The Colorado massacre: Another search for answers to many

of the same questions. Are more armed people the solution, as

the National Rifle Foundation asserts, or is it time for common

sense gun control?

'Violence and Barbarism' in Retrograde United States (La Jornada, Mexico)

Events like yesterdays exhibit, in short, the devastating effects of an anachronistic and deadly approach to gun control that prevails in the United States that amounts to the reproduction, on a national scale, of the 'law of the jungle' that Washington has sought to impose on the world. it sees itself as a great champion of civility for the rest of the world, but instead finds itself a more backward place, thanks to its systematic tendency toward violence and barbarism.

EDITORIAL

Translated By Douglas Myles Rasmussen

July 21, 2012

Mexico  La Jornada  Original Article (Spanish)

James Holmes: Yet another in a long line of deranged individuals who had no trouble obtaining automatic weapons and pleanty of ammunition to kill innocent people. Is it time to fine tune the availability of firearms? BBC NEWS VIDEO: Robots to search shooter's apartment; President Obama to visit Aurora, July 20, 00:02:45

The mass murder that occurred during the first few minutes in a Colorado theater yesterday - where an armed gunman killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 50 - brought forth voices of condemnation and solidarity in the society and political class of the United States, from the nations president, Barack Obama, who declared five days of national mourning as a sign of respect for the victims of this act of senseless violence, to his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, and has rekindled the perennial debate about the need to regulate arms trade in that country.

Posted by Worldmeets.US

This massacre is the bloodiest event since the April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, where 33 people died as a consequence of two attacks with firearms by a student there. Unfortunately, acts like that at a university campus and this one at a movie theater are not isolated events: 13 years later, the memory of the infamous April, 1999 slaughter at Columbine High School - also in Colorado - is still fresh. At Columbine, fifteen students were killed.

One must also add to the list the violent events at the end of 2007, when a 19-year-old armed with an assault rifle killed eight people at a mall in Nebraska, as well as the string of bloody events in 2009: in March, the killing of 11 people in a series of shootings in Alabama; in April, the hostages that were taken at an immigrant center in the town of Binghamton, New York, which ended in the murder of 14 people; and the mass murder perpetrated by the Pakistani-American [Palestinian American, actually] psychologist Nidal Malik Hasan on a military base in Fort Hood, Texas, where 13 people died (12 soldiers and one policeman), with 31 seriously wounded. And in January of last year, a shooting in Tucson, Arizona, left six people dead and 13 wounded, one of whom was Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The list also includes a series of lesser shootings in many of our neighbors cities, which usually leave behind dead and wounded.

SEE ALSO ON THIS:

Polityka, Poland: America in Anger's Clutches

Beijing Youth Daily, China: Making Sense of America's Right to Bear Arms

Frankfurter Rundschau, Germany: Virginia Tech One Year On: The 'Silent Scandal'

New Straits Times, Malaysia: Don't Just Blame Virginia Tech

Kitabat, Iraq: 'Thank Allah the Virginia Killer Wasn't Muslim'

FTD, Germany: Now Suddenly, Gun Control Looms Over White House Race

La Jornada, Mexico: Virginaa Tech: An American Tragedy

NRC Handlesblad, The Netherlands: Americans Distrust State Monopoly on Violence

JoongAng Daily, South Korea: The Legacy of Cho Seung-hui: A Lesson to Koreans

The Korea Herald, South Korea: Koreans Feel Collective Guilt Over the Massacre

La Jornada, Mexico: Rejecting U.S. Drug War is Essential for Mexico's Survival

Xinjingbao, China: Information Society Triggered Massacre

China Daily, China: A Nation Cannot Be Tarred by a Single Killer

La Jornada, Mexico: The 'Paths of Death' Lead to Washington

La Jornada, Mexico: A Culture of Violence

O Povo, Brazil: Virginia Tech: Sign of Our Wounded Civilization

Khaleej Times, UAE: Shooting Shows Something Ails America 'At its Core'

Al Watan Voice, Palestinian Territories: Fort Hood: 'Muslims Can't Be Trusted'

Dar Al Khaleej, UAE: America's 'Black Knights' and the Fort Hood Tragedy

Le Temps, Switzerland: 'Double Lesson' at Fort Hood

Khaleej Times, U.A.E. Fort Hood Shooting: 'Don't Pin It on Faith'

Hurriet, Turkey: Shooting at Fort Hood and the Role of Muslim Clerics

The Telegraph, U.K.: British Muslims Debate the Fort Hood Killer

These horrifying episodes all share one indisputable common denominator  aside from the mental disorders of the individuals who carried them out: the excessive proliferation of firearms among our neighboring countrys population, supported by the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which grants all citizens the unrestricted right to arm themselves. It is estimated that there are almost 300 million individually-owned firearms in the United States - almost one per person - and on a daily basis, on average more than 80 people die from assaults committed with such weapons. The possession of firearms - illegal or not - on the part of resident of that nation is also fueled by the determined support of reactionary and chauvinistic segments of U.S. society, such as the National Rifle Association (NRA), an ultra-conservative organization closely tied to the Republican Party, which has dedicated itself to opposing any government attempt to regulate the trade in firearms. What happened at the theater in Colorado coincides with the discussion in the United States over the adoption of a treaty among U.N. member states to better-regulate the international trade in conventional arms [The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty]. This has been portrayed by the NRA as an attempt on the part of Obama to limit the aforementioned constitutional provision

Events like yesterdays exhibit, in short, the devastating effects of an anachronistic and deadly approach to gun control that prevails in the United States that amounts to the reproduction, on a national scale, of the law of the jungle that Washington has sought to impose on the world. The lack of ability or willingness of the Obama Administration to regulate and contain the sale of weapons not only periodically results in a nation in mourning, it affects other nations like ours - remember the massive smuggling of weapons from the United States into Mexico under Operation Fast and Furious.

The Colorado massacre is further of evidence that the current U.S. government has been defeated by the ominous inertia so prevalent in the politics, economy and culture of that country, which sees itself as a great champion of civility for the rest of the world, but which instead finds itself a more backward place thanks to its systematic tendency toward violence and barbarism.

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