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Showing posts from January, 2013
DEATH BEFORE DISARMAMENT: America's Reluctance to Confront Gun Legislation “Just throw your guns in the air, and buck-buck like you just don’t care!” Onyx , “Throw Ya Gunz”, 1993 In Chicago , teenager Hadiya Pendleton , who performed at President Obama ’s second inauguration was murdered this week by gunfire. In Detroit , nearly 400 gun-related criminal homicides were recorded in 2012. In Phoenix , an office-building confrontation has, as of this writing, left one person dead and two injured by gunfire. The gunman is currently at large, and in the meanwhile, U.S. Congress is poised to debate new, nationwide gun policy. Dismally—and perhaps predictably—despite President Obama’s signing of 23 executive orders directly aimed at gun policy, the prospect of comprehensive gun control legislation is widely speculated to fall apart before it even begins. It is abhorrent that intellectual dishonesty tends to dominate of the hand-wringing that goes on with both elected official
FIND A SOLUTION It's a new year, but some old issues unfortunately have tragically come to a head in the past month. In Newtown, Connecticut , a disturbed young man, Adam Lanza , committed a heinous act of seemingly wanton murder, laying siege to an elementary school, killing 26 people on site, and at home, killing his mother Nancy as well, before finally shooting himself dead as police authorities arrived.  President Barack Obama subsequently charged Vice-President Joe Biden to lead a task force that would come up with comprehensive proposals for public policy legislation related to gun access and mental health, to present before the new Congress.   This author wrote the following in response to the mass-shooting which grievously wounded Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2011.  In full acknowledgment of the horrific human tragedy that unfolded in Newtown and in other recent gun-related violent crimes, it seems appropriate to reiterate the issues therein: