The Certainty of More Shootings

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/the-certainty-of-more-shootings/260133/


Like everyone, and I'd say especially like every parent, I am of course saddened and horrified by the latest mass shooting-murder. My sympathies to all.

And of course the additional sad, horrifying, and appalling point is the shared American knowledge that, beyond any doubt, this will happen again, and that it will happen in America many, many times before it occurs anywhere else.

Recently I visited the site of the "Port Arthur Massacre," in Tasmania, where in 1996 a disturbed young man shot and killed 35 people and wounded 23 more. The site is a kind of national shrine; afterwards, Australia tightened up its gun laws, and there has been nothing remotely comparable in all the years since. In contrast: not long after that shooting, during my incarnation as news-magazine editor, I dispatched reporters to cover then-shocking schoolyard mass shootings in West Paducah, Kentucky, and Jonesboro, Arkansas. Those two episodes, coming back to back, were -- as always -- supposed to provoke a "national discussion" about guns and gun violence. As always, they didn't; a while later they were nudged from the national consciousness by Columbine; and since then we have had so many schoolyard- or public-place shootings that those two are barely mentioned.

The Brady Campaign's list of mass shootings in America just since 2005 is 62 pages long.

I agree with the Atlantic's Garance Franke-Ruta about the inevitable pattern of public reaction to these events. But I find my own thoughts most precisely matched by Adam Gopnik's on the New Yorker's site today. He says:
'The truth is made worse by the reality that no one--really no one--anywhere on the political spectrum has the courage to speak out about the madness of unleashed guns and what they do to American life....'



*** only gun owners control the conversation about guns, the # of guns, what guns mean in society.
there is no room for other commentary, desires, ideas about what a more gun free country might be.

[mnhtnbb]

1. This country has always been violent...it wasn't known as the wild, wild west for nothing.

[Mojorabbit]

6. +1000 nt

[Pholus]

2. Wow. Just wow. The link to the Brady Campaign's list is now bookmarked.

I think that link will be included in every single reply to every single gun owner who doesn't admit the problem exists from now on.

[coalition_unwilling]

3. It's a friggin' public health epidemic, imo - n/t

[xchrom]

4. i think that's another legitimate way to discuss it. nt

[HopeHoops]

5. The "right to arms" doesn't extend to rocket launchers. Why does it allow assault rifles?

There are reasonable limits and unless you're part of a "well regulated militia", as in "the army", why do you need anything that goes beyond hunting or self defense? Anyone who thinks they need an AK-47 to kill a deer is a pussy.

[LiberalEsto]

7. The "national discussion" can't get two words in edgewise

because the NRA spends big money to drown out any possible mention of saner gun laws.

[elbloggoZY27]

8. Another Violent Day

What happened in Aurora Colorado was an Aberration and perpetrated by a human being.

Every day in our society a person commits some type of criminal act.

Here in the United States there are many gun laws and convicted persons go to jail. However, a lot of gun owners do not commit any crimes. What happened in this theater perpetrated by one person is definitely a huge human tragedy.

To those who lost a family member or had one injured or just a regular patron who decided to go to that theater I offer you my most profound condolences and thoughts.


To the First Responders or any other unknown hero's your actions probably saved someones life and that the alleged perpetrator was caught stopped a very tragic event from being worse.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Yup, new normal

Why there will be much more blood spilled...thanks for the wonderful example.