Use the fields below to perform an advanced search of statepress.com - Arizona State Press's archives. This will return articles, images, and multimedia relevant to your query.
861 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(02/05/13 9:00pm)
On Jan. 30, gunshots rang out in a building on 16th Street just north of Glendale Avenue in Phoenix. My father works in the neighboring building. It turned out that this crime was clearly intentional and that my father and his coworkers weren't threatened by the shooting — save for their proximity to the crime scene. It was still enough for me to break my silence on gun control.
Coming from a fairly liberal family, I never grew up around guns. In fact, they kind of scare me.While I don’t ever intend on keeping guns in my home, I can understand why millions of Americans fight for the individual right to bear arms, as this right is a part of their culture. I took it upon myself to look closely at the issue of gun violence in the U.S. and what we can do to reduce its rate.
Gun bans may not be the way to go. If the U.S. government was to uproot a constitutional amendment — and take away something that millions of Americans use safely and ethically — they’d better have a damn good reason, and they simply don’t.
Many cite the Australian ban on assault weapons as a reason to institute a ban in the U.S., along with the fact that stricter gun control laws in the U.S. are correlated with less gun crime. However, Australian statisticians found no statistically significant evidence to show that the gun ban and "buyback" system had any effect on the reduction in gun violence. The fact that their already low homicide rates were already declining could not provide enough evidence that this idea is worth investment in the U.S. — and that’s even if we need to reduce the gunstock to reduce crime. It’s entirely possible that the way we enforce gun punishment may be the problem, not gun ownership.
Some have attributed gun violence to violent video games and mental illness. While I didn’t grow up on guns, I did grow up on around violent video games and mental illness. It seems that it is competition and not violent content that triggers aggression (as opposed to violence) and that mental illness is not even correlated with gun crime.
These stigmatizing associations hurt the discussion much more than they help, as violence and the capacity for violence are two entirely different things.
What makes America different from all of these other countries that have significantly lower homicide rates by firearms? If we don’t have different video games than other countries, if we don’t have a disproportionate amount of mental illness and if our gun ownership doesn’t causally explain our rate of gun violence: What is it?
We all want answers now. We call for gun control and a revision of the mental health system now, but behavioral economics wait for no one. I want to feel safe as much as anyone else. But before you use rhetoric that shames gun owners and compares the right to individually bear arms to the pain the parents of the children that died in the Sandy Hook shooting must feel, consider this: Your child is 100 times more likely to drown in a swimming pool at home than die by a gun.
It's not that Americans deserve their guns more than parents deserve their children’s safety. It’s that the comparison is simply unfair. We’re all on the same side of wanting to keep our children safe, yet we all know plenty of happy homes with swimming pools. These “right answers” take time.
Take solace in the fact that we’re in the right direction. Crime rates are dropping each year. We're part of the stop-motion film with each month and year being a plotted point on a graph with lines relating and permeating downward. The graph is representative of each cog and wheel you push toward being a safer country. We make it safer for our children by simply having discourse that seeks the truth.Reach the columnist at ameschko@asu,edu or follow her at @alishameschkowWant to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.
(02/01/13 11:08am)
January is a special month for me. And this January was no different, except that this time, an earthquake hit my body and shook my soul.
(01/23/13 12:15am)
Shelbe Olson, music therapy major and sophomore, practices her guitar in the music building at ASU. Olson, along with other music therapy majors, are required to learn the basics of guitar and other musical instruments for their field of study. (Photo by Laura Davis)
(01/17/13 3:30am)
On a cold winter’s day in Newtown, Conn., a lone gunman killed his mother and 26 other individuals ? including children ? before killing himself.
(01/10/13 11:51pm)
Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Tucson, and community representatives introduced a three-pronged bill Thursday afternoon that would regulate all gun transactions outside the State Capitol.
(01/10/13 12:00am)
The ASU women's golf team have not been 100 percent healthy this whole season. But it has not and will not affect them.
(01/09/13 11:00pm)
The future is here and we sometimes fail to see it.
(12/06/12 3:53am)
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He landed in North America, where he hurt some indigenous people, too.
(11/19/12 11:58pm)
There are levels to Facebook friend streamlining. You can hide someone’s feed if you simply don’t want to see his or her constant photo spam or mundane complaints. The next step is unfriending, which leaves the possibility of being friends again open.
(11/15/12 3:49am)
Need a little pick-me-up for the paper you’ll write last minute tonight? Think it’s a good idea to chug down an original Berry 5-hour Energy shot? Not so fast. Federal officials have charted 13 deaths in the past four years linked to the so-called harmless energy supplement, according to The New York Times.
(11/14/12 12:33am)
The stigma around marijuana is getting old.
(11/01/12 11:09pm)
Attack ads are as common as houseflies during this election. This past week, Rep. Jeff Flake was the target of one launched by the Humane Society Legislative Fund, a non-partisan organization that follows politicians’ voting records on animal rights issues.
(10/17/12 11:41pm)
The combination of pop-rock musical numbers harmonized with dark lyrics of depression, medical ethics and drug abuse issues is captivating through the Arizona Theatre Company’s production of “Next To Normal.”
(10/11/12 11:50pm)
Last Saturday night I was dancing in a club filled with people. Yet, in the midst of everything, I felt lonely. It wasn’t because I chose not to dance or because I didn’t have friends there.
(10/03/12 2:29am)
ASU’s annual security report, released Monday, included a significant rise in number of sexual offense cases.
(09/24/12 10:22pm)
Whether it’s my co-workers, acquaintances I’ve met in class, or even my very best friends, everyone I know in my age group has some type of chronic anxiety or panic disorder.
(09/18/12 11:20pm)
The daily activities of many 5-year-olds do not include physical and speech therapies, countless trips to the doctor or traveling for extensive medical procedures once a year. But for Andrew Burkhart, this is all normal.
(09/12/12 10:39pm)
Few bands have the ability to let listeners feel pain in the lyrics while simultaneously putting a giant grin on their faces. Passion Pit just so happens to be one of these bands and they returned to the Valley for the first time in almost three years to prove just that. On Tuesday it brought its infectious sounds in front of a sold-out crowd at Tempe's Marquee Theater in support of their sophomore album, “Gossamer.”
(09/06/12 10:45pm)
Many people experience anxiety throughout their lifetimes, but for millions of Americans, this harmless reaction to stressful situations can develop into an actual disorder.
(08/30/12 8:19pm)
We think that censorship is a thing of the past: something that happened in Ancient Rome or Nazi Germany, or something we’re above and beyond.