It's the end of 2012 and my folder full of tabs / bookmarks that I've
been meaning to share is over flowing. The end of a year seems like a
good enough reason to get them all out there for your perusal and it
doesn't hurt that it will help get me up over the 100 post threshold for
2012 either.
We're gonna do this categorically, sort of at least, some other links ended up on twitter; check the sidebar for those or @hcoppola.
So we didn't get through everything on new year's eve, I had better things to do what can I say? Which means the dump will continue to start off 2013.
This one is on Guns. We have a gun problem in America, it's an enormous problem and has been an elephant in the room for entirely too long. I could go on and on and get pretty worked up over this one; instead I'm going to give you some of the things that I've read and that have resonated with me over the past couple of months. Suffice it to say that the US is the only country in the world with the type of gun violence that we suffer from and it is both shocking and shameful.
In an earlier post this Gizmodo story about the secret online weapons store that will sell you anything would've been filed under some sort of wow look at what the internet has wrought and how online commerce is twisting and evolving and what are the rules and who has any kind of jurisdiction or enforcement capabilities. Really though it's just emblematic of our gun crazed culture.
In the wake of the Newtown shootings Mother Jones has stepped up with a lot of typically (for them) well written, researched, and sourced pieces on the need for gun control and the inherent fallacy of the notion that we would be made safer by a more heavily armed society.
The writers at the New Yorker have written a lot for the magazine's website as the fall of 2012 erupted in mass shooting events, all of it was worth reading but these were the ones that I really wanted to share...
- Adam Gopnik wrote after the Aurora shootings about how American is the only country in which mass shootings of this type are common and accepted.
- Alex Koppelman wrote about the disgraceful silence of politicians in the wake of the Aurora shootings.
- John Cassidy saluted Mayor Bloomberg for his work to advance gun control after the Newtown shootings.
- Adam Gopnik passionately called for gun control and laid out the inarguable and simple facts that show that it works after the Newtown shootings.
- David Remnick called on President Obama to at long last demonstrate leadership in tackling our gun problem and making America a safer place.
- Jon Lee Anderson also wrote about the enduring shame that is America and Americans' acceptance of gun violence in our society.
- Jeffery Toobin broke down the Second Amendment.
- Alec Wilkinson wrote about his experience carrying a weapon as a small town police officer.
- Amy Davidson eviscerated the pathetic notion that arming teachers would make students safer.
- And a bunch of the writers got together to discuss the political battle for gun control in the magazine's weekly Political Scene podcast.
Bob Costas caught flack for mentioning gun violence during a football game and the Daily Show weighed in...
David Cole took a look at America's gun culture and three of the books that go deeper into it for the New York Review of Books.
Firmin Debrabander wrote about the affects on and curtailing of freedom in an armed society.
Fareed Zakaria echoed Adam Gopnik's call for gun control and he closed with these words - "The problems that produced the Newtown massacre are not complex, nor are the solutions. We do not lack for answers. What we lack in America today is courage."
Fareed is right.
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