Comments below... ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote :
--In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote : And I'm back to "America has a political problem," given that the overwhelming majority of Americans want stricter gun controls, but the appropriate legislation is consistently blocked by the minority who don't want any gun controls. Obviously that political problem has an impact on many other situations besides gun control. But the point is that if the majority could get its way, gun safety would be significantly improved, and some of the awful statistics would be reduced. C: With 80% of homicides in our cities being gang related I am not sure even gun laws can touch this issue. DC has the strictest laws against gun ownership and is 8th in homicide rate. The most vocal people for guns are not the ones shooting each other with them. Can you really think of a gun law that would stop criminals from using them to defend their turf? I don't think I said anything to that effect. However, Obama's "Now Is the Time" proposals include many things that could be done to reduce gun violence, including increased mental health care spending: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/wh_now_is_the_time_full.pdf http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/wh_now_is_the_time_full.pdf So for me the issue is education and dealing with poverty. If you look at a map of where DC homicides are, it is a map of our poorest residents. People living in a horribly broken social system, with a society that has artificially inflated the value of drugs through prohibition, ends up with gang driven murder rates like we have. Amsterdam does not have this toxic mix. So I'm back to "America has a people problem."
