Ráfagas - 14 enero

--How NRA’s true believers converted a marksmanship group into a mighty gun lobby. The Washington Post. Una muy completa historia de la NRA. No siempre fue un reducto de radicales. Hoy tiene cuatro millones de miembros, 781 empleados, 125.000 voluntarios e ingresos anuales de unos 200 millones de dólares.

--How Hollywood Made the Gunmakers' Day. Mother Jones. Los fabricantes de armas saben que el cine es un socio muy especial.

--Don't Blame Video Games for Real-World Violence. ¿Videojuegos y violencia?:

Youth violence has declined to 40-year lows during the video-game epoch, and countries that consume as much violent media as we do, such as Canada, the Netherlands, and South Korea, have much less violent crime, even if you factor out gun violence.

--Nuclear weapons didn’t end World War II! Salon. Dos mitos sobre las armas nucleares cuestionados. En primer lugar, la idea de que Japón se rindió a causa de las bombas sobre Hiroshima y Nagasaki.

Wilson draws on detailed minutes from the meetings of the Japanese Imperial Staff to make two things clear; first, that the bomb did not have a disproportionate influence on Japanese leaders’ deliberations and psyche, and second, that what did have a very significant impact on Japanese policy was the invasion of Manchuria and the Sakhalin Islands by the Soviet Union.