Kimberly’s humble opinion on gun control: It would be ridiculous for the government and society to do nothing to monitor the kind and size of weapons that people have. Should everyone have the right to carry a rocket launcher? Do people need automatic weapons for personal protection? I also think it is sad that President Obama is giving the gun lobby cover, by showing up at memorials for the Aurora, Colorado victims, and not mentioning gun control as part of the solution.
Kimberly’s poem about guns is: here
An interesting article pointing to the need for at least some gun control:
Rifle in Shooting Once Was Federally Restricted
Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2012
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You might think Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of and spokesman for the mighty American gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, has an almost cosmic sense of timing. In 2007, at the NRA’s annual convention in St. Louis, he warned the crowd that, “Today, there is not one firearm owner whose freedom is secure.” Two days later, a young man opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech, killing 32 students, staff and teachers.Photo: AP
Just last week LaPierre showed up at the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty here in New York and spoke out against what he called “anti-freedom policies that disregard American citizens’ right to self-defense.” Now at least 12 are dead in Aurora, Colorado, gunned down at a showing of the new film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” a Batman movie filled with make-believe violence. One of the guns the shooter reportedly used was an AK-47 type assault weapon that was banned in 1994. The NRA pressured Congress to let the ban run out in 2004.
Obviously, LaPierre’s timing isn’t cosmic, just coincidental and unfortunate; as Shakespeare famously wrote, the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves. In other words, people — people with guns. There are some 300 million guns in the United States, one in four adult Americans owns at least one and most of them are men. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, over the last 30 years, “the number of states with a law that automatically approves licences to carry concealed weapons provided an applicant clears a criminal background check has risen from eight to 38.” Read more »
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Filed under: Barack Obama, News, progressive politics, US Politics | Tagged: Aurora shooting, Bill Moyers, Dark Knight shooting, Dark Knight tragedy and gun control, Gun Control, gun lobby, National Rifle Association, NRA, Wayne LaPierre | Leave a Comment »
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