Thread by @dcherring

I'm gonna thread @FareedZakaria's "Last Look" frm his show yesterday- I hope he doesn't mind.

This is simple, and i believe, important.

🧵 👇👇👇

"For me, the most gut-wrenching aspect of this shooting, as well as all the others, is that what needs to be done is so blindingly obvious. Let me make some points about it that I have made 10 years ago after the Newtown massacre.

The most important fact to know about America's gun violence is that it is off the charts compared to any other advanced country in the world.

According to estimates by the University of Washington, we have eight times the rate of gun homicides compared to Canada, 50 times compared to Germany, 100 times compared to the U.K., and a staggering 250 times compared to Japan.

So when people talk about the mental state of the shooter, just keep asking yourself about those numbers. Do we have 50 times the rate of mentally disturbed people as Germany? Or is our level of violence in movies and video games 250 times more than that watched and consumed...

in Japan? Obviously not.

So what explains our exceptional rates of gun killings? Well, there is one area where we are exceptional, the number of guns that are easily available in America.

With 4 percent of the world's population, we have almost 50 percent of the world's guns. There are more guns in people's possession than there are people in the United States.

It's easy for an 18-year-old in Texas to buy AR-15 style rifles whose designed purpose is to kill human beings with deadly speed.

Gun control works. Japan, Germany, Britain, and Canada all very different countries and cultures, but they have one common thread, strong gun control laws, and that has one common result, low gun violence.

Ten years ago...

...I mentioned an incident that took place in China that's also worth repeating.

Just hours before the Newtown shootings, a mentally disturbed man entered a school in China's Henan province. He tried to kill as many children as he could. He injured many, but he did not kill a single one because the only weapon he could get his hands on was a knife.

I will keep saying this. We know what would work. There has rarely been so much evidence pointing in one direction if all of us were just willing to open our eyes."

thank you @FareedZakaria.

@FareedZakaria These are the facts, and they reveal the GOP 'mental health' smokescreen as just that- a smokescreen.

Maybe someone can do a threader app or whatevs on this? Thnx!