You can see this happening: stung into action by the massacre in Connecticut and with nothing to lose in the final term of his presidency, Barack Obama throws the power and prestige of his office into the reform of America's gun laws. A ban on semi-automatic assault rifles like the one used at Sandy Hook Elementary School would save countless lives and secure his place in history.

Yet formidable forces oppose him, led by the National Rifle Association, with its millions of members and bottomless pit of money. The propaganda war is fast and furious.

The NRA’s insane idea about more guns in schools

Absurd, unbelievable, tragic, obscene — I grope for words to describe the National Rifle Association’s proposal for how the nation should respond to last week’s slaughter in Newtown: More guns in the schools.

Elmar Uy thought his software was acting up when he first saw the huge jump in sales of bulletproof backpacks two weeks ago. He checked the figures and discovered the website's traffic had jumped tenfold.
Then he turned on CNN, and it made sense.
Following the fatal shootings of 20 children and six adults last week at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, BulletBlocker said it is struggling to keep up with demand for its bulletproof backpacks for children.
"We sell 15 to 20 backpacks in a good week," said Uy, the company's vice president of sales. "Since the shooting, we've sold 50 to 100 per day."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/sales-of-bulletproof-school-bags-soar-20121224-2bul0.html#ixzz2G14O5leU


US firearm sales have sky-rocketed since the Newtown school massacre, as debate over gun control rages and enthusiasts fear certain assault weapons and high-capacity magazines could be banned.
President Barack Obama basically has put gun enthusiasts on warning, says Larry Hyatt, owner of a gun shop in Charlotte, North Carolina, referring to efforts to outlaw certain weapons in the wake of the Newtown shooting.
A semi-automatic Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle was used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in which a disturbed local young man shot dead 20 young children, six adults and his mother before taking his own life.
"Right after it, anti-guns (activists) started talking. The president said he wanted quick action, and so that is going to fuel the buying frenzy, and it is," Hyatt said, describing the rush as largely "politically motivated".

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-gun-sales-soar-as-owners-fear-new-rules-20121225-2butv.html#ixzz2G14gppkr

When U.S. drones kill civilians, Yemen’s government tries to conceal it

Dhamar, Yemen — A rickety Toyota truck packed with 14 people rumbled down a desert road from the town of Radda, which al-Qaeda militants once controlled. Suddenly a missile hurtled from the sky and flipped the vehicle over.

Chaos. Flames. Corpses. Then, a second missile struck.

Within seconds, 11 of the passengers were dead, including a woman and her 7-year-old daughter. A 12-year-old boy also perished that day, and another man later died from his wounds.

The Yemeni government initially said that those killed were al-Qaeda militants and that its Soviet-era jets had carried out the Sept. 2 attack. But tribal leaders and Yemeni officials would later say that it was an American assault and that all the victims were civilians who lived in a village near Radda, in central Yemen. U.S. officials last week acknowledged for the first time that it was an American strike.

“Their bodies were burning,” recalled Sultan Ahmed Mohammed, 27, who was riding on the hood of the truck and flew headfirst into a sandy expanse. “How could this happen? None of us were al-Qaeda.”

More than three months later, the incident offers a window into the Yemeni government’s efforts to conceal Washington’s mistakes and the unintended consequences of civilian deaths in American air assaults. In this case, the deaths have bolstered the popularity of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist network’s Yemen affiliate, which has tried to stage attacks on U.S. soil several times.

Furious tribesmen tried to take the bodies to the gates of the presidential residence, forcing the government into the rare position of withdrawing its assertion that militants had been killed. The apparent target, Yemeni officials and tribal leaders said, was a senior regional al-Qaeda leader, Abdelrauf al-Dahab, who was thought to be in a car traveling on the same road.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/when-us-drones-kill-civilians-yemens-government-tries-to-conceal-it/2012/12/24/bd4d7ac2-486d-11e2-8af9-9b50cb4605a7_print.html

Donald Trump said on Friday arming teachers would create “offensive capability as well as defensive capability within the schools” and help deter mass shootings such as that which took place in Florida last week, leaving 17 people dead.

Trump spoke at a joint press conference with Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister of Australia, a country which banned automatic and semi-automatic weapons after a 1996 mass shooting in Tasmania and which has not seen such an incident since.

Turnbull declined to advise his host on pursuing a similar ban, amid calls for new gun restrictions across the US since the shooting last week at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school.

Asked what concrete action he would take to make American children safe at school, Trump said “we are going to be very strong on background checks” with particular reference to mental illness. He described the Parkland gunman as “a very sick person and someone who should have been nabbed”.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/23/trump-australia-malcolm-...

Read from top... As mentioned before, about 50 per cent of us are mad enough to commit atrocities under the right (wrong) circumstances.  This has been lab tested... 

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said Sunday that students would be better off “taking CPR classes” than marching for “phony gun laws.

“How about kids, instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that,” Santorum said on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2018/03/25/santorum-kids-should-learn-cpr-instead-of-...

Just hours after a gunman killed 10 people at a Texas high school, two students 1,000 miles away worried about the safety of their usual seats in the school cafeteria.

Calysta Wilson and Courtney Fletcher, both juniors at Mount Pleasant Community High School in Iowa, believe their table in the cafeteria would be the first one a gunman entering the room would target.

“We sit at the table closest to the doors,” Calysta, 17, said as she took in a softball game. “In the case that you came in as a shooter and you killed the first person you saw, I would die. I would not make it.”

It is an unnerving, new consideration born from the grim, steady beat of mass shootings across the country — the last two 93 days apart on high school campuses in Florida and Texas. As the reality of school violence sinks in, the conversations among many high school students have changed from “This could never happen here” to “What do we do when this happens?”

Students raised with the persistence of mass shootings and versed in the protocol of active shooter drills think often of the possibility of a shooting in their schools. Whether they are in English or history class, they routinely consider the safety of their classrooms, even running scenarios in their heads about how likely they are to get shot.

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/us/school-shootings-drills-risks.html?

Read from top.

On a quiet afternoon somewhere in America, a couple of dozen employees gathered for an all-staff meeting.

• Two Australians helped create an anti-gun violence video in the US
• The video for March For Our Lives has been viewed more than 50 million times
• There were 103 school shootings in the US in 2018 

"Today, we're going to be learning what to do in the event of an active shooter," the boss said to the fidgeting group. 

"We've brought in a special guest. She's an expert on this."

The expert was Kayleigh, an 11-year-old girl with blonde hair and blue overalls.

As she enters the room, the employees smiled, thinking it's a joke. 

But they traded those expressions for gasps as Kayleigh offered detailed instructions in a calm, authoritative tone. 

"If there was an active shooter, you would all be dead," she said.

"When you talk out loud, the shooter can hear where you are and where you're hiding."

Kayleigh continued to outline tips for dealing with an armed attacker — things like pushing chairs against the doors, what to listen for to detect the shooter's location, breaking and climbing out broken windows.

A few of her shocked adult students were moved to tears. 

Some look away in discomfort. All were silent. 

Kayleigh finished with a rhyme she learnt from her elementary school teacher, singing softly:

"Lockdown, lockdown, let's all hide. Lock the doors and stay inside."

The message: this is what American children learn at school.

It is all part of a video created by two Australians, Alex Little and Karsten Jurkschat, for March For Our Lives.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-01/two-australians-made-a-viral-gun-...

Read from top.

According to CNN, up until late November, there had been 45 school shootings in the US in 2019.

There are various ways to consider the numbers.

Everytown for Gun Safety names 99 incidents of gunfire on school grounds this year.

In the DC bureau, there's a squawk box adjacent to the supervising producer's desk that spits out information from American ABC about incoming feeds, assorted Oval Office pool sprays, congressional gaggles and breaking news.

"Attention, Washington clients. Attention, Washington clients," the staff member will intone.

And then, more often than you can imagine, "Live on Channel 3, we have aerial shots of a school"

It's as if the whole office freezes.

Everyone knows what comes next.

I hold my breath. Which state? Which school? And then breathe out when it's not that middle school in suburban Maryland.

What unfolds has become weirdly formulaic. 

Heavily armed police will swarm the school as helicopters hover above, filming the unfolding event live.

We've learnt to discern the scale of the incident by assessing the urgency with which the police are moving, how many ambulances arrive, the tone of the police Twitter feed.

If all the cable channels pause regular programming to switch to the story, you know it’s bad.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/news-coverage/2019-12-17/zoe...

Read from top.

Students at a Yorkshire school were asked in a homework assignment if the Manchester terrorist should be forgiven. Many parents of pupils expressed indignation. “Should we forgive the terrorists?” This surprising question was to be answered by twelve-year-old students from a school in Yorkshire, UK. On December 13, the Bridlington school posted an assignment with the exact title: “Imagine that you are the parent of one of the victims of the Manchester bombing. Write an answer to the following question: must terrorists be forgiven?”

On May 22, 2017, a suicide bomber of Libyan origin, Salman Abedi, had unleashed his belt of explosives after a concert by singer Ariana Grande. The attack left 22 dead and 116 injured, including many children, adolescents and parents.

"Absolutely disgusting"

The exercise proposed by the Bridlington school aroused the indignation of many parents of students. “There are children in this school who attended the concert when the attack took place. There is even a cousin of one of the victims in the school, "said the mother of a student to the Hull Daily Mail, the main regional daily in Yorkshire. "I think this exercise is absolutely disgusting," added the grandmother of a school student. Kate Parker-Randall, the establishment's director, apologized for the initiative. It was justified by asserting that the exercise should present the pupils with a difficult moral question and lead them to choose between "hatred or forgiveness as the best answer in the face of such terrible crimes". Kate Parker-Randall finally admitted that "after reflection, [they should] have asked the question in a different way".

Find out more about RT France: https://francais.rt.com/international/69304-faut-il-pardonner-terroriste...

Gus: Yep. Christ would have said "do it again on my other cheek"... The terrorist should be forgiven and sent to rot in a jail for 327 years of his natural life, if he had not been shot dead before...

Idiots... Read from top.

On May 14, a racist attack at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket snatched the lives of 10 people and left three more injured. It was the deadliest mass shooting of the year in the United States.

Ten days later, a gunman targeted a 4th grade class at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 21. It was the deadliest school shooting in America since Sandy Hook.

The two attacks are not outliers. Mass shootings happen in the U.S. with depressing regularity.

Today is Day 145 of the year, and the country has already experienced 213 mass shootings so far. Two hundred and thirteen such attacks in 21 weeks. This averages out to about 10 a week.

The tally comes from the Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization. The group defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, excluding the shooter. The full list of mass shootings in 2022 can be found here.

Mass shootings, as is well known by now, are a common recurrence in the United States. Around this time last year, the U.S. had experienced a similar number of mass shootings: also about 10 a week.

READ MORE:

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/15/1099008586/mass-shootings-us-2022-tally-number

READ FROM TOP.

SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/37280

https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/6533

and many more posts on this subject on this site.

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