Guns

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Revised A lot of smoke is being generated to cover up the fact that the horrific Florida school shooting that has left at least 17 dead results from a virtual absence of meaningful gun controls in the US, such that a few gun manufacturers are allowed […]

Guns

8,855 Murders by Firearm in US in 2012 vs. 30 (Equiv. 164) in UK

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Reprint edn. The United States continues to be peculiar in handing out powerful magazine-fed firearms to almost anyone who wants one and not requiring background checks on private purchases even if these are made at gun shows. 80% of civilian-owned firearms world-wide are in the US, […]

Guns

Guns: Americans more likely to be Shot by Toddler than by Terrorist

contributors

By Ann Jones | (Tomdispatch.com) Americans who live abroad — more than six million of us worldwide (not counting those who work for the U.S. government) — often face hard questions about our country from people we live among. Europeans, Asians, and Africans ask us to explain everything that baffles them about the increasingly odd […]

Guns

Not the Onion: Shooting Range raises Age Limit to 12 after 9-year-old girl Kills Instructor with Uzi

contributors

CBS New York buries the lead: “A 9-year-old New Jersey girl accidentally killed an Arizona shooting instructor as he was showing her how to use an automatic Uzi, authorities said Tuesday. CBS 2’s Weijia Jiang reports.” Ms. Jiang’s last sentence is about the shooting range raising the age limit to 12 (from, apparently, anything). CBS […]

Crime

Vegas ‘Revolution’ Shooters inspired by Tea Party Law allowing Shooting of Police

contributors

Vegas cop killers ‘had pro-gun militia links’ (via AFP) A gun-toting couple possibly linked to anti-government militias killed two US cops execution-style and left a swastika on the bodies, in America’s latest chilling shooting rampage, police said Monday. In the third mass shooting in three weeks in the… —- Related video: Rachel Maddow: “Killers’ […]

Democratic Party

Georgia Courthouse is shot up by Sovereign Citizen after GOP backs Bundy, Open Carry

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole That didn’t take long. The Georgia GOP rushed into law an ‘open carry’ provision in April allowing people to tote around guns in bars and churches (apparently these are felt to be complementary institutions in Georgia) and schools (these are apparently felt to be full of expendable if short people in Georgia). […]

Constitution

“Joe the Plumber”: “Your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.”

contributors

“Joe the Plumber”: “Your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.” (via The Political Carnival) “Joe the Plumber” (Sam Wurzelbacher, the not-plumber), wrote the following in response to the grieving parents of the kids slaughtered in Santa Barbara by a gun-toting, knife-wielding murderer who took his own life: By Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher… —— […]

Bill of Rights

Rep. Louie Gohmert: Constitution only fit for Americans who ‘cling to God and guns’

Juan Cole

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) recently asserted that the U.S. Constitution only applied to people “who cling to their God and their guns.” Speaking at a rally in Iowa for Republican Senate candidate Sam Clovis on Friday, Gohmert recalled that he had…

Crime

GOP: Giving CDC money to study Gun Violence would be “Funding Propaganda”

Juan Cole

(By Lois Beckett via ProPublica). After the Sandy Hook school shooting, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) was one of a few congressional Republicans who expressed a willingness to reconsider the need for gun control laws. “Put guns on the table, also put video games on the table, put mental health on the table,” he said less […]