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Is now the time for the US government to enact gun control?
Up to 27 people, many of them children, were killed on Friday in a mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, CT. Is this latest in a series of recent mass shootings a signal something must be done about American gun laws?
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Jaume Plensa's "Tel Aviv Man" at Art Basel, the world’s premier trade fair for leading galleries and collectors focused on modern and contemporary art.
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The front of the Art Basel building. This year’s show attracted 303 of the world’s top galleries from 36 countries, showing the works of more than 2,500 artists. It drew more than 62,000 visitors, a new record.
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Platform Gallery's Chen Wei and one of his "Recovery Room" series at Liste Young Artist's show. By the time the week was over he had sold more than 10 works, with prices ranging from $1,800 to nearly $3,000.
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A performance spectator admires some of the pieces at Basel Art.
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A performance piece at Basel Scope, done by an unidentified nearly naked man who moved in slow motion up and down the aisles dressed like a Greek version of Mars, the god of war.
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A performance piece at Scope. The man clutched a staff, on which a plastic container for motor oil with the BP logo was impaled.
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An installation piece at Basel Art.
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An installation piece with paper tubes at Basel Art.
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A gallery scene at the Scope Basel show.
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A sculpture of Sperone Westwater Gallery's employee, Michael Short, by Evan Penny.
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Evan Penny's sculpture of Michael Short.
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A woman views Jaume Plensa's "Tel Aviv Man," (Study) 2010, Galerie Lelong, Paris.
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"Medusa marinara," 1997 — a photographic representation of the Medusa in spaghetti and tomato sauce by New York-based Brazilian artist, Vic Muniz.
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Children play around Ai Weiwei's piece, "Field," 2010.
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Heimo Sobernig's "Black Cube" sits on display outside outside.
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A piece by Yayoi Kusama titled "Pumkin."
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The kid stole the guns from his mother, who had a perfect right to them, she had a permit and everything was legal. He, the kid, was jealous of the kindergartners that his mom taught so he killed her and the little ones she loved. What a jerk -- this tragedy might not have happened if one or two of the teachers had a gun and USED IT TO PROTECT themselves, the other adults and especially the children.
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Our children have the right to life and liberty...owning a gun should have a much higher bar!
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It has now been over 10 years since gun owners in Australia were forced by new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by their own Government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.
The statistics for the years following the ban are now in:
Accidental gun deaths are 300% higher than the pre-1997 ban rate
The assault rate has increased 800% since 1991, and increased 200% since the 1997 gun ban.
Robbery and armed robbery have increase 20% from the pre-97 ban rate.
From immediately after the ban was instituted in 1997 through 2002, the robbery and armed robbery rate was up 200% over the pre-ban rates.
In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 171 percent.
There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the ELDERLY. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort, and expense was expended in successfully ridding Australian society of guns.
Let's examine the overall murder rate and the gun murder rate in Australia. Take note both are virtually unchanged and unaffected by the gun ban.
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^^^^^^^ This shows how everything is falling into place, how the government is slowly making its move through peoples grieves, basically blinding us. (Bill of rights, 2nd Amendment) This nation has fallen apart. Never turn your back on your creator. Smh.
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You cannot remove guns from the equation and expect mental illness to go away with them. That kind of reasoning is just the knee-jerk reaction from the liberal, left that always follows a horrible tragedy like this. If at least ONE or TWO RESPONSIBLE ADULTS on every campus were trained and armed then the lunatics of the world would not attempt these kinds of heinous acts. Did anyone notice that all of the adults killed were female, don't you think that this deranged young man knew that this school would be easy pickings for him. It is so sad that someone, anyone did not have the right tools to stop him. Isn't it about time for the government to acknowledge that they need to have better security in our public schools, shouldn't they be held responsible for our children, which we leave in their care ? ? ? They have had armed air-marshalls, undercover, on commercial airplanes for years now, why not schools ? ? ?
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I agree, teaches should have the right to carry. We cant stop the crazys, face it we need jobs and we need armed gaurds in school, problem solved. If you ban guns then only the killers will have guns.
Stop the violance on TV and screen if you want to solve this
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You can't go ahead, an start enacting Law's that are going to take away the citizens of this county the right to bear arms, and be able to protect themselves because someone did not recognize that this kid had problems. I do not want to diminish the horrible and tragic outcome of this incident, especially due to the age of much of these kids. But there is no comparison to the number of these isolated incidents against how many people in the country have legal guns, with proper permits, that keep them locked and away from kids to get at.
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Not one law could have prevented this horror. Only law abiding citizens obey the law. Permits to carry a concealed weapon, help good citizens protect themselves & loved ones, from evil. "More guns less crime" by professor Lott says it all. God bless these angels.
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Let me say this as a Democrat so that there will be no blaming me for siding with the right or the NRA. This isn't about guns unless we're talking about assault rifles and other such weapons that belong in war. I realize that everyone is looking for someone to blame, so why aren't we blaming our lawmakers and Justice system? Are they not the ones being lobbied and paid to keep certain regulations on guns and those selling them from ever being written or made laws? Most of you don't even realize that it's the NRA writing our gun laws in the first place. There's thousands of things we can do to stop the potential for madness, but I will be damned if someone is going to take away my right to keep and bear arms so that the only ones with guns are the crazies!
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I've been a mental health professional for 20 years and counting. I have an array of thoughts, feelings, and suggestions. We live in a "SICK" America...WE...THE PEOPLE...need to join together and embrace mental illness, understand mental illness, and help those who struggle with mental illness. Not only do gun control laws need to be assessed....mental health laws need to be addressed as well. The problems we face as Americans is mutlifaceted and we need to join together as ONE and SHARE OUR IDEAS, EXPERTISE, TALENTS, GIFTS, EDUCATION....AND CREATE A "HEALTHY" AMERICA. It's clear WE...THE PEOPLE HAVE A PROLBLEM...IT'S TIME TO FOCUS ON A SOLUTION. I firmly believe CHANGE IS POSSIBLE...what is the alternative! As a country....what we are doing is NOT WORKING....TIME TO TRY SOMETHING NEW...SOMETHING THAT WORKS...WHO'S WITH ME?
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It's not about Gun Control or new Laws. If you think that is the answer, you are totally ignorant to the real problem. You can't keep blaming Guns for the violence in today's Society. Enforce the Laws on the Books already, but lets start Profiling the Bad people again. Look at the Mental Health aspect and start getting our Constitutional Rights back. Fight the ACLU, who is behind the lack of Profiling in America today. They are systematically taking our Rights away. Lets also put the Blame where it should be on the Individuals that are committing these acts. You can also go right to the Parents of these people and for that matter the Educational System, where these Individuals come from. Unfortunately, the Schools today hide these people for fear of being sued by the ACLU or some other Liberal Think tank.
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Here it is by the numbers. This excludes things like non-induced cancer, heart attacks, suicide. The focus here is on the preventable incidents.
Tobacco use 529,000
Medical error: 195,000
Unintentional injury: 118,021
Alcohol Abuse: 107,400
Unintentional poisoning: 31,758
Drug Abuse: 25,500
Unintentional falls: 24,792
Non-Firearm Homicides: 16,799*
Firearm Homicides: 11,493.
Taken from CDC, and FBI, both US Government sources.
*According to the FBI not only is Baseball America's past time, it also provided us with America's murder implement. The ball bat it the #1 murder weapon in the U.S. Should we begin licensing them?
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Gun control is not the solution.
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China just had 22 stabbed and slashed in a school, and guns aren't even close to being a leading cause for premature death in the US. auto accidents, medical malpractice, accidental falls, and illness all outstrip this by far.
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Some of our family guns are for hunting, as well as our bow and arrows, but at the same time they are here if there was a home invasion...but mostly.. they are hear to protect us from our out of control Government... and we have the right to have them for that reason. We do not have machine guns or anything stupid and we DO NOT Need the government wasting any more time talking about this... they need to get to work doing their job instead of running our country into the ground.
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There have been crimes involvingvarious kinds of weapons since weapons were produced. The onlything taking our guns away will do is make innocemt people defenseless and criminals even more dangerous becsise they will still have guns, but we wont have any way to defend ourselves.
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Looking to the government to prevent such tragedies will not stop them from occurring again. Our government is not the one to blame nor to look to. The school should have taken the correct actions to protect their children. They failed. Why are not expressing outrage over this? Instead we are trying to ban assault rifles. This will not guarentee our safety.
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I think we should look at violent video games that teach children to kill.
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To bring it up I have noticed something and have done some research on the topic but look at something people....The shooting in Aurora colarodo happend exactly 9 days before the hearing for the gun grab and the C.I.A was the ones who pushed it the hardest...it didn't succeed so then what happens? Another shooting just with kids instead of general people which is gonna turn the nation and worlds head much faster than before....what would happen if the whole population had no guns? The government could do whatever they wanted to without any resistance....what I have learned is that the C.I.A maybe ploting and organizing these shootings as though they are just tragic incidence in orderto gain heartfelt support to ban weapons so that the govenment and maybe U.N. can do something big although I am not sure what that might be but I doubt good considering they want to disarm the nation first.....again this is just hersy but it is something to think about.....if u trust a government u are a fool which is why u are better to rely on yourself, family & friends before the government,,,ik I would trust satan before I would any government.
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What good will it do to ban ALL weapons??? NONE!!! if a criminal wants to get a weapon they will find a way to obtain one. Our own government gave weapons to the drug cartel and then one of own gets killed with our weapons!!! and these were not your every day weapons either; they were assault weapons that no one is allowed to own. so what do you have to say about that? From the president on down those assault weapons were given to the drug cartel. I'm telling you any time the government gets their hands on any controversial issue innocent people are going to get hurt.!!!
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Yes but when everything calms down. We don't want it said it is for a different reason.
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I think our problem in America is the liberal people that protect everybody until they do something like this and then they would protect him( the murderer) if he had lived and gotten the death penalty. Don't they realize that someone that has the capability to murder will do it even if they had to do it with bombs, knives etc. you are not going to stop murder from happening. Why would the liberals think that taking our guns would end this, don't they realize that criminals will still have them and sell them to people like this, they don't care abut our laws, we still have people bootlegging, selling drugs and the criminals get them. So keep your hands off my guns.
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This is not about the deaths of all those innocent children. People who want to control our lives are using this issue to stir emotions up on the death of 20 innocent child to establish more control of the populous of the United States. We have been a strong and prosperous country primarily because of our strong independence and the abilities to have our freedoms such as free speech and the right to bear arms. Once we start weakening these rights, we will eventual loss these rights and our country will be something else and not the United States of America. This is the bottom line!!!!
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Face it people. A law is talking put on paper. It is TELLING an evil person, "You can't shoot people, you shouldn't seek to buy or own weapons!"
What happens when you TELL a bad man, "Sir, you can't kill people, we forbid it!" What happens? EXACTLY NOTHING!!! HE DOESN'T CARE! That's why all the gun laws in the world WON'T STOP ANY KIND OF CRIME. Criminals WILL get guns, guaranteed!! I read recently about a robber who was caught. HE SAID THAT HE CHOSE HIS TARGETS BASED ON THE PLACARD ANNOUNCING 'NO WEAPONS PERMITTED'! He knew he'd be 'safe' there!!
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Yes..And lets issue all policemen BB guns; that way gun crimes will stop! Oh wait, how will taking guns away from the non-criminal police, force the criminals to stop perpetrating gun crimes? Oh well, less guns on the street, less crime!! Right?
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NO MORE TALK. WE NEED ACTION ON THIS!
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Long overdue!
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Bans are one thing but remember guns like anything else cannot be dis-invented.
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More than 5,000 people were killed in Guatemala last year by gunshot - most of those in Guatemala City. Other countries with a higher per capita rate of deaths by guns than the USA include: El Salvador, Honduras, Swaziland, Mexico, Brazil, Philipines, South Africa, Columbia ...
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Even if guns are not altogether scrapped, there should be controls on the types of guns that can be legally bought and wielded. The right to bear arms is for us to be able to protect ourselves. But do we really need a .223 rifle to do that?
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I feel like everyone can only see the bad in the world at moments like this. This is definitely a tragic event but there are also times when guns can help and protect people. That is why our 2nd Amendment is the right to bare arms. At least, that's how I see it.
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Yes: 1812
No: 1154
Maybe: 495
10:53 pm ET, 12-16-12
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no new gun laws you already have 20.000 on the books how many are enforced? what is needed immediatly is two things 1 psycologistal testing and 2 gun mandatory gun classes for any individual purchaseing a firearm No Gun Bans !
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If someone exercises the right to legally own a gun, then, the person MUST be responsible and use common sense. What we need is more education on how to own a gun, especially if the gun owner resides with other people. A gun is a serious thing, not a toy. Not something one goes and tells the neighborhood about it, or talk about it in public places, and put it in the hands of people than are not capacitated. You are thinking about owning a gun, invest in a good SAFE and keep it secured. DO NOT allow ANYONE else access to it. Period. I am sorry, but that's the way it works. My respectful opinion.
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The Constitution is right. No gun control but control the violence in which the mind of our young people are focused. Control video games and simulators that are training them to kill, the media and films that emphasize violence exacerbating their copycat tendency. More psychological studies and help from the Dpt. Family and Children, what is important is to teach kids how to control their anger before is too late. Many, many children are growing alone with a TV-babysitter because their parents are too busy.
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We need to close the gun show loophole, reinstate the ban on automatic weapons, and keep guns out of the hands of the mentally unbalanced. For starters. Arming teachers and everyone under the sun is an insane solution to the violence in this country.
We do, also, need to check the violence in video games. It is out of control. And we need to increase funding for mental health care.
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The problem is that main stream media is supporting these terrorist by giving them their "Fifteen minutes of Fame". Take the responsibility to the source, not the tool. Do not react in a knee jerk fashion and punish law abiding citizens. Treat the murderers as terrorists and do not print their names, do not show their pictures, do not let them become famous. These creatures may be pulling the trigger, but irresponsible journalism is loading the weapons. Shame on you for airing the dirty laundry to make a by-line.
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Yes the gun laws should be changed in the U.S.A its no longer the wild west it ended 200 years a go
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We have the same nutjobs in Australia ....we dont have massacres of little ones because we have gun control . The only decent thing to come out of the Right Wing Howard govts tenure ! President Obama will become the man who made America safer . Those children mut not die in vain
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Yes it is time for gun control. We as Americans can keep the 2nd amendment by getting war weapons out of the hands of the criminally insane and off the streets of America. What would we have thought if this had been terrorist walking into a classroom and killing. We must realize that terrorist are walking the street of America with war weapons in their hands. And they will shot you if your hair is too long too short or they do not like the way you walk.
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Kallie, how many people could he have killed if guns were properly controlled & his mother didn't have one to steal?
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How do we justify 30,000 victims of gun violence? Just giving everybody more guns does not keep the guns from ending up killing our babies, our mothers, our fathers, our neighbors. The NRA thinks only of their pocketbooks. No civilized nation has these statistics.
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Let's regulate the sale of bullets!
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