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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Virginia Tech happens every day in Iraq
Friday 27 April @ 13:27:55 |
 BY PHIL WILLKIE
Last week’s deadly gun rampage in Virginia horrified the nation. News anchors were in Blacksburg, Va., within hours, and a media frenzy soon blanketed our nation of 300 million.
Iraq, a nation of 25 million, and the size of California, contends with these events daily, being four years into a civil war that the U.S. created.
The New York Times called it the “worst gun rampage in U.S. history.” Can that be true? What about the massacres at Wounded Knee in 1890?
The President—who promotes a “culture of life”—hurried to Blacksburg. The President’s war of choice in Iraq has caused the deaths of 3,300 American soldiers, 100 times the number of deaths at Virginia Tech.
The U.S. has the worst gun violence of any modern industrial nation. Some will call for more restrictions on gun sales. There are federal laws that ban the sale of guns to people like the killer at Virginia Tech who have had court-ordered psychiatric treatment. Virginia, among many other states, fails to cooperate to enforce these laws.
The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world. We also have the greatest extremes of economic inequality. The top 10 percent earning over $100,000 a year now get 48.5 percent of the total income. A mere 300,000 of the richest Americans earn as much as the 150 million on the bottom of the wage ladder.
Nearly 50 million Americans have no health insurance. And millions of those insured are not covered for mental illness.
In most working families, both parents need to be wage earners. We have a lot of young people that are neglected. Some, like the killer at Virginia Tech, are walking time bombs.
Gun violence in minority communities is often tied to the sale of illegal drugs. Any renewed effort at gun control needs to look at reforming drug laws. Marijuana should be legalized—and therefore separated from dangerous narcotics. The government could control the sale of narcotics.
Economic inequality drives the drug market. Until we look at the underlying reasons driving violence—we are likely to see more tragic events like the one at Virginia Tech. ||
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