Will Obama Put Into Action His Call For Stricter Gun Control And Gwynne Dwyer Violence Embedded In American Society

Insane Macho Pro-gun Gov. Rick Perry speaks out: More Guns in schools not less
Gywnne Dwyer Violence for the sake of ‘justice’ embedded in U.S. culture
Stand Your Ground Laws in the 25 states they have been acted increases the numbers of homicides in those states and here is an issue of race in how these laws are interpreted and in the outcome of court cases using these laws.

What is of utmost importance to begin to reduce mass murders in America is whether Obama will take action to at the very least ban assault weapons and larger than needed or reasonable sized Magazines or will it all end in just a lot of hot air and no action taken.

The Americans we are told suffer from having very short attention spans and very short memories. So when some famous personality gets involved in a controversy or goes into rehab or is arrested or appears to have a baby bump or there is an awards show coming up on TV or what's happening with the British Royalty they will if they allowed forget all about this latest massacre . And the government will will continues its obsession with non-existent crisis such as the bogus Fiscal Cliff and the need to cut back on the Security Net .

Maybe if necessary and if Obama didn't really meant what he said Obama will create more distractions for the public to be concerned about as it goes to war in Syria or Iran or wherever especially where the armed forces are no match at all to the US war machine. Will Obama as an appeaser to the right wing and the Hawkish politicians and military leaders use more war propaganda to shift the public's focus away from the difficult issues such as gun control or cut backs to essential services while spending another 100 billion or more on more foreign conflicts.

In America real men own and are willing to use their guns over the slightest insult or if you like to defend their fragile sense of self and honor.


Rick Perry: Guns In Schools Should Be Decided By District by Melissa Jeltsen at Huffington Post , Dec. 18, 2012

Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) warned against a "knee-jerk" reaction from the federal government on gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, and expressed support for allowing teachers to carry guns on campus.

Speaking at a Tea Party event in North Richland Hills, Texas, on Monday night, Perry reflected on the Connecticut elementary school massacre that left 20 first-graders dead, calling it "evil," according to NBC 5.

Perry expressed his continued support for gun rights, according to the Dallas Morning News, saying he believed people with concealed-handgun licenses "should be able to carry your handgun anywhere in this state,” and elicited applause when he spoke positively about a Texas school system that allows some staff members to come to school armed.

Perry was referring to the Harrold Independent School District, which, in 2008, became the first district in the country to permit teachers and staff to carry concealed weapons. Those participating in the program must hold concealed-carry licenses and be approved by the school board.

Gwynne Dwyer argues that the gun violence and even massacres are a result of America's attitude towards violence . The Americans in general appear to believe that the use of violence is the appropriate way to respond to problems because the USA is stuck in a Medieval mindset.

Dwyer argues the nation did not at its beginning reject violence and move towards the rule of law while other democracy 's first gave up their guns and began to trust in the rule of law.

In a previous post we were trying to make a similar point in which we discussed the need of a paradigm shift in America's psyche as it were in its public attitudes in which violence is glorified as being a manly way to redress grievances whether at home or abroad. And so its addiction to violence and guns and violent movies, violence on TV and in computer games .But the USA is also addicted to war to serve its needs to have more control over the rest of the world . Most of the Empires preceding the American Empire have believed that they were blessed and protected by their God or a host of Gods. Others claim the right to forge an Empire based upon some form of historical evolution or inevitability or Hegelian/Marxist dialectic.

Violence for the sake of ‘justice’ embedded in U.S. culture Gwynne Dyer via Cape Breton Post, Dec. 18,2012

...What has just happened in Newtown, Conn. is the seventh massacre this year in which four or more people were killed by a lone gunman. The fact that this time 20 of the victims were little girls and boys six or seven years old has caused a wave of revulsion in the United States, but it is not likely to lead to new laws on gun controls. It’s not even clear that new laws would help.

Half the firearms in the entire world are in the United States. The rate of murders by gunfire in the United States is almost 20 times higher than the average rate in 22 other populous, high-income countries where the frequency of other crimes is about the same. There is clearly a connection between these two facts, but it is not necessarily simple cause-and-effect.

Here’s one reason to suspect that it’s not that simple: the American rate for murders of all kinds — shooting, strangling, stabbing, poisoning, pushing people under buses, and so on — is seven times higher than it is in those other 22 rich countries. It can’t just be guns.

Steven Pinker, whose book “The Better Angels of Our Nature” is about the long-term decline in violence of every kind in the world, is well aware that murder rates have not fallen in the United States in the past century.

...It’s just that in the United States, it’s easier for individuals like that to get access to rapid-fire weapons. And, of course, the intense media coverage of every massacre gives many other crazies an incentive to do the same, only more of it.

But only one in 300 murders in the United States happens in that kind of massacre. Most are simply due to quarrels between individuals, often members of the same family. Private acts of violence to obtain “justice,” with or without guns, are deeply entrenched in American culture, and the murder rate would stay extraordinarily high even if there were no guns.

Since there are guns everywhere, of course, the murder rate is even higher. But since the popular attitudes to violence have not changed, that is not going to change either.

Don't Ignore the Evidence: Stand Your Ground Is Bad for Florida by Dr. David Hemenway at Huffington Post, June 10,2012

As the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, I've dedicated much of my career to researching the issue of gun violence. Too often I have seen policy makers make decisions about guns which were dictated not by the scientific evidence but rather by emotion and special interests. Thus their policy decisions have often reduced rather than promoted public safety. I hope the same phenomenon does not occur in Florida with respect to its Stand Your Ground Law.

...the best available research evidence indicates that Stand Your Ground laws are dangerous, with few redeeming benefits to society.

A new study by economists at Texas A&M University, available through the National Bureau of Economic Research (2012), uses police data and concludes that Stand Your Ground laws are associated with a significant increase in homicides and that these homicides are classified as murders.

Using public health data, economists at Georgia State University also recently (2012) found that passage of a Stand Your Ground law is associated with a significant increase in homicides, and particularly homicides of white males. They conclude that "these findings raise serious doubts against the argument that Stand Your Ground laws make public safer."

Researchers also find striking racial disparities in how Stand Your Ground laws play out once a defendant claims self-defense. John Roman and Mitch Downey of the Urban Institute find that in states with Stand Your Ground laws, twice as many homicides are deemed justified as in non-Stand Your Ground states. In the Stand Your Ground states, when white shooters kill black victims, 34 percent of the resulting homicides are deemed justifiable, while only 3 percent of deaths are ruled justifiable when the shooter is black and the victim is white.

Have Stand Your Ground laws had some beneficial impact by allowing law-abiding citizens to protect themselves? The evidence doesn't show that. The Texas A&M study finds no evidence that Stand Your Ground laws deter crimes: rates of burglary, robbery and aggravated assault are unaffected by the laws. Instead, too often the law is used to protect criminals rather than innocent victims. In a review of the close to 200 Stand Your Ground cases heard in Florida courts since 2005, the Tampa Bay Times finds that most people who raise a Stand Your Ground defense have a criminal arrest record. Indeed, in more than 1/3rd of Florida Stand Your Ground defendants who killed someone have previously been arrested for threatening someone with a gun or illegally carrying a weapon. The law has been used to free gang members, drug dealers fighting with their clients, and perpetrators who shot their victim in the back. Indeed, in most of the Florida Stand Your Ground confrontations, the victim was not committing a crime that led to the confrontation, and was not armed.

The best available research makes Stand Your Ground laws look like a disaster.

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The insanity of "Stand Your Ground Law" has led to more homicides and not fewer and they have a major racist component of how the defense is used so these laws are considered racist and more often than not protects criminals while the innocent are killed.

Black American Teenager Shot To Death For Playing Loud Music

Was the loud music endangering the shooter's life

Column: 'Stand your ground' law flaws : Latest shooting death in Florida shows uneven justice of the law. USAtoday.com, Dec. 4, 2012

The latest victim of Florida's "stand your ground" law was buried in Georgia on Saturday -- eight days after the vehicle he and three other black teens were sitting in was pumped full of bullets by a man who objected to their loud music.

Cops say 45-year-old Michael David Dunn fired eight or nine shots into the SUV, snatching the life from the body of 17-year-old Jordan Russell Davis, who was sitting in a back seat outside a Jacksonville, Fla., convenience store.

After the shooting, Dunn waited for his girlfriend, who was inside the store when the gunfire erupted, to return to his car before driving off. They spent the night in a local motel. The next day Dunn drove 173 miles to his home in Satellite Beach, Fla., where he says he was preparing to turn himself in when police showed up to arrest him.

...fired on the SUV after one of its occupants brandished a shotgun while they were exchanging words over the loud music. Never mind that cops say no weapon was recovered from the vehicle, that is Dunn's story and -- for now, at least -- his lawyer is sticking to it.

...Since the law's enactment, 73% of the people who have used this defense after killing a black person have been set free, according to an analysis done by the Tampa Bay Times. Those who killed someone white escaped a guilty verdict just 59% of the time.

Those numbers have the stench of Jim Crow justice. They suggest that black life does not have the same value as white life in the Sunshine State. They imply that a law that gives a person the right to use deadly force, when he has the option to retreat from a conflict, tilts the scales of justice in favor of injustice.

Last month, a task force appointed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott to review the stand-your-ground law in the wake of Martin's killing found little room to improve the statute. But given the death of Davis, there is clearly still good reason for criticism of that ill-conceived law.

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Some 25 states have some version of "Stand Your Ground" laws.



Gunman Kills Self After Opening Fire on Florida School Board Uploaded on 15 Dec 2010 http://www.visualtube.com ABCNews -

A gunman killed himself after opening fire on a Florida school board meeting. He was confronted by two school officials, one who attacked him with her purse, and another, the security chief, who fired his gun at the shooter.

Police said a 56-year-old man disrupted the the Bay District School Board meeting in Panama City, Fla., walked up to the podium, pulled out a can of red spray paint and painted a large letter "V" with a circle around it.

"The shooter approached the front of the board members, spray painted a symbol on the wall and fired an unknown amount of rounds," said Panama City Police Department spokesman Sgt. Jeff Becker.

also see:
Five ‘Stand Your Ground’ Cases You Should Know About by Suevon Lee ProPublica via Truthdig ,June 10, 2012





and so it goes,
GORD.