Tag: Gun Violence
Obama Reacts to the Latest Mass Shooting
This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal. If we truly care about this — if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience — then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them. Period. Enough is enough.
— President Obama, quoted by Politico, after yet another mass shooting.
U.S. Is Averaging More than One Mass Shooting Per Day in 2015
247
Number of mass shootings in the United States in the first 238 days of 2015, through Aug. 26, including the journalists murdered in Virginia yesterday. Aug. 26 was the 238th day of the year, the Washington Post reports.
Some Questions for the Gun Store Owner With the “Muslim-Free Zone”
When a gun shop owner announces he’s closing because he’s tired of selling arms to young, disturbed white guys wearing rebel flags, that will be a YouTube video worth watching
It’s bad enough that a gun store owner declared his store a “Muslim-free zone” after the shooting and killing of four Marines and a Navy sailor by 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdelazeez. That he chose to deliver this message in front of a rebel flag tacked up over an American flag, while wearing a sidearm, made this move just that much worse.
There are so many questions raised by Andy Hallinan’s video. For starters:
- Why didn’t Hallinan declare his gun shop a “white supremacist who says he wants to start a race war free zone” after 21-year-old Dylann Roof shot and killed nine people at a Charleston church?
Why Aren’t BMW and Adidas Condemning the Rebel Flag?
Both BMW and Adidas have plants in South Carolina but neither company has shown any interest in asking state legislators to stop flying the Confederate flag* over government buildings.
When these companies decided to take advantage of the cheaper, mostly non-unionized labor there, they made a decision to identify with the state. So why aren’t they speaking up? After all, it’s their state now.
A European Perspective on Our Mass-Killing Problem
The regularity of mass killings breeds familiarity. The rhythms of grief and outrage that accompany them become—for those not directly affected by tragedy—ritualized and then blend into the background noise. That normalization makes it ever less likely that America’s political system will groan into action to take steps to reduce their frequency or deadliness. Those who live in America, or visit it, might do best to regard them the way one regards air pollution in China: an endemic local health hazard which, for deep-rooted cultural, social, economic and political reasons, the country is incapable of addressing. This may, however, be a bit unfair. China seems to be making progress on pollution.
— The Economist
America is Awash in Guns — And Fear of Them
What if we’re missing a bigger issue in our musings about Ferguson and race and unarmed black men being shot by white guys, often police officers? Yes, systemic racism and a breakdown in our ability to trust police are serious problems. But are we overlooking something more basic?
It’s a rare day without a story like this one:
A white cop observes a black man cut through a parking lot to avoid a red light. He follows the car and when it starts to pull into an apartment complex, he turns on his cruiser’s lights to pull it over. The black man, 29-year-old Brian Dennison, drives further into the complex and parks in a parking space. When he gets out of the car, the cop shoots at him. Luckily, the shot missed. It was lucky because Dennison had his 6-year-old daughter in the car. And she was having an asthma attack. And her inhaler was inside their home, where Dennison was rushing when he drove around the red light.
So why did Officer J.C. Garcia get it so wrong?
