What America Needs Now...

Following the assassination attempt of US Senator Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday, the US needs to wake up to the danger of allowing free access to guns to almost all citizens without stringent checks, and needs to tone down the violent rhetoric in it's political debate.

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution allows all citizens "to keep and bear arms", this has lead to a situation where a majority of Americans believe it is within their rights to own a firearm. Currently, for every 100 US citizens there are 90 legally owned guns.

Whenever there is a major shooting in the UK, the debate that follows is almost always on the control of guns and of the environment in which the shooting occurred, as seen with last years Cumbria Shootings and Northumbria Manhunt. But, because of the Second Amendment in the US the control of guns portion of debate is always missing, no politician will go near it, suggesting Americans should give up their guns is political kryptonite.

So, what should be done, I believe the senate needs to have an open and honest debate about the place of guns in society, with the aim of implementing Canadian-style gun control.

In Canada citizens are legally allowed to own guns but there are 4 steps to go through before being allowed a licence:
1. Pass a gun safety course
2. Provide three character references
3. Provide information on your marital status and financial affairs
4. Post this off and receive your licence within 4-6 weeks.

One other difference between the US and Canadian law is that in Canada self-defence is not a valid reason to hold a gun. This means that in Canada a much more reasonable proportion (22%) of households hold guns.

Now the other half of this debate is about the environment and glorification of guns, especially in politics. The Republicans (but to some degree Democrats too) have allowed a culture of violence to appear in their politics, instead of disagreeing in an open debate, senators have (literally) been making targets of those they disagree with, this simply has to end.

And no matter how you defend it, if your response to the shooting of someone you disagree with is to scrub your website of any inappropriate messages, then you have a guilty conscience, and for good reason.

Sarah Plain's map of senators who voted for a health care bill she disagreed with...

Glenn Beck being his usual opportunistic, hypocritical self:

Anyway, i'll leave you with this impassioned speech by Keith Olbermann on the shooting:




Shep

Stop Scaring George Orwell.

So, it would appear that the repercussions of events 8 years past are still with us:

In the UK last year the government proposed a large database of every phone call, internet search and email sent within UK territory and, predictably, there was an outcry at a 'Big Brother society'. Shortly after this the plans were toned down, instead making ISP's and Telecommunication companies hold said information and make it accessible to the Government when requested. It would seem we were lucky.

The US however, may not have been so lucky.

After 9/11 the Bush Administration the scarily Orwellian sounding 'National Security Agency' was given billions in additional funding. meaning that recently it's operations have taken a step up, one such 'improvement' is the creation of a $2 billion building, a third larger than the US capitol buildings and requiring an energy consumption equal to that of Salt Lake City.

What, you ask, is to be stored in this super-structure?

Well, exactly what the UK government wanted to hold. details of all phone calls, e-mail messages, and data trails: web searches, parking receipts, bookstore visits, and other digital 'pocket litter'.

This information will add up to 'Yottabytes of data' by 2015.

does that not mean much to you?, probably not. well, here's some perspective:

A Yottabyte is equivalent to 10²⁴ Bytes. Or, a septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

The scale of this is so large numbers past Yottabytes have not yet been named!.

And, to give us some credit, at least our Government announced this to the public, and then scaled it back when they realised it was unpopular.

In the US of course this is all without any public discourse or input. God Bless Democracy.

The Full Article can be read here,

Shep