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End the Gun Epidemic in America
It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD DEC. 4, 2015
All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.
But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/end-the-gun-epidemic-in-america.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-top-region®ion=opinion-c-col-top-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-top-region

BlueCaliDem
(15,438 posts)that it's made it unbelievably easy to buy as many guns and assault riftles you can afford with as many rounds of ammo you like without any background checks. Even the stricter gun laws have "loopholes" that make it even easier for murderers to get a "legit" gun for a couple of hundred dollars and "modify" it for high-capacity rounds.
It's all but impossible to end the bloody gun epidemic in the United States unless we repeal the 2nd Amendment, and I don't see that ever happening.
TipTok
(2,474 posts)I'll get right on that...
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)The problem seems to be more the vetting process than weapons.
And maybe not even that because the vetting process in Switzerland is rather broad.
maindawg
(1,151 posts)That the military style assault weapons incite very angry people to attack innocent groups of people. I don't believe we will ever ban them , but we can ban the sale of them again. We have to.
EdwardBernays
(3,343 posts)For the tiniest percentage of gun violence.
It's like banning ferraris to cut down on road fatalities.
Lizzie Poppet
(10,164 posts)I've been carping about the almost exclusive focus on mass killings at the expense of much of any talk at all about the vastly more numerous "ordinary" killings for a while now. It's bizarre...at best.
EdwardBernays
(3,343 posts)Of the beliefs of pretty much everyone that thousands of dead Americans a year is just the price of doing business.
Sure even on DU people behave like delusional gun nuts. It's part of American culture.
So if you can pretend the goal is to, what was it that Obama said, "potentially have a chance of reducing" mass shootings then we can also keep pretending that thousands of dead kids a year is a-ok.
EdwardBernays
(3,343 posts)The media says blame the leaders instead of asking for anyone anywhere to accept personal responsibility.
The leaders are shooting people. The NRA isn't shooting anyone. Gun manufacturing lobbiests aren't either.
Gun owners are shooting people.
The gun violence epidemic would be over tomorrow if gun owners gave up their guns. Or if gun owners demanded much stricter gun control.
Neither will happen.
Blaming politicians is like the media blaming Trump for his popularity instead of the millions of Trump supporters.
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)aikoaiko
(34,207 posts)When the anti-gun vanguard state declares them fine for civilians to own, you know the NYT is full of pooh.