Will Connecticut Massacre Give Politicians the Guts to Take on the Gun Lobby? - Scientific American
Every time a deranged American male goes on a rampage, shooting down dozens of people, gun lovers trot out the familiar excuses: Guns don’t kill people, people do. If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. If some of the victims had been packing heat, they could have shot the bad guy before he shot them.
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The journalist Jeffrey Goldberg floats this argument in this month’s The Atlantic. “Guns are with us, whether we like it or not,” Goldberg writes, so maybe good guys should arm themselves so they can take out the bad guys. After quoting a gun-control advocate asking whether we want to live in a country in which “the answer to violence is more violence,” Goldberg responds that “in a nation of nearly 300 million guns, his question is irrelevant.”
I reject this defeatism. I blame our recurrent mass shootings on not only despicable pro-gun groups such as the National Rifle Association—which feed off and fuel Americans’ childish obsession with firearms—but also on the cowardice of politicians. In 2008 the NRA warned that Barack Obama would be the most anti-gun president ever.
Actually, Obama, although he supported gun controls when he was an Illinois state senator, switched his stance during his presidential campaign. “I believe in the Second Amendment,” he said. “I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”
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President Barack Obama said in a brief, emotional appearance today: “We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in these past few years.” Indeed. So what are he and other politicians going to do about it?
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2012/12/14/will-connecticut-massacre-give-politicians-the-guts-to-take-on-the-gun-lobby/
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