Showing posts with label Australian gun laws. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australian gun laws. Show all posts

Friday, May 3, 2019

World asking why so many U.S. mass shootings?


The U.S. has 4.4 percent of the global population but owns 42 percent of the world’s guns. According to a 2015 study by Adam Lankford, professor at the University of Alabama...
Dianne Feinstein-Here's the culprit
"Worldwide, a country’s rate of gun ownership correlated with the odds it would experience a mass shooting. This relationship held even when he excluded the United States, indicating that it could not be explained by some other factor particular to his home country."
In another Lankford study of the same year, "only 4 percent of American gun deaths could be attributed to mental health issues." And re. suicides...
"countries with high suicide rates tended to have low rates of mass shootings — the opposite of what you would expect if mental health problems correlated with mass shootings."
That pretty much puts a damper on the NRA's perpetual and tiring comment that mass shootings are a mental health issue. The Washington Post Editorial Board said "there have been more than 100 mass shootings, more than 4,500 gun deaths (not counting suicides) and more than 8,400 gun injuries. Here's a comparison with down under...
"Australian physician. Nikki Stamp, a heart and lung surgeon in Perth, Australia, said in a Wednesday Post op-ed that in more than 16 years of practice, she has had to deal with only two instances of gunshot wounds. One was a man who had accidentally shot himself and the other an attempted suicide."
And if you look at the Aussie's gun laws you can understand Stamp's comment. This is "because of the gun-control measures the country put in place after a mass shooting in 1996, in which 35 people were killed." Sheer common sense which neither the U.S. Congress nor the American public has. Australia wonders why we haven't tried the same thing here. So do American gun advocates. And speaking of the U.S. Congress...
"Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is introducing legislation to increase the minimum age to buy assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in the wake of a shooting in that state."
This is sheer nonsense considering the magnitude of the gun violence issue, especially since it was Feinstein who proposed banning assault weapons entirely just a few years ago. It is dumb moves like this the rest of the world will look at and marvel that the U.S. population hasn't self-destructed using its 393-million guns. Come to think of it, it is a wonder we haven't.

Will Brian Thompson's murder end a corrupt insurance industry practice?

Doctors without authority Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare was murdered and drew headlines like this on WGTC ... " ‘He was a se...