Gun crazed America

AR-15 Bushmaster assault rifle

Customers are buying Bushmasters so fast that stores have trouble stocking it. We sold 14 yesterday. That’s way up. All of our suppliers are out of them. — Ross Meyer of Gunworld & Archery in Elko, Nev

We don’t really have a lot in stock, because it’s been so popular. They’ve been selling faster than manufacturers can produce them. — Daniel, an assistant manager at Discount Shooters Supply in Roseville, California

Naturally, when something’s a lot in the news, it has increased sales. I doubt there’s much inventory left at this point. There are no discounts, that’s for sure. — Andrew Molchan, director of the National Association of Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers (NAFLFD)

A little over a week ago we saw the massacre of the innocents. This was followed by eloquent but meaningless words from Barack Obama, but public pressure does finally seem to have spurred him into some some of action.

• Massacre of the innocents
• Eloquent words are not enough
• More meaningless empty words

A couple of days ago, a week on from the massacre of the innocents, the mouthpiece on behalf of the NRA finally broke their silence and spoke at a press conference called by the NRA. It was to be bushiness as usual. His solution to the massacre of the innocents, was to pour more guns into a violent, screwed up society. Arm the good guys against the bad guys. But who determines who are the good guys, who are the bad guys?

• NRA Calls for Arms in School

Drugs wars are taking place on the streets of Mexico, in the favelas of Rio. They are are using military hardware. When the Mexican dug cartels and traffickers want weapons, they pop across the border to Good Ol’ USA. A classic two way trade, drugs flow across the border one way, money and guns flow the other.

• Breaking The Taboo
• Mexico’s drug war: Made in the US
• Over the border: US firearms in Mexican drug war
• On the road in Houston with a US firearms agent
• Gunshop owner on fight against cartels

There is no Federal Law in the USA that prohibits gun trafficking.

In Ireland, IRA and their various terrorist and paramilitary counterparts were asked to disarm. In Iraq, in Libya, there has been attempts to disarm society.

Why therefore does America think itself unique, a 2nd Amendment carved in stone, the right to bear arms?

England is a violent society, drunken scum on the streets at night, on slum estates but they are not armed, though guns can be obtained.

You do not flood a violent society with guns. A violent society where fear is ratcheted up. A society where teachers carry concealed weapons just in case.

I have a couple of classes that have potential shooters. I’m going to utilize my concealed weapons permit and carry for the rest of the year. Scary, but I would rather seriously wound an assailant than have a massacre like last Friday. I’m going to protect the “kids” in my school. The other teachers could not stop the continued slaughter. I can and will.

You also need to know that a few years ago, there was a kid in one of my classes who I knew, if the time was right would go on a shooting rampage. I went to the principal, counselor, etc. Their hands were tied until he made a move… It’s nuts here in the US sometimes. Thank heavens this kid decided to go nuts by threatening his brother. — shooting but missing him — during spring vacation and was sent off to detention in a jail north of us. Imagine if this boy went off at school and not missed. This boy came from a broken home.. from what I have seen here, the greater come from.horrible home atmospheres. Home and decent parenting plays a huge factor. In the US, our gun laws, and there are many, need to be enforced. The laws are not totally being enforced.

We have lock down training. I have found ways to sneek my mid.out through the under school cement duct system. This US not on lock down, but will get the life safely out. I’m not staying in a building that is being shot up. Only if I have to will I ever seriously wound a shooter.

We do not need more gun laws, what Mr Moore needs to realize is that we need to put teeth into the laws that we already have. There would be a huge difference in the U.S. if we did. Moore needs to push for that. We are going to get more crap that isn’t policed anyway. It’s stupid to go that route until policing what we have.

Adding more laws..definitely not the answer.. it just adds more burecratic shit to wade through.

Trust me on this one. I see so many misuses of the gun laws. I guess I needs to squack snirt then…Mr. Moore should do that instead of pushing for more waste of government and our fav dollars.

That’s tax dollars….

I am and will be refreshing my target and response skills with a small concealed pistol on Saturday. My father, a marine, taught me how to handle myself, quite well with a gun. I can, if I have to kill, but I also have the skills to wound an assailant where he/she cannot fire back.

It looks like a concealed gun will be part of me. However, I will not carry until after Saturday’s workout.

Checked district policy on gun carry. Teachers cannot carry guns. However state law says schools are open gun. Since it’s concealed, I will be packing.

Tomorrow is our last day of school before Christmas break. Hoping the district will cancel school for tomorrow. Gun threats in city schools north of us. I think the kids want to get out and are playing the system.

Teaching with an edge to it…. Interesting.

I am, even though I have a concealed weapon, teaching with all the love that I have inside me. A juxtaposition.

In the 1999 Columbine school shootings in Colorado, an armed school resource officer exchanged gunfire with one of the teenage gunmen. An after-action report ordered by the Colorado governor said that the exchange forced the two gunmen into the school library, where they then killed 10 students.

• Bowling For Columbine

Yes, Michael Moore is calling for tighter gun control, but he is also calling for the ills of US society to be addressed.

• “Americans kill people”: Michael Moore on Newtown, mass shootings, and the US culture of violence

Canada, Norway, Switzerland, have more guns per capita, but they do not have the killings. The massacre in Norway last year was an aberration. England is a violent society, but is not flooded with guns.

What you do not do is flood a violent society with guns, stoke up fear, then not expect mass killings.

• Bushmasters Disappearing From Shelves After Newtown

The crazed killer in Newtown used a Bushmaster assault riffle. The publicity for the weapon caused sales to shoot up.

Bushmaster is only one version of a generic rifle called the AR-15, a civilian cousin of the M-16 developed for the U.S. Army in the 1960s. Other manufacturers produce versions of their own, most at a lower price than the Bushmaster, which retails around $700 to $900.

Gunworld’s Ross Meyer describes the AR-15 as “the Barbie Doll of rifles.” “You can add scopes, flashlights, lasers,” he says. “You can really tech it out. And being semi-automatic, it’s fun to go out and shoot.”

• Newtown Massacre: What Is a Bushmaster .223?

You can inflict a lot of damage to the head of a seven year old with .223 calibre ammunition. The victims at Newtown were shot several times at point blank range.

Maybe the debate would be different if pictures of the victims were shown on national TV before and after the shooting.

Arm the good guys against the bad guys. The mother of Adam Lanzer had her own private arsenal, she knew her guns. She was his first victim.

Today, two fire fighters shot dead, two seriously injured, the gunman found dead. Ther fire fighters appear to have been lured to the scene of a house fire.

• Two firefighters dead after being shot while responding to house fire; suspect dead
• US firefighters shot dead at blaze in Webster, New York
• [UPDATES] Two Firefighters Fatally Shot While Fighting Blaze Near Rochester

What answer the NRA? Fire fighters attend a fire with armed escort?

Free tickets Farnborough Airshow

Vulcan with Red Arrows in V formation

Boeing Dreamliner

… we would like to invite you to apply for a pair of complimentary tickets – FIA12

For two weeks Farnborough residents suffer horrendous head-splitting noise as warplanes fly overhead.

For one week roads are sealed off, roads gridlocked. A journey of 10 to 20 minutes takes two hours.

Local residents closest to the airshow are being security checked into and out of their homes, have to provide ID. A foretaste of the London Olympics?

As a sop to local residents they are offered two free tickets per household. The area in which this is being offered is less than the last airshow two years ago (when first introduced) and the tickets are restricted on a first come first served basis (which has now been exceeded).

Local residents have to go to a web address, fill out their post code, how many tickets, in whose name, provide address, e-mail, mobile number (if nothing else a trawling exercise to gather personal information on local residents). Finally an on-line pdf invoice which presumably one prints off and takes to reclaim ones ticket.

https://secure.smartregister.co.uk/events/farnborough/FIA12-Local/launch.aspx

What if you have no printer, what if, you go back later and find the pdf invoice is no longer there, has timed out?

https://secure.smartregister.co.uk/events/farnborough/FIA12-Local/timeout.aspx

A telephone number, 01252 532800, several options, and several tries to get through. Ticket sales say not them, try a different option.

Eventuality a singularly unhelpful female who says you should have picked up the tickets beforehand, you cannot now get in, as all tickets have gone.

You have an invoice, or had, that says you have tickets, they are even in your name.

No, says the woman, you should have picked them up before, did you not read the letter.

The eight numbered bullet points say how to apply, give telephone number if a problem, say pick tickets up from gate B. Nothing about picking up tickets in advance. The rest of the letter two pages of detailed fine print on road closures and diversions, then a third page of maps showing road closures and diversions. The on-line form said nothing about picking up tickets in advance.

Unhelpful female said some had picked up tickets in advance. Pushed for someone to deal with the problem, gave an e-mail of someone who it was claimed was handling complaints re tickets.

sam.wreareglesworth@farnborough.com

There is going to be a lot of very angry local residents on Saturday and Sunday who turn up expecting to get in, and find they are denied access.

The Farnborough Airshow is promoted as a fun day out for the family, kids go free.

It is not, it is an arms fair, dealers in death. In modern warfare, civilians and especially children, suffer the highest casualties.

Tickets on the public days are £41 each! Kids go free.

The public get a raw deal. Many of the stands are empty. They do not see the information on how effective at killing are the goods on display. If they are there for the flying, any local resident will tell them you get a better view from outside.

North Camp Station is offering the tickets cash only at somewhat less than £41 each.

• Test pilots put the A380 through its paces at Farnborough Airshow
• Branson’s ‘spaceship’ goes on show at Farnborough
• Russian Knights pull out of airshow display

Stop the suppliers of death in Syria

Syrian tanks in Homs

When a regime murders its own citizens in cold blood, that regime has no right to exist.

How many more children will we see massacred, how many innocents slaughtered by Assad and his murderous thugs before the world acts on Syria?

Each day the world sits idly by, more people are killed in Syria. The world has blood on it hands.

The Russians are propping up Assad, although even they have recognised the inevitable and said they are willing to let Assad fall. And yet still the Russians veto the UN Security Council.

If the world fails to act, Syrians will turn to Muslim fundamentalists, as they are already beginning to do.

Last week 27 children were massacred.

The Syrian currency is facing total collapse as sanctions begin to bite. Syrian banks are being propped up by Russian banks.

Military intervention is looking the least worst option.

Russia has an estimated annual arms sales worth £320 million to Syria. Russia is still supplying weapons to the murderous Assad regime.

We must stop the flow of weapons to the murderous Assad regime.

India and the US are key clients to Syria’s main weapons supplier — the state-owned Russian company Rosoboronexport. If we can get the two countries to threaten to halt all deals unless the Russians stop supporting Syria’s murder machine, the arms dealers could be forced to stop their Syria sales. Both the US and India want to stop the violence in Syria, but diplomacy is failing. This is their best chance — let’s give them a massive mandate to act.

The US has already persuaded the company to stop light weapons sales to Syria. Now if we can build up the pressure on India and get both countries to speak out, Rosoboronexport could be forced to cut Syria’s arms supply completely.

Please sign the urgent petition to stop dealing death to Syria and tell everyone — our call will be delivered to both countries and Rosoboronexport at a massive arms fair in Paris in two days:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/us_and_india_stop_syrias_merchants_of_death/?vl

International political solutions are failing to stop the bloodshed in Syria — a couple of weeks ago the world was stunned by the brutal al Houla massacre where 49 children were executed, and last week there was another mass killing. Why? Assad is protected by his old friend Russia, which has blocked international action while profiting in arms sales — Rosoboronexport is Russia’s biggest arms dealer, bringing the government billions in revenue per year. President Assad is only clinging to power through military might and sowing fear. If we can convince Russia that supporting the Syrian regime is not worth it, and end arms sales to Assad, his killing arsenal will wane and his command will slip away.

India and the US make up over 50% of Russia’s arms sales, and they both want strong action on Syria. The US has led efforts to stop the violence, and a group of US Senators is right now calling on the Pentagon to cancel a massive helicopter contract with Rosoboronexport. India already voted to stop the violence in Syria at the UN Security Council. Now, experts say if there’s even a hint that the Indian government might reconsider its patronage of Rosoboronexport because of Syria, sales to the regime could end, and the Russians could ditch their support for Assad.

Rosoboronexport could be held legally responsible for war crimes for sending weapons to the Syrian regime, but due to huge profits and a sense of impunity, they continue their bloody business as usual. Diplomatic pressure is mounting on Russia right now, but it is this financial threat that could be the deciding card. We have to act now and make sure hundreds of thousands of us speak out before Rosoboronexport arrives in Paris next week. Click to call on the US and India to stop Russia’s deadly deals now and forward to everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/us_and_india_stop_syrias_merchants_of_death/?vl

Over the past year, Avaaz members have supported the Syrian spring and an end to the violence — we have broken the blackout, exposed hidden atrocities and provided critical lifelines to Syrians under siege.

Now Avaaz are delivering our petition to the UN to call for more monitors. Now, let’s do all we can to cut off the weapons at the source that are killing the Syrian people.

Next month the Farnborough Airshow, the world’s biggest arms fair, takes place. It is being promoted as a day out for the family, kids go free.