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To Live And Die In America

Posted December 22nd, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton
This is the headline of The Huffington Post right now.  It’s a list of just some of the gun deaths in the last week alone, since the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School:

TO LIVE AND DIE IN AMERICA

3 Shot And Killed In Mich… 18-Year-Old Shot Multiple Times, Dies… Man Kills Wife, Teen, Himself… Man Shoots, Kills Own Son… Cops Shoot Teen Dead… Man Gunned Down In Parking Lot… 5 Dead In Spate Of Shootings… 2 Murdered In Philly… 2 Kansas Cops Shot Dead… Shooter Killed… 4 Die In Apparent Murder-Suicide… Ga. Cop Dies From Gunshot… Argument Leads Teen To Shoot Friend… Man Shot To Death… Teen Dies After Being Tied Up, Shot… Man Shot Dead In Street… Drug Deal Leads To Shooting Death… Mother Of 2 Killed In Road Rage Shooting… Man Shoots, Kills Intruder… 1 Killed In Coney Island… Man Dies From Gunshot Wounds… Cops Investigate Gun Death… Shooting Victim’s Body Found On Bike Trail… Man Charged With Shooting Own Brother Dead… Man Dies After Being Shot In Chest… Body Of Shooting Victim Found In Pickup… Teen Arrested For Robbery Shooting Death… Man Carrying 2-Year-Old Son Shot Dead… Man Fatally Shot Near Home… Parolee Dies In Shooting… 1 Killed In Buffalo Shooting… Man Shot Dead In Apartment Complex… Street Gun Battle Kills Grandma Bystander… Man, Woman Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide… Woman Shot Dead By Intruder… 14-Year-Old Arrested Over Fatal Gun Attack… Man Found Shot Dead In Parking Lot… Woman Shot In Face By Ex-Boyfriend… 1 Woman, 3 Men Shot Dead… 2 Die In Attempted Robbery… Army Reservist Shot To Death In Alley… Man Shot To Death In Bodega… 2 Shot Dead In Burned House… Man Shot During Break-In… Man Fatally Shot… 20-Year-Old Gunned Down… Man Shoots Self During Police Pursuit… 1 Killed In Baltimore Shooting… Cops ID Shooting Victim… 60-Year-Old Man Shot Dead… Shot Man’s Body Found In Vacant House…. Woman Shot And Killed Outside Her Home… Shooting Victim Was ‘Trying To Turn Life Around’… Slain Shooting Victim Found In Street…. Driving Altercation Leads To Shooting, 1 Dies… 3-Year-Old Dies In Accidental Shooting… Man Turns Self In After Allegedly Shooting Wife… Man Shot Dead Outside Home… 3 Slain In Separate New Orleans Shootings… Cops Investigate Shooting Death… Man Shot Dead In Ohio… Teen Shot To Death… Man Dies After Being Shot Multiple Times… Man Charged Over Son’s Shooting Death… Cops Find 2 Men Shot Dead… 1 Dies In Shooting… Man Charged Over Gun Killing… 1 Shot Dead In Confrontation… Man Charged With Murder Over Shooting… Motel Owner Shot And Killed… Husband Shoots Estranged Wife Dead… Suspect Arrested Over Deputy’s Shooting Death… Police Probe Fatal Shooting… Cops Kill 2 Suspects In 3 Shooting Deaths… Man Killed Fighting Back Against Robber… Man Killed In Home Invasion…. Nightclub Shooting Kills 1… Child Brain Dead After Drive By Shooting… Man Charged Over Shooting Of Ex-Wife… Body Found In Vacant House… Teen Fatally Shot…

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File under: ugliness, US politics | Tagged: Tags: gun control, guns, homicides, Huffington Post, NRA, Sandy Hook | 6 Comments
  1. Hugh McCauley says:
    December 22, 2012 at 11:26 am

    Disgusting! The wild, wild West (Philadelphia) is 15 miles from my home. We hear it all on radio every day. Tragedy upon tragedy seems to multiply with gunshots everywhere in poor urban areas. As an old veteran I refuse to carry a gun because I’m afraid to, in case I was ever tempted to use one.

  2. SusieOfArabia says:
    December 22, 2012 at 12:31 pm

    It’s staggering! … and shameful.

  3. Donna says:
    December 22, 2012 at 1:50 pm

    I guess none of these killings would have happened if everybody had been armed.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 22, 2012 at 2:18 pm

      Yup, that’s NRA-sure. Today the NYT’s Nick Kristof tweeted this:
      “Following NRA logic that guns make us safe, Secret Service should arm everyone at presidential events, to foil assassins.”

  4. angela murnane says:
    January 2, 2013 at 1:00 am

    just keep spreading awareness … the smoking battle is almost won and it took decades … surely Americans can learn from mistakes

  5. Guy de la Rupelle says:
    May 12, 2013 at 12:02 am

    Feels odd reading through those horrifying statistics. I’ve been in Japan for over 2 decades and the situation is very different. In 2008, the U.S. had over 12 thousand firearm-related homicides. All of Japan experienced only 11, fewer than were killed at the Aurora shooting alone. And that was a big year: 2006 saw an astounding two (2!!!), and when that number jumped to 22 in 2007, it became a national scandal. By comparison, also in 2008, 587 Americans were killed just by guns that had discharged accidentally!
    To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you’ll file with the police. Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don’t forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years.
    Even the most basic framework of Japan’s approach to gun ownership is the opposite of America’s. U.S. gun law begins with the second amendment’s affirmation of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms”. Japanese law starts with the 1958 act stating that “No person shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords,” later adding a few exceptions. In other words, American law is designed to enshrine access to guns, while Japan starts with the premise of forbidding it. Interesting cultural differences I’d say.

Gun Sickness

Posted December 15th, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Guns make me sick.  Literally, sick.

At the sight of one, I get this queazy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I feel kind of faint. I want to throw up.  I want to be anywhere but where I am at that moment, to put as much distance as I can between myself and the weapon.

In this, I am no coward. I am simply sane. I am damned if I’ll show that I’m intimidated, but I’d be crazy not to be. Because whether a gun is holstered at the waist of a policeman, held pointed at me by a solider at a checkpoint, brandished by a proud collector, or flashed by a thug outside a nightclub, it says one thing and one thing only: “I can kill you.”

So with all the years of psychology behind me, with all my “experience” with guns (the sound of a bullet whistling past your ear is not one you ever forget), why do I still not understand why others don’t react this way? Why do I not understand that guns evidently turn many people on, and make them want to be the ones doing the killing?

What am I to make of a Facebook “friend” who declares herself a peace activist, quotes Rumi, and then obscenely argues that if only the teachers at that Connecticut elementary school had been armed… ? Or of another self-declared Facebook peacenik who maintains that she is “neither for nor against guns”?  That’s some kind of peace on earth. Forget good will to all men. Let alone women and children.

Over half the American population agrees with the National Rifle Association’s solipsistic dictum that “guns don’t kill, people do.” As though guns had any other purpose.  The same majority agrees with the argument that “incidents” like the Connecticut elementary-school shooting — only one of an average of twenty such mass shootings each year in the US — are not a gun-control problem, but a mental-health one. And in a way they don’t realize, they are right.

The United States does indeed have a severe mental-health problem, but it’s not a matter of a sick individual here and there.  It’s something far worse.  It’s a mass psychosis, in which this country places gun protection above the protection of human life.

Guns are the sacred cow of American politics.  Could there be a falser god?

Effective gun control is a political no-go.  And even if it were possible, it wouldn’t be enough. All guns are initially made and sold legally. And the guns used to kill twenty 6- and 7-year-olds and their teachers in Connecticut yesterday were bought by and legally registered to the shooter’s mother — who was his first victim.

Here’s what we really need to do:

We need to amend the Second Amendment.   We need to limit the “right to bear arms.”

And we need to brand the NRA a terrorist organization, one that aids and abets terrorism.  The terror on the faces of the surviving children being led out of their school yesterday testifies to that.

gun sickness

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File under: ugliness, US politics | Tagged: Tags: Connecticut, gun control, mass psychosis, mental health, NRA, Sandy Hook, Second Amendment, terrorism | 13 Comments
  1. Bushra Zafar says:
    December 15, 2012 at 8:44 pm

    I am so sick of all the stupid playing politics with people’s lives. this is not a rights issue. this is a common sense issue. If they want the right to bear arms then we should go back to the arms that were about when the constitution was written.

  2. saheemwani says:
    December 15, 2012 at 9:58 pm

    Thank you Lesley. I’m sharing this post on Facebook. One tight slap for the gun-defenders.

  3. Lynn Rosen says:
    December 16, 2012 at 9:13 pm

    Thanks for your reasoned post. Would that the rest of the world could see this through your clear eyes.

  4. Tea-mahm says:
    December 17, 2012 at 11:08 am

    Thank you for your wise words, Lesley! Also, I think we need to mention making it easier for families with mentally sick kids to get help. And prayer for the families. T’m

  5. zummard. says:
    December 17, 2012 at 3:30 pm

    Many of us feel more than sick to mention in words. I cannot imagine how the parents and relatives of those children will ever recover from such a tragedy.
    In my view, the real culprits are the (weapon)gun-manufacturing businesses. As someone said aptly, ‘so many guns are already in the hands of people in the U.S. that it is not possible to eliminate them anymore.’
    The manufacturers have sold so many to the rest of the world that we will never know how many innocent lives have been cut short by the guns that have travelled all over the world.
    WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN? WILL THEY EVER LEARN?
    When will their greed for making and selling weapons be satiated?
    And please don’t give me the line, Guns don’t kill. People do. Of course guns in the hands of people KILL. That is their only function.
    I don’t know if I am making any sense here – the world is an insane place right now.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 17, 2012 at 8:03 pm

      Thank you for prompting me: I just posted video of Marlene Dietrich singing Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” with that famous refrain. — L.

      • zummard. says:
        December 18, 2012 at 4:19 am

        Thanks. I wish the whole world would sing it all together. I ask all those whose hearts have been touched by this violence to pray for a world where the sanctity of innocence is respected and sacredness of places such as schools, homes and places of worship is preserved.

  6. Joan Clark says:
    December 19, 2012 at 2:35 pm

    There is no need to amend the constitutional right to bear. Arms. Pass legislation to ban civilian sale of multishot magazine ammunition. If a mentally disturbed person only had access to single shot guns, knives, etc, fewer people would be killed.

  7. Jerry M says:
    January 15, 2013 at 11:11 am

    Except for the part about NRA being a terrorist organization (they aren’t they are a lobbyist for the gun manufacturers), I agree with everything else in the post.

  8. Fish Jones says:
    January 17, 2013 at 12:04 am

    There are so few hobbies that carry the feeling behind owning, caring for, and shooting a gun.

    So many people die every day–yet guns are what people whine about.

    Cancer and other diseases takes years to kill and is degrading, expensive, and exhausting. You become your disease. A gun accident has much less chance of that.

    If Sandy Hook had been a bus+train= exact same casualties, no one outside of Sandy Hook would care 2 months later.

    Yes, guns can sicken you. As someone with really bad phobias, I get that, but it’s just a gun.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      January 17, 2013 at 10:57 am

      What exactly IS “the feeling behind owning, caring for, and shooting a gun”? And what makes it a “hobby”?

    • Jerry M says:
      January 20, 2013 at 10:30 pm

      Why are we so willing to control alcohol consumption in order to prevent possible deaths but unwilling to control gun use? We have a gun violence problem that is an embarrassment (if only we were capable of embarrassment).

  9. Jerry M says:
    January 20, 2013 at 10:27 pm

    I will never know why all sorts of restrictions are allowed on freedom of speech (the first amendment) but to touch the second is considered in impossibility. The US has gun violence rates appropriate to a third world country. For some reason many Americans cannot be shocked into sanity when they are read the statistics.

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