Is the acceptance of large scale gun violence in America desensitizing Americans to violence in general? Does it make them less caring towards companion animals?
Please forgive me for doing one more article as a spin-off from the marathon bomb story. I just find this sort of thing interesting because it might help us get to the root of good cat caretaking, a subject that is important to me. There is a need to improve cat caretaking at a general level, worldwide.
On the radio this morning – BBC Radio 4 – the presenter made a good point (as far as I was concerned). He said that in America 85 people are shot dead every day. The gun death trend leads to the conclusion that it will outstrip car deaths by 2015. I am not sure he is correct with the 85 per day figure but I am sure that the USA is just behind Venezuela in the number of gun homicides per year (average over past 5 years) and 5th in the world.
He also referred to the lack of desire of the American government to tighten up gun control even in the light of the 20 young children killed in the Sandy Hook School massacre. The gun that killed them was an automatic rifle. The whole event took 5 minutes.
Then we have the Boston marathon bombings in which 3 people were killed and 180 people were injured, some very seriously. An horrendous event that rightly resulted in a fantastically effective law enforcement response. It was total war on the terrorists and America won.
Is there a disparity in the response to the homegrown, domestic daily shootings and routine massacres (often at schools) and the “terrorist” bombings? It seems that the driving force for an effective response is not the number of victims but who the perpetrators are and their motives.
The terrorist bombings are an attack on the proud people of America, whereas the daily murders using firearms are American to American incidents. They appear to be accepted. It is a domestic problem. The well known scale of the gun homicide problem indicates that Americans have become inured to the extraordinarily high levels of gun violence. Is the lack of adequate gun control desensitizing Americans with respect to violence? If so, does this have an impact on the quality of care that, in general, Americans apply to their cats? Does it help feed the culture of cat declawing? Does it condition people to accept the large number of cats PTS at centers yearly?
Note: I am not saying that Americans in general have poor standards of cat care.
85 or 90% of people in the US would rather get rid of guns probably but being just about the most corrupted government on earth I believe the government does what it wants for money reasons. I mean’t legal corruption by the way. ‘Lobby Groups’ in my opinion are the legal face of corruption yet often times completely without moral nor consideration of the general population. The NRA has also enough political power to make senators scared into voting a certain way. With that many gun deaths a day how can the US government get up in the morning and even look at themselves without doing something about it. Furthermore the laws they were trying to pass were really mild. No automatic assault weapons with big rounds of bullets and more stringent laws stopping mentally unstable people from getting their hands on guns. Seriously you would have to be a total nutjob yourself to vote to allow mentally unstable people to buy guns. I think the US government is full of mentally unstable people if they can seriously believe that they shouldn’t let other nutjobs buy any kind of guns they want. IT’s not like they are trying to ban guns. Not even a tiny bit close to that. They are just trying to get rid of some obvious things but NO. Aaargh. It’s so crazy and dumb I can’t even think about it. They actually vote against a background check. Who the hell makes so much money selling guns to gangsters so they can kill eachother and makes a fortune out of it, and happens to have alot of power in government. Who is it and why aren’t they in jail? They are crazy. They don’t care about anything. It’s totally nuts. And listen to all the 2nd amendment nut jobs (older country folk I guess) who would rather just live with a gun under their pillow. It’s crazy. It’s completely barbaric. It’s also backwards. What kind of people promote violence like that. They would rather everbody have guns so they can shoot the bad guys. c.r.a.z.y
The USA seem to have a completely different attitude toward guns than we do. I have a friend over there who can’t believe we don’t all have a gun in our homes and even more so that all our police aren’t armed.
She goes off alone to a lonely farm in the ‘wilds of wanny’ as we call isolated places here, for stuff she needs and there is no one else for miles around, I’d be terrified to know the farmer has a gun and is liable to use it when someone arrives unnanounced as she sometimes does.
As guns seem to be everyday items there I’m not surprised all Americans are not shocked and horrified at the killing of cats. If a cat is shot here we go all out to ensure the killer is found and punished.
I feel very much for the gentle and compassionate people in the USA who don’t want violence in their lives, not only towards their fellow men but towards animals too.