The Las Vegas shooting demonstrates once again the need for gun control laws
Nearly 60 people were killed and more than 500 others wounded in the shooting attack late Monday in Las Vegas, when Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old white man, opened fire on a crowd of 22,000 people attending a concert. It is the largest deadly incident of its type in modern U.S. history. Unfortunately, it is not an isolated event and everything leads one to believe that it will not be the last.
Organizations demanding gun control in the U.S. place shooting attacks that have four or more fatalities under a mass shooting category. Usually, the annual death toll is 121, but this year alone, there have been 273 events that fit this category.
It is a truly deadly epidemic – it cannot be ignored that there are more weapons than people in the United States – caused by a completely misleading interpretation of the right to bear arms, which was incorporated into the U.S. Constitution in 1791.
It should not be necessary to remind those who object to gun control that the United States has changed much since then, but unfortunately that is not the case. In fact, the shooting in Las Vegas happened while Congress was in Washington, D.C., making plans to discuss a Republican bill that would make it easier to buy firearm silencers. It does not require much imagination to conclude what would have happened in the famous city in Nevada if the spectators had not even heard the burst of bullets of an automatic rifle from the window of a building.
President Trump has just suffered the worst catastrophe during his tenure thus far. Hurricanes cannot be avoided, but shootings can.
Epidemia mortal nos Estados Unidos
Tiroteio de Las Vegas demonstra mais uma vez a necessidade de leis de controle de armas
Trata-se de uma verdadeira epidemia mortal – não se pode ignorar que nos EUA existem mais armas que habitantes – causada por uma interpretação completamente equivocada do direito ao porte de armas introduzido na Constituição norte-americana em 1791.
The Beijing summit did not produce a major agreement between the great powers on the region, but it firmly established that Middle Eastern crises are now deeply tied to the great-power dialogue.
During the Cold War, the United States occupied the apex of this triangular dynamic, pitting China and the USSR against each other. Today, it is Beijing that occupies that apex.
A summit that would normally send a reassuring message ... faces total uncertainty thanks to the weakness of the United States. The only person to blame for this is Trump.
Taiwanese government officials and national security leaders must remember that, right now, silence speaks louder than words, and it is better to remain still than to act rashly.
If this electoral gridlock [in domestic policy] does occur, it may well result in Trump — like several other reelected presidents of recent decades — increasingly turning to foreign policy.