June 14, 2016

Guns Are The X Factor In American-Style Mass Murder

Car accidents kill people. Construction accidents kill people. Even a slip and fall in the shower has been known to occasionally kill a person. There is a limitless list of things that can kill a person, but we accept life has risks. We accept the convenience and commerce offered by automobiles all while acknowledging the negative side effect of vehicle fatalities, although regulations have made cars safer than decades ago. We accept building roads, bridges, and other infrastructure also comes with a negative side effect, although in this area we have done a lot to decrease construction fatalities through safety regulations. And yes, we accept that even the most mundane of things, taking a shower, could lead to death.

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September 16, 2013

The AR-15 Semi-Automatic Assault Rifle Was Used At Sandy Hook, Aurora, And Now The Navy Yard Shooting

EDIT: Early reports indicated an AR-15 was involved in the Navy Yard shooting. That turns out to be false, but it hardly changes anything. If Aaron Alexis was able to so easily kill 12 people without an AR-15, I don’t want to think what would have happened had he used an assault rifle (yes, that’s what it is). The amount of carnage possible even with less potent weapons lends even greater support to banning assault style weapons.

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April 20, 2013

John Oliver Exposes Australia’s Gun Control ‘Failure’

In 1996 Australia suffered it’s worst mass shooting event with 35 innocent people killed. Newly elected conservative Prime Minister John Howard faced a choice, he could enact strong gun control laws that might also penalize law-abiding gun owners, or do nothing. He chose the former, and with 17 years of data, the evidence is pretty clear. In the 18 years preceding the 1996 massacre, Australia saw 13 mass shootings. There have been none since tough new gun control measures passed.

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January 5, 2013

Hey Gun Advocates, Spare Me Your Righteous Indignation

Nearly 500 people have been murdered by a gun in the United States of America since the horrible mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Those are the victims. The children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School are the victims. — Gun advocates are not the victims. Card-carrying NRA members are not the victims. People who talk tough but need a gun to be tough are not the victims. People who justify the need for violent assault weapons for protection or sport are not the victims. — So yeah, gun advocates, you can spare me your righteous indignation.

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July 21, 2012

Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting: America is NOT shocked

Every time one of these mass-shooting, mass-murder events happens in the United States we see headlines like “Americans in shock,” and descriptive words like horror and terror, but do you see a problem here? Did you notice that I started this article by saying “every time,” which indicates this is not a rare event. The fact is, while overall crime statistics are at 20 (even 30) year lows in many categories (including murder) we still have mass-shooting events occurring with regular frequency. Each one of us has essentially come to expect that these mass-shooting events are going to happen regularly. So is there anything shocking about it?

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