LA Times (March 2)
The U.S. is “sending guns, crime to Mexico.” The country “has some of the strictest gun laws in the world,” but these don’t thwart the cartels. “To stock their arsenals, Mexican criminal organizations exploit lax U.S. gun laws, relying in part on straw purchases.” Each year, on average, over 250,000 firearms cross the border into Mexico from the U.S.
USA Today (June 21)
“You’d think that if there was one step both parties in Washington could support in the wake of the nation’s worst mass shooting, it would be to close a yawning gap in federal gun background checks…. Yet in an extraordinary act of cowardice,” over 50 “spineless lawmakers voted against advancing a commonsense measure to expand background checks to virtually all sales of guns, not just those sold by federally licensed dealers.”
Tags: Background checks, Commonsense, Cowardice, Dealers, Guns, Lawmakers, Mass shooting, Spineless, Washington
Los Angeles Times (January 6)
“With gun epidemic raging, Obama finally bypasses Congress.” The president detailed his “modest steps” in a sometimes tearful speech. Ultimately, further Congressional measures will be necessary to solve what has become “one of the most vexing political issues of our time.” The over 30,000 gun related deaths each year show the “grotesque human cost…. At some point, the American people need to inform their leaders that this price is just too high to pay.”
Chicago Tribune (November 20)
“How many refugees from Syria, Iraq or anywhere, for that matter, have committed acts of terrorism in the United States? Well, zero seems to be the answer.” And yet, out of an abundance of caution, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to restrict Syrian refugees. Talk about misplaced priorities. “When it comes to an actual threat — the near certainty that thousands of Americans will be slaughtered next year and every year going forward by guns in the wrong hands and by guns designed for the efficient killing of human beings — our lawmakers and state chief executives are inert.”
Washington Post (October 7)
“It’s time to hold America’s gunmakers accountable.” It is “profoundly misguided that one of the least accountable industries in the United States involves enterprises selling products that kill people.
Tags: Accountable, Enterprise, Gunmakers, Guns, Misguided, U.S.
Washington Post (July 8)
“Maybe Chicago’s death toll will help stop the madness on gun access.” Over the Fourth of July weekend, Chicago “was scarred by what tragically has become another American tradition: gun violence. In the course of 84 hours this past weekend, 82 people were shot in Chicago, 16 of them fatally. One person an hour, not in some far-flung war zone but on the streets of a major U.S. city.”
New York Times (February 3)
“The idea that guns are essential to home defense and women’s safety is a myth. It should not be allowed to block the new gun controls that the country so obviously needs.” Guns kept at home are more often fired “in accidents, criminal assaults, homicides or suicide attempts than in self-defense. For every instance in which a gun in the home was shot in self-defense, there were seven criminal assaults or homicides, four accidental shootings, and 11 attempted or successful suicides.”
Tags: Accidents, Criminal assaults, Guns, Home defense, Homicides, Suicide, Women’s safety
