GUNS (Marc Cladera, Menchu Borrás, Georgia Warren)

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Gun fanatic mum who was accidentally shot by 4-year-old son 'will NEVER give up her weapons'

A MUM who was accidentally shot by her four-year-old son 'will never give up her guns', her family have announced.

Family members said Jamie Gilt will still be pro-gun - despite being almost killed in an accidental shooting in her truck. Gilt, 31, is in a stable condition and faces criminal charges after her son found a fully loaded .45 handgun next to his child booster seat and pulled the trigger. The boy's grandmother Jane Bramble told The Sun the youngster has no idea that he had almost killed his mum. And she insisted her daughter would not change her opinion about owning guns - and will keep the semi automatic gun fired in the incident.

"All the gun control people are jumping on this, but it will not change her opinion about owning guns.”

"She is very pro gun and will not change her opinion about owning them.”

The four year old boy has not been named and is in the care of his grandmother while social services launch an investigation. Police said he will not face any charges.

Gilt was driving to her sister's home near Jacksonville, Florida, when the youngster fired a single shot into the driver's seat. The bullet passed through her back and exited out of her stomach. A police officer saw the driver waving at him frantically and when he approached the vehicle Gilt said her son had shot her in the back. Police found a handgun on the floor of the vehicle and the boy was unrestrained in the child booster seat. Gilt was flown by air ambulance to the UF Hospital in Gainesville where she remains in a stable condition.

She has yet to be interviewed by police as doctors have said she is not medically fit to make a statement. The Putnam County Sheriff's Office said Gilt could face a first degree misdemeanour charge of negligence if it was found the boy had easy access to the gun. However, a former state prosecutor said it was unlikely Gilt would be charged as she had suffered enough.

Other articles:

If you want to know a bit more about guns, especially about gun control in America, check out the links to these articles:

Our global guns problem

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0223-overton-us-guns-abroad-20160223-story.html

So America, this is how other countries do gun control

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/15/so-america-this-is-how-you-do-gun-contro

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Mind map

Discussion:

1. Are you for or against guns? Would you legalize them?
2. Do you think that the countries where guns are legal are safer than the ones where they aren’t?
3. If guns were legalized, would you acquire one? Why?
4. Do you think leaving a gun near a child is a good idea? Why?
5. Do you think that having a gun makes people feel safer?
6. What do you think about justifiable homicide?
7. What would you do to prevent firearms deaths?

GUNS

by Maria, Margot, Catchot and Laura

Guns in the US: The statistics behind the violence

(From: BBC NEWS http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34996604)

In his first weekly address of 2016, Barack Obama vowed to take executive action to increase background checks on gun buyers.

His announcement followed another bloody year in the US in which thousands were killed and tens of thousands wounded by gunfire.

Here's a look at some of the statistics behind the violence.

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The statistics

Mass shootings: There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which catalogues such incidents. A mass shooting is defined as a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant.

(Source: Mass Shooting Tracker)

School shootings: There were 64 school shootings in 2015, according to a dedicated campaign group set up in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in 2012. Those figures include occasions when a gun was fired but no-one was hurt.

(Source: Everytown for Gun SafetyResearch)

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All shootings: Some 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured [those figures exclude suicide]. Those figures are likely to rise by several hundred, once incidents in the final week of the year are counted.

(Source: Gun Violence Archive)

How the US compares: The number of gun murders per capita in the US in 2012 - the most recent year for comparable statistics - was nearly 30 times that in the UK, at 2.9 per 100,000 compared with just 0.1% of all the murders in the US in 2012, 60% were by firearm compared with 31% in Canada, 18.2% in Australia, and just 10% in the UK.

(Source: UNODC)

  

The home front: So many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country. According to research by Politifact, there were about 1.4 million firearm deaths in that period, compared with 1.2 million US deaths in every conflict from the War of Independence to Iraq.

(Source: Politifact)

Total number of guns: No official figure exists but there are thought to be about 300 million in the US, held by about a third of the population. That is nearly enough guns for every man, woman and child in the country.

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The NRA: The right to own guns is regarded by many as enshrined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, and fiercely defended by lobby groups such as the National Rifle Association, which boasted that its membership surged to around five million in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Gun violence and terrorism: The US spends more than a trillion dollars per year defending itself against terrorism, which kills a tiny fraction of the number of people killed by ordinary gun crime. According to figures from the US Department of Justice and the Council on Foreign Affairs, 11,385 people died on average annually in firearm incidents in the US between 2001 and 2011. In the same period, an average of 517 people were killed annually in terror-related incidents. Removing 2001, when 9/11 occurred, from the calculation produces an annual average of just 31.

DISCUSSION

Do you think a stricter gun legislation in the USA would prevent deaths?
Do you think it would be better if only security forces (police, army, etc) and hunters had guns?
Would you want to have a gun if you lived in the United States? Why? Why not?
Would you feel safer having a gun at home?

What do you think are the reasons why civilians like you feel the need to have a gun in their homes?

Which do you think are the reasons why the US government doesn't act on their gun-problem?

What about the economic interests? Do you think they are the reason why the US won't change their gun legislation? Do you believe it is merely because of safety?