Comments on: Don’t expect a paradigm shift in American gun politics

By: Hamis Hill

Hamis Hill — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:12:33 +0000

Both the US and Australia share the common history of the War of the Three Kingdoms where a Monarch, using foreign funds, raised a standing army against the English parliament and people, and lost his head as a consequence.
This tyranny was raised against the American colonies a bit over a century later.
Those English colonists were well aware of the War of the Three Kingdoms,it was, after all their recent history, just as it is the long forgotten history of all Australians, regardless of their ethnicity.
So why all this pretence that Australians somehow cannot understand the role of private weapons in the US?
Why all this moral superiority, when the present crew of marsupial ignoramuses have done nothing at all to claim any superiority at all?
Long forgotten history indeed.
Are you all quite sure that this complacent ignorance is not inviting any modern tyrants?
The behaviour of the politico-religious dementoids who have subverted the opposition by just one vote and who have been trashing the conventions of parliament?
She’ll be right?

By: مكينMrGibberish

مكينMrGibberish — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 01:54:00 +0000

‘He went out into the bush, where the gun-nutters are’

your comment might seem logical for someone who does not know the US, but for someone is is familiar with it you are off the planet man.

you don’t have to go into the bush to find the ‘gun-nutters’, in America they are all around you especially in the red states, and the right to bear arms is in the constitution. it is a totally different culture and a different place to Oz.

my cousin was in the US marines, but he did not feel safe raising his young family in Texas so he moved to California. this is not to say that it is very bad in the US and you have to be fearful all the time when you live there.

the NRA is more powerful than Grover Norquist and Wall Street, more than the Zionist lobby, they have more influence on congress and the senate than the POTUS could ever have. it’s no easy task, and it’s not helpful to compare date palm to chili.

By: Phil L

Phil L — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 08:09:44 +0000

Interesting how the Port Arthur gun tragedy here in Australia was all the public and the politicians needed to change the laws in a democratic and peaceful way.
What is it about the American psych that prevents rational debate and action on this matter? It beats the hell out of me.
Like many others I’m thanking my good luck that my two children (6 & are here in Australia…

By: Stiofan

Stiofan — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 03:56:10 +0000

You just can’t help yourselves, can you? John Howard’s greatest policy achievement is airily dismissed as “a relatively simple task”. Howard didn’t hide in his Canberra bunker. He went out into the bush, where the gun-nutters are, and argued his case in public meetings. I never voted for him, but his willingness to get out and do the right thing on this occasion stands in stark contrast to the current incumbent, whose idea of public debate is screeching ad hominem attacks and unfunny Youtube videos.

By: Arty

Arty — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 01:39:56 +0000

There is nothing we can do about the freedom to carry arms, and use them, in the USA.

Be very, very worried about every effort to bring similar lax guns laws in Australia.

Which Australian political party supports easing our firearm laws?

By: joanjett

joanjett — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 01:23:02 +0000

Oh Obama won’t do anything except cry crocodile tears. The man assassinates his own citizens and those of other countries via drone attack all the time! Collateral damage that’s all.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 03:40:46 +0000

Sadly true.

If Obama doesn’t try, neither will anybody else, not for another generation at least.

If he does, somebody will try to kill him.

By: beachcomber

beachcomber — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 01:32:01 +0000

Maybe some amendments to their Constitution enshrining the Right to send your kids to school, safe in the expectation that they will be alive when you go to collect them, would help. Or the Right to go to the Movies without being assassinated. More radically , an Obligation to lock your weapons up. It is little wonder the USA is a declining power when they let a law written over 220 years ago undermine everyone’s safety.

By: rhwombat

rhwombat — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 04:18:37 +0000

Some comment from the US has suggested that the solution is to punitively tax (and/or track) ammunition in the same way as we have approached cigarettes with a big public health stick. The test of whether this might be effective would be the level of screaming indignation promulgated by the monstrous arms manufacturers of the US and their attack dogs in the NRA. It might go some way to reemploy all those spin merchants moving on from the failing “no anthropogenic climate change” industry.

By: Dylan Nicholson

Dylan Nicholson — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 04:12:35 +0000

There won’t be gun reform law, but it will (and has already starting becoming) almost universal that every building, every schoolyard, every public park, everywhere where it is feasible to do so will require security guards and metal detectors. And maybe eventually people will realise how absurd it is to prefer that over sensible regulation and oversight of civilian ownership of powerful and dangerous weapons.