News You May Have Missed: The Einstein Award Goes To . . .

You may have guessed from my gun post that I'm no particular fan of firearms. But today I was sobered to read that even if all guns were confiscated, that wouldn't stop the carnage. Read on . . .

LAKE LUZERNE, New York (AP) -- A young man shot himself without using a gun.

Damion M. Mosher, who put bullets in a vise and whacked them with a hammer to empty the brass shell casings, was hit in the abdomen by one of the shots, authorities said.

Warren County deputies said they were called to Mosher's home in Lake Luzerne on Saturday afternoon after one bullet went about a half-inch into his abdomen. He was treated at Glens Falls Hospital and was released. No charges were filed.

Mosher, 18, told authorities he was trying to empty the .223-caliber rounds to collect the brass casings for scrap.

Sheriff Larry Cleveland said about 100 other rounds that Mosher hit had "fizzled," but one was somehow sent with more force. It was unclear if the bullet ricocheted or hit him directly.

An employee of an Albany scrap metal company told The Post-Star of Glens Falls that the business pays $1.70 a pound for scrap brass shell casings.

Cleveland said Mosher's shells amounted to just a few pounds.

Lake Luzerne, at the southeastern edge of the Adirondacks, is 45 miles north of Albany.

Xenophilia

Since I managed to criticize our fair country regarding guns, why not continue to do the same on other subjects, too?

I found this intro in US News & World Report (3/26/07 issue) to be interesting. More people want to move to the U.S. than anywhere else, but that doesn't mean we have nothing to learn from anywhere else. Read on for some examples. And if you'd like to read in detail the "30 lessons we can learn from other countries," you can click on this link.

How They Do It Better
By Susan Headden
Posted 3/18/07
We have the biggest GDP, the finest universities, the highest ownership of color TVs, and the greatest number of Nobel Prize winners. So how come the Danes are the happiest people in the world? Living in the dark, no less. Schoolchildren in New Zealand are cleaning our clocks in math and science. Teachers are better paid and more respected in Japan. Our highways are choked with traffic, but we can't manage to build a train that goes more than 150 mph.

Our eating habits? Please. Just compare our average portion with a meal in Japan, and you'll understand why our adult obesity rate is 32 percent, compared with only 3.6 percent for the Japanese. The French, likewise, are slim and well fed-and they offer world-class dinner conversation to boot. Their secret: They don't want to know what you did yesterday; they want to engage you in a lively discussion of ideas.

But our shortcomings are bigger than dining and discourse. Remarkably, the United States is nowhere to be found on the Economist's global index of lowest infant mortality. At the other end, our average life expectancy, at 77.9, puts us 40th in the world- after Costa Rica and Cuba. As for our treatment of the planet, we're down at No. 28 on the global index of environmental performance, a value based on six measurements of environmental health. Meanwhile, Denmark manages to get 20 percent of its energy from the wind. And in Singapore, tossing a candy wrapper on the sidewalk will set you back a thousand bucks.

On a grimmer index, America has more people in prison-2,135,900-than any other country in the world. And the highest rate of gun-related homicides of all industrialized nations. If we followed Europe's example of treating drug addicts rather than jailing them, would the numbers go down? It's a complex and controversial question. But Holland's experience shows that treatment of drug
abuse is at least vastly cheaper than the alternative.

In the following pages, we offer 30 lessons we can learn from other countries. The list is admittedly unscientific and decidedly incomplete. We're not even saying that all of these practices would work here; if Americans wanted free day care and government-funded maternity leave, after all, they'd have to pay Norway-size
taxes.

What follow are simply practices that intrigued us: the Germans retraining prostitutes to care for the elderly, the Brazilian buses that are so clean and efficient that even the rich people ride them, and the Japanese toilets that deodorize the room and put the seat down when you're done.

Don't Shoot, I'm Only the Blogger

The April 21 issue of The Economist provided some interesting statistics (and other information) about guns in the U.S.A. Together, they tell a story:

Number of guns in America: ~240 million
Number of adults in America: Less than that.

Murders with guns, 2005: 14,000
Suicides by firearm, 2004: 16,000
Fatal firearm accidents, 2004: 650
Children killed by guns, 2004: 400

In the last 45 years, more Americans have died by gunfire than were killed on foreign battlefields in the last 100 years.

President who signed bills banning assault weapons (semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity handgun magazines) and requiring background checks before gun sales: Bill Clinton
President in office when assault weapons ban expired: George Bush

Households with guns, 1977: 54%
Households with guns, 2007: 33%

On-line price of an AK-47: $379.99

I have nothing original to add. To my knowledge, we are the most violent "developed" society on earth. I defy anyone in my VAST readership to tell me why any person (except the police and military) should be able to buy assault weapons, armor-piercing bullets, and the like. Idiocy in the defense of freedom is still idiocy.

(You can read the entire article here, but you might need a subscription to do so.)