In VS gaat het ook na Tucson niet over het échte probleem: wapens - Buitenland - VK
For those of you who's Dutch is a little rusty, this article cites columnist David Greenberg who pointed out that the political left and right have switched sides in discussing the Tucson shooting.
During the Fort Hood shooting people on the Right argued that Islam was the real cause, while people on the Left denied this and pointed out that the shooter acted alone and is a deranged person. In the Tucson shooting the Left argues that the rhetoric on the right is to blame for the violence while the Right denies this by saying that the shooter acted alone and is deranged.
And then there are a few who argue that easy access to weapons is the real issue to debate. That's a place no one wants to go. And so we will do this whole dance again the next time.
2 comments:
This is a complex issue though, Roy. Michael Moore pointed out in Bowling for Columbine that there are about as many guns per capita in Canada as there are in the US and yet the gun related death-per-year statistics show a staggering difference:
United States - 11,127 (3.601 per 100,000)
Germany – 381 (0.466/100,000)
France – 255 (0.389/100,000)
Canada – 165 (0.484/100,000)
United Kingdom – 68 (0.109/100,000)
Australia – 65 (0.292/100,000)
Japan – 39 (0.030/100,000)
(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_for_Columbine)
I am the last person to defend the easy access to guns in the US (I think it is insane) but I do buy into the idea that the general climate of discourse has something to do with the amount of violence in this country. In the Newshour the other day David Brooks received some counter arguments in what was a rather good discussion on this topic in my opinion:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june11/rhetoric_01-10.html
I think all these factors together, easy access to weapons and a toxic political atmosphere may cause an unstable person to act the way this guy did.
Palin helped manifest the shooting, by publishing and publicizing the "crosshair targets on politicians and their districts" map. It was scrubbed by her people, after the fact, yet lives on every time we mention it, still contributing to the "general climate of discourse".
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