Mario Balzic is the Police Chief of Rocksburg, a town in Pennsylvania where the mills have closed and the mines shut down. In this 1974 novel, as in other novels in the series, the Chief lives with his wife Ruth, their two daughters, and Balzic’s elderly mother.
It had taken years for the hedges to [...]
Marlon James at the PEN American Center writes about the Mean Streets panel at New York’s World Voices Festival, with Jo Nesbo (Norway), Roberto Saviano (Italy), Christian Jungersen (Denmark) and Juan Gabriel Vasquez (Colombia).
Funnily enough it was Saviano, the only writer dealing explicitly with non-fiction, who reminded us that the very notion of the hero [...]
I just found this on Amazon.com:
Shooting in the Dark by John Baker. A Delicious PI, Quirky cohorts, Damsel in Distress, Evil Stalker, it’s All Here.
Sam Turner has done battle with demon rum and won. Unlike other hard-boiled PIs, Sam is drinking water when that beautiful dame [...]
Not everyone in America, of course, but listening to the interviews of students and others around the tragedy at Virginia Tech, it is quite clear that, for a significant number of people, the obvious and correct way to go is not even on the cards. And the pro-gun lobbyists are out in droves bolstering up their hopeless case, notwithstanding that the massacres will carry on happening until individuals decide to say no to guns.
What follows is only one example of the kind of mindless drivel that is being pumped through the American media at the present time:
In 2000, the rate at which people were robbed or assaulted was higher in England, Scotland, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Sweden than it was in the United States. The assault rate in England was twice that in the United States. In the decade since England banned all private possession of handguns, the BBC reported that the number of gun crimes has gone up sharply.
Some of the worst examples of mass gun violence have also occurred in Europe. In recent years, 17 students and teachers were killed by a shooter in one incident at a German public school; 14 legislators were shot to death in Switzerland, and eight city council members were shot to death near Paris.
The main lesson that should emerge from the Virginia Tech killings is that we need to work harder to identify and cope with dangerously unstable personalities.
It is a problem for Europeans as well as Americans, one for which there are no easy solutions — such as passing more gun control laws.
One can only hope that American citizens with open eyes, those who can see clearly, along with the rest of the world, that tight gun control laws are the only answer, will provide cogent and convincing arguments sufficient to draw their fellow countrymen back into the stream of reasonable opinion.
Table of contents for Gun control
- America in denial over gun control
- America still in denial over gun control
- Melt the Guns
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