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Pastimes : WHY?? Littleton Colorado -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PatiBob who wrote (202)	4/23/1999 9:04:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 368

You make sense to me. It's just that my heart sinks everytime there is a nasty crime and the news uses a Colt or Beretta as the icon for a violent act. This incident hits me on several fronts. We live in a peaceful, prosperous country. What Littleton is to me - is an act of terrorism. Domestic terrorism no less awful than the Munich massacre of 27 years ago. The worst thing? The Black September movement had an ideology we could understand! The trenchcoat death squad had no cause. Did you see "The Big Lebowski"? I'm reminded of John Goodman's character expressing moral outrage at nihilism. "National socialism - at least it was an ethos!!" While this AIN'T a plug for fascism or ideological terrorism (unfortunately necessary disclaimer, folks) it is doubly distressing to be the Enemy for no good reason at all. Ordinary kids from "good" families in good neighborhoods in a prosperous section of the richest nation on earth - on a murder/suicide mission for no reason. We are denied even the solace of rationalizing a motive. Thanks for letting me rant; I'll go now and hug my family. I'll touch on the original question of this thread. I have no idea how to do anything about the underlying social rot. I'm pretty glum about the whole thing. When I grew up in the 60s and 70s there was still something left of the idea that we lived in a great nation and were headed toward bigger and better things. In the 70s I went thru adolescence - and the message changed. Overpopulation. Resource crises. Environmental collapse in our lifetimes. HOPE was replaced with a pervasive hopelessness - and the Punk movement was imo the first to distribute it to the teen generation. "The world is ending anyway, so party til you drop." It is my opinion that this is a very corrosive idea, and it falls on each and every one of us to elect politicians who will draw a line against hopelessness, against victimhood, against the spurious entitlement to live in comfort. OK, I'm really started now... better catch my breath.

To: PatiBob who wrote (202)	4/24/1999 12:38:00 PM
From: WTSherman	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 368

< Here's another fact: There are more child abuse victims each year then there are gun shot victims. If we take away the guns, then shouldn't we take away the "weapon" used to abuse children?< Here's another fact for you, more Americans have died in civilian guns deaths,in this century<, than were killed in in military action in the whole history of the nation. Here's another fact, more people died from gunshots in the last 18 months(in the U.S.) than were killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. A few more facts to consider, 2/3 of all gun deaths last year were not part of any other criminal activity(such as rape, robbery, etc.). Since you're into facts, here's some more... 75% of all gun deaths last year were committed by people who had no criminal records. The NRA has done more harm and been partly responsible for more deaths in this country than any other organization in its history. The hypocrisy of this organization is stunning. For example, the NRA is vehemently opposed to banning assault rifles. Why? These are weapons that are explicitly designed to kill other people. They have no purpose otherwise. Why not ban the ownership, sale, manufacture and import of these weapons? Well, the NRA's answer is that some people like to collect them. Wow, that's a really compelling argument for keeping these things around, huh? How many lives have been lost because of that? If you want to understand what happened in Colo. think about how guns are seen in this country. Guns=Power. That's the message that is in the movies and TV, etc. Its the underlying message that the NRA is all about. So, what we end up with is that people who feel powerless and insecure come to see guns and gun violence as a way to overcome those feelings and some percentage of them act out on it. That's what Colo. was all about. A group of kids who felt powerless and insecure who took the gun message and acted out on it. The NRA and the gun lovers of this country will some day have to face the responsibility that they have for the carnage that is all around us. One last fact for you, you have 10 times the chance of being shot by someone you know than you do by someone you have never met.