What kind of weapon kills 9 people in a few seconds?

[tblue37]

78. For a taste of what "gun culture" means, google "gun wedding" and then click "images."

Last edited Fri Jun 19, 2015, 05:37 PM - Edit history (1)

When people's guns are so important to them that they must display their guns prominently in virtually every situation, especially those marked as important rites of passage, then they think of their culture as being defined by their passion for guns. Their guns are the "stars" of almost every scene--or at least their love of and relationship with their guns star in every scene.

When television shows and movies (and video games, too, of course) make it seem as though shooting at someone or something is the way to deal with almost any difficulty, that is gun culture. Kids grow up in a milieu that normalizes the use of guns as a way to settle disputes, express anger and frustration, or simply express one's social status and power.

When cops automatically reach for their guns when they interact with citizens who do not immediately bow and scrape submissively enough before their "authoritah," that is gun culture.

When people sleep with their loaded guns right by their beds, so they can grab them while still groggy after being awakened from a deep sleep and shoot at any sound or movement in the dark (without bothering to find out whom they are shooting at, and thus all too often killing their own loved ones), that is gun culture.

When people become the gun-owner version of cat ladies and other out of control hoarders, that is gun culture.

When terror that the government will snatch their precious away, or at the very least forbid them to purchase any more guns or ammunition, provokes gun lovers into panicky runs on stores that sell guns, so the sellers can hardly keep up with the demand, that is gun culture.

In gun culture the only truly inalienable right is the right to pack heat, and single-issue RKBA voters will elect any dangerous demagogue, regardless of his stance on other really important issues, as long as he squawks loudly enough in defense of their right to stockpile unlimited quantities of of guns and ammunition and to carry their guns aggressively into public spaces, scaring the caca out of people who just want to go about their normal activities.

In gun culture, an endless sequence of gun massacres--no matter how many die, no matter how innocent or young the victims are--cannot have any influence on the debate about reasonable laws pertaining to responsible gun ownership.

And when guns kill so many people, many of them children, each year, each day, in the US--a bloody harvest that we just don't see in other First World nations--that is gun culture!

From nbcnews.com:

<SNIP>

• Every year in the U.S., an average of more than 100,000 people are shot, according to The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence.

• Every day in the U.S., an average of 289 people are shot. Eighty-six of them die: 30 are murdered, 53 kill themselves, two die accidentally, and one is shot in a police intervention, the Brady Campaign reports.

• Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 335,609 people died from guns -- more than the population of St. Louis, Mo. (318,069), Pittsburgh (307,484), Cincinnati, Ohio (296,223), Newark, N.J. (277,540), and Orlando, Fla. (243,195) (sources: CDF, U.S. Census; CDC)

• One person is killed by a firearm every 17 minutes, 87 people are killed during an average day, and 609 are killed every week. (source: CDC)

<SNIP>

Guns and kids:

• 82 children under five years old died from firearms in 2010 compared with 58 law enforcement officers killed by firearms in the line of duty (sources: CDF, CDC, FBI)

• More kids ages 0-19 died from firearms every three days in 2010 than died in the 2012 Newtown, Conn., massacre (source:CDF, CDC)

• Nearly three times more kids (15,576) were injured by firearms in 2010 than the number of U.S. soldiers (5,247) wounded in action that year in the war in Afghanistan (source: CDF, CDC, Department of Defense) <emphasis added>

• Half of all juveniles murdered in 2010 were killed with a firearm (source: Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention)

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/16/16547690-just-the-facts-gun-violence-in-america?lite