Stephan: Even conservative but still rational media like the National Review are beginning to report on America's cultural insanity about guns and what they do.
A crime scene in Philadelphia, Pa., following a shooting, July 19, 2021 Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty
With homicides peaking at 500 in November, Philadelphia has just reached — and is likely to exceed — its murder record, previously set in 1990.
Amid the development that the city had reached this record, Mayor Jim Kenney lamented the rise of gun violence and declared creating a safe community a priority for his administration.
“I never stop thinking about the victims and their families and the incredible loss these senseless deaths leave behind. And as we enter this holiday season, I can’t help [but] think of all the incredible potential that has been extinguished by the loss of life,” he said Wednesday.
Kenney touted a recent initiative in collaboration with law enforcement, called Operation Pinpoint Strategy, to curb crime and “take record numbers of guns off the streets.”
“Every one of these guns off the streets is one less that could be used to harm or kill Philadelphians,” he said. The startling surge in violence largely coincided with the COVID pandemic, which wrought economic and social distress across the country, resulting in higher unemployment.
In June, Philadelphia’s city council authorized a fiscal […]
Stephan: Stories like this can be found in local papers around the U.S. almost every day. Unless they have a racial or other angle they rarely breakthrough to national news. Just another random gun murder...ho...hum.
Three people were shot at a crowded North Carolina mall on Black Friday — leading to a “stampede” for the exits that may have injured others, according to reports.
Three people were shot at a crowded North Carolina mall on Black Friday — leading to a “stampede” for the exits that may have injured others, according to reports.
“Durham Councilman Mark-Anthony Middleton told WRAL News that three people were shot at The Streets at Southpoint shopping center on Friday afternoon. One person is now in custody,” the station reported Friday afternoon. “WRAL reporter Aaron Thomas happened to be shopping inside one of the mall’s stores on Friday.”
Thomas told the station: “We were in the Express store, and I was looking around at one of the clothing racks, and all of a sudden, I see this swarm of people running. At that point, it’s like you don’t know what to do, do you run out or do you stay in the store and try to hunker down. We did lock down and they locked the […]
Kara Fox, Krystina Shveda, Natalie Croker and Marco Chacon,, - CNN
Stephan: Here are the facts about our cultural insanity about guns, and the social effects they cause. Click through to see all the charts that accompany this story.
Atlanta. Orlando. Las Vegas. Newtown. Parkland. San Bernardino. Ubiquitous gun violence in the United States has left few places unscathed over the decades. Still, many Americans hold their right to bear arms, enshrined in the US Constitution, as sacrosanct. But critics of the Second Amendment say that right threatens another: The right to life. America’s relationship to gun ownership is unique, and its gun culture is a global outlier.As the tally of gun-related deaths continue to grow daily, here’s a look at how gun culture in the US compares to the rest of the world.
How firearm ownership compares globally
The United States is the only nation in the world where civilian guns outnumber people.
Select a country or territory to see how its gun ownership rate compares to the US
Rate of civilian firearms per 100 people 120.5US62.1Falkland Islands
: 33
Note: Gun ownership rates are estimates as of 2017. Some entries have been combined to calculate rates for Cyprus, United Kingdom and Somalia. Data not available for Christmas Island, Nauru and Vatican City.
Stephan: The current interpretation of the 2nd Amendment has nothing whatever to do with what the Founders intended. It is the product of the NRA and the Republican Party, and was basically sold to Americans in order for death merchants to make greater profits.
Dodge City in 1878 Credit: Wikimedia Commons
It’s October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, and Arizona is not yet a state. The O.K. Corral is quiet, and it’s had an unremarkable existence for the two years it’s been standing—although it’s about to become famous.
Marshall Virgil Earp, having deputized his brothers Wyatt and Morgan and his pal Doc Holliday, is having a gun control problem. Long-running tensions between the lawmen and a faction of cowboys – represented this morning by Billy Claiborne, the Clanton brothers, and the McLaury brothers – will come to a head over Tombstone’s gun law.
The laws of Tombstone at the time required visitors, upon entering town to disarm, either at a hotel or a lawman’s office. (Residents of many famed cattle towns, such as Dodge City, Abilene, and Deadwood, had similar restrictions.) But these cowboys had no intention of doing so as they strolled around town with Colt revolvers and Winchester rifles in plain sight. Earlier on this fateful day, Virgil had disarmed one cowboy forcefully, while Wyatt confronted another and county sheriff […]
Stephan: I do not think this essay is the total answer to what has gone off the rails in the United States and left us, except militarily, a second tier nation, but I am publishing it, because I am happy to see that finally a conversation is starting about why we are in this sorry state.
What I find particularly disheartening is that while the White terrorist peasants are facing at least some measure of justice, nothing is being done about the MAGAt aristocracy. Why at the very least haven't Bill Barr and James Eastman been disbarred? Why didn't Merrick Garland not immediately act on the House committee's subpoena prosecutions? Why is there no investigation as to why the FBI disregarded the warning alarms about what was coming on 6th January? And on and on.
Here is the reality that I see. By almost any social outcome measure you like we, as a country, are second rate because we have made short-term profit and greed the only social priorities we honor. Instead of being the "we" culture as defined in our founding documents, we have become an every person for themself "I" culture. Instead of facing up to the racism that was baked into our founding, we continue to lie to ourselves about it. And finally, instead of absolutely separating church and state as the Founders intended, we have debased Jesus' teaching into a christofascist cult.
Credit: Facebook
Everyone has a pet theory or two about what has gone wrong in America. And by America I of course mean the United States of, discounting the other 34 countries of the Americas — which speaks to our exceptional self-centeredness, which might in fact be seen as one of the overarching reasons why the country has gone to pot. Not only do we harbor a fervent belief that we have nothing to learn from others, we barely comprehend that they exist.
With the Republican Party’s platform morphing from obstruction to fascism (e.g., CPAC is planning a spring fling in authoritarian Hungary), citizens losing their minds over wearing masks and talking up anything but a safe and free vaccine in a deadly pandemic that has taken more American lives than were lost in our Civil War (in an era before doctors could do much more than use a saw), and school board members facing violent threats for supporting basic inclusion and diversity efforts in public schools — for many, the concept […]
