News Release

Guns, Terrorism and a “Culture of Killing”

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REBECCA PETERS, rebecca.peters101 at gmail.com, Skype: rebecapeters
Currently in Guatemala, Peters is with the International Action Network on Small Arms. She helped lead the campaign to reform Australia’s gun laws. Her pieces include “When will the U.S. learn from Australia? Stricter gun control laws save lives.”

The group just released a statement: “At church, at school, in shopping centres, at movie theatres, clubs and cultural events — once again we see the mass murder of civilians in the USA, because weapons designed for killing large numbers on the battlefield are so easily available. Almost every other industrialized country has implemented basic firearm regulation and the results are starkly evident in the data. The whole world is grieving with the USA, and anxious for this country to do something about easy access to lethal weapons.”

BEAU GROSSCUP, bgrosscup at csuchico.edu
Grosscup is author of several books including The Newest Explosions of Terrorism and, most recently, Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment. He can talk about the selective use of the term “terrorism” and other aspects of policy and violence.

LAURIE CALHOUN, laurielcalhoun at gmail.com, @laurielcalhoun, Skype: laurie.calhoun
Currently in Australia, Calhoun is author of the books We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age and War and Delusion: A Critical Examination.

She tweeted Monday: “#UnitedStates is a #cultureofkilling, from top to bottom. Citizens are taught by #USgov that #masshomicide = #war is how to resolve conflict.”

In her piece “The Drone Assassination Assault on Democracy,” Calhoun wrote: “Given that a primary means to conflict resolution deployed by powerful governments with every tool of diplomacy at their disposal has become homicide, perhaps it should be unsurprising that factions and individuals with no institutional power should take up arms as well.”