120,000 Americans have killed one another with guns since Sept. 11, 2001, says columnist
April 14th, 2009 at 10:06am Chuck Sweeny
This Bob Herbert column in The New York Times points out a sobering statistic: Since Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked New York City and Washington, D.C., 120,000 Americans have killed one another using guns.
I’ve never been an advocate of stricter gun control, although I do predict that eventually a majority of Americans will demand draconian gun control laws to curb the growing gun violence. Please don’t send me posts about the Second Amendment. I know what it says and I believe, as does the Supreme Court, that it provides for the individual’s right to keep and bear arms.
However, I also don’t think the Framers had any idea that “average joes” would be blowing off their family members’ heads and killing cops by the threes and fours.
I’ll leave you with this quote. I don’t know its origin, but I often heard Paul Harvey use it after reporting on some deranged lunatic shooting up a school, office or household:Â “Self government requires self control.”
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized
6 Comments Add your own
1. ben | April 14th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Yes, the probllem is if you have a populaton that can’t be trusted with a .38 revolver how can they collectively be trusted with a hydrogen bomb? We need to look at the messages the “entertainment” media are sending to children about how trivial it is to kill another person. We need to look at why our children are raised without hope or goals. We need to look at the throwaway children that drift into gangs. We need to look at our drug economy/culbure. The gun deaths are tragic, to be sure, but they are a symptom of a cancer that is eating away at our society, not the cause of the problem.
2. gowader | April 14th, 2009 at 10:39 am
What about the millions of children that are killed in abortion mills. We should give them guns so they can stay alive.
3. Roger | April 14th, 2009 at 10:55 am
The majority of American will never go for it.
4. Monkey | April 14th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
I was waiting for some nutjob to mention abortion. Thanks for not letting me down.
Too many videogames, too much TV and too much overall media that trivializes death and gun violence are why we are where we are today with gun violence. We need to allow people to own guns legally and REALLY crack down on those who don’t possess them legally. Anything else is just empty posturing.
5. parttymer | April 16th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
The person who mentioned abortion was “gowader”, not “nutjob”. Just setting the facts straight.
6. James Madara | April 21st, 2009 at 9:12 pm
[sigh] You people (you know who you are) keep blaming all of society’s ills on video games, music, and television. First there was Elvis and those long haired Beatles. Then came the video games that ‘rot’ your brain. Now we have that horrible rap music that makes all of these suburban white teens pack heat and bust a cap off in your ass. Wait. What? The more things change, the more they stay the same.
You can try to blame popular culture, but I believe popular culture is a reflection of society. We feed the machine.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed