7.21.2012

You know what time it is

It's get-your-panties-knotted-about-guns time!  There are probably a thousand links to illustrate this already, but try Roger Ebert here or the San Francisco Chronicle here, or anyone jumping on the Mike Bloomberg bandwagon.  (If you want to buy a gun in New York, your best bet is getting them from the cops who smuggle them.)

Yesterday was a nasty, terrible day for gun violence in the United States.  In Aurora, twelve souls were lost. Terrible.  Horrible.  Very sad.

In an unrelated story, if yesterday was typical, somewhere between 80 and 90 people died in traffic accidents.  Same as the day before, the day after, and for that matter every other day of the year.

Ebert notes that the U.S. has "insane" gun laws, and that we are "one of few developed nations that accepts the notion of firearms in public hands."  I'd sure rather live in a place like Canada or Norway, where sensible gun control prevails and crazy people can't get their hands on a gun.

But what's this?  Ebert, incomprehensibly, uses as his closing zinger the fact that one of the victims was witness to another mass shooting recently...in Canada.  Cognitive dissonance never slowed this guy down.

Link for traffic fatalities here and global murder rates here.  Note that the U.S. squeaks barely into the orange with a 5-per-100,000 murder rate.


(ADDENDUM): This interesting tidbit from the CDC: Gun homicides in the U.S. amounted to 11,015 for the year 2010; deaths from accidental falls that year added up to 25,903.  You know, this country's permissive attitude toward ladders and other means of access to high places is, in a word, insane.  I urge you to write your legislators and tell them to stop being such cowards on this issue.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Too bad that fat fuck wasn't at the midnight screening in Aurora.

His body would have shielded at least three innocent kids.

Old Zeke said...

I don't think we should wish death on our political opponents, but thanks for the comment.

Anonymous said...

Oh I don't know anything about his politics.

I just don't like fat people.

Old Zeke said...

Point awarded to anonymous.

Happy Super Tuesday!