Lazy linking – Teen Vogue edition

Teen Vogue has a new executive editor, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, who some of you might know from her time at feministing.

I expect that Teen Vogue will continue with their great articles under Samhita Mukhopadhyay, and judging from their newest issue, this is certainly the case.

They have a great portrait of teens fighting for gun control. The portrait doesn’t just cover the Parkland teens, but also some of the many other teens fighting for it across the US.

Gun Violence Will Be Stopped By These 9 Young Activists

Teen Vogue invited gun violence survivors and gun control activists to talk about the power of the next generation: young people who are working to end mass shootings and ensure student safety once and for all. Clifton Kinnie of Ferguson, Missouri; Nick Joseph, Emma González, Jaclyn Corin, and Sarah Chadwick of Parkland, Florida; Jazmine Wildcat of Riverton, Wyoming; Kenidra Woods of St. Louis; Nza-Ari Khepra of Chicago, Illinois; and Natalie Barden of Newtown, Connecticut — youth from different backgrounds with different connections to the issue — to speak candidly about their experiences and what’s to come.

Teen Vogue also has an op-ed written by Parkland activist Emma González on Why This Generation Needs Gun Control, and an article on the NRA

There are also several other great articles, including Chris Evans Opened Up About Being an Ally for Women During the #MeToo Movement, so I expect that Teen Vogue will continue to be an important news source for a while yet.

In things that never happened

After the tragic school shooting in Parkland, there was a lot of tweets on the subject on twitter.  Of the ones I saw, most were either talking about how to stop school shootings, or amplifying the voices of those who were direcetly affected by this school shooting. And then there were the Russian bots, pushing any gun control talking points.

And then there were the rare gems like the following

 

I call this a gem, because it is such a blatant lie, that it is amazing that he thought he could get away with it.

In many European countries, including my native Denmark, there is no such thing as an armed security guard. Either you are police or military, or you are unarmed. In other European countries, there are armed guards in high risk situations, e.g. transporting money, but rarely at any other time. Again, the general rule is, that if you are armed, you are police or military.

In no European country I know off, would anyone think of placing armed guards at a school, except in very extreme situations. For example, police guards Jewish schools when there is a very high Islamic terrorist threat level.

So, the idea that anyone would think it commonplace to place armed guards at a school, regardless of the size, clearly shows that the person has no understanding on the situation in Europe – it is, in other words, a fundamentally US question.

I am not the only who has made fun of this tweet, J.K Rowling has done so as well, and David Burke has taken it down (but not acknowledged that it was a lie).

Dear America, please make it stop

Back in 1996, I was traveling around the world with a friend.

As a result of this, I was in the Great Britain, when the Dunblane school massacre happened in Scotland, and in Australia when the Port Arthur massacre happened in Tasmania.

Both of these massacres shook the world, and especially the nations they happened in, leading to a huge public demand for a change of the gun laws. In Great Britain, this pretty much led to the private ownership of handguns becoming illegal. In Australia, it led to a complete overhaul of the gun laws.

The changes to Australian gun laws are well known, and it is also well known that there has been no mass shootings in Australia since then. What is less well know, is that in the years up to the massacre, there has been several mass shooting, but none with the number of victims as the Port Arthur massacre. So it took some time before the Australian public had had enough, and demanded something changed.

Last night, in the US, a gun man attacked a LGBTQ night club in Orlando, Florida, resulting in at least 50 dead.

This is the worst fatality from a mass shooting in the US, eclipsing the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the Virginia Tech shooting in deadliness.

America, please let this be your Port Arthur massacre moment.

Ignore for now the possible motive of the killer, and focus instead on the tools used to kill.

Massacres in the US are generally done using legally bought weapons, and it seems likely that this is also the case in the Orlando shooting. The ready availability of legal guns, and the high number of massacres in the US are connected. If you remove the availability of guns, the number of massacres will drop. So, work on reducing the availability of guns.

In Australia, they both changed the laws and bought guns from their owners. Making it harder to get hold of guns both legally and illegally.

The US should do the same.

The 2nd Amendment, and the screwed up way that it has been interpreted by the US courts puts a barrier to sane gun laws, but amendments can be changed – even discarded. I think it is time for Americans to take a long, hard look at the 2nd Amendment, and either change it, so it applies to people in properly state-run militias, or even get rid of it all-together.

America, please wake up. Please don’t continue down the path where you are now, where mass shootings has become a near daily occurrence and only makes the news if there are several fatalities. Please don’t let us wake up to more tragic news like the ones from Orlando.

A young voice silenced forever

I just learned the horrible news that Christina Grimmie, talented singer and YouTube performer, has been shot and killed.

‘Voice’ singer Christina Grimmie shot, killed at concert

I have followed Christina Grimmie on her YouTube channel for years, and have enjoyed the music she has posted there,

It seemed like she was getting her big breakthrough, but then her life was cut short by someone with a gun.

There are no news about the motive of the gunman, but given the shooting took place just after a concert, and she was clearly the target, it might be an obsessed fan.

No matter the motive, Christina Grimmie has become a victim of the gun culture in the USA, which allows people to get easy access to guns.

Since school shootings haven’t been enough to change the US gun culture, I doubt this latest episode will, and I think there will be many more young people who get their life cut short, before the US will change the gun laws – if that will ever happen.