Date: Wednesday, January 12, 2011, 6:32 am
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com
Would You Agree That Gun Violence Is No Longer An Inner City Problem; But Can We Convince Gun Lobbyists?
And if history is any indication, the shock over Giffords’ shooting and the deaths of others won’t last long enough to change all that – at least not as long as the gun lobby, a lobby buoyed by right-wing extremists, continues to persuade enough people that they have more to fear from the government taking their guns than from unhinged shooters taking their lives. ... Picture is of --Roxanna Green, mother of shooting victim Christina-Taylor Green, is shown during a Mass to mourn the rampage victims.
And so, the body count continues. A big one was splayed across the news in 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, armed with teenage angst and semiautomatic weapons, killed 12 people at Columbine High School in suburban, mostly-white Columbine, Colorado. At that time, many people - people who had long since come to see gun violence as something that only afflicted black people in inner-city environments like Compton, Baltimore and Detroit - were shocked to learn that the easy availability of guns paired with sick minds could shatter their idyllic notions of security.
Collective shock, however, was soon followed by a collective shrug. Then in 2007, in perhaps one of the most cloistered environments of all, Seung Hui Cho, a mentally disturbed student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, slaughtered 32 people on that campus in what became the deadliest peacetime shooting incident on U.S. soil – ever. Again, there was shock – followed by a shrug.
Then of course last Saturday's massacre, at a suburban shopping mall in Tucson, where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot in the head by a deranged gunman; and six other people – including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl – were killed. ...Drug use and his departure form a local community college due to bizarre behaviour and outbursts – should have stood in the way of anyone selling him a firearm.
But it didn’t.
To Read More>>>
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles...
And so, the body count continues. A big one was splayed across the news in 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, armed with teenage angst and semiautomatic weapons, killed 12 people at Columbine High School in suburban, mostly-white Columbine, Colorado. At that time, many people - people who had long since come to see gun violence as something that only afflicted black people in inner-city environments like Compton, Baltimore and Detroit - were shocked to learn that the easy availability of guns paired with sick minds could shatter their idyllic notions of security.
Collective shock, however, was soon followed by a collective shrug. Then in 2007, in perhaps one of the most cloistered environments of all, Seung Hui Cho, a mentally disturbed student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, slaughtered 32 people on that campus in what became the deadliest peacetime shooting incident on U.S. soil – ever. Again, there was shock – followed by a shrug.
Then of course last Saturday's massacre, at a suburban shopping mall in Tucson, where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot in the head by a deranged gunman; and six other people – including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl – were killed. ...Drug use and his departure form a local community college due to bizarre behaviour and outbursts – should have stood in the way of anyone selling him a firearm.
But it didn’t.
To Read More>>>
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles...
