ll all be glad that ‘guns don’t kill people”. Seriously doubt that. There are just too many dead lying all over the world. Too many of them are in the US and we’re not actively fighting a war on US ground.
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As a person who has lived under communism, and in an Islamic kingdom, I celebrate all elections. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others” -Winston Churchill
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Nice comment, Charles. Gracious in victory and defeat.
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@Carol: A bazooka, is a shoulder-held, portable, recoilless rocket launcher. They were first used in WW2. They are the first hand-held weapon that could destroy a tank. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazooka
And the AK-47, is an automatic rifle (machine gun). The initials stand for Automatic Kalishnikov (the inventor), and the year of the invention, 1947. see https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=_RADWqirC8aYmQG9zIiACg&q=ak-47&oq=ak-47&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i67k1j0l9.1009.2281.0.2472.6.5.0.0.0.0.167.587.1j4.5.0..2..0…1.1.64.psy-ab..1.5.586.0..35i39k1j0i131k1j0i20i264k1.0.mETIrP6teCE
I lived in Mozambique, the AK-47 is on the national flag.
Both of these weapons are illegal to be owned by private citizens in the USA.
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People pull triggers. Guns shoot bullets. Bullets kill people.
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I don’t know the answer, but I know criminals, wannabe criminals, thugs, gangsters, and people who want to kill will guns, will find on the black market, guns and magazines with which to kill, rob, traumatize. Have you seen the buybacks? $X.XX for your gun; and people turn them in, they do. Then, they go out and buy another gun, no? There is no reason on this earth for anyone to have 15 magazines with 400 bullets (is that math right?) – and seriously, unless you’re some sort of historic collector and your munitions are under glass, what is the need for more than 1 gun? I don’t believe in disarming Americans; if the government disarms us, what is next? Trump already fancies himself a dictator – perhaps he’d like to disarm citizens? I don’t know. I guess it should be harder for a hunter to get more than 1 rifle, and should not be able to purchase anything that makes it a semi-automatic – and if people buy a gun, certainly they don’t need more than one, or hundreds of bullets. Then again, take away the right to bear arms, and criminals and nutcases are going to get them anyhow. What is the solution?
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Anybody who is found in possession of a functional semi automatic weapon after a weapons buy back will spend 20 yrs in prison. You think that would take a huge number of these weapons off of the street.
Just dreaming this is the dumb ass country.
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“What is the solution?”
We already did it here in Australia way back in 1996. Not a single mass shooting since then. Plenty of evidence to back up the actions that the then government took.
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Thank you, Mr. Perry. Of course. But Americans need to hear this. We’re not a terribly well educated country, and people will believe any kind of nonsense they are fed by our politicians, who are wind-up toys for the deep-pocketed gun lobby
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Northam wins big .
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Here’s the langauge I use for all the pols who support the NRA and automatic weapons:
#^&^)**@(#&!!? You!
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Very good. You have a way with words and the message came through bright and clear.
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Politicians do not support the NRA. The NRA supports politicians who favor gun rights, with donations. You have it backwards.
The NRA (and other individuals and groups) provide many millions of dollars to support politicians, who keep their constitutional pledge to support the 2d amendment.
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Good grief. Trump admits that he never knew there were so many countries. If someone is that stupid the last thing you should do is announce it to the world. Didn’t he ever look at a world map? (I wonder if he can find the US and Puerto Rico. After all there is that big water surrounding us.)
Of course, he has to speak about himself.
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Trump’s Global Ignorance on Display: We Have 13,000 Gun Murders a Year; Japan Has Almost None @alternet
Donald Trump’s excellent Asian adventure continued on Monday in Japan with more demonstrations of his impressive knowledge of world affairs. At a state banquet he spoke about his close relationship with the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
He explained, “So my relationship with Shinzo got off to quite a rocky start because I never ran for office, and here I am. But I never ran, so I wasn’t very experienced and after I had won, everybody was calling me from all over the world.
“I never knew we had so many countries.”
The Japanese are a stoical people who do not often display uncontrolled emotion. One can only imagine imagine what they thought of that inane little admission. Apparently, Trump hadn’t even looked at a world map before he was elected president at the age of 70…
As Michael Daly at the Daily Beast reported, 13,286 people were shot and killed in the United States in 2015. (That’s not counting suicide, which would more than double that number.) In Japan there was one…
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-ignorance-mass-shootings#.WgMLEedv4Eg.gmail
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We could learn about gun. Control from Japan and Australia and other countries that want to protect the lives of their citizens:
As Michael Daly at the Daily Beast reported, 13,286 people were shot and killed in the United States in 2015. (That’s not counting suicide, which would more than double that number.) In Japan there was one…
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-ignorance-mass-shootings#.WgMLEedv4Eg.gmail
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We can also take some lessons from Switzerland. see https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/bearing-arms_how-gun-loving-switzerland-regulates-its-firearms/43573832
Almost 25% of Swiss citizens own at least one firearm, many Swiss keep military style weapons (without ammunition) in their homes. Switzerland has much fewer homicides, per capita, than the USA. And not even Hitler would mess with the Swiss.
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Switzerland has the second-highest gun ownership rate of any developed country, about half that of the United States. Its gun homicide rate in 2004 was 7.7 per million people — unusually high, in keeping with the relationship between gun ownership and murders, but still a fraction of the rate in the United States.
Swiss gun laws are more stringent, setting a higher bar for securing and keeping a license, for selling guns and for the types of guns that can be owned. Such laws reflect more than just tighter restrictions. They imply a different way of thinking about guns, as something that citizens must affirmatively earn the right to own.
The United States is one of only three countries, along with Mexico and Guatemala, that begin with the opposite assumption: that people have an inherent right to own guns….
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Our nation does not believe that any rights are “earned”. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are inalienable; furthermore none of these rights, nor any other right is earned. And none are provided by government. Governments are created to protect and secure our rights.
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Our government is not protecting or securing our right to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ when it allows gun owners to kill whenever they decide it is time. Mass murders of innocent people should never become routine. However, it happens so often now that it becomes, “just another one”. When the owning of guns becomes more important than the useless killing of children then our society is sick.
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I just read Thom Hartmann’s blog and am repeating it. I believe it shows just how much “freedom’ we have.
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Thom’s blog
You Are Not Free If You Can’t Afford Healthcare
Is America more free because we can have guns?
I would say that there are a lot of countries that are more free than we are.
I think it’s really important to just lay it out that this whole freedom thing that Republicans are always talking about, what they’re talking about is the freedom of billionaire polluters to pollute, the freedom of billionaire banksters to rip us off, the freedom of the fossil fuel industry to poison our planet, perhaps even leading to the death of our species.
Those are the freedoms that they’re talking about.
Now, if you want to talk about freedom for actual average people in the United States, you’re not free if you’re sick and you can’t get health care or you can’t afford to pay for it.
You’re not free if you’re working full time and you can’t afford to even pay your damn rent. That’s not freedom, that’s a form of bondage.
You’re not free if you’re constantly living in fear that somebody’s going to pop up and shoot you.
There are so many dimensions of America where we are not free compared with the other developed countries in the world, where they don’t have gun violence problems, where everybody does have national healthcare, where everybody does have a guaranteed pension retirement program.
And I think it’s really important to note that.
-Thom
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Q Our government is not protecting or securing our right to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ when it allows gun owners to kill whenever they decide it is time. END Q
Since when does our government permit such activity? Last I heard, killing was illegal.
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The government allows these killings to proceed because Congress and our current president refuse to pass meaningful gun laws. Every wacko, even mentally ill ones, are now free to purchase guns. Statistics prove that the more guns that are available, the more killings that happen. The US is loaded with guns and that is why we have the most mass killings of any country.
So, the government is allowing killings by doing nothing. Nobody is safe when they are in church, at movies, at school or attending a concert. This type of behavior is not what is happening in other countries unless they are at war.
Australia no longer has mass killings. As I said before, when the love of guns becomes more important that children’s lives, this is a sick society.
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Did you read this?
“The NRA was furious in the 1990s when CDC-funded research confirmed that having a gun in the home increases the risk of homicide. In 1996, the NRA pushed its lackeys in Congress to take away $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget – the same amount the CDC spent on gun violence research the previous year. That was the same year Congress passed the Dickey Amendment that prohibited federal funding from being used to “advocate or promote gun control.”
Our government is prohibiting research that proves owning guns increases deaths.
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“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
-Ben Frannklin
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That ridiculous. Giving up the ‘freedom’ to be killed by a gun is in no way correlated to giving up liberty.
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Why isn’t this banned? It is the weapon of choice for mass murderers and serves no other purpose.
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Diane Feinstein, the wacko senator from California, who used to carry a gun herself, has come out (again) with a list of the types of weapons she wants the government to ban. Where is her oath, to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution?
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Should every citizen has his or her own bazooka or shoulder fired missile?
Why not?
Are we all part of a “well-regulated militia?” That’s what the 2nd Amendment calls for.
“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.”
Was Devin Patrick Kelly (Texas church massacre) part of a well-regulated militia?
Was Stephen Paddock (Las Vegas massacre) part of a well-regulated militia?
Was Dylann Roof (Charleston church massacre) part of a well-regulated militia?
Was Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook massacre) part of the same well-regulated militia?
I feel certain that the Founding Fathers did not want every wacko in the Colonies to be armed. They wanted a “well regulated militia.”
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See the militia act of 1903. It defines the militia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Act_of_1903
We keep going around and around on this. See also Heller v. District of Columbia (2008) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
In the Heller case, the SCOTUS ruled that the 2d amendment, conveys and protects the right of INDIVIDUALS (the people) to keep and bear arms. The amendment has two(2) clauses, protecting the rights of the militia, and the people.
None of the individual cited were part of a militia.
And there is no right for individuals to own the types of weapons you describe.
I cannot speak for the framers. But their reasoning, in protecting individual and collective rights, is self-explanatory. Individuals on the frontier needed deadly weapons for defense against hostile armies. In 1792, there were hostile British in Canada. hostile Spanish in Florida, and still hostile French troops west of the Mississippi, because the USA had not yet purchased the Louisiana territory. Also, there was danger of Indian raids, and people needed weapons to hunt.
I can be reasonably certain, that in 1792, no one wanted mentally ill people to have deadly weapons (Meriwether Lewis committed suicide with a pistol).
Nevertheless, the right to keep and bear arms, for both individuals and the militia, was front and center for all of them Bravo.
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Note bene:
We no longer live on the frontier. The only people we have to fear are crazies with guns, like Dylann Roof, Stephen Paddock, Adam Lanza, and Devin Kelly. Poster boys for gun control.
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Agreed, it is not 1792, and there is no danger of invasion from Spanish Florida. Nevertheless, We have every reason to fear violence from armed criminals, such as the individuals you have in your roster.
We agree, that individuals like these persons, are dangerous.
Since you are in favor of disarming law-abiding citizens, how do you propose that citizens protect themselves from armed crazies with guns?
I am all ears.
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Take away their guns.
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Why is the NRA so afraid of research? There has been a gap in research for 20 years ever since research by the CDC found confirming evidence that a gun in the home increases the risk of death.
Massive killings and tragic gun deaths happen in this country on a daily basis. The killings are happening more and more frequently and the NRA pushes more and more fear so that more and more people buy more guns. They are an arm of gun manufacturers and are always looking our for the next fear to push. This doesn’t happen in countries that have decent gun control laws.
As I said before, when the lives of children become less important than owning a gun, the US has crossed a line. This is a sick society. Mexico and Guatemala are the only other countries in the world that allow everyone to own a gun. Guatemala has a problem with kidnappings of wealthy children. School busses have windows darkened and an armed car follows each school bus so that children can get home.
Is this the future you want for the US? The NRA is keeping the public from getting knowledge about the scale of gun violence and what works best to prevent it.
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Thom Hartmann makes a good point in his recent blog.
“The Republicans will never ever speak out against pollution because the donor class is making money on that, against guns because the donor class is making money on that, against the obscene profits the pharmaceutical industry is making because the Republican donor class is making money off that.”
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Stating that bullets kill people, is like stating that photographic film takes pictures.
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Very bad analogy. The purpose of bullets is to kill. People are not killed by cameras.
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My analogy is spot-on. Bullets are used to kill (people, animals, and also in target shooting). Photographic film is used to take photographs.
Both bullets and film are useless, without a human being to load the bullets or the human being to load the film.
You cannot blame killing on bullets, nor photographic film for pictures.
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Q Take away their guns. END Q
Please define your antecedent. Do you propose taking weapons away from the crazies, or from the law-abiding citizens, or from both?
There are people who wish to register and confiscate all weapons from all citizens, leaving only law enforcement and the military in possession of firearms.
Where do you stand?
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The NIH [National Institutes of Health]must fund gun violence research
Gun violence kills an average of 93 people a day in the United States. It is a public health crisis, but because of the National Rifle Association’s extremism, most doctors and researchers cannot treat it as one.
In 1996, the NRA successfully pressured Congress to pass the Dickey Amendment, which effectively banned federal funding for gun violence research, first at the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) and then at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).1
After the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, at the urging of President Obama, the NIH began to fund some gun violence research.2 But it stopped in January. NIH leaders need to know that people across the country are counting on them to stand up to the NRA and the extremist Republicans who do their bidding in Washington and start funding gun violence research again.
Tell the National Institutes of Health: Renew funding to research the public health crisis caused by gun violence.
The NRA was furious in the 1990s when CDC-funded research confirmed that having a gun in the home increases the risk of homicide. In 1996, the NRA pushed its lackeys in Congress to take away $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget – the same amount the CDC spent on gun violence research the previous year.3That was the same year Congress passed the Dickey Amendment that prohibited federal funding from being used to “advocate or promote gun control.”4
While the language of the amendment does not explicitly defund all gun violence research, it has effectively shut it down. Since then, researchers have been so afraid of doing work that could be ineligible for federal funding that there has essentially been a 20-year halt on gun violence research. This gap in research at a time when tragic gun deaths are happening on a daily basis means that public policy is informed more by the NRA’s dangerous and extreme rhetoric than real knowledge about the scale of gun violence, its causes and what works best to prevent it.
Progressive champion Sen. Elizabeth Warren, along with her colleagues Sens. Chris Murphy and Catherine Cortez Masto, recently led 24 of her Democratic colleagues in urging the NIH to renew the funding opportunities it opened in 2012.5 While the tragic massacre earlier this month in Las Vegas has focused attention on the gun violence epidemic, now is the time to help amplify their call.
Thank you for standing up to the NRA.
Michael Hiltzik, “The NRA has blocked gun violence research for 20 years. Let’s end its stranglehold on science.” Los Angeles Times, June 14, 2016.
Miles Korhrman and Kate Masters, “The NIH Is Finding Ways to Tip-Toe Around Congress’s Restrictions on Gun Violence Research,” The Trace, April 7, 2016.
Ibid
Marissa Fessenden, “Why So Few Scientists Are Studying the Causes of Gun Violence,” Smithsonian, July 13, 2015.
Emily S
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This came out from Thom Hartmann’s blog. The top 20 politicians who received money from the NRA are Republicans. Paul Ryan received $171,000. [No wonder he’s pro-gun.] Thom gives a realistic way to regulate guns. Cars kill people and they are regulated. Read his suggestion.
……
…But the gun industry has the power through the NRA to buy legislators, now that the Supreme Court has said that it is okay for an industry to own individual politicians, the power to own Ted Cruz – they gave him $360,000, Marco Rubio got $176,000 – this is just the top 20 recipients of the gun lobby from last year.
Marco Rubio $176,000, Paul Ryan $171,000, Ron Johnson $165,000, Rand Paul $155,000, Pat Toomey $79,000, Ryan Zinke $79,000, the list goes on and on.
By the way, they’re all Republicans, the top 20 recipients of gun money.
Because the gun industry, just like the fossil fuel industry, is a corrupt industry.
The weapons industry in the United States is making money off Americans killing each other.
My position has been for decades, and I continue to hold this position, that we should be as rational about guns as we are about cars.
Cars can kill people and in the 19-teens we put laws into place when cars started killing people to minimize the probability of that happening.
Number one: if you own a car, it’s got to be registered: from the time of manufacture until the time of destruction there’s a clear chain of ownership.
Number two: if you’re going to use a car, you have to demonstrate you know how to use it safely. There’s a driver’s test.
And number three: if you own a car and you’re going drive a car, you have to have liability insurance.
Those three things should be applied to gun owners. Very simple, very straightforward.
And then let the insurance market take care of this.
If some some guy wants to buy five AR-15s and a thousand rounds of ammunition, let his insurance company decide if he’s going be a risk.
With your liability policy on your car, if you get a drunk driving conviction, your price is going go from $200 a year to $2,000 or whatever. I’ve never had a drunk driving conviction, I don’t know this from personal experience, but my understanding is that it explodes the price. It makes sense, right?
.
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This petition just came in to residents of Indiana. It proves that the NRA is buying out politicians.
…………..
My name is Chris Prowse, and I live in Angola, Indiana. I’ve joined with MoveOn members across the country to expose NRA-backed politicians, including our senator.
Senator Todd Young has received $2,896,732 in support from the NRA and members of its staff.
We encourage Senator Young to donate the amount of money the NRA spent on his behalf and commit to not taking another cent from the NRA.
The NRA’s financial hold on our Congress is overwhelming, and it is one of the primary reasons why, in the wake of national tragedies like we witnessed in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, we remain unable to pass commonsense gun laws.
This needs to change.
Sources:
“Gun Rights vs Gun Control,” Opensecrets.org, Accessed October 17, 2017
https://act.moveon.org/go/18333?t=14&akid=193164%2E8577052%2Et-tCFs
“The NRA Took a Big Swing in Virginia and Missed,” The Nation, November 10, 2017
https://act.moveon.org/go/21456?t=16&akid=193164%2E8577052%2Et-tCFs
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This is an article where people in Trumpland were interviewed. It is interesting to read the opinions of loyal supporters of Trump. They do not have a world view but are in a depressing hole where nothing will get better again. They stand by Trump, even the college educated ones such as a retired nurse and teacher. (Makes me wonder what those kids were learning.) It’s sad that these people are forgotten. They definitely won’t get any help from Trump. I think they’ve given up. Very sad.
………………………………………..
…And so Johnstown and surrounding Cambria County, whiter, poorer and less educated than America overall, was famished for the message Trump delivered in person at War Memorial Arena last October. “Your government betrayed you, and I’m going to make it right,” he told them. “We’re putting your miners back to work,” he told them. “Your jobs will come back under a Trump administration,” he told them. “Your steel will come back,” he told them.
“The change you’ve been waiting for will finally arrive,” he pledged.
It was what they so badly wanted to hear. On November 8, 2016, in Cambria County, Trump trounced Hillary Clinton by nearly 38 points.
By last week, though, John George told me that despite what they might have said, people here didn’t really believe Trump would make good on all his promises. “Deep down inside,” he said, “I don’t think anybody thought the steel mills were going to come back.” George is the owner of “George’s Song Shop” downtown. He bills it as America’s oldest record store. It’s been in business for 86 years. His father ran it for 30, and he’s had it for the past 56. George is a Democrat, but he voted for Trump, and he would do it again, he said. His whole adult life, essentially, he’s watched potential customers leave, as the population of the city has plummeted from more than 70,000 to less than 20,000. Now he sees the names and faces of some of his customers in the newspaper. In the obituaries.
In 2015, Cambria County had 58 overdose deaths. Last year, that number soared to 94…
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/08/donald-trump-johnstown-pennsylvania-supporters-215800
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This comes from FactCheck.org. I know that a lot of guns used in Chicago come from Indiana. It is a red state that supports guns for sale. I’ve seen full page ads in the local NW Indiana paper advertising all sorts of firearms. There is a shop about 15 minutes from my condo.
Trump Recycles Flawed Gun Talking Point
By Robert FarleyPosted on November 8, 2017
President Donald Trump has once again misused the example of Chicago to make a case against gun regulations.
Despite what the president claims, Chicago does not have “the strongest gun laws in our nation.” It once did, but the laws that gave it that distinction have since been rescinded. And a spike in homicides occurred after those laws were changed.
Trump also called Chicago “a disaster.” That’s an opinion, but it’s worth noting that other cities – some with less stringent gun laws – have higher rates of gun violence.
Experts also warn against cherry-picking cities to score political points, as examples can be found to fit arguments on either side. They also note that Chicago, which has stricter laws than most cities, is bordered by states that have relatively lax gun laws. And there is some evidence that most of the guns confiscated from crimes in Chicago come from out of state.
Finally, as we have written before, there is no evidence that gun control laws result in higher murder rates. In fact, studies suggest the opposite: States with a higher number of firearm restrictions have lower firearm deaths. But there is only an association between gun control laws and firearm deaths, not a causal relationship, studies show.
Trump’s latest comment about Chicago gun crime came when he was asked if he would consider any gun control policies in the wake of the mass shooting at a Texas church on Nov. 5.
“I mean, you look at the city with the strongest gun laws in our nation, is Chicago, and Chicago is a disaster,” Trump said during a press conference in Korea on Nov. 7. “It’s a total disaster.”…
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I finally found a link to the full article about “Trump Recycles Flawed Gun Talking Point”
https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/ac4826c7-958b-4860-b256-4bb3810e8028
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