You know what's weird? Back several years ago when he was running for president, D.J. Trump used to be known for saying that immigrants to the U.S. are "rapists" -- he himself was just found liable in civil court for sexual abuse and defamation.
Is this what psychologists call "projection"? I think it is. It's where you are doing something yourself, but you hide it, and accuse other people of doing it.
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In the wake of more shooting incidents in Texas, the New York Times ran an editorial (Opinion article) titled, A Gun-Filled America Is a World of Fear and Alienation.
reader comments:
New Jersey
The number of gun deaths per 100,000 residents by state from deadliest to safest per the CDC is listed below: What's the clear and unmistakable pattern? Loose gun laws produce more guns and more gun deaths per capita, with red Republican states leading the charge over the fatal cliffs....and Democratic states produce less gun deaths per capita. Are there a few minor anomalies in the data? Of course. But the pattern is clear.
Gun Deaths Per 100,000, by State
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Mississippi 33.9 (deadliest)
Louisiana 29.1
New Mexico 27.8
Alabama 26.4
Wyoming 26.1
Alaska 25.2
Montana 25.1
Arkansas 23.3
Missouri 23.2
Tennessee 22.8
South Carolina 22.4
Oklahoma 21.2
Kentucky 21.1
Georgia 20.3
Nevada 19.8
Indiana 18.4
Arizona 18.3
Colorado 17.8
West Virginia 17.3
North Carolina 17.3
Kansas 17.3
North Dakota 16.8
Delaware 16.6
Ohio 16.5
Idaho 16.3
Illinois 16.1
Texas 15.6
Michigan 15.4
Maryland 15.2
Oregon 14.9
Pennsylvania 14.8
Virginia 14.3
South Dakota 14.3
Florida 14.1
Utah 13.9
Wisconsin 13.5
Maine 12.6
Vermont 11.9
Washington 11.2
Iowa 11.2
Nebraska 10.3
Minnesota 10
California 9
New Hampshire 8.3
Connecticut 6.7
Rhode Island 5.6
New York 5.4
New Jersey 5.2
Hawaii 4.8
Massachusetts 3.4 (safest)
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Bill Taylor
Sydney, Australia
Owning a firearm should be a privilege, not a right.
As visitors to the United States many times we have enjoyed the friends we made, the cities and landscapes we have explored, the road trips, and the vibrancy of the cultural melting pots we found. But no longer -- we are never coming back.
We look at the USA no longer as a bastion of the free world, but as an appalling example of gun mania having taken over the body politic. Nobody seems to have the power to stop the growth of gun availability, despite constant reports of horrific misuse of guns against innocent people. We see you as being dictated to by the righteous and the angry, embarked on a downward spiral of extreme violence.
Where we live, gun ownership is a privilege granted only when you can demonstrate that you are an active member of a competitive shooting club, a farmer needing something to cull sick or feral animals, or a person working in security where there is a genuine risk of armed confrontation. And the type of gun you can own for each of those purposes is quite specific: in particular, no civilian needs an assault rifle. For that reason they are banned.
This policy is not an assault on individual rights, it is simply common sense.
Midas
Exiled
If [Texas Governor] Abbot cares so much about mental health, why has he blocked expanding Medicaid in Texas following the Affordable Care Act? Lots of rural clinics and hospitals closing as a result.
New England
If poor mental health is the reason for mass shootings, then the inescapable conclusion is that people in states with lots of mass shootings have worse mental health than states with fewer mass shootings.
All I know is that Massachusetts has the lowest rate of gun death overall (per the CDC's 2021 data). It is a state with strong gun laws and a very low rate of gun ownership. I don't believe that the mental health of Bay Staters is so much better than the states with high gun death.
It's the guns.
RP Smith
Marshfield, Massachusetts
If we're going to "harden" every soft target in the country, then we should heavily tax gun and ammo sales to pay for it. I resent my tax dollars going toward this "solution" when the facts show that gun proliferation is the main problem. A problem that other free nations don't have.
boston doctor
a logical world
The problem is guns and those who support their widespread presence. The data is in. The experiment has been done by numerous countries (even getting rid of guns after wide availability, thanks Australia). Get rid of guns, drastically cut gun violence. Only absurdists think weapons enhance safety. Get rid of guns. Full stop. Period. No debate. Problem solved. Objections have all previously been disproven.
Mike Tucker
Strait of Malacca
Americans are not demanding that saving children's lives be the number one priority of the American federal government. As long as the right to go to school and come back home alive is not the number one freedom for American children, nothing will change in American society and American children will continue to suffer from "another week, another shooting" over and over again---it's a horror show of Groundhog Day, stateside, in a country that unlike Malaysia, unlike Australia and unlike the UK does not have a federal firearms law.
I served and defended the USA as a Marine counterterrorist in the late 1980s. But there is no way I'm living stateside again. It is a joy to live in the Strait of Malacca and also, in Koh Samui, Thailand and in the Himalayas---in all three places and everywhere else I travel, there is zero threat of being shot dead in a coffee shop or on a seagoing ferry or in a mall or in a theater, and so on.
Malaysia, Thailand and India all have excellent federal firearms laws, and so does Australia .... likewise, the UK. America: Love it or leave it. I left. It is heaven on earth to walk on a beach at night, look at the stars and hear not one gunshot, not one police siren and know that the children in the fishing villages are always and forever going to go to school and come back home alive, not leave school in body bags.
Mike Tucker
Ronin counterterrorist (ret.), former Marine counterterrorist, poet, writer and photographer
Far East and the Himalayas
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When I saw Louisiana on the list as the second-deadliest state for shootings, it reminded me of the movie Angel Heart---upon being informed of a murder, guy says, "Not a surprise---these people, they 86 each other every week..."
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