Courtesy of the BBC:
The father of Alison Parker, one of two journalists killed live on air, has appealed to US President Barack Obama to push through tougher gun laws.
"You need to do this... I will help you do this and the press is with you on this because they just lost one of their own," Andy Parker told the BBC.
"Mr President, you need to do this. Please do it. Please do it for us and for other people so they're not going to lose their Alisons and their Adams," he said in an emotional message.
I agree.
The President needs to continue this fight. As does the next President, and if need be, the one after.
This is not going away. If anything it is only getting worse.
One new study thinks they know why:
And what makes the United States such a fertile incubator for mass shooters? A comprehensive analysis of the perpetrators, their motives and the national contexts for their actions suggests that several factors have conspired to create in the United States a potent medium for fostering large-scale murder.
Those factors include a chronic and widespread gap between Americans' expectations for themselves and their actual achievement, Americans' adulation of fame, and the extent of gun ownership in the United States.
Set those features against a circumstance the United States shares with many other countries — a backdrop of poorly managed mental illness — and you have a uniquely volatile brew, the new study says.
......
Perhaps no single factor sets the United States apart as sharply as does gun ownership, wrote Lankford. Of 178 countries included in Lankford's analysis, the United States ranked first in per-capita gun ownership. A 2007 survey found 270 million firearms in US civilian households — an ownership rate of 88.8 firearms per 100 people. Yemen followed, with 54.8 firearms per 100 people.
The other piece of significant data the study found is that as many as 65% of Americans believe that their right to own a gun is to protect themselves from tyranny.
In other words if they lose their guns they will lose their freedom.
And that belief is aggressively reinforced by the NRA and their political sockpuppets.
Andy Parker, father of slain Virginia reporter Alison Parker, appeals to President Obama to fight for gun control legislation.
10:24 AM
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