{"id":32974,"date":"2013-05-12T23:47:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-12T22:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/slow-motion-mass-murders\/32974\/"},"modified":"2013-05-12T23:47:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-12T22:47:00","slug":"slow-motion-mass-murders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/slow-motion-mass-murders\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Slow-Motion Mass Murders\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/slow-motion_mass_murders_20130512\/<\/a><\/h6>\n

Posted on May\u00a012,\u00a02013<\/h4>\n
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr.<\/p>\n

MILWAUKEE\u2013Public officials are very selective about when violence and death matter.<\/p>\n

Massacres and terrorist incidents cannot be ignored, but the day-to-day toll from gun violence is often swept aside. Politicians who tout themselves as advocates of law and order don\u2019t want to be unmasked as caring even more about their ratings from gun lobbyists.<\/p>\n

And opponents of the most moderate gun reforms engage in a shameless game of bait-and-switch. Because measures such as background checks would not stop every murder, they\u2019re declared useless even though they\u2019d still save lives. Then the gun lobby turns around and opposes other measures, such as a ban on high-capacity magazines, which could prevent some of the killings that background checks might not.<\/p>\n

The lack of coherence doesn\u2019t bother those who are willing to tolerate all manner of violence to keep the gun business free of inconvenient restraints. Their goal is to exhaust supporters of sane gun laws and get them to give up until the next big tragedy strikes.<\/p>\n

Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee has never given up and never given in. One of the earliest members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group spearheaded by New York\u2019s Michael Bloomberg and Boston\u2019s Tom Menino, he has made curbing urban bloodshed a personal cause.<\/p>\n

Every year between Mother\u2019s Day and Memorial Day, he organizes a \u201cCease-Fire Sabbath\u201d that enlists clergy around the city to preach against violence. \u201cThe ministers and other clergy can reach people that I can\u2019t,\u201d Barrett said in an interview in his office last week. Here\u2019s a faith-based initiative that everyone can believe in.<\/p>\n

Barrett has paid a price for his steadfastness on guns. In his rematch last year against Republican Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin\u2019s recall election (he lost to Walker in 2010), gun groups spent more than $800,000 to defeat him. Such sums are designed to have a chilling effect on other politicians who might take on the gun lobby. \u201cIt hasn\u2019t chilled me,\u201d Barrett says with a smile, \u201cbut obviously I\u2019m not the governor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since late last year, Barrett has made the case for extending background checks to online and private purchases as well as gun show sales by pulling out a large cardboard blow-up of a request <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on : TruthDig<\/a><\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/slow-motion_mass_murders_20130512\/ Posted on May\u00a012,\u00a02013 By E.J. Dionne, Jr. MILWAUKEE\u2013Public officials are very selective about when violence and death matter. Massacres and terrorist incidents cannot be ignored, but the day-to-day toll from gun violence is often swept aside. Politicians who tout themselves as advocates of law and order don\u2019t want to be unmasked as caring even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}