Newtown Massacre: Americans ask “why”?

For our special presentation tonight on our talkshow Straight from the Sky, we bring you a very interesting, albeit educational interview about the Palm Oil Industry. Palm oil is apparently taking Malaysia by storm because it lasts longer than coconut trees and produces a lot more oil that can be used for vegetable oils for cooking and of course many other products related to it. It has become so popular in Malaysia that growers even cut the forest to plant them.

Somehow, the palm oil industry has not yet taken the Philippines by storm, perhaps due to the fact that most of our lands are filled with coconut trees. So to educate us about the palm oil industry, we interviewed Mr. Chan Lok Lim, President of the Agusan Plantations, Inc. and indeed, in one interview, I myself learned a lot about this industry. So watch this very interesting and educational show on the Palm Oil Industry on SkyCable’s channel 61 at 8:00pm with replays on MyTV channel 30 on M-W-F.

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I’m sure that the people in this “wired” world must have seen over satellite TV like CNN, Fox News, Al Jazzera or BBC news that horrifying report from that small town called Newtown in Connecticut, USA where a mass shooting by a lone gunman ended the lives of 27 people, 20 of them school children. The gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, first killed his own mother in their home, then he got her licensed handguns and went to Sandy Hook Elementary School and started shooting at the children and their teachers. Then he was reported to have killed himself.

Once more the whole world asks… “Why?” Frankly speaking, Americans have been asking this question from the Kennedy assassination in Nov. 1962 to Columbine to Newtown. As if on cue, anti-gun advocates once more blame the reality that you can easily get a gun in the United States. This issue has been debated to death in the United States, but like it or not, the US Constitution guarantees the Right to Bear Arms for American citizens.

But let’s ask ourselves, should we blame guns on the mass killings? Come now, guns are inert objects and are virtually harmless unless a person with evil intent to kill people uses it. On the other side of the equation, a person armed with a gun and with good intentions can also stop the evil person by shooting the armed person before he shoots others. So that should equalize things about the gun.

Anti-gun advocates even extrapolate figures of gun deaths with the United States and other western nations with the United States on top of them. But while the previous mass shootings were done by deranged people using assault rifles, what happened in Newtown was different as he only used two handguns, a Glock automatic and a Sig Sauer pistol. Both firearms and a Bushmaster inside his car were all licensed to the killer’s mother.

I’m sure that the anti-gun or gun control advocates were disappointed that the killer, Adam Lanza only used pistols, which is used by the Law Enforcement establishment. The dead gunman’s brother also told authorities that he was suffering from some kind of “autism.” No doubt, he must have argued with his mother, which ended in his shooting and killing her.

Last July 20, also in the US, James Holmes, a deranged man, fired his assault rifle in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado killing 12 people and wounding 12 more. Looking at the timeline of mass shootings in USA, I think the one in Virginia Tech Campus in Blackburg, Virginia on April 16, 2007 has the highest number of victims who were killed. Seung-Hui Cho killed a total of 32 people with scores wounded before he killed himself.

So back again to the shooting in Newtown, should we blame guns for that massacre? Perhaps the mainstream media in the US exaggerated the issue. If you didn’t know, a day before the Newtown mass killings, a knife-wielding man also attacked an elementary school in central China and slashed 22 children. Funny, this was reported by the Chinese State media, which is usually secretive about such incidents, but nothing about this incident was reported in the mainstream news. I found this report buried in the inside pages of the Philippine Star last Saturday.

So clearly, gun control as supported by the media, certainly won’t stop the killing as proven in China where the attacker had no gun. Again, I would like to point the reality that it is hatred that kills people; guns or knives are merely the tools they use to do their dastardly deed.

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Exactly 71 years ago today, the SS Corregidor struck a mine off the island of Corregidor and broke in half and sunk rapidly. Most of the passengers were from Cebu as it was the last ship out of Manila. This Compania Maritima vessel was headed for Cebu then to Australia. My father’s only brother, Benjamin Avila, an accomplished athlete, died in that disaster.

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