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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dorine Essey who wrote (5128)	10/31/2002 1:05:37 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

War with IRAQ is a done deal or that is the way I felt after I watched Peter Jenning's, ABC's anchor report last night. I don't think there is any turning back. The irony is in the commercials. You saw Intel advertise their products and a DVD was mentioned. The parents were happy. The kids were happy. The commercial glowed with the promise of happiness But the average American family's happiness may dissipate very quickly once their kid or grandchildren are returned to them in a body bag after after being blown to bits for Bush's war to gain control of Iraqi oil fields. Let's not forget about his future wars. W is on a Roll. The Washington sniper's use of a BUSHMASTER RIFLE should be a powerful symbol to all Americans of the death and destruction and the Bush administration supports not only in its war with Iraq but in Bush and Ashcroft's refusal to monitor closely those who buy guns without adequate background checks. Criminals often take advantage of these loopholes when they buy guns at gun shows as the Brady organization has noted. Mephisto See: Justice Dept. Bars Use of Gun Checks in Terror Inquiry, See: Message 16757949 opinion:http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=16842000 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "It's crucial that we do all we can to keep the Senate from falling into right wing hands. Control of the Senate will be decided in just a few tight races." The US Congress is filled with sheared sheep. I wouldn't expect much from most of them with the exception of those who voted against the Iraqi invasion.They'll baa from the mouth but that's about it.

To: Dorine Essey who wrote (5128)	10/31/2002 1:16:49 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

Vital Statistics "the gun industry's efforts "to market sniper rifles and the resulting subculture of sniper enthusiasts that have turned discussion of this weapon into a cottage industry of books, Web sites, computer games and even sniper schools." The New York Times October 31, 2002 By BOB HERBERT John Muhammad and Lee Malvo are accused of killing 10 people during their terrifying three-week sniping spree in and around Washington. On Monday a student at the University of Arizona carried five handguns and a couple of hundred rounds of ammunition into a nursing school and proceeded to kill three of his teachers and himself. In Nashville, federal authorities announced this week that they will seek the death penalty against three drug traffickers accused of murdering seven people and seriously wounding a 3-year-old girl. In New York City, a man is on trial for the execution-style murder of five people in a Wendy's restaurant. An alleged accomplice has already pleaded guilty. What these hideous cases all have in common, apart from the grief and suffering endured by the victims and their survivors, is that statistically none of them are that big a deal. Ten people here, five people there - very small potatoes in the crucible of criminal violence that we've got going here in the United States. Even the total number of people killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - approximately 3,000 - is dwarfed by the annual toll of homicides in the U.S. The F.B.I.'s annual Uniform Crime Report was released Monday. It showed that in 2001, the last year for which complete statistics have been compiled, the number of people murdered in the U.S. - exclusive of the Sept. 11 attacks - was a staggering 15,980. There were no screaming headlines to accompany this disclosure because more than 15,000 people are murdered in the U.S. every year, most of them by firearms. It might be a good idea to pay more attention to this. In the spring of 1999, more than three years before the siege of sniper shootings in the Washington area, the Violence Policy Center, a gun control advocacy group, issued a warning about "the dangers posed by the civilian sale of military sniper rifles." The center's report documented the gun industry's efforts "to market sniper rifles and the resulting subculture of sniper enthusiasts that have turned discussion of this weapon into a cottage industry of books, Web sites, computer games and even sniper schools." Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Malvo are now in custody, but the deadly threat of sniper rifles and the sniper subculture remains. And not much is being done about it. Despite the terrible toll that guns in the wrong hands are taking, there is tremendous resistance to even the most modest efforts to control the spread of guns among criminals. That resistance is led, as usual, by the National Rifle Association, which can always be counted on to provide a comfort zone for the perpetrators of gun violence in America. The N.R.A. is opposed, for example, to the creation of a national computerized system for tracing bullets and shell casings to the guns that fired them - a crime-fighting tool that has come to be known as "ballistic fingerprinting." Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin have introduced legislation that would establish such a system, and it has the strong backing of Americans for Gun Safety, which describes itself as a centrist organization that believes in the rights of law-abiding citizens to own guns. But, so far, the proposal has gone nowhere. Senator Schumer told me yesterday that if the investigators in the sniper shooting had been able to use this technology to trace the murder weapon at the start of the killing spree, the case could have been solved weeks earlier, and lives would have been saved. Another modest attempt to thwart the sale of guns to criminals has been the effort to close a loophole in the Brady law that allows unlicensed individuals to sell firearms at gun shows without conducting background checks on the buyers. Illegal gun traffickers flock to these shows, which account for the sale of hundreds of thousands of guns each year. "The criminals have figured it out," said Matt Bennett, a spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety. "They know that for the most part they can't just walk into an honest gun store anymore and buy a gun, so they go to the shows, where there is a huge variety and enormous volume." Close the loophole and save lives? Move toward ballistic fingerprinting? They sound like good ideas. But the U.S., with more than 15,000 homicide victims a year, can't get it done. Copyright The New York Times Company nytimes.com