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Chipping Away at Gun Laws
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Chipping Away at Gun Laws
What's Your Opinion?
These days, the National Rifle Association has plenty of friends in Congress. Thanks to those friends, the $375-billion omnibus spending bill passed two weeks ago includes a hardly-noticed provision to erase the current requirement that gun dealers keep records of customers' purchases for 90 days after they have passed the necessary background check. The NRA-backed amendment will allow those records to be destroyed after just 24 hours. Law enforcement officials will then find it more difficult to track guns that were used in crimes.
Backers of the amendment invoke lofty principles about personal freedom and constitutional rights to justify the change, but they trot out the same shopworn arguments to oppose almost every attempt to limit access to firearms. They may well be setting the stage for an election-year fight over the nation's gun policy. Later this year, the 10-year-old ban on military-style assault weapons is scheduled to expire. To the delight of the NRA and the gun lobby, Republican Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, already has promised that the House will defeat efforts to renew the ban.
America regards itself as one of the world's most civilized nations. But its love affair with guns, especially handguns, is a scandal that, over the years, has resulted in massive numbers of tragic deaths. January is not yet over and the number of firearm deaths across the country is close to - and may already have exceeded - the 2,000 mark.
The nonprofit Handgun-Free America is going too far in seeking a complete ban on private handgun ownership in the United States. But it has pulled together some compelling statistics to justify its position.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of firearm deaths among children under age 15 in this country is nearly 12 times higher than in 25 other industrialized countries combined.
The Washington Post reported in 1998 that, in 1992, handguns killed 13 people in Australia, 33 in Great Britain, 36 in Sweden, 60 in Japan, 97 in Switzerland, 128 in Canada and 13,200 in the United States.
A country-by-country comparison of 15 industrialized nations, based on data compiled from Health Canada, Health Protection Branch and a United Nations International Study on Firearm Regulation shows 62.4 gun homicides per million population in the United States. The next closest county was war-torn Northern Ireland with 35.5 gun homicides per million. No other country is higher than 8.7 per million.
And we call ourselves civilized.
http://www.ellsworthamerican.com/thisweek/02-05-04/ea_edit2_02-05-04.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>
What's Your Opinion?
These days, the National Rifle Association has plenty of friends in Congress. Thanks to those friends, the $375-billion omnibus spending bill passed two weeks ago includes a hardly-noticed provision to erase the current requirement that gun dealers keep records of customers' purchases for 90 days after they have passed the necessary background check. The NRA-backed amendment will allow those records to be destroyed after just 24 hours. Law enforcement officials will then find it more difficult to track guns that were used in crimes.
Backers of the amendment invoke lofty principles about personal freedom and constitutional rights to justify the change, but they trot out the same shopworn arguments to oppose almost every attempt to limit access to firearms. They may well be setting the stage for an election-year fight over the nation's gun policy. Later this year, the 10-year-old ban on military-style assault weapons is scheduled to expire. To the delight of the NRA and the gun lobby, Republican Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, already has promised that the House will defeat efforts to renew the ban.
America regards itself as one of the world's most civilized nations. But its love affair with guns, especially handguns, is a scandal that, over the years, has resulted in massive numbers of tragic deaths. January is not yet over and the number of firearm deaths across the country is close to - and may already have exceeded - the 2,000 mark.
The nonprofit Handgun-Free America is going too far in seeking a complete ban on private handgun ownership in the United States. But it has pulled together some compelling statistics to justify its position.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of firearm deaths among children under age 15 in this country is nearly 12 times higher than in 25 other industrialized countries combined.
The Washington Post reported in 1998 that, in 1992, handguns killed 13 people in Australia, 33 in Great Britain, 36 in Sweden, 60 in Japan, 97 in Switzerland, 128 in Canada and 13,200 in the United States.
A country-by-country comparison of 15 industrialized nations, based on data compiled from Health Canada, Health Protection Branch and a United Nations International Study on Firearm Regulation shows 62.4 gun homicides per million population in the United States. The next closest county was war-torn Northern Ireland with 35.5 gun homicides per million. No other country is higher than 8.7 per million.
And we call ourselves civilized.
http://www.ellsworthamerican.com/thisweek/02-05-04/ea_edit2_02-05-04.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>