Can any event, however deadly, penetrate the American
dedication to the right to bear arms?
After Newtown: No
Better Time for Americans to Debate Gun Control (Folha,
Brazil)
"Obama spokesman
Jay Carney said that the day would come for discussing the issue of carrying guns,
but that it wasn't today. ... but if a day in which 20 boys and girls younger
than 10 years of age are murdered isn't appropriate, when will there ever be an
appropriate moment? what Carney argued is that this emotional moment is not the
most suitable for a debate on an issue so dear to Americans, which makes sense.
But when we talk about school children as targets of a shooter, is there any
way to take emotion out of the equation?"
Visibly distraught, President Obama addresses the nation after America's latest gun massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. By asserting that something must be done to stem such attacks, the president somewhat forcefully reentered the debate about restricting firearms.
WASHINGTON: When
a young man of 24 man entered a movie theater in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, shooting
and killing 12 people in July, the-then two U.S. presidential candidates lamented
the tragedy, offering condolences and avoiding the question of the right of
every U.S. citizen to carry guns.
Discussing the Second Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution, which guaranteed the right to bear arms in an era when
the U.S. still had militias, was not considered electorally healthy in the
midst of the campaign.
On Friday, when a young man killed 20 children and six
adults in an elementary school in Newtown, a hamlet of 27,500 residents in
wealthy Connecticut, Jay Carney, spokesman for the re-elected President Obama,
said that the day would come for discussing the issue of carrying guns, but
that it wasn't today.
Posted by Worldmeets.US
Sadly, this type of crime is becoming increasingly part of
American life. But if a day in which 20 boys and girls younger than 10 years of
age are murdered isn't appropriate, when will there ever be an appropriate
moment?
TV hosts and reporters are crying before the cameras.
Children rescued by their teachers during the shooting describe the noise and
screams they heard apparently without appreciating the full magnitude of what
they witnessed. The president interrupts his public statement three times in
just five minutes to clear his choked throat, wipe away a tear and take a deep
breath. "He is also following the news like a father," said Carney.
But Obama didn't touch on the Second Amendment. He merely
said people need to come together to take “meaningful action." What
could be more meaningful than to control gun sales?
Parents with children in the same age range as those who
were killed, and who live not far from Newtown, are circulating an article from
the Huffington Post that classifies gun
control as a parenting issue.
What Carney argued is the equivalent of saying that this
emotional moment is not the most suitable for a debate on an issue so dear to
Americans, which makes sense. But when we talk about school children as targets
of a shooter, is there any way to take emotion out of the equation? And when we
remember that this is the third massacre in less than six months - in addition
to the movie theater, there was the Sikh temple in Milwaukee in August - can
anyone say that the statistics are skewed?
Many readers, on other occasions, have pointed out that in
Brazil, the sale of weapons is prohibited, yet the number of deaths from
firearms is close to 40,000 per year (the data varies according to source and method
of counting).
But Brazil might not be the best example to compare with the
United States. In other high-income countries where the sale of firearms is
prohibited or controlled, the incidence of crimes of this kind is significantly
lower than in the U.S. The Harvard School of Public Health has established a
correlation between number of weapons and homicides.
Even so, the discussion gets complicated because most
Americans continue to favor the carrying of weapons, and the Second Amendment seems
untouchable. The National
Rifle Association, the leading pro-gun group, has 1.7 million fans on Facebook.
But there is a growing campaign for better regulation,
background checks, control over sales and limiting the number and type of
weapons sold. It is around this debate that American politicians and activists
should start to build their arguments.
The information up to now, as a matter of fact, is that the
shooter used weapons in the crime that belonged to his mother - and that he
also used them to kill her.
