Word: moment
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...years, even five, we could be looking back on the past three decades of gun violence in America the way one once looked back upon 18th century madhouses. I think we are already doing so but not saying so. Before Atlanta, before Columbine, at some quiet, unspecified moment in the past few years, America decided it was time to advance the civilization and do right by the ones who know what the killing and wounding are like, and who know the pain...
...will be the last. High time. My guess, in fact, is that the hour has come and gone--that the great majority of Americans are saying they favor gun control when they really mean gun banishment. Trigger locks, waiting periods, purchase limitations, which may seem important corrections at the moment, will soon be seen as mere tinkering with a machine that is as good as obsolete. Marshall McLuhan said that by the time one notices a cultural phenomenon, it has already happened. I think the country has long been ready to restrict the use of guns, except for hunting rifles...
That said, I am pleased to report that the likelihood of sweeping and lasting changes in the matter of America and guns has never been higher. There comes a time in every civilization when people have had enough of a bad thing, and the difference between this moment and previous spasms of reform is that it springs from the grass roots and is not driven by politicians or legal institutions. Gun-control sentiment is everywhere in the country these days--in the White House, the presidential campaigns, the legislatures, the law courts and the gun industry itself. But it seems...
Time was when the dread moment of learning how popular you were came only with the delivery of birthday or Valentine's Day cards. Now every day is judgment day, thanks to instant messaging and the in-your-face presence of its address book (the "buddy list") on computer desktops. The software offers real-time chat with friends, family or co-workers who are online, as most now seem to be. Instant messaging, or IM, in fact, handles more missives each day than the U.S. Postal Service. Besides relying on it to evaluate their popularity levels, teenagers...
...moment that crystallized JP Miller's feelings about Cary Stayner, now 37, came in 1987, when the morose young man of 24 reluctantly showed him his prized pencil drawings. Miller spent countless hours with the Stayners preparing to write I Know My First Name Is Steven, the NBC mini-series based on the Steven Stayner kidnapping case. "I kept at him, and eventually he kind of confided very shyly this dream he had. He wanted to be an artist," Miller says. He saw no second coming of Picasso in the sketches but said to Cary, "'Why don't you send...