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You have a right to laws that keep you safe from gun violence
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/02/opinions/zuckerman-umpqua-community-college-shooting/index.html
Excerpts from the article:
Mass shootings are so normal in the U.S. that pundits -- myself included -- already know what we're going to say. We'll hear that mass shootings are a price we pay for a broken mental health screening system, that the actions of a lone madman shouldn't erode a constitutional right, that concealed carry would have prevented the shooting, that we should mourn the shooting deaths, but not "politicize" a tragedy.
We'll hear that the U.S. has almost three times as many firearms per capita as any other developed nation, that our firearms homicide rate is more than six times any other comparable country, that more young people will be killed by guns in the U.S. this year than will die in cars from crashes.
What we won't hear is anyone predicting that the tragedy in Oregon will lead to changes in U.S. gun policy.
Other nations have made dramatic changes to their firearms laws after a mass shootings. After the 1996 Port Arthur massacres, where a man armed with a semiautomatic rifle killed 35 and wounded 23, the Australian government pushed through legislation that restricts, but does not ban, firearm ownership. Australia has not suffered a mass shooting since, and many gun control advocates hope that the U.S. could adopt Australian-style legislation.
Consider smoking. Despite research linking smoking and lung cancer in the early 1940s and a definitive surgeon general's report in 1964, smoking in U.S. public places was routine through the 1980s. The shift of smoking from normal to abnormal began in earnest when a union, the Association of Flight Attendants, convinced Congress that secondhand smoke was killing their members, who spent hours a day inhaling recirculated toxins.
Smoking went from being an individual risk --and individual choice -- to being a public health hazard.
Mass shootings are the secondhand smoke of America's dysfunctional relationship with guns. They are the moments where something we know to be dangerous to their owners and those around them become deadly to the public as a whole. As we mourn those killed in Roseburg, Oregon, we should think of the 33,636 people killed with firearms [2013 stat] in America, and ask how we learn to stop seeing this as normal and see it as madness.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/02/opinions/zuckerman-umpqua-community-college-shooting/index.html
Excerpts from the article:
Mass shootings are so normal in the U.S. that pundits -- myself included -- already know what we're going to say. We'll hear that mass shootings are a price we pay for a broken mental health screening system, that the actions of a lone madman shouldn't erode a constitutional right, that concealed carry would have prevented the shooting, that we should mourn the shooting deaths, but not "politicize" a tragedy.
We'll hear that the U.S. has almost three times as many firearms per capita as any other developed nation, that our firearms homicide rate is more than six times any other comparable country, that more young people will be killed by guns in the U.S. this year than will die in cars from crashes.
What we won't hear is anyone predicting that the tragedy in Oregon will lead to changes in U.S. gun policy.
Other nations have made dramatic changes to their firearms laws after a mass shootings. After the 1996 Port Arthur massacres, where a man armed with a semiautomatic rifle killed 35 and wounded 23, the Australian government pushed through legislation that restricts, but does not ban, firearm ownership. Australia has not suffered a mass shooting since, and many gun control advocates hope that the U.S. could adopt Australian-style legislation.
Consider smoking. Despite research linking smoking and lung cancer in the early 1940s and a definitive surgeon general's report in 1964, smoking in U.S. public places was routine through the 1980s. The shift of smoking from normal to abnormal began in earnest when a union, the Association of Flight Attendants, convinced Congress that secondhand smoke was killing their members, who spent hours a day inhaling recirculated toxins.
Smoking went from being an individual risk --and individual choice -- to being a public health hazard.
Mass shootings are the secondhand smoke of America's dysfunctional relationship with guns. They are the moments where something we know to be dangerous to their owners and those around them become deadly to the public as a whole. As we mourn those killed in Roseburg, Oregon, we should think of the 33,636 people killed with firearms [2013 stat] in America, and ask how we learn to stop seeing this as normal and see it as madness.
