The influential National Rifle Association (NRA) in the United States unites Second Amendment supporters, conservatives and libertarians. For decades it was considered to be virtually inviolable, mainly as the group has the support of many top politicians in Congress and several other powerful institutions. Now, however, the situation could get uncomfortable for the NRA as the state of New York has brought charges against the NRA for fraud. New York’s goal is simple: dissolving the NRA.

Mission: Dissolve the NRA

The NRA is the most influential voice in the gun lobby in the United States. Now, after 18 months of investigations, the Attorney General of the State of New York Letitia James has brought charges against the organization. “Fraud and abuse” has been ongoing in the NRA for years, according to James. According to her charges, NRA chief Wayne LaPierre and three other executives have embezzled association funds on a large scale. They have allegedly utilized the organization as a “personal piggy bank” and “plundered” it without being checked. As a result, the NRA lost more than $ 64 million in this way – in the previous three years alone, according to James. In fact, the corruption is “so broad” that James has stated that the total dissolution of the organisation is necessary.

What are the NRA Leaders Accused of Doing?

The four suspects are accused of – inter alia – stealing money for luxury trips and giving profitable contracts to family members and friends. LaPierre alone is accused of having spent $ 3.6 million on safari trips and private driving services in just three years. He is further accused of having flown eight times in a private jet to the Bahamas in order to vacation there on a yacht provided for by an NRA service partner. LaPierre is also charged with having obtained a $17 million pension package without the approval of the organization’s board of directors.

Charges were also brought against the NRA, and an adjacent foundation on Thursday. Washington DC Attorney General Karl Racine said the lobby organization misused millions of dollars in foundation funds in the district as well as its other alleged wrongdoing.

The NRA Denies All Wrongdoing

The NRA immediately denied all allegations and spoke of these developments as a political maneuver prior to the presidential and congressional elections on November 3. According to the organization’s president Carolyn Meadows, these legal charges are an “obvious attempt to score politically and to attack the leading voice of the opposition against the left-wing agenda.”

President Donald Trump called the lawsuit against the NRA a “terrible thing” and suggested that the lobby association registered in New York should move to Texas and live a “very good and beautiful life” there. Trump later wrote on Twitter that just as the “radical left New York” wanted to “destroy” the NRA, his challenger in the presidential election, Democrat and former VP Joe Biden, wanted to abolish the right to own guns, a position which is not contained in Biden’s platform.

Biden Doesn’t Want to End Gun Ownership

Trump repeatedly accuses the Democrats of wanting to abolish the right to bear arms, which is enshrined in the Second Amendment. Leading Democrats, however, only advocate for a tightening of gun laws, such as additional background checks.

The issue of firearms could well play an essential role in the election campaign before November 3. The NRA is one of the most influential lobby organizations in the United States and claims to have around five million members. For decades it has been resisting the tightening of gun laws, sometimes using highly controversial methods.

Spotlight on the NRA

The NRA has not-for-profit status and is therefore subject to special donation and charity requirements. It is traditionally conservative and has enormous political influence, especially in Congress, where many Republican Congressmen openly speak out for the NRA and receive endorsements and donations for election campaigns in return. The NRA also supports Trump. In 2016 the NRA supported Trump in the presidential election campaign with more than 30 million dollars, according to figures from the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

There have been discussions in the United States about the influence of the NRA for years. Recently, however, the debate seems to have intensified. In the midterm mid-term elections in 2018, for example, groups that advocated stricter gun laws spent more money. Republicans sponsored by the NRA even lost the majority in the House of Representatives.

Moreover, many individual US states have also tightened their gun regulations slightly in recent time. For Trump and his reelection efforts, however, gun owners remain an essential part of his base.

L'articolo New York vs the National Rifle Association proviene da InsideOver.

Japan has almost eradicated gun crime with one of the lowest rates of gun crime in the world, after countries like South Korea, Mongolia and Romania. In 2014, the East Asian Island recorded just six gun deaths, attributed to its extremely stringent gun laws.

Firearm Regulations In Japan

While handguns are banned in Japan, shotguns and air rifles are allowed. The number of gun shops are also severely restricted. Likewise, users hoping to purchase a gun must attend an all-day class after which they must take a written exam and pass a shooting-range test, scoring 95 percent or above.

Gun owners in Japan can only purchase new gun cartridges after spent ones from their last visit are returned. They must also notify the police of where they store their gun and ammunition, and subject their guns to yearly police inspections. For good measure, they must store their guns and ammunition separately under lock and key and inform the police of exactly where they keep these in their homes.

Japan’s History Of Gun Control

Dr Alan Cummings, Associate Head of Department of East Asian Languages and Culture at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, explained that: “Control of weapons is a very long standing public policy in Japan.”

“Going back to the late 16th century when there were edicts issued to confiscate swords from the hands of commoners in order to create a clear class delineation between farmers and artisans and the warrior class. Warriors were permitted short and long swords in public through the 17th, 18th and most of the 19th century, but other classes were forbidden to do so.

“Laws were issued in the 1870s to ban the carrying of all swords in public, as part of the creation of the modern state and the abolition of samurai status. These laws were strengthened after the war in 1945, when the US Occupation instigated laws (and essentially pressurized the Japanese government) to remove all weaponry, firearms as well as most swords, from the Japanese. The Occupation authorities were of course concerned about possible resistance,” Cummings explained.

“Over a period of six months or so, millions of weapons of all types (pistols, rifles, swords, bayonets, etc.) were removed from their owners. The only exceptions were for hunting rifles and swords of artistic quality. You can also see these laws as an attempt to entirely demilitarize Japan, and therefore linked to Article 9 of the postwar Japanese constitution, the so-called peace clause. Subsequent laws have generally strengthened these restrictions,” he added.

The Many Tests To Own A Gun In Japan

Under these restrictions, users must take a mental health test, a drug test and a criminal record check to successfully apply for a firearm. The police carry out additional background checks on applicants’ relatives and work colleagues and look for any links the applicant has to extremist groups.

“Japan was pressurized into [stringent weapons restrictions] immediately after the defeat in WW2,” Cummings explained. “But there is a wider question of why Japan has never seriously attempted to relax these laws.

“The answer to that is obviously much more complex, and as well as the political expediency of having an acquiescent population, there is also Japan’s post-war image of itself as a society that has renounced violence following the trauma of the [Second World War] defeat.

“My sense is that there is very little interest in Japan from citizens in owning guns. There has long been trust that crime should be dealt with by the police and the judiciary. Even the juries have only existed in Japan for ten years now, since 2009. Guns are generally not as frequently glamorized by the media and entertainment industry as in other countries. Shooting and hunting are not common pastimes. The prevalence of guns in other countries, like the US, is not seen as enviable but rather as a source of fear, and there is a very long memory for incidents such as the shooting of the Japanese student Yoshihisa Hattori in Baton Rouge in 1992.”

Martial Arts Instead Of Guns

In law enforcement, Japanese police officers rarely use guns. All are trained in martial arts, however, including judo and kendo. Similarly, crime in Japan is rarely executed using guns.

“Guns are not frequently used by yakuza, particularly not against ‘civilians’ or the police,” Cummings clarified. “If they are used, it is almost always by gang members against other gang members. The statistics bear this out. For example, in 2018 there were eight homicides in Japan, all of which involved yakuza. There were just eight armed robberies involving a firearm, two of which were yakuza-related. The last time there was a major yakuza shooting war was in the mid-1980s. Intimidation, destruction of property, and the threat of violence are used far more commonly used by the yakuza than guns.”

Japan’s Remaining Violence Problems Hit Close To Home

Gun crime and violence has been near-eradicated in Japan, leaving the nation to tackle another form of violence and criminal behaviour: domestic violence, sexual violence against women, “random acts of violence against total strangers (sometimes against children), and familial violence, with children killing their parents or vice-versa.

“Japan definitely has a problem with domestic and sexual violence which for a long time went largely unreported because of multiple gendered, social, and legal factors,” Cumming said, adding “that has started to change more recently, with changes in awareness, in reporting, and in the legal responses (for example new laws over the past twenty years on stalking, spousal abuse, and so on). The difference is that there doesn’t seem to be any association at all in Japan between guns and masculinity.”

L'articolo Why Japan Has One Of The Lowest Gun Crime Rates In The World proviene da InsideOver.

It’s no secret that mass shootings in the United States of America are a problem, to say the least. Since the year began, there have been 255 mass shootings in the country, resulting in 275 deaths and 1065 injuries. The trend is on the rise, according to the BBC, and with large-scale gun control seeming unlikely, other precautions outside of the government are being proposed to deter mass shooters instead.

No Notoriety is a campaign asking the media to refrain from making the perpetrator of such attacks the main object of attention when reporting on the incident. The rules are simple: publications can refer to the assailant once, in the matter of public interest, though withhold from going into detail regarding their name or likeness unless the individual is still at large. Motivations and mindset can be published in order for the public to understand the events that transpired, though anything that the perpetrator did to attract attention or fame, such as the publication of manifestos, statements, or photos and videos, should not be published, as that would be giving the killer what they wanted: infamy. 

The biggest case for No Notoriety is the fact that fame could be what attracts prospective mass shooters to taking action. Take the recent Christchurch Mosque Shootings for example – the perpetrator of this attack live-streamed the murders, gaining 200 viewers during the streaming, and, when Facebook took the footage down, the clip was re-uploaded 1.5 million times in less than 24 hours. In this instance, the killer got what they wanted: mass attention on a world-wide stage.

Another instance of this is the Columbine High School shooters, who, prior to the attacks, said that they were aiming for “the most deaths in US history…we’re hoping”. The gunman behind the 2012 Aurora shooting, known for occurring at a midnight screening of the Batman movie ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, chose the venue because they “thought a movie theatre would lead to higher fatalities”, the University of Alabama’s Adam Lankford said. 

According to the Los Angeles Times, the perpetrator of another attack, this time the Umpqua Community College shooting in 2015, wrote in a blog post: 

“A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”

The incentive of fame, despite it being largely negative, obviously plays a role in the increase of mass shootings taking place.

Another motivation for No Notoriety? The fact that the victims of such atrocities are often barely acknowledged in comparison to the amount of spotlight perpetrators of these attacks often get. In fact, the founders of No Notoriety, Tom and Caren Teves, started the campaign after losing their 24-year-old son, Alex, in the aforementioned Aurora shooting. The assailant got what they wanted – copious press coverage – but the victims, including Alex, did not receive the same treatment. The Teves believe that victims’ lives are “more important than their killer’s actions”, and that the victims deserve to be celebrated and remembered more than their attackers do. 

The same belief is championed by survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the ninth most deadly mass shooting in the US since 1949. Teenage survivors of the attack formed a political action committee named named ‘Never Again MSD’, advocating for tighter gun control within the country. One of the founders, 19-year-old David Hogg, is also a vocal advocate of No Notoriety, tweeting:

I don’t know the shooters name and don’t want to. If you agree, anytime you see a post with their name or face from news organizations post #NoNotoriety with one of the victim’s names. We make these sick people known worldwide for their horrifying acts, let’s stop that.

— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) May 20, 2018

It’s obvious that some sort of drastic change is needed to prevent more tragedies from occurring. Half of the ten most deadly shootings in the US have occurred in the last three years. Perhaps if those with power in government cannot necessitate change, the media can attempt to instead. No matter what, if things keep occurring at the same rate that they are now, the world is going to be a much darker place. 

L'articolo The Case for No Notoriety proviene da InsideOver.