The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| US gun control battle shifts from Congress to the states Posted: 09 Dec 2013 04:35 AM PST In scores of statehouse battles, both gun-control and gun-rights advocates have notched wins since a mentally unstable gunman killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. Electoral and legislative fights since Newtown - including the election last month of a Democratic gun-control supporter, Terry McAuliffe, as governor of Virginia, the home state of the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby - are likely a foretaste of battles to come next year in federal and state elections. "We're in this for the long haul," said Mark Glaze, executive director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition founded by Bloomberg. "This issue is like a cruise ship that's been going in the wrong direction for a long time, directly toward the iceberg, and it's going to take a while to turn around." Democratic President Barack Obama supported legislation in Congress this year that would have extended background checks for sales made online and at gun shows. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in January showed that 86% of those surveyed favored background checks for all gun buyers. Obama backed a proposal to ban rapid-firing "assault" weapons like the one used in Newtown and tighter limits on the capacity of ammunition clips. The measures failed to clear the Senate in April in the face of opposition from gun-rights advocates who say it is essential to hold the line on Americans' right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment of the Constitution. The NRA has argued that attacks like Newtown were more a result of a weak mental health system than lax firearms regulations. A week after the Newtown attack, NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre came out against gun control and called instead for armed guards in each of the 99,000 schools in the United States. Erich Pratt, a spokesman for the Gun Owners of America, a gun rights group, said both Obama's gun-control approach and gun-free zones for schools and other sites of mass shootings are misguided. "When a bad guy walks in there with a gun, he's going to be the only one with a gun until the police can arrive," Pratt told Reuters Television. In the US House of Representatives, a gun-control bill by Mike Thompson, a California Democrat and the chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, has gained 186 co-signers, but has been stalled for months. The bill by Thompson, a gun owner and Second Amendment backer, would expand background checks, but also would have features designed to attract support from gun-rights advocates such as banning gun ownership lists. "When the federal government failed to act, the states stepped in to fill the void" on gun-control legislation, Thompson said. In response to the Newtown massacre and the 2012 shooting deaths of 12 people in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, about 1,500 pieces of gun legislation were introduced in US state legislatures. Only about 10% of them were passed, with a slight edge - 74 to 66 - for gun-rights bills. They included making it easier in some states to get concealed-carry permits or removing information about gun or concealed-carry permits from the public record. On the gun-control side, the most common theme was modifying laws on issuance of concealed-carry permits. Major changes came in five northeastern states - New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey - with passage of legislative packages that featured restrictions on military-style weapons like those used in Aurora and Newtown. "The number of new strong state laws is, at least since I've been involved in the movement, unprecedented," said Lindsay Nichols, attorney at the Law Centre to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco. Colorado also passed gun-control measures, but since then gun-rights activists have used recall elections to oust two state senators who had backed them. The ousters came despite the nearly US$3 million (RM9.6 million) Bloomberg and other gun-control advocates spent to stave off the recalls. A third senator resigned in November rather than face a recall vote. Pratt, the Gun Owners of America spokesman, said the Colorado recalls would be a big factor in congressional midterm elections next year. "What happened in Colorado should send shock waves through every legislator's heart that's been supportive of gun control," he said. A shift in the fight over firearms has come with the entry of Bloomberg, the billionaire founder of the media and data company that bears his name, on the gun-control side. "Money always helps, and for the first time the gun safety side has some money behind it," said Jim Kessler, a founder of the Third Way think tank in Washington. As of November 13, Bloomberg's Independence USA political action committee has sunk US$2.97 million this year into federal races. That includes US$2.2 million (RM7 million) in an Illinois Democratic primary that saw gun-control backer Robin Kelly defeat Deborah Halvorson, who had been highly rated by the NRA. Independence USA also outpaced the NRA roughly 5 to 1 when it spent about US$3 million successfully backing gun-control Democrats for Virginia governor and attorney general. Spending on federal lobbying for gun control rose to US$1.8 million (RM5.8 million) this year, a ninefold increase from the year before, but that was still far behind gun-rights lobbying, whose spending more than doubled, to almost US$13 million (RM41.7 million). The rising tide of money came as the number of groups lobbying on both sides of the issue roughly doubled this year, to about 80. - Reuters, December 9, 2013. |
| Walk this way, says China’s heavy metal shoe maker Posted: 08 Dec 2013 10:21 PM PST "I've been walking with iron shoes for seven years," said Zhang Fuxing, before strapping two crudely-welded iron blocks to his feet. "After they reached 400 kilograms (882 pounds), I felt very proud. Next spring I plan to add 50 kilograms." Zhang took a deep breath before each wrenching step in the towering footwear, with every impact leaving him struggling for balance. It took him over a minute to take 10 paces, but he claims to walk up to 15 metres each day in the shoes, which he has gradually increased in weight, and touts them as a cure for back pain and hemorrhoids. Zhang, 52, credits his ability to move the shoes — which he leaves outdoors, safe in the knowledge that they are close to impossible for most people to lift — to the Chinese spiritual martial art Qigong, said to involve controlling the flow of supposed bodily energies. "It's not strong muscles that make you able to walk like this, the power comes from internal organs," he said, adding: "When you walk with your heart it will work." Zhang believes his shoes to be the heaviest in China, but admits that competition from a number of other eccentrics renders his claim uncertain. One of two Chinese iron shoe wearers to share a Guinness World Record for walking 10 metres backwards in heavyweight iron boots is Zhang Zhenghui from Changsha. According to a 2010 report by the official Xinhua news agency he has gold-painted shoes weighing more than 200 kilograms. Lai Yingying, an entertainer from Fujian in the east, was shown by state broadcaster CCTV wearing shoes tipping the scales at a total of 300 kilograms. A runner, Liu Mei, took to exercising in metal footwear after growing bored of tying sandbags onto his trainers, the state-run China News Service reported, and challenged other exponents to compete for the title of "Iron Shoe King". His call "hit the world of eccentric stunt people like a tidal wave", the report said, but there is no record of the contest having taken place. Zhang Fuxing — who runs a workshop making machine parts — says he was inspired by one of these pioneers. "I saw someone wearing iron shoes on TV. They said it was good for the heart and bones," he said. At the time Zhang was suffering from back pain "so bad that I couldn't bend over to wash my face", but claims his symptoms disappeared just months after donning the footwear, an experience which left him wanting to share them with a wider audience. He now manufactures a range of weighted metal footwear, which users strap over their existing shoes, in a small factory near his hometown in the northern city of Tangshan, and sells them online. A snazzy red pair weighing 10 kilograms each costs 550 yuan (RM291.51), while the heaviest 60 kilogram boots sell for 1450 yuan (RM768.52). He claims to have sold several hundred pairs, including at least 10 to his neighbours, several of whom gathered around on a chilly morning to watch Zhang take his wobbling steps. "We've all worn his iron shoes, it makes your legs feel better," said Chen Guanghua, a woman in her sixties. "We can't all play badminton, but anyone can wear shoes." - AFP, December 9, 2013. |
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