No school year in the U.S. in nearly a decade saw as much gunfire as the 2021-2022 academic calendar, a report released Friday shows. The report (https://everytownsupportfund.org/press/new-everytown-report-finds-average-number-of-gunfire-on-school-grounds-incidents-nearly-quadrupled-during-last-school-year/?_gl=1*ifxwvo*_ga*ODUyMTMyNDc4LjE2NjA3NjgzMTU.*_ga_LT0FWV3EK3*MTY2MDkyMjczMC40LjEuMTY2MDkyMjc5My4wLjAuMA) was published by Everytown For Gun Safety, a nonpartisan group advocating against gun violence. The gun violence report shows the last school year, between Aug. 1 and May 31, saw 193 incidents of gunfire,[Read More…]

American schools are soft, you say? I know what you mean. I taught college for 15 years, so I’ve dealt with my share of still-teenagers fresh out of high school. Many of them inspired me, but some had clearly earned high marks too easily and needed remedial help in math, English, or other subjects. School discipline had been too lax[Read More…]

An epidemic is hitting the US and ordinary citizens are unable to stop it. The reason is simple: the laws protect the killers. And those responsible for making the laws have abdicated their responsibility. The Gun Violence Archive reports that mass shootings have increased from 269 in 2014 to 693 in 2021. They do so even when the victims could[Read More…]

Irrespective of whatever is ethnic identity of any shooter leading to violence and/or murders, how can approach towards him be decided by his religion, race, colour or any ethnic as well as national factor? A crime remains a crime. Sadly, double-standards of this nature still prevail. If Salvador Rolando Ramos was an Arab, a Muslim and/or a Black, the rage[Read More…]

The United States remains a country of tenacious faith.  The nature of that faith stretches from the digital pulpits of Silicon Valley, where cool technology occupies the seat of majesty, to the hot Bible Belt of spiritual endurance and suffering, where the good Lord holds sway in stern disapproval.  In between, market fundamentalists take time to worship the invisible hand[Read More…]

The gun I carried on the streets of New York City in the late 1960s was a Beretta, similar to the pistol James Bond packed in the early Ian Fleming novels. It was a small, dark beauty that filled me with bravado. I was never afraid when I had it in my pocket, which is why I’m so very afraid[Read More…]

What more can be said with so much grief, after the spate of recent gun violence around the country? Can anything be added that has not already been said. The same questions have been haunting the country over the past two decades. Why do mass shootings appear to be accelerating? Why are children often being targeted? Why are teens, who[Read More…]

The horrifying mass murder of 18 school children and two teachers in Uvalde, TX occurred at the same time as the funeral of Celestine Chaney, grandmother of six and Buffalo, NY mass shooting victim, was taking place. Only two of the ten Black Americans killed in Buffalo by avowed white supremacists had been yet laid to rest when that tragedy[Read More…]

This Memorial Day, as the nation reflects on, mourns and honors the sacrifices of U.S. military personnel who have died in the line of duty, another senseless killing of innocent elementary school children by a deranged gunman has marred the Federal holiday. First observed on May 30, 1868, the holiday allows us for one day to reflect on those sacrifices[Read More…]

I have been numb and silent. Not like me. But I guess I am also human and sometimes the pain is too much. 19 children dead? Should I be thankful that none of those who died in Buffalo, Uvalde or in the many instances of mass shootings that happen as regularly as rainfall in America, didn’t have the name of[Read More…]

The Washington Post (WashPost) made a front-page headline after the Buffalo’s East Side mass shooting. The headline – “‘That’s not the devil. – That’s America.’” tells state of the one of the most advanced bourgeois states – the United States of America. The report (May 17, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/17/buffalo-tops-shooting-neighborhood/) by Silvia Foster-Frau formulated its heading by citing James Baldwin, 60, a citizen[Read More…]

Societies generate their own economies of tolerable cruelties and injustices.  Poverty, for instance, will be allowed, as long a sufficient number of individuals are profiting.  To an extent, crime and violence can be allowed to thrive.  In the United States, the economy of tolerable massacres, executed by military grade weapons, is considerable and seemingly resilient.  Its participants all partake in[Read More…]

America continues to unleash unparalleled madness in the world. It’s the madness spawned by an all-consuming hatred against: Children, Women, Men, Black-Brown-White folks, Russians and Communists, Palestinians and Houthi, Nature, the Environment, Beauty and Life itself. It remains mindless, formless and knows only violence. The manufacturers of all this violence can be found permanently-embedded in every state of the American[Read More…]

The weekend of 4 July was supposed to be a celebratory time in the USA as celebrations of freedom day were being held all over the country and fireworks celebrations were being organized. But this turned out to be actually a nightmarish time for a very large number of people as random shooting incidents and brawls in many parts of[Read More…]

A new poll has found a majority of Americans is blaming mass shootings in the U.S. on easy access to guns and racism, but a significant portion also put networks like Fox News and CNN at fault. Asked “how much do you blame each of the following for mass shootings?” in the wide-ranging Politico/Morning Consult poll, 69% and 67% pointed[Read More…]

I write these words in an agony of urgency.  Already this year, 2019, there have been 31 mass shootings in the USA; more than in any other nation.  Over half of these have been in the state of Texas.  At what is only temporarily the most recent crime scene, in Odessa, one of the victims was 17 months old. The[Read More…]

The US is in the midst of an epidemic of mass killings. In the 215 days so far this year, the US has seen 252 mass shootings – an average of more than one a day. The reasons why this is happening are pretty obvious: too many guns, inadequate gun laws, a culture of militarism that glorifies violence, misogyny, and[Read More…]

Hundreds of mothers, students and other volunteers demanding action on gun control marched on the White House and the Capitol on the heels of the deadly shooting in El Paso, Texas on Saturday. Several other similar protest demonstrations were also held across the U.S. Members of activists group Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action organized the march. The protesters[Read More…]

In the wake of the February 14, 2018, mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 students and staff members, a teacher said the school looked “like a war zone.” And to many young Americans, that’s exactly what it felt like. But this shooting was different. Refusing to be victims, Parkland survivors disrupted the “thoughts and[Read More…]

Another mass shooting in America!  They are so frequent they are anticipated.  I favor stick gun control, and the application of the Second Amendment of the Constitution should be challenged as it now stands before weapons’ technology but continues to be interpreted along antiquated guidelines. How little is commonly known about the original purpose and history of the Second Amendment,[Read More…]

Another horrible mass shooting took place in the US on Wednesday night, the 307th such episode on the 311th day of the year, according to a website that tracks gun violence. A 28-year-old Marine Corps veteran of the Afghanistan war walked into a country music dance club in Thousand Oaks, California on Wednesday night and opened fire with a handgun,[Read More…]

We just had another mass murder in the USA. A military connected person carried it out. I know two Marines. Both have shell shock permanent brain damage AND PTSD. One shot a rifle at a medical helicopter going to a hospital across the lake where he lived when back in the USA. The other raped his own daughter, realized his[Read More…]

It’s Friday. There have been 28,420 incidents of gun violence so far this year in the US. 1,135 of those have happened since last week. Yesterday saw the 154th mass shooting—of four or more human victims—so far this year, and the year is marking its 180th day. Those numbers were reported early Friday morning by CNN. So you can expect[Read More…]

A week ago on May 18, 10 students were killed and 13 wounded at Santa Fe High school just south of Houston, within its metropolitan area.  The shooter was a student who, as can now be expected, had been bullied. While definitions of a mass shooting may vary, the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 labels it as[Read More…]

The quaint, unassuming, elevated area south of Denver known as Columbine rarely, if ever, caught the attention of the average American residing outside the State of Colorado for just over 99% of the twentieth century. When it etched its way into the hearts and minds of shocked onlookers around the world 19 years before Friday, nobody predicted that it would[Read More…]

“People like me are not good for big business, like for animal business, medicine business and for many other businesses.  That’s why they are discriminating and censoring us.” Nasim Najafi Aghdam discussing YouTube She claimed to have detested it, issuing fiery calls on her social media outlets, and asserting that this creature was demonic in its effort to limit talent,[Read More…]

Co-Written by Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox The United States government views human rights not as the foundation of human dignity but as an impediment to corporate profits. — Haley Pedersen & Jodie Evans, AlterNet, January 11, 2018. In the United States of America it’s all about the quantity, not the quality, of so-called freedom. That may be because[Read More…]

  “Violence and other potentially criminal behaviors caused by prescription drugs are medicine’s best kept secret.” — David Healy, UK psychiatrist and author (and co-founder of www.RxISK.org)   “The establishment media ignores the scientific evidence linking psychiatric medications and violent behavior because psychiatry is the religion of the mainstream media, and they don’t want to see the dangers of psychiatrically[Read More…]

Sonoma County, Northern California: Over a million students and allies walked out of classes in the U.S., from Maine to Hawaii, and elsewhere in the world on March 14. Ten days later, March 24, hundreds of thousands of defiant marchers flooded the streets in Washington, D.C., and at more than 800 places on every continent except Antarctica. What might they[Read More…]

  In the first 11 weeks of 2018, there have been 12 school shootings. Although shootings on school campuses only make up a tiny fraction of gun injuries and deaths annually, a March report from the Giffords Law Center focuses on the deep impact of gun violence on children in the USA, elaborating on how it extends far beyond the classroom.[Read More…]

Yesterday, in solidarity with the 17 students killed in Parkland, FL., students all across the country left their classes for 17 minutes.  These students echoed the moral determination of their grandparents, almost fifty years ago, in nationwide student strikes following the murder of four student antiwar protesters at Kent State.  Check the Congressional Record, and you’ll find one speech  commemorating[Read More…]

  Sonoma County, California: Driving through small-town Sebastopol on March 14 toward the Senior Center, this 73-year-old noticed groups of young students with signs gathering on downtown street corners and waving to motorists. These active participants in direct democracy joined thousands who walked out of schools across the U.S. and the world, organized by the Women’s March Youth branch. As[Read More…]

A superintendent threatens to suspend students protesting gun laws. But that’s not legal. Curtis Rhodes, the superintendent of the school district in Needville, a small town southwest of Houston, wrote a letter to students and parents that was distributed Tuesday on the social media page for the town’s high school. It began with a reference to the protests around the country[Read More…]

That there is a change in the air is evident this time.  Since the mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida on February 14, there have been demonstrations by school kids, their parents and others, confrontations of politicians including the president, and a general feeling that enough is enough. The most prominent opposition to gun control, the National Rifle Association (NRA)[Read More…]

It had been in the works.  Instead of engaging in the traditional revulsion associated with a mass shooting, or even digesting the grief of outraged students and grieving parents, US President Donald Trump’s solution to guns violence was elementary.  To target the perpetrator, it was necessary to arm instructors, mount the barricades, and raise the stakes. His address of February[Read More…]

  On February 14, 2018, it happened again. Young people, full of potential, their futures before them, shot down… at school, supposedly a place for learning, growing, having fun, making friends, even falling in love. This time the murderous violence struck Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. A former student wielding a semiautomatic rifle massacred 17 people—14 students,[Read More…]

The scene is the House of Commons; the date May 7, 1940.  A simple motion to adjourn for the ten-day Whitsun recess is of little concern to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who has a comfortable 213 seat majority.  Then things take a turn.  A plan approved by the first First Lord pf the Admiralty Winston Churchill to land troops in[Read More…]

“Sixty-eight percent of U.S. citizens believe that ‘better mental health screening’ would help to reduce the number of school shootings, but one has to ask what’s considered mentally healthy in our spiritually-anemic, sick society.” — Richard Martin Oxman Relationships and loyalties within a family are the strongest and most important ones, say most people. [Pause.] Yes, blood is thicker than[Read More…]

Seventeen people were killed and at least 14 more wounded Wednesday afternoon in the latest horrific school shooting in the United States. The tragedy unfolded at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, located some 30 miles northwest of Fort Lauderdale, in Broward County. According to reports, a former student started shooting from outside and then entered the school[Read More…]

  The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was written into the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in 1787 as the replacement-Constitution for this country, replacing the prior Articles of Confederation, which had bound the United States together as the nation’s first Constitution. We Americans live under America’s second Constitution, but the terms-of-reference in it are the same as[Read More…]

  The Las Vegas gunman wasn’t operating merely as a gunman but as a sniper, and yet the U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment makes no distinctions whatsoever regarding handguns versus snipers’ weapons — automatic (or semi-automatic) rifles which spew bullets so fast the Las Vegas shooter was able in the brief time-span of only around ten minutes to murder at least[Read More…]

Introduction Contrary to the Hegelian assumption that civilization progresses in a linear mode, the contradictions of capitalism between the promise of prosperity for all, on the one hand, and the reality of perpetual capital concentration, on the other, undermines bourgeois democracy and leads toward a more militaristic-police state. The nexus of structural and behavioral violence has not been lost even[Read More…]

Yet another mass shooting in the U.S., this time at Ft. Lauderdale airport, Florida’s second largest.  A certain Esteban Santiago flew from Alaska changing planes en route at Minneapolis.  Arriving, he headed to the baggage collection area, claimed his suitcase, opened it in the privacy of a toilet, removed a gun, methodically loaded it, and began shooting in the baggage[Read More…]