guns

Friday October 30, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday October 30, 2020

Far-right militias heed Trump’s call for poll watchers, and law enforcement is worried

Far-right militia promoter Josh Ellis can reach more than 20,000 members across the country in a matter of keystrokes. Many followers believe, like him, that the presidential election could be hijacked by leftists, a Trump defeat would plunge the nation into tyrannical rule, and the United States is lurching toward a violent civil war.

October 10, 2014

Ellis, who operates MyMilitia.com and goes by “AR2,” for “American Revolution 2.0,” has advised like-minded citizens to stand guard at voting stations Tuesday as part of President Trump’s “army” of poll watchers — and, if necessary, to use force.

“They are to be out there as patriots, not militias,” Ellis, of suburban Chicago, said in a phone interview before he addressed an “American Patriot Rally” last Saturday in Florida.

“But if they see immediate danger of physical harm to someone,” he said, “they need to intercede and stop it.”

The country is on high alert in the countdown to Election Day. In a hair-trigger time of guns and grievances, anarchists and vigilantes, COVID-19 restrictions and conspiracy theories, the nation’s law enforcement agencies, election protection specialists, and watchdog groups are closely monitoring militant extremists on the right and left while bracing for rogue acts of violence.

Pandemic Times

“There is a serious threat that militias and armed vigilantes will be at polling places and will pose a danger to voters,” said Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists and hate groups.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a report Oct. 6 warning that violent domestic extremists “might target events related to the 2020 presidential campaigns, the election itself, election results, or the post-election period.”

Two days later, the danger was crystalized when the FBI foiled an alleged plot by 14 suspects tied to the paramilitary Wolverine Watchmen militia to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat sharply criticized by Trump, and try her for treason over her pandemic-driven shutdowns. (Boston Globe) 

 

Wednesday July 25, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday July 25, 2018

Does Canada Have a Gun Control Problem?

July 18, 2012

In the aftermath of the deadly mass shooting in Toronto that left two bystanders and the shooter dead and 12 others injured, a right-wing blogger has questioned whether Canada’s gun control laws actually work.

 
“I thought they had gun control in Canada,” Laura Loomer, tweeted. “What happened?” she asked.
 
That tweet was one of dozens of others posing the same question, with many branding the shooting as evidence that gun control laws do not work. 
 
But others have been quick to point out that the number of shootings should speak for itself. 
 
“This is the first mass shooting in our country in almost two years,” one Canadian tweeted. “How many has the USA had just this year? Gun control DOES work, obviously. Just not 100 percent of the time.”
 
The past year has seen a spate of mass shootings across the U.S., with a total of 154 taking place since June 28 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as any that results in four or more individuals shot or killed in the same general time frame or location. 
 
Sunday’s mass shooting in Toronto was the first in Canada since an attack on a mosque in Quebec City on January 29, 2017, which saw a single gunman kill six people and wound 18 others. 
 
Before that, Canada had not had a mass shooting since January 22, 2016, when a 17-year-old student shot and killed two people at a residence in La Loche, Saskatchewan, before continuing his rampage at La Loche Community School, killing a teacher and an assistant, and wounding several others.
 
A firearm is nearly seven times less likely to be used in a homicide in Canada than in the U.S., according to Statistics Canada. (More Stats: Newsweek) 
 

SaveSave

Saturday February 25, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday February 25, 2018

President Trump at CPAC Insists Arming Teachers, Not Gun Control, Will Keep Schools Safe

President Donald Trump reiterated his support for arming teachers during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday morning, saying that keeping guns out of schools makes them targets for mass shooters.

January 17, 2013

“When we declare our schools to be gun free zones, it just puts our students in far more danger,” said Trump. “People that are adept with weaponry and with guns — they teach. I don’t want to have 100 guards with rifles standing all over the school. You do a concealed carry permit.”

Other than one mention of “strengthening” background checks, Trump did not talk about the ideas for tighter gun control that he has floated in the last week – including raising the age of purchasing some weapons and banning bump stocks. The National Rifle Association, which was an early backer of Trump’s and channeled over $30 million towards supporting his campaign, opposes raising the age limit.

July 25, 2015

The speech seemed in line with many of the talking points of NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, who went on the offensive on Thursday on the same CPAC stage, accusing gun control advocates of exploiting last week’s Florida school shooting tragedy.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, allegedly opened fire with an AR-15 rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14, killing 17 people. In the days following, Trump pledged to take action to help prevent more school shootings in America, inviting those who have experienced school shootings to the White House. He reiterated his call to action on Friday, telling the audience, “We will act. We will do something.” (Source: TIME) 

 

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Thursday, January 17, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, January 17, 2013

How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

Slate partners with @GunDeaths for an interactive, crowdsourced tally of the toll firearms have taken since Dec. 14.

The answer to the simple question in that headline is surprisingly hard to come by. So Slate is collecting data for our crowdsourced interactive. This data is necessarily incomplete (click here to see why, and to learn more about @GunDeaths, the Twitter user who helped us create this interactive). But the more people who are paying attention, the better the data will be. You can help us draw a more complete picture of gun violence in America. If you know about a gun death in your community that isn’t represented here, please email a link to a news report to slatedata@gmail.com. And if you’d like to use this data yourself for your own projects, it’s open. You can download it here.

Update, June 19, 2013: As time goes on, our count gets further and further away from the likely actual number of gun deaths in America—because roughly 60 percent of deaths by gun are due to suicides, which are very rarely reported. When discussing this issue, please note that our number is by design not accurate and represents only the number of gun deaths that the media can find out about contemporaneously. Part of the purpose of this interactive is to point out how difficult it is to get accurate real-time numbers on this issue.

Using the most recent CDC estimates for yearly deaths by guns in the United States, it is likely that as of today, 10/4/2013, roughly 26,278 people have died from guns in the U.S. since the Newtown shootings. Compare that number to the number of deaths reported in the news in our interactive below, and you can see how undertold the story of gun violence in America actually is. (Source: Slate)