Another Mass Shooting in a Pro-Gun State

Will we ever learn. How many Americans have to die before we realize that allowing just about anyone to get a gun is suicidal. And when will we learn that the NRA owns the Congress and White House. And they don't give a damn about the lives of their fellow citizens. They want  to sell guns. And it doesn't matter who buys them:

Police say the man who opened fire in a suburban Portland shopping mall apparently killed himself after fatally shooting two people and wounding a third.

Clackamas County sheriff's Lt. James Rhodes says law enforcement who flooded the Clackamas Town Center in response to the afternoon shooting didn't fire any shots.

Witnesses described a scene of chaos and disbelief as a gunman wearing some sort of camouflage outfit and a white mask shot an initial burst of fire and then more rounds near the mall's food court.

Many shoppers fled and others hid in the backrooms of stores.

Boy, 7, shot to death at Pa. gun store

Another example of what the profusion of guns in our society is doing to us:

 A man's handgun went off while he was holding it as he got into his truck in the parking lot of a western Pennsylvania gun store Saturday, and the shot killed his 7-year-old son, authorities said.

Joseph V. Loughrey, 44, of Sharpsville, was getting into the truck when the 9 mm handgun discharged, wounding Craig Allen Loughrey in the chest, according to state police. The boy died at the scene at Twigs Reloading Den in East Lackawannock Township, 60 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Investigators said Loughrey told them he didn't realize there was a bullet still in the chamber. "This happens all too often where people think the gun was empty," Lt. Eric Hermick told The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Shooting of Florida 17-year-old at gas station draws comparisons to Trayvon Martin case

We can thank the NRA for this. If you have a gun gotta be able to use it, one way or the other. And why not use it against a "minority."

The fatal shooting of a Florida teenager who was listening to loud music in a car a week ago has drawn comparisons to the Trayvon Martin case, but the differences are significant.

Unlike the Martin case, there were several witnesses to this shooting and there was no scuffle before 17-year-old Jordan Davis was shot to death. And notably, the man accused of firing into the car was arrested a day later.

Michael David Dunn is charged with murder and attempted murder in the Nov. 23 shooting at a Jacksonville, Fla., gas station. The 45-year-old Dunn parked beside the sport utility vehicle occupied by Davis and three other young men and told them to turn the music down, police said. Dunn exchanged words with Davis, who was in the back seat, and started firing. He later told police he felt threatened. His attorney has said Dunn saw a gun and shot in self-defense, perhaps laying the ground work for a case under Florida's "stand your ground" law.

68,000 guns seized in Mexico since 2006 came from US

I guess those guns make Mexico a freer nation as NRA argues:

 68,000 guns recovered by Mexican authorities in the past five years have been traced back to the United States, authorities said Friday.

The flood of tens of thousands of weapons underscores complaints from Mexico that the U.S. is responsible for arming the drug cartels plaguing its southern neighbor. Six years of violence between warring cartels have killed more than 47,000 people in Mexico.

ATF: Mexico seized 68,000 guns made in or imported to United States since 2006

Thousands of Mexicans have died because of the thousands of guns exported to Mexico. We can thank the NRA and U.S. government for this fact:

The government said Thursday that 68,000 guns recovered by Mexican authorities in the past five years have been traced back to the United States.

The flood of tens of thousands of weapons underscores complaints from Mexico that the U.S. is responsible for arming the drug cartels plaguing its southern neighbor. Six years of violence between warring cartels have killed more than 47,000 people in Mexico.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released its latest data covering 2007 through 2011. According to ATF, many of the guns seized in Mexico and submitted to ATF for tracing were recovered at the scenes of cartel shootings while others were seized in raids on illegal arms caches. All the recovered weapons were suspected of being used in crimes in Mexico.

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Florida man mistakes girlfriend for hog, shoots her

That's guns are used for--killing the innocent:

A Florida couple was on a weekend camping trip that ended in an airlift to the emergency room.

Steven Egan, 52, was hunting with his girlfriend, Lisa Simmons, in the northern part of the state when he mistook her for a hog and shot her.

"He saw a hog and thought he shot it and went to look for it," Maj. Steve Clair of the Flagler County Sheriff's Office told ABC News.  "He heard her and thought it was a hog and just shot."

Va. couple accidentally shot at gun safety class

Guns are dangerous even for trained people:

A Roanoke, Va., man and his wife were recovering after he accidentally shot himself and her during a firearms safety class.

LA Times Editorial: Obama anti-gun? Says who?

Just another example of the fraud who is Barack Obama:

Obama hasn't proposed any anti-gun legislation in his first term, and has rarely mentioned the topic. This makes us wonder how long the NRA and the politicians who do its bidding can continue to pretend there's a wolf at the door before people look outside and discover that wolves are an endangered species.

The answer, based on last week's annual NRA convention, is apparently forever.

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Bill Cosby: Trayvon Martin Case About Guns, Not Race

It's both. Cosby deserves credit for speaking up:

Actor and comedian Bill Cosby says the debate over the killing of Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch volunteer should be focused on guns, not race.

In an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" aired Sunday, Cosby said calling George Zimmerman a racist doesn't solve anything. Cosby says the bigger question is what Zimmerman was doing with a gun, and who taught him how to behave with it.

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Tucson Widow Calls for Gun Control

The problem is the politicians don't care. If one of their own got shot down and didn't take action then they never will. Only by taking on the NRA could we get gun laws that protect the American people:

Mavy Stoddard and her husband, Dory, were independent voters who decided to meet their Democratic Representative, Gabby Giffords, at one of her "Congress On Your Corner" events on a Saturday morning last January 8, 2011.

They were the ninth and tenth people in line when the shooting started. Mavy thought she had heard a firecracker. Then she saw a young man with a gun raised about 20 feet away.

"My eyes lit on the shooter as he was pulling the trigger in a shooting stance," Stoddard recalled in an interview at St. Louis City Hall.

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Police say SC man carried loaded machine gun and handgun into NYC subway system

This is very frightening for those of us who travel the NY subways every day. Guns are everywhere. It almost seems they are easy to buy as bubble gum. Certainly the NRA loves that fact:

A South Carolina man who entered the New York City subway system with two loaded weapons has been arrested.

The NYPD says a police officer stopped the suspect after seeing him go into in Manhattan subway station Sunday night without paying. The officer then noticed a handgun in the man’s waistband.

Police recovered a loaded Smith & Wesson .45-caliber handgun and a loaded Intratec Luger Tec-9 machine gun. Police say the machine gun was found inside a bag the man was carrying.

Source

Ranger shot at Mount Rainier National Park

With all these guns out there no one is safe:

A ranger at Mount Rainier National Park was shot this morning. The shooting occurred just before 11 a.m. near the Longmire Ranger Station at the park.Units from the Washington State Patrol and the Pierce County Sheriff's Department are responding to the park and searching for the suspect. "Officer down, information just coming in. Stay out of area suspect armed with a long rifle on foot," the Pierce County Sheriff's Department reported on Twitter around 11:25 this morning.

Source

US Police Fatalities up 13 percent in 2011 to 173

Government cutbacks a major factor but so are the increase in the number of guns in our society:

Craig Floyd, the group's chairman, blamed the rise on budget cuts to public safety departments. He cited surveys by police groups that showed many cut back on training and delay upgrading equipment, and referenced a Department of Justice report issued in October that said an estimated 10,000 police officers and sheriff's deputies have been laid off within the past year.

"I'm very troubled that these drastic budget cuts have put our officers at a grave risks," he said. "Our officers are facing a more brazen cold-blooded element and fighting a war on terror, and we're giving them less training and less equipment they need to do their jobs safely."

[...]The number of firearms-related fatalities, which have risen 70 percent since 2008, was particularly alarming to analysts. Of the 68 deaths, 14 took place while the officer was attempting an arrest, nine occurred during a domestic disturbance call and five were ambushes, according to the data.

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Gun sales at record levels, according to FBI background checks

At least the killing business is doing well:g ranges, sportsmen organizations and publishers, has offered a glimpse into the economic impact of the industry.

Firearms industry has returned robust results in the midst of recession.

A recent report by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a trade association for the firearms industry which boasts membership of more than 5,500 manufacturers, distributors, firearms retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen organizations and publishers, has offered a glimpse into the economic impact of the industry.

But a little reminder of what guns do for us:

1. Of all firearm-related crime, 86 percent involved handguns.5
   
   Only one in six Americans own handguns.6
   
   Unlike manufacturers of other consumer products, the industry that makes handguns is unregulated for health and safety. 
2. <sup>Since 1962, more than one million Americans have died in firearm homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings. Handguns were used in more than 650,000 of these fatal shootings.7
   
   In 1997�the most recent year available�there were 89 firearm deaths per day, or a firearm death every 16 minutes.8
   
   In homes with guns, a member of the household is almost three times as likely to be the victim of a homicide compared to gun-free homes.9</sup>
3. The largest category of firearms fatality is suicide, not homicide. In 1997, 54 percent of all gun deaths were suicides, and 42 percent were homicides.16
   
   About six out of 10 suicides are committed with firearms.
4. For every time a gun in the home is used in a self-defense homicide, a gun will be used in�
   
       1.3 unintentional deaths
   
       4.6 criminal homicides
   
       37 suicides22
   
   In 1997 there were 15,690 homicides.
   
       Of these, 8,503 were committed with handguns.
   
       Among handgun homicides, only 193 (2.3 percent) were classified as justifiable homicides by civilians.23
   
   For every time in 1997 that a civilian used a handgun to kill in self-defense, 43 people lost their lives in handgun homicides alone.

The numbers might have changed since 1997 the fundamentals haven't. Guns are not used for the good of this country but cause terrible harm.

California Soldier Shot at his Homecoming Party

America is a war zone just Afghanistan. And it's made that way by the proliferation of guns, drugs and a violent culture. Seems to me that we need to win the war at home before we can win any wars abroad:

An Army soldier recovering from injuries suffered in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan has been shot at his homecoming party, and family members say he's paralyzed and in critical condition.

Christopher Sullivan, 22, was shot late Friday while trying to break up a fight between his brother and another man at a San Bernardino, Calif., residence.

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