Some Extremists Fire Guns and Other Extremists Promote Guns

[billh58]

Over the last two decades, Canada has had eight mass shootings. Just so far this month, the United States has already had 20. Canada has a much smaller population, of course, and the criteria researchers used for each country are slightly different, but that still says something important about public safety.

Could it be, as Donald Trump suggests, that the peril comes from admitting Muslims? On the contrary, Canadians are safe despite having been far more hospitable to Muslim refugees: Canada has admitted more than 27,000 Syrian refugees since November, some 10 times the number the United States has.

- Snip -

The problem is that we make no serious effort to keep firearms out of the hands of violent people. A few data points:

■ More Americans have died from guns, including suicides, since just 1970 than died in all the wars in U.S. history going back to the American Revolution.

■ The Civil War marks by far the most savage period of warfare in American history. But more Americans are now killed from guns annually, again including suicides, than were killed by guns on average each year during the Civil War (when many of the deaths were from disease, not guns).

■ In the United States, more preschoolers up through age 4 are shot dead each year than police officers are.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/opinion/some-extremists-fire-guns-and-other-extremists-promote-guns.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

According to Second Amendment absolutists and NRA/ILA/GOA apologists however, the fact that the United States is the world leader in gun deaths, injuries, and violence is worth the sacrifice in order to maintain Liberty. Liberty for whom? The dead and wounded? The grieving families of gun violence victims?

Vote for those Democrats who have the courage to stand up to the right wing gun nuts and their corrupt gun lobby representatives. The momentum is on our side, and we can do this!

[flamin lib]

1. Hmmm, what happened in 1970? Oh, yeah, that was the year the radical right wing

gun movement took over the NRA. Prior to that the NRA was all about sportsmanship, safety, training and marksmanship. After the coup of 1970 it became about self protection, guns everywhere, concealed carry and fear mongering to help sell more guns. After the coup the NRA got more of it's income from the gun industry than it did from its membership. The focus shifted from all the things that hundreds of years of safety training and marksmanship to selling guns.

Fear sells guns. Talk to the gun rights movement supporters and they tell you that you must have a concealed gun on your person with a round in the chamber and 19 more in the magazine so you can be ready at less than a second's notice to open fire on the 'bad guy with a gun'. They talk about 'situational awareness' and have contests called Three Gun where a shooter will compete with an assault weapon, a pistol and a shotgun on tactical courses shooting at popup man-shaped targets.

Like my dad said to me, don't hate a man (or group) just for what they are, get to know them first. You'll find a good reason.

[Nancyswidower]

2. Wow....really?