America

Despite hundreds of mass shootings unfolding in the US every year, Congress has repeatedly failed to pass major gun-control legislation.

But those House-passed bills currently have very little chance of passing in the evenly divided Senate. Republican senators are likely to filibuster any proposed gun-control legislation, and Democrats do not have the 60 votes necessary to advance those bills. Support for a ban on handguns also hit a new low in 2021, with just 19% of Americans telling Gallup that they would be in favor of such a policy. Four in 10 Americans live in a household with a gun, while 30% say they personally own one, according to a 2021 survey by Pew Research Center. Some have proposed prohibiting gun purchases by people under 21, which may have prevented the 18-year-old shooter in Uvalde from acquiring his weapons. The US has already seen other devastating examples of mass shootings this month. But despite hundreds of mass shootings unfolding in America every year, Congress has repeatedly failed to pass major gun-control legislation.

After each of the repeated mass shootings that now provide a tragic backbeat to American life, the same doomed dance of legislation quickly begins. As the ...

Otherwise, the basic rules of American politics will continue to allow Republicans to impose their priorities even when a clear majority of Americans disagree. As a result, when the House passed its universal-background-check bill in 2021, only eight Republicans voted for it, while just a single Democrat voted against it. In their opposition to gun control, Republicans in Congress clearly are prioritizing the sentiments of gun owners in their party over any other perspective, even that of other Republican voters. That impassable opposition reflects the GOP’s reliance on the places and voters most deeply devoted to gun culture. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, the Senate in 2013 voted on a measure backed by President Barack Obama to impose background checks on all gun sales. According to calculations by Lee Drutman, a senior fellow in the political-reform program at New America, a center-left think tank, Senate Republicans have represented a majority of the U.S. population for only two years since 1980, if you assign half of each state’s population to each of its senators.

In the last 14 days, America has been shattered again and again and again by the horror of gun violence.

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I was a firearms exec for years. The industry used to adhere to self-imposed rules and norms – until gun makers and lobby groups like the NRA realized fear ...

The horrific murders of second- and third-graders are part of that system. The system continues to work just as it was designed by the NRA and NSSF; from their point of view, nothing about it is broken. So far there is silence from the NSSF and the NRA on the 10 Black Americans murdered in Buffalo and the 19 children and two teachers murdered in Uvalde. A number of other people in the industry sounded their own alarms about the impacts of “terrorist rifles” and a nation with unlimited gun sales and insufficient responsibility. With the election of America’s first Black president, the lobby embraced conspiracy-mongering, racism and fear campaigns. Eventually, their message becomes almost universal: Something is horribly broken in a country that allows troubled young men to arm themselves to the teeth and kill innocent people – especially young children.

The massacre of 19 children in Uvalde once again raise the question of why public support for tighter gun laws goes unheeded in a country with a gun culture ...

In the face of inaction at the federal level to make it harder for potential killers to possess and use guns, there is now movement in the states in the opposite direction. There has been a proliferation in the years after the ban ended. One was the ban on assault weapons enacted in 1994, a law championed by Biden when he was a senator, but the 10-year prohibition expired at its sunset in 2004. Today, according to the Giffords Center, 21 states allow someone to buy and carry a weapon “into public places without any background check or safety training.” Think about what it means that the killings of children in their schools have become common enough to need such a list. The gun lobby as it exists today is a citizen-grounded movement that retains a stranglehold on the Republican Party. Instead of moves to tighten gun laws, legislatures in Republican-led states, among them Texas, have acted to loosen them. Biden noted that in the decade since Sandy Hook, there have been 900 incidents of gunfire at schools. Red-flag laws, more resources for identifying and treating mental health, and more protection for students are some of the answers offered up at times such as these. More than 300,000 students have been exposed to gun violence since the 1999 shooting at Columbine, in Colorado, according to a Washington Post database. It came just 10 days after a racist attack at a grocery store in Buffalo that killed 10 people. In the years after Sandy Hook, the NRA has been hollowed out and weakened by scandal. Robb Elementary now joins Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Virginia Tech and Columbine High School, among others, in a roster of death at educational institutions.

US News: NEW DELHI: A gunman murdered 19 children and two teachers in the deadliest US school shooting in nearly a decade, prompting President Joe Biden to ...

A Democrat, Biden accused the gun lobby of blocking enactment of tougher firearm safety laws. The US also has by far the highest number of privately owned guns in the world. More recent data also suggests that gun ownership grew significantly over the last several years. He ordered flags flown at half-staff daily until sunset on Saturday in observance of the tragedy. The main challenge for effective policy is that the United States may now have more guns (around 400 million) than people (330 million). The US has 4% of the world’s population but about 40% of the firearms in civilian hands.For the love of guns In 2017, the number of civilian-owned firearms in the US was 120.5 guns per 100 residents, meaning there were more firearms than people.

The gun lobby is so powerful in America and politicians there are far too easily corrupted.

When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?” the president asked. The high-point of John Howard’s prime ministership came early in his tenure. It was strong, clear and correct policy.

In District of Columbia v. Heller, special legal protections for handguns made America's gun violence problem unsolvable.

And that means that the weapon responsible for the most deaths in the United States is beyond the reach of policymakers who do not sit on the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh denied that these weapons are “dangerous and unusual” because they are, in fact, “in common use” throughout the United States. The Court’s current slate of justices appear to be more hostile to gun laws than any Supreme Court in American history. If anything, that number underestimates the dangers presented by handguns because the FBI classified over 3,000 of the murders that year as being committed by “Firearms, type not stated.” If you only count gun murders where the type of firearm is known, about 90 percent of all such murders are committed with a handgun. Handguns, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the Court, are “overwhelmingly chosen” by gun owners who wish to carry a weapon for self-defense. Miller (1939), the “obvious purpose” of the Second Amendment was to “render possible the effectiveness” of militias. It also reinvented the Court’s understanding of what the Second Amendment is supposed to accomplish. Heller. By a 5-4 vote, the Court held, for the first time in American history, that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a gun. By far the deadliest weapon in the United States is the handgun — the easiest kind of firearm to conceal. One of the most consequential choices by policymakers to choose gun rights over sensible policy came in 2008, with the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. While Democrats frequently suggest banning assault rifles as a solution to gun violence, those weapons account for only a tiny fraction of homicides. 2020 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, shows that over 24,000 people died of suicide from a firearm that year, while just over 19,000 died in a gun-related homicide (2020 was an unusually deadly year, most likely due to the pandemic).

The gun lobby has not always been as powerful as it is today. What has emerged in the following decades is a paranoid narrative of “us versus them” where ...

In the survey 76 per cent of respondents cited protection as their primary reason for owning a gun, up from 46 per cent in 1994. A 2016 study from Harvard and Northeastern University found that half of all guns in America were owned by just 3 per cent of the population. A 2017 study from Baylor University explored the symbolic meaning of guns and their role in American culture.

Where is America headed? It's no longer an academic question. By Harlan Ullman, Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist. May 25, 2022 / 6:00 AM.

And as one wing of one political party rejects the results of the 2020 presidential election as "stolen," despite every court decision and legitimate piece of evidence to the contrary, this is highly unhealthy. If not, beware the Declaration of Independence and destructive government. Second, creating a public-private partnership for a National Investment Infrastructure Fund patterned after the greatest economic boom in American history following the end of the 1918-20 Spanish flu pandemic is essential. The most trenchant statement in the Declaration of Independence, arguably, is not equality of men and by extension women. The Fifth Horseman offers several corrective ideas and recommendations. Yes, the U.S. Congress has overwhelmingly agreed to sending $40 billion in aid to Ukraine. And both parties concur that China is the largest clear and present danger to the United States. That Democrats in the House may vote to indict Republican members for defying subpoenas issued by the Jan. 6 committee would be reciprocated by the GOP if it held the majority. Third, can and how can corrective action be implemented? The divides have been exacerbated. Depending on how the final Supreme Court decision on Roe vs. But ... Congress is unable and possibly incapable of dealing with the border and immigration; political time bombs in the form of the "4Gs" -- guns, gays, God and gestation periods; debt; and imposing even a patina of civility and compromise in deliberations. As argued in my latest book, The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large, of the seven major disruptors, failed and failing, i.e., destructive, government is the most dangerous.

If you look at any top European team, you will find several Argentine players. Lionel Messi, Ángel Di María, Leandro Paredes, Emiliano Martínez, Cristian Romero ...

Mbappe has made the headlines lately but one comment was able to anger an entire continent. Argentina played against all of South America to qualify for a World Cup. Mbappe and France had to play against Ukraine, Finland, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kazakhstan. You can decide which team had the more difficult path to the World Cup. The France and PSG star spoke to TNT Brasil where he stated the following:

Children are supposed to be partying, dusted with potluck popcorn, coming home sticky. Done with standardized tests, done navigating another confusing pandemic ...

They’re supposed to be performing xylophone solos, peeling their paintings off walls, making plans for summer fun. So, we send our kids to school and hope for the best. Was that a car backfiring, or was that a shot? A time for strong, underpaid, tired teachers to get a well-deserved break. A time for parents to share a laugh and an eye roll, not to stagger to their cars alone. They’re supposed to plunk down heavy backpacks and not open them until fall.