Conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch has Tweeted his support for gun control:
Rupert Murdoch ?@rupertmurdoch
We have to do something about gun controls. Police license okay for hunting rifle or pistol for anyone without crim or pscho record. No more
I guess this makes him a short-sighted, liberal, tree hugger.
Or are some things too important to remain in the septic tank of American political polemics?
It’s been interesting since the Colorado massacre the number of Tweets, comments on some blogs, posts and Facebook posts that sarcastically say gun control couldn’t have changed this, or since the theater was a declared gun free zone, why, see did that do any good? All of those are smoke screens…shell games.
Those of us here in San Diego remember well that terrible day of July 18, 1984 when an armed-to-the-teeth James Huberty burst into a McDonald’s in San Ysidro near the San Diego-Tijuana border and opened merciless fire, murdering 21 people of all ages and injuring 19 before his destructive life was ended by a sniper. Those of us (like me) who covered it as part of our jobs in the city’s news media — and the one year after story where we had to go back and see how families were doing a year after their loved ones were murdered (they were not doing well) — were also never the same.
Yes, guns don’t kill people, people that lax laws allow to have guns kill people — people who may be nutcases, people who aren’t properly cleared, or people who have in their possession weapons that real hunters or legit gun collectors (legit gun collectors would pass any future required screening) would not have kill people.
Guns don’t kill people: lax laws that allow unstable or clearly criminal people to have weapons that empower them to live out their fantasies, or vent frustrations stemming from personal issues in hails of life-snuffing bullets, kill people.
Laws that allow innocents sitting in a McDonald’s eating their lunch in San Ysidro in 1984 as they gaze into the faces of friends or loved ones or parents or kids or a pre-teen kid riding outside the restaurant on his bike to be shot dead help kill people.
Laws that allow kids and teenage lovers and sailors and families sitting in the assumed-safety of a movie theater to have their lives snuffed out in an obscenely terrifying finale to their lives help kill people — laws that allow one person to buy 6000 rounds of ammunition online in a short period of time along with four guns legally without raising an eyebrow help kill people.
And anyone who points to the fact that lax laws are allowing people with guns to kill people — bigtime — is painted as wanting to take all guns away.
Nope: the reality is, no one is talking about taking all guns away.
Just
make
it
much
tougher
for
criminals
and NUTS
to
get
guns.
But it will now be interesting to see if “Fox and Friends” blasts Murdoch as being a tiresome “librrrruhl” for suggesting maybe its time to tweak some laws before yet another nutcase tanks more lives. You know the answer to that one already…
And also don’t hold your breath on a)those who call for controls to face anything but attempts to politically obliterate or demonize them or twist their words calling for controls or b)any kind of action given politicians’ timidity in face of big bucks that would pour into the campaign coffers to defeat them if they seriously, aggressively pressed to seriously to finesse some laws. The outlook for that is bleak:
In the aftermath of the massacre, during which suspect James Holmes allegedly used a range of firearms, the issue of gun control has re-emerged into the national spotlight. But while a small number of political leaders, like New York City’s Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey’s Frank Lautenberg have vocalized their support for it the political climate for any kind of legislation is forbidding.
Laws can be changed to make it tougher for unstable people and criminals to get guns.
That would take some political guts.
But there’s a shortage of political guts.
So the human guts left by the bullets — enabled by lax laws tacitly endorsed by timid politicians in both parties — on the floors of places like restaurants, schools and theaters will continue.
As will the tears shed by future brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, classmates, lovers, relatives, and friends.
P.S. Mr. Murdoch: Bravo.
UPDATE: Businessweek:
President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have spoken little about gun control in their campaigns for the White House and showed no sign of shifting course after one of the deadliest shootings in recent U.S. history.
“It’s not one of the issues that either candidate has shown much inclination to discuss,” Don Kettl, dean of the school of public policy at the University of Maryland, said. “There are more downside risks than upside gains in talking about it.”
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.