Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: Why Have We Stopped Talking about Guns?

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:



Published on Saturday, June 13, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Why Have We Stopped Talking about Guns?
by Bill Moyers & Michael Winship


You know by now that in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, an elderly white supremacist and anti-Semite named James W. von Brunn allegedly walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a .22-caliber rifle and killed security guard Stephen T. Johns before being brought down himself. He's 88 years old, with a long record of hatred and paranoid fantasies about the Illuminati and a Global Zionist state. How bitter the bile that has curdled for so many decades.

You will know, too, of the recent killing, while ushering at his local church, of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country still performing late term abortions. Sadly, this case was proof that fatal violence works. His family has announced that his Wichita, Kansas, clinic will not be reopened.

You may be less familiar with the June 1st shootings in an army recruiting office in Little Rock that killed one soldier and wounded another. The suspect in question is an African-American Muslim convert who says he acted in retaliation for US military activity in the Middle East.

Soon, however, these terrible deeds will be forgotten, as are already the three policemen killed by an assault weapon in Pittsburgh; the four policemen killed in Oakland, California; the 13 people gunned down in Binghamton, New York; the 10 in an Alabama shooting spree; five in Santa Clara, California; the eight dead in a North Carolina, nursing home. All during this year alone.

There is much talk about hate talk; hate crimes against blacks, whites, immigrants, Muslims, Jews; about violence committed in the name of bigotry or religion. But why don't we talk about guns?

....(snip)....

The fact is, neither party will stand up to the National Rifle Association, the best known front group for the arms merchants. In Virginia, just across the Potomac River from the Holocaust Museum, this week's Democratic primary for governor was won by state legislator R. Creigh Deeds, a man who supports allowing concealed weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol and opposes limiting handgun purchases to one a month. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/13

[NightWatcher]

1. you cant solve the problem of DUI's by limiting cars

you have to deal with what got us there. Von Brunn could have driven his car into a synagogue, Tiller could have been run down by a truck driven by an anti abortionist. Lets not talk about the tools, but the personalities involved.

[bettyellen]

2. we could talk about restricting ownership, and we should! ...drivng over Tiller, is that a joke?

[Irreverend IX]

3. "three policemen killed by an assault weapon"

Firearm animism is the hallmark of a "fair and balanced" piece of writing on guns. No, Bill and Mike, guns don't come to life and kill people of their own accord. And the reason no one is talking about guns is that the last major anti-gun legislation had no effect on crime and brought about a Republican majority and 8 years of George Dubya Bush. A war on guns will be about as successful as the war on drugs.