After hearing about the Aurora shootings, my anger and disappointment, brewing since the Columbine shootings at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Chardon High School, took me straight to the root of the problem: gun laws in America. In my opinion, there are plenty of twisted psychopaths all around the world but the majority of them don't have access to semi-automatic weapons. So here is some reading material to give you an idea of what kind of politics we are up against. The weapons industry isn't just putting the lives of innocent people around the world in grave danger. These are incidents that remind us how much big business via the NRA threats our personal safety, right here on our own U.S. soil!

Quotes from...

U.S. CHRONICLES

Battleground America

One nation, under the gun.

by Jill Lepore
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There are nearly three hundred million privately owned firearms in the United States: a hundred and six million handguns, a hundred and five million rifles, and eighty-three million shotguns. That works out to about one gun for every America.


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In many states, to purchase a gun from a licensed dealer you need a permit, which requires you to complete firearms-safety training, not unlike driver’s education. But, even if all states required this, not everyone who buys a gun would have to take a class. That’s because forty per cent of the guns purchased in the United States are bought from private sellers at gun shows, or through other private exchanges, such as classified ads, which fall under what is known as the “gun-show loophole” and are thus unregulated.



Gun sales soaring, boosted by gun laws, concerns about Obama
by Bill Briggs




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On Wednesday, gun maker Sturm, Ruger & Co. announced the company was forced to temporarily suspend its acceptance of any new firearms orders due to a barrage of wholesale orders — more than 1 million in 2012 alone. Last year the company shipped a total of 1.1 million firearms. This massive push "exceeds our capacity to rapidly fulfill these orders," the Connecticut company said in a news release, adding that it expects to resume normal operations by the end of May.
While "no true stats" exist reflecting actual U.S. gun purchases, Ginger Colbrun, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms pointed to a report the agency published last year citing a significant spike in gun manufacturing. According to the report, 5.5 million firearms were manufactured in 2009 (the most recent year for which such figures are available) — 1 million more than in 2008, and the highest number since at least 1986. A rise was seen in all four primary categories: pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns.


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“Stand Your Ground” laws, which have come under fire as a possible factor in the Florida shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, may be having another impact, too — helping fuel a surge in gun sales.

Gun buyers swamped retailers nationwide last year, prompting a record 16.4 million instant criminal background checks of potential owners, up 14.2 percent from 2010, according to FBI figures. While some buyers may not have followed through with gun purchases or may have been denied, others bought more than one, so background checks are considered a good proxy for sales in the industry.

On Wednesday, gun maker Sturm, Ruger & Co. announced the company was forced to temporarily suspend its acceptance of any new firearms orders due to a barrage of wholesale orders — more than 1 million in 2012 alone. Last year the company shipped a total of 1.1 million firearms. This massive push “exceeds our capacity to rapidly fulfill these orders,” the Connecticut company said in a news release, adding that it expects to resume normal operations by the end of May …



You're probably wondering what the deal is in your state...


link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MJAQY6AB50