Republican Governor Shocks the Country by Calling for Stricter Gun Laws

Apr 12, 2023 | Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has called on his state legislature to revise the state's gun laws to make it more difficult for dangerous people to get their hands on firearms. This is a massive step forward for the country, as Republican politicians have rarely been on the side of stricter gun laws. This also shows that the protests in the Tennessee statehouse had an impact, as the national spotlight showed how horrible Republicans are. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what happened.

'Falling Flat': Acosta Breaks Down GOP Lawmaker's Pro-gun Talking Points

May 28, 2022 • CNN's Jim Acosta breaks down the pro-gun talking points from some GOP members and examines the potential reasons the US leads in number of mass shootings compared to other countries.

Switzerland Votes for Tighter Gun Laws by Large Margin

THE GUARDIAN: Motion to line up county’s laws with EU rules passed with 64% of votes, initial results show

Swiss voters have agreed by a nearly two-to-one margin to adopt tighter gun controls in line with changes to European Union rules, heading off a clash with Brussels.

The measure passed in the binding referendum on Sunday under the Swiss system of direct democracy by a 64%-36% margin, provisional final results showed.

The restrictions, which apply to Switzerland as a non-EU member because it is part of Europe’s Schengen open-border system, had raised hackles among shooting enthusiasts before the vote.

Failure to adopt the rules could have forced Switzerland to leave the passport-free Schengen zone and the Dublin joint system for handling asylum requests. » | Reuters | Sunday, May 19, 2019

Spain Races to Prevent Catalonia Independence; the United States and Its Guns

Obama Admits US Gun Laws Are His 'Biggest Frustration'

BBC AMERICA: President Barack Obama has admitted that his failure to pass "common sense gun safety laws" in the US is the greatest frustration of his presidency.

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Obama said it was "distressing" not to have made progress on the issue "even in the face of repeated mass killings".

He vowed to keep trying, but the BBC's North America editor Jon Sopel said the president did not sound very confident.

However, Mr Obama said race relations had improved during his presidency.

Hours after the interview, a gunman opened fire at a cinema in the US state of Louisiana, killing two people and injuring several others before shooting himself.

In a wide-ranging interview, President Obama also said: » | Friday, July 24, 2015

US Gun Debate: Obama Unveils Gun Control Proposals

BBC: US President Obama has unveiled the most sweeping gun control proposals in two decades, setting up a showdown with firearms rights advocates.

He called for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and wider background checks on gun buyers.

The Democratic president also signed 23 executive actions, which do not require congressional approval.

A month after last month's school massacre in Connecticut, he said gun-control reforms could wait no longer.

Mr Obama unveiled the proposals at the White House on Wednesday, flanked by children who wrote him letters after December's Newtown shooting, which left 20 children and six teachers dead.

Mr Obama said: "if there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there is even one life that can be saved, then we've got an obligation to try."

The top US gun lobbying group, the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), said the proposals were "not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation".

"Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy," the group said in a statement. (+ video) » | Wednesday, January 16, 2013

America's Deadly Devotion to Guns
THE GUARDIAN – EXTRACTS: There are around 90 guns for every 100 Americans yet, despite 85 fatal shootings a day, the mighty US gun lobby is as powerful as ever. In the wake of Trayvon Martin's killing, Gary Younge reports on the country's deadly attachment to firearms

…

But America's relationship with guns is as deep and complex at home as it is perplexing abroad. The fact that most British police are not armed confounds even the most liberal here. And even though the nation is evenly split on whether there should be more gun control, every time there is a gun-related tragedy, whether it is the shootings in Arizona,Virgina Tech or any number of schools, the issue has been effectively removed from the electoral conversation. And at the centre of these apparent contradictions stands the NRA, once an organisation that represented the rights of hunters and sportsmen and now a major political player closely linked to the gun industry. "All the domestic controversies of the Americans at first appear to a stranger to be incomprehensible or puerile," suggested the 19th-century French chronicler Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. "And he is at a loss whether to pity a people who take such arrant trifles in good earnest or to envy that happiness which enables a community to discuss them."

But guns in America are no trifling matter. There are approximately 90 guns for every 100 people in the US (a rate almost 15 times higher than England and Wales). More than 85 people a day are killed with guns and more than twice that number are injured with them. Gun murders are the leading cause of death among African Americans under the age of 44.

And the NRA is no joke. Claiming gun ownership as a civil liberty protected by the second amendment, it opposes virtually all gun control legislation. It claims more than 4 million members, has a budget of more than $300m and spent almost $3m last year – when there were no nationwide elections – on lobbying.

…

» | Gary Younge | Monday, April 16, 2012

Universities in Texas 'To Allow Students to Carry Guns on Campus'
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Universities in Texas are set to be forced to allow students and academics to carry guns on campus, in a victory for a firearms lobby unbowed after last month’s massacre in Arizona.

A new law that looks certain to pass through the Texas legislature would mean that its 38 public colleges, which are attended by half a million students, must permit concealed handguns on site.

It would become only the second state, after Utah, to enforce such a rule.

More than 20 states have rejected similar proposals introduced since the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007.

At present, colleges in Texas – along with churches and businesses – are free to ban firearms from their premises. Guns are prohibited from university buildings, dormitories and surrounding grounds.

The plan is likely to astonish most who recall the mass shootings at Virginia Tech, where a student killed 32 people, and in Northern Illinois the following year, where five people were murdered.

It also comes just six weeks after six people were killed and 13, including the US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, were wounded during a shooting spree in a supermarket car park in Tucson, Arizona. >>> Jon Swaine, New York | Monday, February 21, 2011

It’s Time to Take the Wild Out Of the West!
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH – EXTRACT: The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords shows why it is time to rethink America's gun laws, says Harold Evans.

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A law-abiding American citizen is far more likely to die with a bullet in his body than a British citizen. All the comparable Western countries with reasonable gun laws have long had vastly fewer gun homicides. The murder rate per 100,000 people for the US is 5.2. For Australia it is 0.07, for Japan, 0.05, and for the UK 0.06.

… Gabrielle Giffords shooting: Why it is time to change gun laws >>> Harold Evans | Saturday, January 15, 2011

Beware! First It Was Your Fags, Now It’s Your Guns! Bloomberg to Make Bid for the White House
THE SUNDAY TIMES: IT started as a small group of American mayors worried about gun violence. It has since grown into a vociferous national organisation that has challenged the powerful US gun lobby and boosted speculation about the presidential prospects of Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York.

The latest recruit to Bloomberg’s coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns is Patricia Tucker, the widow of a North Carolina sheriff who was shot in the face by a teenager on probation for an earlier offence. He was found to have bought a shotgun from a dealer who allegedly should have refused the sale.

Tucker appeared last week in a new advertising campaign aimed at Congressional allies of the National Rifle Association, the defender of American gunowners’ rights. Bloomberg’s assault on one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying groups has marked him out as both a target for right-wing critics and as a bold, energetic campaigner whose immense personal wealth might enable him to side-step the traditional primary-filled path to the White House.

As the billionaire founder and majority owner of the Bloomberg media empire, the mayor is considering spending $1 billion of his personal fortune on an independent campaign in the 2008 White House race. Bloomberg has gun lobby — and the presidency — in his sights (more) By Tony Allen-Mills

Mark Alexander

Bloomberg, the Man Who Outlawed Smoking in New York City, Now Wants to Outlaw Your Guns
NEW YORK TIMES: In New York, Michael R. Bloomberg is known as the billionaire media mogul who became mayor. But in many parts of the country, he is the man who would take away your guns.

An editorial writer in Harrisburg, Pa., accuses him of “ranting” about illegal firearms. A conservative publication in Florida, NewsMax, asserts: “Bloomberg’s hatred of guns has twisted roots.” And on the Web site of The Wichita Eagle, one writer wonders why a New York mayor is “telling the people of Kansas what to do.”

In towns large and small across the country, Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican, has emerged as the face of gun control in America. Under his guidance, a coalition called Mayors Against Illegal Guns has grown in little more than a year from a skeletal group of 15 into an organization of 225 leaders of towns and cities — many of them Democrats — who are pursuing legal, political and media strategies to stem gun crime. Bloomberg Cast as Enemy No. 1 of Gun Rights Advocates (more) By Diane Cardwell

Mark Alexander

Bloomberg Ruffles Some Feathers Over Guns
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Michael Bloomberg, the multi-billionaire mayor of New York who is considering a self-financed run for president as an independent, is lauded in his home city for the crackdown on guns that has helped slash crime there.

But firearms enthusiasts who gathered at a "Bloomberg Gun Giveaway" near Washington last week had a very different view. In a show of defiance, the Virginia Citizens Defence Group, a gun rights lobby, was raffling tickets for weapons to support two local gun dealers who are being sued for alleged illegal arms sales. Gun lobby takes aim at ‘Yankee’ Bloomberg (more) By Philip Sherwell

Mark Alexander

The US’s “lethal commitment to its own freedoms”?
TIMESONLINE:

”Perhaps of all the elements of American exceptionalism – those factors, positive or negative, that make the US such a different country, politically, socially, culturally, from the rest of the civilised world – it is the gun culture that foreigners find so hard to understand.

The country’s religiosity, so at odds with the rest of the developed world these days; its economic system which seems to tolerate vast disparities of income; even all those strange sports Americans enjoy – all of these can at least be understood by the rest of us, even if not shared.

But why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?” - Gerard Baker Only the names change. And the numbers (Read Gerard Baker's comment)

LE FIGARO: Abasourdis par le pire carnage qu'ont connu les États-Unis, les médias américains s'interrogent sur le manque de réactivité des responsables de l'université de Blacksburg et relancent le débat sur le contrôle des armes à feu. Virginia Tech : l'université critiquée

WELTONLINE: Immer wieder kommt es in den USA zu Bluttaten an Schulen und Hochschulen. Eines der bisher schlimmsten Massaker ereignete sich 1999 in der Columbine High School in Colorado, wo 15 Menschen ums Leben kamen. AMOKLAUF: Bluttaten an amerikanischen Schulen und Hochschulen

FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG: Der schlimmste Amoklauf Amerikas

FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG: Prävention: Wie lassen sich Amokläufe verhindern?

DIE PRESSE: Bush betont Recht auf Waffenbesitz

DIE PRESSE: Der Täter: Hinweise auf Motiv

“Amerika schützt seine Kinder nicht - so lautete zusammengefasst der Kommentar der französischen Tageszeitung "La Republique du Centre" am Dienstag nach dem blutigsten Amoklauf in der Geschichte der USA. "Man muss schon mit aller Bitterkeit unterstreichen, dass die USA zwar paradoxerweise dermaßen um die Weltordnung besorgt sind, andererseits sich aber nicht in der Lage sehen, ihre eigenen Kinder dort zu schützen, wo sie sicher sein sollten", heißt es in dem Blatt.” - [Quelle: Die Presse]

Mark Alexander