The past - no shortage of American Gun Violence, with the Gun Culture, and high rates of ownership...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
(interesting that Australia is listed on par with Mexico... look at what Mexico is going through... but weapons are probably flooding in from the USA...???)
I was intrigued to watch The American President painfully select his words in some of his interviews... Flip side of the coin... American Military... A very large defence force, which is active away from its shores... also responsible for moderately high level of deaths...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel
In concept, there are some parallels to Mining, and Oil & Gas...
Mining - many people don't want coal mining to occur... but many of those people aren't prepared to sit and freeze in the dark... (Solar and wind do not stack up on base power load, with our current high consumption rates!)
Oil & Gas - same as mining... people don't want oil or gas rigs off their shore lines, but many people aren't prepared to swap a car for a bicycle...
Guns - similar, many American's will fully support gun ownership restrictions on one hand, but they may also want to retain their "right" to bear arms... own guns... even the president was eluding to tougher background searches on people before they could own a gun.... this would only be the first baby step... I would think...
The Future:
Cars - Micro-light electric cars
Guns in America - I expect they will slowly phase in several layers of beurocracy... but I expect it will take them about 20 years to instill big changes... change the way people think...
What do you think...???
One of the craziest comments from Obama was that gun massacres would no longer be tolerated in the US.
So does this mean up to now they were
WTF ???
Had dinner with a mate over from Texas last night, he said that the feeling isn't that too many people have guns, it's that not enough do. If more people had guns somebody would have stopped him sooner. Go figure.
The gun lobby in the States is hugely influential and doesn't hold back in using the clout and money they have.
An enduring image in my memory from the early 90's whilst traveling in the south was the sheer number of very large billboards along the freeways/highways of Florida extolling the virtues of gun ownership and how gun ownership is a "constitutional right" for all Americans - I'm not sure if military style handguns and rifles were what they had in mind but like all things maybe the Constitution is in need of fresh look over.........
I find the Doc's Obama meme a little off.
Firstly, they do not deliberately target kids unlike the terrorist wankers who aim to kill as many people as possible as publicly as possible and don't care if they are kids etc.
Obama shedding a tear for murdered little kids has nothing to do with his bombing insurgents and terrorists overseas and accidentally killing civvies in the process. Not to say the latter is right and just etc.... but they are not related.
I think the picture is borderline offensive as it seeks to get political mileage in an unrelated area ('war against terror') using the death of little kids in a stateside massacre. Very poor form.
Using the same logic we also need to make one for every leader since the dawn of time.
Wondering how long till the Martin Bryant simmerlarites popped up..........
Everyone is saying they need to take a lesson from Australia, maybe they already did.
Joe Biden has the poison chalice. It will be interesting to see how he copes and what he comes up with.
They have already said they will respect the 2nd amendment, which doesn't sound like they will work too hard.
No it's just sensational guesswork, you know, fantasy. He's a conspiracy theorist.
The gun control debate may be redundant before too long. People may soon be able to make their own gun with a cheap computer, cheap 3D printer, cheap Internet and cheap plastic.
Prototypes are being developed now though I don't think any have fired a bullet yet.
The gun control lobby in America has failed over the last 40 years. Criminal Gangs have more firepower than local police forces. Gun ownership is just as high as it ever has been. It's just as easy to buy a gun as it ever has in America.
There has been no recent legislation put forth to limit or ban guns in America and it's pretty unlikely there will be. Any politician who takes a strong stand on gun control will be in danger of losing their job. On the federal and state level most politicians are trying to work out how to keep the government going on less and less money. They don't have time or the resources to reduce gun ownership.
I would love it if Obama resigned over the fiscal cliff, health care and gun control and said "I quit. You people are just too stupid for me to be your leader."
This debates has been around for decades in the States , I believe even if they did bring in regulations to control high powered semi automatic assault style rifles and hand guns , there are simply too many out there now , there are hundreds of millions of guns in America , even if they had a buy back scheme as we did here in Australia , and they got back say 80% of these dangerous automatic weapons and hand guns , there would still be tens of millions of these type of guns in the system .The outlaws or criminals aren't going to hand their guns back so it's a checkmate situation .
I can appreciate both sides of the argument to some degree , just can't see a viable outcome .
Here's a music video from the mid 90's from very policily outspoken Dave Mustaine from Megadeth.I remember when I first saw this video when it came out the statics blew me away . That was nearly 20 years ago , so I imagine the statics are even worse.
The pen is mightier than the sword/gun/bomb/missile/WMD, or so we would like to believe.
Weapons do not kill unless wielded to do so by a killer.
Weapons are tools as is weapon legislation, each designed for a different end.
It is not the inanimate item that is dangerous, he who posses it is dangerous.
"guns don't kill people, people kill people" is a flawed and unrealistic argument to deflect the discussion away from guns and assumes there isn't a problem of shootings.
For the current USA constitution relating to guns to work it assumes that all people in a community are mentally stable, reasonable and obey the law.
And because this is only possible in "dreamland" limiting the availability of guns seems a realistic solution to reduce shootings.
A more accurate statement is, "Guns don't kill people. Bad/mad/sad people with guns kill people."
There are two parts to the problem and you have to address both parts. Get rid of the guns and fix the sad, the mad and the bad.
For all the political difficulties, the one dimensional problem of reducing the quantity of guns has to be an easier first step to take.
This is the Gun Association's answer... to be said with a thick Yankee accent...
"The best way to stop a bad guy with guns, is with a good guy with guns!"
