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  Name:
  Gustav
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  Warsaw, Poland

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Saturday, April 21, 2007

I'm so sick of this

Economist.com:


But the tragedies of Virginia Tech—and Columbine, and Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, where five girls were shot at an Amish school last year—are not the full measure of the curse of guns. More bleakly terrible is America's annual harvest of gun deaths that are not mass murders: some 14,000 routine killings committed in 2005 with guns, to which must be added 16,000 suicides by firearm and 650 fatal accidents (2004 figures). Many of these, especially the suicides, would have happened anyway: but guns make them much easier. Since the killing of John Kennedy in 1963, more Americans have died by American gunfire than perished on foreign battlefields in the whole of the 20th century. In 2005 more than 400 children were murdered with guns.


Minutes after the tragedy on Monday, Polish news programs were running headlines like:

"W Ameryce można kupić broń w supermarkecie"

Translation: "In America one can buy a gun in a supermarket"

Everyone else sees it. Why don't we?

6 Comments:



Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think you are making the same mistake that everyone else is: that this has some ‘deep’ meaning. It doesn’t. It’s not about the availability of guns,,,,or anything. It’s about a nutter.

If the availability of guns was a factor then we would see the same thing happening in countries like Switzerland or Israel where everyone has a gun. But we don’t.

So this is nothing to do with guns. It’s about nothing.

5/04/2007 09:04:00 PM  


Blogger Unknown said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

5/05/2007 09:47:00 PM  


Blogger Gustav said...

But anonymous, such tragedies happen far less frequently in Switzerland and Israel. Though their rates of gun ownership may be similar, their restrictions on gun ownership are far more stringent. Certainly their are plenty of nutters in Switzerland and Israel.

Or does the US have a monopoly on nuttery? (And if this is your assertion then I know plenty of folks who would agree with you.)

5/05/2007 09:50:00 PM  


Blogger likwidshoe said...

Though their rates of gun ownership may be similar, their restrictions on gun ownership are far more stringent.

In Switzerland where almost every house is required to have a machine gun?

I don't think so.

You don't believe that 20,000+ gun laws is enough?

5/18/2007 10:42:00 AM  


Anonymous Anonymous said...

its not only that the folks in usa dont see this...

i watched how this tragedy was covered on american cbs (via sky news) and i was shocked when some people actually said that less students would have died if one of them had a gun and killed the guy before he killed others...

hello! no one would have died if he hadnt had a gun!

6/07/2007 02:34:00 PM  


Blogger Gustav said...

Likwidshoe:

Every person in Switzerland "required" to keep an automatic weapon in his house has undergone military training. Can we agree then that we'll allow everyone in the US to have an automatic weapon as long as they've undergone military training? I could live with that.

I don't know where you get the 20,000 number from, but I suspect it includes laws PERMITTING people to carry concealed weapons, for example. Still, it seems quite obvious that all of the gun laws we have simply aren't enough to prevent such tragedies. Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about this.

I don't want MORE gun laws. In fact just one national, comprehensive, sensible gun law would be fine with me.

6/12/2007 12:03:00 PM  

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