Make love, not murder weapons
First, I'm sorry for filling your friends page. I forgot how to make a cut because I don't usually put something this long in my journal. Sorry times a million.
I don't like to spout off my opinion and act like I'm really close to the tragedy that happened at Virginia Tech. But this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately: guns and violence in America. Gun control reform NEEDS to happen in this country. And it needs to happen fast. Americans are murdered for the dumbest reasons, and are killed in the dumbest gun accidents every day. And nothing is being done about it. Since I've had about 5 cups of coffee today, I want to get out my feelings here instead of doing homework.
Okay, here's your chance to moan and groan for my advocation of gun control. Go ahead and call me a crazy liberal right now, make fun of me for quoting Jimmy Carter (even if you didn't like what he did in office, you can't deny he IS a smart man who KNOWS things). But the truth is, this is not a liberal v. conservative "wedge issue" or "hot topic." It's time to look at some facts about people murdering people in this "safe and secure" country. And it's time to look at the special relationship the NRA has with our government.
Jimmy Carter wrote in his book "Our Endangered Values," that there are more people that die from gun shot wounds in this country than in any other developed nation.
A Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research study found the rate of homicide in America is 19 times higher than 35 other high-income countries COMBINED.
35 other countries. Combined.
More from Johns Hopkins: I don't know which year this is for (maybe 2004 or 2005), but the number of people killed with a hand gun in America that year was 30,419. The country with the next highest number was Canada, with a whopping 1,034. Great Britain: 197 Japan: 83
Yes, it is a constitutional right to own guns. I completely respect and honor that right. If my dad, and his dad, and his dad and so on had not had the right to own hunting weapons, they would not have eaten as well. They hunted for food and survival. Hunting animals is something people since almost the beginning of time have needed for survival, and some people today use hunting as a major source of food. People use guns to protect themselves. That is great. So yes yes yes, people should be able to own guns.
But when our forefathers drafted our wonderful constitution, they did not lead a country obsessed with violence. Americans love violence, and being a mass comm major, I know that tragedy and violence sells more than sex. Violence is a great source of entertainment. "Gangsters" rap about killing people like it's nothing, and kids look up to those stars. Kids look up to action movie heroes who shoot their way through people left and right to find a bad guy in an hour and a half. So what do they do? They take out Dad's gun and show it to friends and bring it to school.
"According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American children are 16 times more likely than children in other industrialized nations to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and 9 times more likely to die from firearms accidents."
A few simple clicks of the mouse can lead you to tons of information about gun deaths in America. If I'm sparking your interest at all, (lol) here's just one website I found with statistics about one of the saddest things happening in our country: kids dying from handguns (http://www.kidsandguns.org/study/fact_file.asp)
Now, when tragedy strikes, like the Baton Rouge boy who was recently shot and killed by his friend just playing with a gun, or of course the largest school-shooting massacre in the history of our country, the media and the government are so clever at misleading the people. They don't want you to think things like "How did this foreign exchange student get access to handguns? Why did he have handguns?" They want people to think "Those incompetent policemen could have prevented this. They should have done more after the first shooting."
Yes, by some stroke of incredible luck, they could have found that guy in those two hours he disappeared. But how could they have predicted that that guy, who it seemed was just really really angry at his ex-girlfriend who go to a classroom across campus and do such an unheard of act of crazed violence?
I do not think those policemen are to blame. Of course they were doing the best they could with the information they had. Why would they want something like this to happen? They now carry the heavy, heavy burden of investigating this thing.
The gun laws in our country are to blame. And the lobbyists working for the NRA, pumping billions of dollars into our Congress and making millions of dollars in the process are to blame. Guns are a huge money maker in this country. The NRA is one of the largest organizations in the country because the NRA lies to Americans, telling them that if they elect anyone other than a Republican candidate, all of their guns will be taken away from them.
It honestly makes me sick watching this Virginia Tech convocation, watching the president of the University praise George W. Bush for his support and his actions over the last 24 hours. And it makes me sick watching him speak to the University, acting like he, Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr. or Ronald Reagan or the United States Congress have no blame in this when they shot down bill after bill over the last few years that could have prevented criminals, people on our terrorist watch list living in this country and non-citizens and just fucking crazy people from getting a gun in their hands. They shoot them down because they know the NRA will get pissed at them, and if they do that they don't get to go on vacation to The Bahamas or Colorado or wherever these fucking lobbyists take them every year. They know they could lose millions of dollars for themselves, and millions of dollars for these lobbyists who practically write legislation for America.
Big business and big money reign over American laws. Weapons is a big industry in this country that make money for our small, elite class in power ruling our nation. They make money for the big corporations that control almost every media outlet in the country.
Public opinion polls show the majority of average Americans would like at least a little more gun control. The numbers a year or two ago were something like 4 out of 5 Americans. The other fifth of those Americans are probably NRA members who truly believe their hunting rifles will be taken away because they are being lied to by the people with all the money from the weapons industry.
It's sad. It's wrong. And as a result, thousands upon thousands of people die every year due to benign neglect of the people we put in office through "democratic" means.
I don't like to spout off my opinion and act like I'm really close to the tragedy that happened at Virginia Tech. But this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately: guns and violence in America. Gun control reform NEEDS to happen in this country. And it needs to happen fast. Americans are murdered for the dumbest reasons, and are killed in the dumbest gun accidents every day. And nothing is being done about it. Since I've had about 5 cups of coffee today, I want to get out my feelings here instead of doing homework.
Okay, here's your chance to moan and groan for my advocation of gun control. Go ahead and call me a crazy liberal right now, make fun of me for quoting Jimmy Carter (even if you didn't like what he did in office, you can't deny he IS a smart man who KNOWS things). But the truth is, this is not a liberal v. conservative "wedge issue" or "hot topic." It's time to look at some facts about people murdering people in this "safe and secure" country. And it's time to look at the special relationship the NRA has with our government.
Jimmy Carter wrote in his book "Our Endangered Values," that there are more people that die from gun shot wounds in this country than in any other developed nation.
A Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research study found the rate of homicide in America is 19 times higher than 35 other high-income countries COMBINED.
35 other countries. Combined.
More from Johns Hopkins: I don't know which year this is for (maybe 2004 or 2005), but the number of people killed with a hand gun in America that year was 30,419. The country with the next highest number was Canada, with a whopping 1,034. Great Britain: 197 Japan: 83
Yes, it is a constitutional right to own guns. I completely respect and honor that right. If my dad, and his dad, and his dad and so on had not had the right to own hunting weapons, they would not have eaten as well. They hunted for food and survival. Hunting animals is something people since almost the beginning of time have needed for survival, and some people today use hunting as a major source of food. People use guns to protect themselves. That is great. So yes yes yes, people should be able to own guns.
But when our forefathers drafted our wonderful constitution, they did not lead a country obsessed with violence. Americans love violence, and being a mass comm major, I know that tragedy and violence sells more than sex. Violence is a great source of entertainment. "Gangsters" rap about killing people like it's nothing, and kids look up to those stars. Kids look up to action movie heroes who shoot their way through people left and right to find a bad guy in an hour and a half. So what do they do? They take out Dad's gun and show it to friends and bring it to school.
"According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American children are 16 times more likely than children in other industrialized nations to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and 9 times more likely to die from firearms accidents."
A few simple clicks of the mouse can lead you to tons of information about gun deaths in America. If I'm sparking your interest at all, (lol) here's just one website I found with statistics about one of the saddest things happening in our country: kids dying from handguns (http://www.kidsandguns.org/study/fact_file.asp)
Now, when tragedy strikes, like the Baton Rouge boy who was recently shot and killed by his friend just playing with a gun, or of course the largest school-shooting massacre in the history of our country, the media and the government are so clever at misleading the people. They don't want you to think things like "How did this foreign exchange student get access to handguns? Why did he have handguns?" They want people to think "Those incompetent policemen could have prevented this. They should have done more after the first shooting."
Yes, by some stroke of incredible luck, they could have found that guy in those two hours he disappeared. But how could they have predicted that that guy, who it seemed was just really really angry at his ex-girlfriend who go to a classroom across campus and do such an unheard of act of crazed violence?
I do not think those policemen are to blame. Of course they were doing the best they could with the information they had. Why would they want something like this to happen? They now carry the heavy, heavy burden of investigating this thing.
The gun laws in our country are to blame. And the lobbyists working for the NRA, pumping billions of dollars into our Congress and making millions of dollars in the process are to blame. Guns are a huge money maker in this country. The NRA is one of the largest organizations in the country because the NRA lies to Americans, telling them that if they elect anyone other than a Republican candidate, all of their guns will be taken away from them.
It honestly makes me sick watching this Virginia Tech convocation, watching the president of the University praise George W. Bush for his support and his actions over the last 24 hours. And it makes me sick watching him speak to the University, acting like he, Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr. or Ronald Reagan or the United States Congress have no blame in this when they shot down bill after bill over the last few years that could have prevented criminals, people on our terrorist watch list living in this country and non-citizens and just fucking crazy people from getting a gun in their hands. They shoot them down because they know the NRA will get pissed at them, and if they do that they don't get to go on vacation to The Bahamas or Colorado or wherever these fucking lobbyists take them every year. They know they could lose millions of dollars for themselves, and millions of dollars for these lobbyists who practically write legislation for America.
Big business and big money reign over American laws. Weapons is a big industry in this country that make money for our small, elite class in power ruling our nation. They make money for the big corporations that control almost every media outlet in the country.
Public opinion polls show the majority of average Americans would like at least a little more gun control. The numbers a year or two ago were something like 4 out of 5 Americans. The other fifth of those Americans are probably NRA members who truly believe their hunting rifles will be taken away because they are being lied to by the people with all the money from the weapons industry.
It's sad. It's wrong. And as a result, thousands upon thousands of people die every year due to benign neglect of the people we put in office through "democratic" means.