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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTwelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/nine-facts-about-guns-and-mass-shootings-in-the-united-states/?tid=pm_pop***SNIP
1. Shooting sprees are not rare in the United States.
Mother Jones has tracked and mapped every shooting spree in the last three decades. Since 1982, there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii, they found. And in most cases, the killers had obtained their weapons legally:
2. Eleven of the 20 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States.
Time has the full list here. In second place is Finland, with two entries.
3. Lots of guns dont necessarily mean lots of shootings, as you can see in Israel and Switzerland.*
As David Lamp writes at Cato, In Israel and Switzerland, for example, a license to possess guns is available on demand to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both nations. Both countries also allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms, and yet, admits Dr. Arthur Kellerman, one of the foremost medical advocates of gun control, Switzerland and Israel have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States.
*Correction: The info is out-of-date, if not completely wrong. Israel and Switzerland have tightened their gun laws substantially, and now pursue an entirely different approach than the United States. More details here. I apologize for the error.
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)green for victory
(591 posts)the one thing common in all of these shootings-
the fact that the shooter(s) are either on, or withdrawing from, dangerous pharmaceutical drugs. That might also explain why these shootings are a recent phenomenon.
http://ssristories.com/index.php
This website is a collection of 4,800+ news stories with the full media article available, mainly criminal in nature, that have appeared in the media (newspapers, TV, scientific journals) or that were part of FDA testimony in either 1991, 2004 or 2006, in which antidepressants are mentioned.
One look at the database should convince anyone that there is a real problem.
Why does the Mainstream Media ignore this connection?
If every shooter was either on, or withdrawing from, LSD -would that draw some attention?
You bet it would.
newfie11
(8,159 posts)JI7
(89,252 posts)marions ghost
(19,841 posts)....background checks and better laws re sales, types, access, prosecutions --would make a lot of these guns that have been used ILLEGAL.