I get a tad disgruntied when MSNBC goes "Breaking News" into stories where there is minimal facts, at best. I also get upset when NYC goes crazy over an event that is local, yet can basically ignore an event, in say, Chicago -let alone Wyoming or elsewhere. I do know that bringing back the old story line on guns is valuable to regenerate the needed conversation about there being far too many guns.

As the viewer watches the anchors and reporters open up the informative substance of the event, a sense of sympathy overcomes the viewer. This event is a mile from MSNBC. This occured at a spot many MSNBC employees walk by each day. This is now a personal event to MSNBC. At this point, the viewer starts to calm down and support the reporters efforts to get to the bottom of the story and bring it to life for all of us.

Still wish that they would pay a bit more attention to simular events, elsewhere, throughout the nation. Still wish that they would stay on the topic of our need to deal with too many guns. Still wish that they would have more segments on so many topics, including the war on women, bringing minorities more into mainstream America and providing more true equality to all. Still wish that far more reality was provided to our need to protect and develop our children's education. Maybe there are just not enough hours in a day.

Bloomberg: 'There's an awful lot of guns out there'

And even more nut cases.

I have never heard of a gun loading it's self then go out and kill a bunch of people.

New Bloomturd City has the toughest gun laws in the country, and still people shot each other.

I think this dude was upset he could not get a 16oz soda at the local restaurant, and can't have a smoke in the battery.

Hey Bloomberg "There's an awful lot of angry people out there"

I hear it all the time "If everyone had a gun the gun nutz wouldn't kill so many people. Well now even with well trained police may have shot people. So much for that theory!

Bloomberg should come up to Flint/Saginaw - we average 6 to 8 a month. Its not the guns, its the people and socio/economic conditions causing our tax bases to have defaulted - lack of security being one of the results of our jobs being outsourced along with deprived opportunity. Too much of our society, for the benefits of a few, has been tossed off at the curb.

The deaths from murder suicide could be cut in half! If we can get the murderer to commit suicide first..

Murder, Suicide Rates Climb When Jobs Vanish and Economy Slows
By Marthe Fourcade and Michelle Fay Cortez - July 7, 2009 19:01 EDT

July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Murders and suicides spike with unemployment, U.S. and European researchers said.

The scientists, who combed through almost four decades of European Union records, found that a 1 percent increase in joblessness brings about a 0.8 percent rise in suicide and murder rates. Government programs to help workers offer some protection, they wrote in the July 8 issue of The Lancet.

The global economy is now in its deepest recession since World War II, with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicting the output of its 30 members will shrink 4.1 percent this year. The slump has pushed unemployment to its highest since 1983 in the U.S. and the most in a decade in the 16 nations that use the euro.

“The effects of a financial crisis depend crucially on how governments chose to respond,” lead researcher David Stuckler of Oxford University said in a telephone interview. “Financial crises cause significant hardships for many people, but they don’t have to cost them their lives.”

Stuckler, Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and colleagues said governments may be able to use the findings to help people better cope with the recession.

A bigger jump in joblessness made things worse, the researchers found. When the unemployment rate grew more than 3 percent, the increase in suicides was 4.5 percent.

Silver Lining

In that scenario, the scientists also found a 28 percent surge in deaths from alcohol abuse, a link that “lends support to the notion that short-term negative effects of unemployment mainly affect psychological distress,” they wrote.

There was a silver lining: the scientists found that for every 1 percent gain in unemployment, the number of road traffic accidents dropped 1.4 percent, a development they explained by the fact that people tend to walk more than they drive when times are hard.

Also on the brighter side, the rise in unemployment didn’t boost suicide rates in countries where governments spent at least $190 per person on programs to help workers keep their jobs or train for a new one, according to Stuckler. The U.S. and the U.K. spend less than that, and countries in central and eastern Europe have weaker protection for workers, the researchers said.

“Some places have done much better than others, even with the same levels of unemployment,” McKee said in an interview. “Those employment policies don’t interfere with the benefit you get in road traffic accidents. You are getting a win-win situation.”

Tip of Iceberg

Stuckler cited the New Deal, which U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted in 1933 to help pull the U.S. out of the Great Depression.

“Death rates fell, even though many people learned about the Great Depression by hearing about bankers jumping out of windows,” he said.

Suicides have claimed some prominent investors and executives in the last 12 months. German billionaire Adolf Merckle stepped in front of a train in January. David Kellerman, chief financial officer of Freddie Mac in McLean, Virginia, hanged himself in April. U.K. investor Kirk Stephenson jumped in front of a train last September.

“The U.S. and the U.K. currently spend under $190 to help workers get back into the workforce and retain jobs,” Stuckler said. “So we would expect to see more rises in suicides in the U.S. and the U.K. than in countries that have better resourced active labor market programs.”

Overall death did not increase when unemployment climbed, the researchers found. They noted that the increase in suicide and murder rates was for people aged under 65.

“Suicides are just the tip of the iceberg,” Stuckler said. “We can’t measure all the emotional distress. There is much more going on in the background in terms of human suffering.”

The Centre for Crime and Justice at King’s College in London and the Wates Foundation, a U.K. charity, funded the research.

To contact the reporters on this story: Marthe Fourcade in Paris at mfourcade@bloomberg.net; Michelle Fay Cortez in London at mcortez@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aJp2H_Axtn68

Chris - I agree with you. Having a weapon available makes a person fell braver than he might otherwise be. Look at the Zimmerman case in Florida. If he didn't have that weapon he would not have approached Trayvon Martin and nobody would be dead, and nobody would be in court.

Some people simply kill others, always have and always will. Technology doesn't change that fact. Guns are all but prohibited in New York City, but people still kill each other. The answer is not more gun control or a prohibition all together. You can't not change human behavior.

The same holds true for Tyrants, they have always been there and they will always be. Gun control has a tendency to create greater opportunity for Tyrants. How does a society protect itself from a Tyrannical Government absent of having weapons to enable it to do so? Take the guns from the citizenry and open the door to a Tyrant. I will keep my guns, thank you very much. And to put your minds at easy, in my 57 years, I have never fired my guns or even aimed them at any one.