[Vision2020] In Other Countries, Laws Are Strict and Work

[Art Deco]

The psychological defense mechanism of denial is very, very powerful where
emotionally charged, strongly held opinions are at stake.

w.


On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 9:50 AM, Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>wrote:

> I'd like to see what the anti-gun control crowd things of this compelling
> article.
>
>
> On Dec 18, 2012, at 4:05 AM, Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>
>
> ------------------------------
> December 17, 2012
> In Other Countries, Laws Are Strict and Work
>
> Like other shootings before it, the Newtown, Conn., tragedy has reawakened
> America to its national fixation with firearms. No country in the world has
> more guns per capita, with some 300 million civilian firearms now in
> circulation <http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32842.pdf>, or nearly one
> for every adult.
>
> Experts from the Harvard School of Public Health, using data from 26
> developed countries, have shown<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html>that wherever there are more firearms, there are more homicides. In the
> case of the United States, exponentially more: the American murder rate is
> roughly 15 times that of other wealthy countries, which have much tougher
> laws controlling private ownership of guns.
>
> There’s another important difference between this country and the rest of
> the world. Other nations have suffered similar rampages, but they have
> reacted quickly to impose new and stricter gun laws.
>
> Australia is an excellent example. In 1996, a “pathetic social misfit,” as
> a judge described the lone gunman, killed 35 people with a spray of bullets
> from semiautomatic weapons. Within weeks, the Australian government was
> working on gun reform laws that banned assault weapons and shotguns,
> tightened licensing and financed gun amnesty and buyback programs.
>
> At the time, the prime minister, John Howard, said, “We do not want the
> American disease imported into Australia.” The laws have worked. The
> American Journal of Law and Economics reported in 2010 that firearm
> homicides in Australia dropped 59 percent between 1995 and 2006. In the 18
> years before the 1996 laws, there were 13 gun massacres resulting in 102
> deaths, according to Harvard researchers<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/files/bulletins_australia_spring_2011.pdf>,
> with none in that category since.
>
> Similarly, after 16 children and their teacher were killed by a gunman in
> Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996<http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/18/world/scottish-inquiry-s-focus-why-strict-gun-law-failed.html>,
> the British government banned all private ownership of automatic weapons
> and virtually all handguns. Those changes gave Britain some of the toughest
> gun control laws in the developed world on top of already strict rules.
> Hours of exhaustive paperwork are required if anyone wants to own even a
> shotgun or rifle for hunting. The result has been a decline in murders
> involving firearms.
>
> In Japan<http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/a-land-without-guns-how-japan-has-virtually-eliminated-shooting-deaths/260189/>,
> which has very strict laws, only 11 people killed with guns in 2008,
> compared with 12,000 deaths by firearms that year in the United States — a
> huge disparity even accounting for the difference in population. As Mayor
> Michael Bloomberg stressed on Monday<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt-nEl55eXU&feature=player_embedded>while ratcheting up his national antigun campaign, “We are the only
> industrialized country that has this problem. In the whole world, the *
> only* one.”
>
> Americans do not have to settle for that.
>
>
> *Read related editorials on gun control: rethinking guns<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/opinion/the-gun-challenge-reason-for-hope.html>and constitutional
> issues<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/opinion/the-gun-challenge-second-amendment.html>
> .*
>
>
> --
> Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
> art.deco.studios at gmail.com
>
>
>
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-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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