"There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters." Alice Thomas Ellis
"I’ve got no interest in my own emotional state. Or myself. I find my own emotional state the most boring subject I could think of." Dominic Cummings talking to Suzanne Moore.
"Personally the last person I want to know about is myself." William Trevor
"I’ve never quite believed in the obvious English eccentric, the man who comes into the pub every night and is known to be a dear old eccentric. I always suspect that that is probably self-invention. What I do believe in is the person who scarcely knows he’s eccentric at all. Then he says something so extraordinary and you realize he perhaps lives in a world that is untouched by the world you share with him." William Trevor
"I’ve got no interest in my own emotional state. Or myself. I find my own emotional state the most boring subject I could think of." Dominic Cummings talking to Suzanne Moore.
"Personally the last person I want to know about is myself." William Trevor
"I’ve never quite believed in the obvious English eccentric, the man who comes into the pub every night and is known to be a dear old eccentric. I always suspect that that is probably self-invention. What I do believe in is the person who scarcely knows he’s eccentric at all. Then he says something so extraordinary and you realize he perhaps lives in a world that is untouched by the world you share with him." William Trevor
"Every major question in history is a religious question." Hilaire Belloc
Paul Theroux's 3 rules of travel: 'Travel on the ground — avoiding air travel. Travel alone when possible. Keep notes. That’s it.'
Paul Theroux's 3 rules of travel: 'Travel on the ground — avoiding air travel. Travel alone when possible. Keep notes. That’s it.'
Americans aged eighteen to twenty account for only four percent of the population but 17 percent of murderers, almost always male. School shootings get the most attention. The problem is not just the guns. It is the young men who wield them.
ReplyDeleteThere’s a pattern inside those sordid statistics, with some 70 percent of school shootings since 1999 having been carried out by people under eighteen. The median age of school shooters is sixteen.
There have been at least 554 school shooting victims spread across 331 schools, with over 300,000 children exposed to gun violence at school in the US since the Y-in-the-road game-changing Columbine High School massacre. The frequency of shootings has increased, with a surge of thirty-four incidents in 2021, the highest in any year since Columbine.
There is also the inexplicable Columbine divide that factors into kids killing kids. Pre-Columbine America saw school shootings number only approximately 300 instances in 150 years. Post-Columbine shootings number 331 in only twenty-three years.
Something very big is very wrong in America and our kids are not alright. Add in drug use, overdose deaths and teen suicides (many involving guns; suicide is the third greatest cause of teen death, with homicide in the number two position) and you have more than a crisis: you have a nightmare.
Peter Van Buren / Spectator USA, May 31, 2022
It's not gun laws that cause murders. On the other hand why do people who are not American nor live in America take much or any interest in this? I suppose it has propaganda value emphasising to the subjects the importance of statism.
Delete80% of American homicides are gang killings.
Delete56% of Americans found guilty of homicide are African Americans according to Wikipedia, who make up 12% of the US population.
DeleteThroughout history, owning, and especially, bearing arms was the privilege of the rich and powerful.
DeleteSome want to keep it that way. Others, due to their slave mentality, accept wholeheartedly The State's monopoly on violence.
The US is the exception:
"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified on Dec 17, 1791.
This rubs the wrong way a lot of the World would be Führers: it gives a bad example.
People owning guns makes it a lot more difficult if not outright impossible, say, for some zealous agents of the State, to drag to jail, in front of her children, a pregnant mother for a fb post promoting a protest against the vicious lockdown in Australia.