Gun Violence

Guns don't kill people, but they make it a whole lot easier for people to kill people. KEITH LOGAN El Monte

Tragedy in Norway Re " At least 87 die in Norway terror attacks: Suspicion falls on Islamic extremists or neo-Nazi groups after a blast in Oslo and a shooting rampage ," July 23, and " Muslims feel the sting of blame ," July 24 Muslims like me, who live in America, took a collective sigh of relief when it was learned that the person apparently responsible for this carnage was a Norwegian native of Christian faith. Western media seem to have jumped the gun in immediately pointing accusing fingers at "Muslim terrorists" being responsible for this mayhem.

Saying they want to find creative ways to protect neighborhoods from gun violence, a group of community leaders and residents will gather Saturday for two daylong forums at the State Building in Van Nuys. The town-hall-style meetings, sponsored by the San Fernando Valley Branch of the NAACP's Youth Council, will promote an open dialogue among youth and adults on how gun violence affects individuals and entire communities, organizers said. The forum will be divided into two sessions.

This time it was Norway. The world has come to accept another mass murder carried out by some nut with a gun, and no one dares to propose anything that might prevent gun violence in the future. If this follows the pattern of other mass murders, the suspect probably had no criminal record and would easily have passed a background check and could have purchased his guns legally. When is the world going to recognize the misery caused by guns and do something to stop it? Yes, people kill people, but they do it with guns.

The shooting rampage that left at least 85 dead at a youth camp near Oslo stunned Norway, a nation of about 4.9 million residents who are far less accustomed to gun violence than the U.S. Authorities have described the 32-year-old man arrested in connection with the shootings, as well as a bombing in downtown Oslo that left at least seven others dead, as a far-right Christian fundamentalist. A chilling manifesto attributed to the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, that was discovered Saturday contains an image of him pointing a weapon toward the camera.

The gun was in a backpack, we're told. The backpack was dropped or set down in a Gardena High School classroom Tuesday morning, and the gun fired accidentally, critically injuring a 15-year-old female student who was struck in the head. A male student, also 15, was shot in the neck. You send your kids to school, and before the lunch bell rings, they're in the hospital. So the questions begin. Why is it so easy to smuggle a gun onto campus? How many more guns are on school campuses in greater Los Angeles and beyond?

Mexico has some of the strictest gun laws in the hemisphere. Citizens are permitted to buy low-caliber firearms for self-protection or hunting, but only after a background check and approval by the defense ministry; they must also purchase the guns directly from the ministry. The goal of this parsimonious approach to allotting firearms is a society free from gun violence. Unfortunately for Mexico, however, its weapons management strategy is sabotaged by an accident of location ? its residence next door to the gun capital of the world.

News that an armed fugitive who shot and killed four police officers near Seattle on Sunday was still at large prompted fear, anger, sorrow and something else: The desire to grab a gun. "I can tell you that most people have probably got their weapons loaded right now," a retired computer worker from Parkland, Wash., told The Times. "I think people should carry their guns and be ready," a local taxi driver told National Public Radio. It's a typical American response to an all-too-typical American incident of gun violence.

Re "More victims? It's a dead certainty," Opinion, Sept. 20 It seems as if I hear this more and more every year. More shootings in small towns or "safe" communities are taking place every day. Is it the number of handguns out there? Is it the recession? Is it because people simply snap? Maybe it's simply circumstance and chance. If an individual does not own, or have the means to obtain, a gun, chances are no one is going to get shot. Garret Griggs Playa del Rey :: Thank you for the eloquent Op-Ed article concerning America's ongoing gun tragedies.

'Killing Shocks UC Irvine campus" ran the headline in this newspaper on Tuesday after a man allegedly shot his ex-wife to death. The article, which reported the slaying, focused at least as much on the shock in the community that such a thing could happen in a place like Irvine. I felt sad, of course, when I read it. I felt a twinge of despair. Shock, however? Not the least bit. Of course it happened. Twelve thousand people are shot to death in the U.S. every year -- accounting for more than two out of every three killings.

Two very different women meet on a Rio de Janeiro beach: Harriet (JoBeth Williams), a WASP homemaker from Massachusetts, and Bia (Sybyl Walker), a free-spirited, samba-loving doctor from Brazil. But each carries a wrenching secret in Charles Randolph-Wright's "The Night Is a Child," an affecting if underdeveloped study in grief and renewal now at Pasadena Playhouse. Harriet is facing a shocking anniversary. A year ago, her son, Michael (Tyler Pierce), committed a horrific crime, and the family -- including uptight daughter Jane (Monette Magrath)

One Sunday in March, a man strode down the aisle of the First Baptist Church in Maryville, Ill., pulled out a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol and fired at the pastor. The Rev. Fred Winters deflected the first bullet with his Bible, sending bits of it into the air like confetti. But the next three rounds hit Winters, killing him.