Article in the Economist needs some intelligent feedback

[SlimPickens67]

In this week's edition of The Economist you'll find the following statements in an article in the "Leaders" section called "The blame game" about the Tucson shootings.

The right target, ever further away

Opportunists who seek to gain political advantage by blaming the shootings on words would do America better service if they focused on bullets. ...Copyrighted Material Removed.


There are a lot of things wrong with those two paragraphs, not least the idea that America is the only "decent" country where a civilian can get his hands on a Glock. I'm posting here to invite you to give them some intelligent feedback to counter such utter ignorance in a prominent international news magazine (admittedly a British one, but their largest circulation is in the U.S.).

You can read the article and comment online here:

http://www.economist.com/node/17902699

All the best

 

[mgregg85]

No great surprise here, I really do wish other countries would mind their own business. England has enough problems with their "knife culture" that they don't need to worry about our affairs.

 

[Oyeboten]

GIven the yearly number of deaths by iatrogenic illness or mishap ( likely close to 3/4rs of a million a year, every year ), while one or one's estate has to pay enormous sums for the priveledge...deaths by automobile mishap, electocution, pharmacological misadventure, depression, murder by whatever means, drowning, slip-n-fall, Plane Crash, etc...I see no rationality in how the press plays up occasional firearms related injury or death.

There have always been miscreants, and, always will be.


A sane society accepts this with no need for being drama queens about it...and, elects situational awareness and basic skills for action when called for, as a basic tenet of individual responsibility.

Individual responsibility ought to be the emphacis, and, not helplessness, ineptitude and mindless fear while being hog tied by bureaucrats who then demand taxes to support themselves, under pain of severe punishment if one refuses to be hog tied by them.

Wrong direction...


The 'press' has been a joke for several generations now, a mere gesticulating prostitute turning tricks for their owners and the symbiosis of that with intel and long since lost any respectibilty, of what little it even had four or five or six generations ago.

Actually, it has had no respectibility or honor or intrinsic validity in over seventy years now, far as I can tell.

 

[Neverwinter]

There are specific incidents which seem to resonate strongly within our society. Plane crashes and active shooter incidents are two that are fresh in memory. The immediacy of these events results is a horrible feedback loop as our media deluges us with it and we demand more.

In our community, there are people who will jump at any gun related incident and panic buy things with money that they intended for something else. I did it once before.

We all know that the Tucson shooting was more a failure of the mental health system than gun regulation, but it seems like we're not willing as a nation to really have a substantial dialogue into dealing with it. Maybe the tragedy is just the motivator to get us talking again about the state of healthcare in this country.

 

[withdrawn34]

^^ That is really a dialogue we should've had after the last somewhat similar incident with Cho at Virginia Tech. Yet, we are not addressing the difficult question of what (if anything) can be done about the minority of the mentally ill, who have seriously violent tendencies.

 

[spartan00054]

The Economist has always looked down their nose at us "colonials." I'd sooner be dipped in something extremely unpleasant than to subscribe to that mistitled rag, but my dad has been a subscriber for as long as I can remember.

Economists are supposed to set aside agendas and emotion in order to concentrate on hard facts so that they can come to the most valid conclusions possible. My own strong beliefs in the RKBA as a human right aside, the fact is that since Britain enacted their draconian handgun ban in 1997, they have surpassed the United States in every violent crime category except for rape and murder. While I've got nothing to explain the rape discrepancy, I'd say that the difference in murder rate has a lot to do with our cultural differences: the British believe they have duty to retreat, whereas we believe we have the right to kill in self defense. I'd rather suffer the struggles and take the risks required to live in a society with "vigilante values" any day than be forcibly disarmed by a government that is patently incapable of protecting me.

 

[TuckerNielson]

I've been an Economist subscriber for a while now. I'm not surprised at how they handled this story. SSDD.

There is one statement in this article that is absolutely true - "It is fanciful to imagine that guns will ever disappear from America..."

I want to make sure that law abiding citizens are among those that still have them.

 

[S.W.G.]

I'd rather suffer the struggles and take the risks required to live in a society with "vigilante values" any day than be forcibly disarmed by a government that is patently incapable of protecting me.

Very well put, that should be a bumper sticker!

 

[Sebastian the Ibis]

I used to live in London. One day, in downtown London, I saw a burglar trapped between a couple of burglar doors, he had tried to rob the place and the clerk locked him between the double doors on his way out. There was a crowd of people gathered outside watching when I got there, I stuck around for 10 minutes or so.............. and no Cop ever showed up!!!!! Apparently, nobody showed up for another 20-30 minutes after I left, and then it was an unarmed, little old lady cop who was showing up to take a report - not subdue a cornered youthful robber.

I can't think of a worse place to live, I'll take my Glock and the armed a$$-kicking American patrol officers who immediately show up to a 211 any day over the pathetic non-confrontational system they have of there.

 

[TexasBill]

In various parts of London, police are now patrolling the streets with H&K MP5 submachine guns. Do you know of any American city where the cop on the beat is openly carrying a fully automatic weapon?