02-16-2017, 03:32 PM
(02-16-2017, 12:19 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I watched it. It was very good, although it moved painfully slow; as did the police response to the shooting. It took an hour for the police to invade the Tower and shoot the madman. 16 died, and about 33 were injured. I remember that news story well. It was the moment when mass shootings became an epidemic in America, and thus posed a challenge to our gun culture. That was the era of the Kennedy/MLK shootings as well.I liked the documentary, though I was hoping for more in the way of historical perspective and editorial content. But as I have said before, as political issues go, the issue of gun control is utterly moot. (I don't even care to discuss it much; it's pointless) Given the sheer number of guns in circulation, including hundreds of thousands of assault rifles, and more being manufactured and sold every day...
Newtown and Orlando have brought the epidemic to new lows. Astrologically, it corresponds to Uranus conjunct Pluto in 1966; it was almost exact at the time on August 1st. The square between these planets in 2012-2013 brought the issue to another climax. It is the revolutionary conjunction. What kind of revolution will the gun issue create, is the question now. It powers both liberal movements for gun control, and reactionary right-wing militias and rebellions like the events of 1992-95 I discussed here.
What strikes me, is how little progress America has been capable of since 1966. We have regressed on this issue, and so many others. Instead of tighter regulations on guns, especially on campuses and other public places where mass shootings have occurred, on the 50th anniversary of the disaster the State of Texas allowed "licensed" gun owners to conceal and carry. As the documentary showed, the result is the end of free inquiry on campus, because of the fear that a debate could turn into a shooting. And "license" in Texas means absolutely nothing, now that Trump and the Repugs are getting rid of such lenient regulations as now exist. Specifically, the Senate apparently removed restrictions on mentally ill people from getting guns. This would quite likely have prevented the original Texas University Tower shooting.
Here's a link to the PBS Newshour report on the documentary that covers the gun debate at the end of the film.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/concealed...-campuses/
Here's a link to the film
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/tower/
The stalemate and the refusal of the 40%+ reactionaries in America and in the red states to progress portents a whole lot of trouble at least before this 4T is over.
"Guns In America, By The Numbers"
http://www.npr.org/2016/01/05/462017461/...he-numbers
...short of outright confiscation, there is no single measure or combination of measures, that will stanch the gun violence sufficiently to bring our gun homicides into line with that of other developed nations. The growing proliferation of weapons in America--now even "ghost guns" that can be assembled at home like kit cars--promises gun violence for as far as the eye can see. My girlfriend and I have talked about the possibility of moving to another country with saner gun laws, among other motivations. For all the overhyped fears of "radical Muslim terrorists," we as Americans are much more likely to be mowed down by a homegrown crazy.
We have paid an increasingly bitter and bloody price for the Second Amendment. When I learned of the massacre of small children at Sandy Hook, I cried. Wept for the innocent children, their parents, indeed for the country. And when Congress--which the NRA pretty much owns lock, stock, and barrel--couldn't even summon the moral courage to pass a simple gun control measure in response, well, I knew that we were through the looking glass as a society. If our Founding Fathers were alive today to survey the aftermath of any of the venues where mass shootings have taken place, I can't help but feel they would shake their heads in Prufrockian dismay, and say, "This is not what we meant at all."