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Foreigners think Americans are 'bananas' when you explain our gun culture to them: Korea-based American scholar
May 26, 2022
On Thursday, Robert Kelly, an American scholar living in Korea, broke down the extent to which other countries find America's gun culture "bananas" — and see the entire way the United States approaches guns to be backwards and dangerous.
"I have lived outside the US for almost 18 years – in East Asia and Western Europe – and I have discussed guns in America with non-Americans countless times given that my area is political science," wrote Kelly. "Non-Americans are genuinely curious why we allow private fire arm ownership, especially when it so obviously correlates with gun violence. I can say that I have never had a non-American ever tell me they wished their country had US gun laws. Not one."
"In short, there is no other country in the world which approaches guns with the laxity we do," Kelly continued. "No other conservative party in a democracy approaches guns as the GOP does. Often my students here often don’t even understand how gun ownership is a ‘conservative’ or partisan issue, which is something Americans should know. Righties in other countries are not gun fetishists. Even other societies with a frontier tradition — Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Russia — don’t have the gun culture we do."
"No one else talks about an ‘armed citizenry’ resisting tyranny. When you try to explain this one, my students often can’t even figure out why they would battling their own democratic government. Good question! And then they wonder how regular Americans with guns could outshoot the cops or the military. They can’t, of course. Another good question!" continued Kelly. "And very definitely, no one wants armed teachers, metal detectors in schools, open carry, concealed carry, and so on. Hardening schools and letting regular people walk around packing strikes them as insanely dangerous."
RELATED: Uvalde gunman's mother got 'an uneasy feeling' about her son -- but insists he was 'not a monster'
The United States is a dramatic outlier in mass shootings, with far more of them than any other country. And, wrote Kelly, this leads his students abroad to reach the conclusion that U.S. gun culture is indefensible and dangerous.
"Inevitably then, I get three or four papers a year in my US politics class on guns, and they’re uniformly negative and incredulous," wrote Kelly. "One particular title I remember from years back: ‘The US is a Gun-ocracy.’ That just about sums it up."
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Uvalde gunman's mother got 'an uneasy feeling' about her son -- but insists he was 'not a monster'
May 26, 2022
The mother of the 18-year-old gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School admitted she saw warning signs in his behavior.
Adriana Reyes, the mother of accused shooter Salvador Ramos, told ABC News that her son was "not a monster" but did display troubling signs of violence.
"I had an uneasy feeling sometimes, like 'what are you up to?" Reyes said in an interview at her home. "He can be aggressive ... If he really got mad."
Ramos allegedly purchased two military-style rifles shortly after turning 18 this month, and he used them to carry out the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history after wounding his own grandmother at their home.
RELATED: From our cold dead hands: DC Republicans cling to guns in wake of Texas shooting
"We all have a rage," Reyes said, "that some people have it more than others."
Reyes repeatedly expressed sympathy for the child victims and their families, and said she was not aware that her son had bought the weapons.
"Those kids… I have no words," Reyes said, crying. "I don't know what to say about those poor kids."
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On Thursday, The Daily Beast reported that a school in Fort Worth, Texas is apologizing for a career-day presentation given by a Tarrant County deputy to kids mocking "liberals" for fearing AR-15 style semiautomatic rifles — just a day after an 18-year-old gunman used two such rifles to massacre 19 children and two teachers at a school in Uvalde a few hundred miles away.
"The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, citing a school employee, reports that a deputy from the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office gave a presentation to students that at some point included photos pulled up on Google Images," reported Allison Quinn. "One of the images was of a poster titled 'A Liberal’s Guide to the Deadly AR-15,' which detailed the different parts of the rifle."
According to the report, a spokesman for the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office disputed that the AR-15 was mentioned in the career-day presentation, but did not elaborate any further.
"Daggett Elementary Principal Kendall Miller subsequently said in a letter to parents that 'one of the presentations by a local public safety agency included information that was not age-appropriate,'" continued the report. "Miller went on to acknowledge that the presentation was 'insensitive' and 'not suitable' for students 'in light of recent events.'"
This comes as other schools are reporting close calls involving firearms.
The same day as the controversial Tarrant presentation, a student at a high school in Richardson, Texas one county over was arrested entering the premises with an AK-47 and AR-15-style rifle. And in Sacramento, California, a second-grader was discovered to have a handgun with a loaded magazine in their desk on the day of the Uvalde shooting.
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