Federal agents have searched high and low to find ties connecting the Tennessee shooter at military facilities, Mohammed Youssef Abdulazeez, with a terrorist organization with no success. “At this time, we have no indication he was inspired by or directed by anyone other than himself,” Edward Reinhold, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Knoxville, Tennessee, told reporters Friday. That Abdulazeez is a murderer who killed at least 5 people and injured a number is not in dispute but whether or not he can be connected to a terrorist organization is. The good news is if he isn’t a card carrying member of ISIS International then it is not homegrown terror it is only just another mass murder - nothing to get too exited about.
All this according to The Washington Post has lead them, (FBI), to the uncomfortable question that counterterrorism is reaching the practical limits as to what they can do to detect homegrown plots. The report goes on further to detail that Abdulazeez had at least two rifles or shotguns and a handgun when he opened fire on a military recruiting center and a Navy Reserve center in Chattanooga Tennessee. “Some of the weapons may have been purchased legally and some of them may have not been”, according to the FBI.
So we all have to be resigned to wholesale slaughter. Apparently if the shooter hasn’t blurted out on Facebook that Jihad or racism is the answer mass murders are just going to take place. Implicit in this report is that the authorities have given up on stopping wholesale slaughters such as the one that has just been played out in Aurora Colorado where an “unstable” young man, James Holmes opened fire in a theater killing 12 people and wounding 70 others. That he had mental problems and had schizophrenia was not the issue in his trial but rather whether he was psychotic at the time of the shooting. Holmes had endless numbers of guns of all types including semi automatic rifles, which had been Federally banned from 1994 - 2004, which he used in his attack
PEOPLE NOT GUNS KILL. - NRA
So if the FBI cannot as yet find a connection to a terrorist motive Abulazeez and Holmes are just lumped in the same category. According to the NRA they are two evil people who would have slaughtered all these people regardless of whether they had access to guns. Now evil people and mentally challenged citizens are not unique to America they are all over the world so one wonders why all the other countries in the world do not have a mass murder every month or so? (Mass murders being defined as more than four people being killed).
Perhaps, just perhaps these evil people or mentally disturbed cannot obtain guns so easily. Sadly, for them, they have no second amendment rights that have been distorted to allow them the means to kill who you like as often as you like with whatever weapon you like.
The number of killings with guns has been very difficult to record as the NRA have lobbied the GOP not to fund the Center of Disease Control to collect data. President Obama issued an executive order ever since Sandy Hook Elementary School where 20 souls, mainly young children were slaughtered by an individual who had semi automatic weapons in his stolen arsenal. He too had major mental problems and an obsession with mass murders.
GUN DEATHS AND THEIR COST
It is accepted that there at least 33,000 gun related deaths in America each year. Little wonder when there are at least 300 million guns floating around and if the NRA had its way there would be 300 million more. Little focus takes place on most of these deaths unless there are sensational murder trials, celebrity suicides, police shootings or on the odd occasion when the potential shooter kills less than four people such as in Foot Hood. For the most part these deaths don’t even rate the same news coverage as road accidents do. The latter are responsible for a similar number of deaths. In 2013 the commonest causes of death in the ages 15 to 34 were unintentional deaths, suicides and homicides. The commonest method of suicide is by gunshot as is the commonest method of homicide. Put another way gun deaths are a big problem in the USA. Almost as big a problem in 2014 as breast cancer deaths, (40,000) as common as prostate deaths, (29,450) larger than leukemia, (24,000) and far more than carcinomas of the ovary, cervix and uterus combined.
COSTS OF RESEARCH OF GUN AND CANCER DEATHS.
One needs hardly have to detail how much has rightfully spent on research to avoid cancer deaths. In 2010 cancer research costs were estimated at 124 billion dollars and they are projected to be between 158 and 200 billion in 2020. When you compare this with the virtually nothing spent on gun deaths, remember Congress nixed the expenditure on even tallying how many gun deaths there were, it is a scandal. Mother Jones the internet website studied the costs to society of gun violence and it was 229 billion per year. This equals nearly the total costs of Medicaid countrywide.
Jay H. Ell is reduced to arguing the dollar cost of this slaughter as no-one seems to care about them unless they are acts of international terrorism. The same citizens who teach their children to look to the left and the right before they cross the road seem comfortable sending their children to school or college and attend places of worship where they have a chance go being cut down by gun fire.
At the same time Congress and State legislatures do not seem to be pressurized into increasing the mental health care budget. The most vulnerable group to accidental and gun deaths are the age group 15 - 34 a tragedy that gets no attention while there endless resources spent on weather prediction.
NOTHING LEFT TO BE SAID
This subject has figuratively been shot to death. Everything has been written and nothing done. Jay H. Ell has blogged repeatedly, "The Tuscon Massacre and American Culture - Can There Be a Solution", "Guns: Obama, NRA, GPO = Stalemate", "Boston, Bombs, Guns, Cars and Society", "Obama Wants to Take Away Our Guns - Mr. Martinez" and all those blogs on Police shootings. (The latter number also very difficult to come by and are accepted as being 400 per year - a number said to have been reached already this year. In addition more than 40 police are said to be the victims of gun violence per year).
At the very least the subject is worthy of research which is the last thing that the NRA want as it may be established that guns are responsible for gun deaths. Sooner or later there will be consensus on the subject as numbers get reported from now on. In addition the very factor that finally enabled bipartisan support on draconian mandatory jail sentences for non violent drug offenders was the cost of incarceration not to mention all the other expenditures, could result in the investigation into this slaughter and its obvious solutions - register gun holders who have to show proficiency and care of weapons, ban multi shooting weapons and improve mental health care while keeping guns out of their hands. On a cost benefit analysis the effort has to be worth 229 billion dollars a year and for the soppy, like Jay H. Ell, there is a profound humane side to it all!
PS: The Charleston Church shooting, with a handy hand gun that contains 13 rounds that could be fired in rapid succession, by a racist has almost faded into history but for the removal of the Confederate flag but the Colorado mass murder will still be in the news the trial moves to the sentencing phase.....
No comments:
Post a Comment