Massacre in Great Britain

Yesterday, in the Cumbria secion of Great Britain, mass shooter Derrick Bird killed twelve people and injured twenty-five more. As the BBC reports,authorities have yet to be able to determine a motive, though reports indicate the shooter had been having familial problems.

My Gut Reaction: Am I the only one who's noticed that Great Britain experiences these events every five or ten years or so, while the United States seems to experience them every few months.

Analysis: It has pretty much been established to everyone who wants to think about it that the wide availability of guns in the United States contributes to the high number of mass shootings and gun violence in our country. The thing that strikes me most about what happened in Britain is how rare these events are over there, particularly as compared to here.

I am not arguing that we immediately implement British style laws banning hand guns. As desirable as ridding America of hand guns may be, that cat is already well out of the bag. It would require massive infringements on civil liberties to confiscate every hand gun in America, such that the cure would in many respects be worse than the disease. Nevertheless, the contrast of the two countries should be spur enough to lead us to consider far tighter regulation of fire arms and enforcement of fire arm laws in this country.

Irony of Ironies

Rather eerily, given my post of this morning, a shoot out broke out in the East End of Pittsburgh, in the neighborhood called Stanton Heights, killing three police officers. We express our condolences.

This only goes to show just how deep a problem this is. We have two mass shootings, in two different parts of the country, within twenty-four hours of each other. This is not just a local issue; it is a national issue. The need for a stand against the right wing gun lobby has never been clearer.

America: Land of the Gunshot Wound

Yesterday, we had yet another bloodbath courtesy of some maniac with a gun. This time it was a Vietnamese immigrant who was pissed off over the fact that he couldn't learn English. His nuanced response: to kill a group of his fellow immigrants.

When the hell are we going to wake up, America? I'm all for liberty, but allowing every maniac in the country to amass their own personal armory is just insane. Rather than considering the "rights" of gun owners and enthusiasts, maybe it's time to start considering the public's right to safety. The interests of the many outweigh the needs-or in this case desires-of the few.

We will no doubt here the usual course of protests from the libertarians citing the Second Amendment and the occasional mass shooting outside of the United States, as in a recent post on Reason's Hit and Run blog noting the coincidence of shootings in Alabama and Germany last month. However, posts like this one always ignore the obvious issue. Germany has this type of thing every few years, while we seem to have them every few weeks, not to mention all the individual shootings.

It's time to stand up for sanity.

Nutter Should Be Over the Hill

The recent brouhaha over Senator Obama's "bitter" comments are all the evidence we need for why Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter should be endorsing him over Sen. Clinton.

While Hillary whines about Barack disrespecting "sportsmen," he comes out and speaks the god-honest truth: rural single issue voters are focusing on issues such as gun control and religion at the expense of our cities and our country. With Mayor Nutter's recent efforts at creating gun laws in Philadelphia, he should be embracing Barack with both arms.

And as for Senator Clinton's contention that Obama's comments were elitist and could lead to Republican attacks, just look at brendancalling's response to a post on the Suburban Guerrilla blog.