Amy Goodman: U.S. Gun Laws: Guilty by Reason of Insanity

[marmar]

from truthdig:


U.S. Gun Laws: Guilty by Reason of Insanity

Posted on Jul 25, 2012
By Amy Goodman


James Holmes, the alleged shooter in the massacre in Aurora, Colo., reportedly amassed his huge arsenal with relative ease. Some of these weapons were illegal as recently as eight years ago. Legislation now before Congress would once again make illegal, if not the guns themselves, at least the high-capacity magazines that allow bullets to be fired rapidly without stopping to reload. Holmes bought most of his weaponry within recent months, we are told. Perhaps, if sane laws on gun control, including the ban on high- capacity magazines, were in place, many in Aurora who are now dead or seriously injured would be alive and well today.

The facts of the assault are generally well-known. Holmes allegedly burst into the packed theater during the 12:30 am premier of the Batman sequel “The Dark Knight Rises,” threw one or two canisters of some gas or irritant, which exploded, then began to methodically shoot people, killing 12 and wounding 58.

“Everybody sort of started screaming, and that’s when the gunman opened fire on the crowd, and pandemonium just broke out,” Omar Esparza told me. He was in the third row, with five friends out for a birthday celebration: “He started opening fire on the audience pretty freely, just started shooting in every direction, that’s when everybody started screaming, started panicking. A lot of people had been hit at that point at those initial few rounds, and that’s when everybody sort of hit the floor and started to exit.”

Esparza continued: “It sounded like the bullets had stopped, and it sounded like he was either switching guns or reloading his rifle. At that very second when we sort of heard the silence, we realized that that was our only opportunity of getting out or of dying. So, at that split second, we had to react and had to exit as quickly as possible. And we barely made it, too, because approximately a second after we had exited, we heard him starting to shoot again.” ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/us_gun_laws_guilty_by_reason_of_insanity_20120725/

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[appal_jack]

2. Alas, Amy's head is in the sand about this

Let me say first that I am an Amy Goodman fan in general, and a great admirer of how she has affected the whole media scene in America. When WBAI was messing with her journalistic freedom back in the late 1990's, I attended a downtown NYC rally on her behalf.

But on Assault Weapons Bans or even magazine capacity limits, Amy is wrong. That ship has sailed. The US is awash in high capacity magazines: for AR's (like Holmes used), AK's, Uzis, Glocks, etc. As an example, one online vendor, AIM Surplus, recently imported one batch of AK magazines (described by enthusiasts as 'Chugo' mags, as they we likely manufactured in China, but have been in the former Yugoslavia region since the Balkan Wars of the 1990's): 40,000 of them. They are now sold out. This sort of importation & sales of AK components has been going on since the 1980's by dozens of vendors, with only a ten year hiatus during the last AWB. At present, there Is a thriving US industry manufacturing magazines for all of the above firearms as well.

Our safety can be best addressed via universal healthcare and better mental health services, plus many other means, but gun control won't be one of them.

-app

[RC]

3. Gun control has to be a part of that.

What good is Universal Health care and and better mental health services, when a bunch of people die on the spot by some deranged gun nut that took advantage of our very lax and conflicting weapon control laws to amass his arsenal in a few weeks, without setting off any alarms beforehand?

[Zoeisright]

4. Uh huh. You just keep telling yourself that.

You're wrong, but just keep telling yourself that.