About 30 years ago, assault weapons that could be used to perpetrate mass shootings started to receive big crackdowns, and the commonality of them on the streets for crimes eventually became obsolete. Many thank yous have gone out to reduce mass shootings.

However, the challenge that has emerged in the changeover, is many would be criminal shooters are turning to smaller guns, and with that come the pros and cons of these types of weapons. To a shooter, a pro might be a con to an innocent victim and society, cons, vice versa. Explaining, the downside of a small gun or firearm to an ill intended shooter and hence con, works to the advantage of society that wants gun violence mitigation; main among these is that the number of victims during discharges of the firearm are reduced (often correlated to the reduced number of bullets that can fit in the gun), the lethality level of the firearm such caliber, often is not as strong, and the power of a shot is not felt as much when the bullet strikes a person from far off. This is not to say that a stray bullet from a small gun will do nothing beyond a quarter a mile, but a 22 caliber 2 inch barrel is probably not going to do as much damage as a long range rifle designed for hunting deer and elk.

Smaller guns used by petty criminals may often cost less than larger assault weapons.

There can basically be two classes of small guns, in context. One are cheaper guns that have some impact, designed mainly for stopping power in emergencies, to thwart a robbery for instance, lethality not intended. The other category, are highly specialized compact weapons that might be very costly especially when purchased from a firearm company.

Compact, small, concealable, pocket, pistols, handguns, there are a bunch of different names for them. The key words for 2021 and 2022, are 'guns that can fit in a pocket', in someone's clothes, such as a pants pocket, or jacket. Often inconspicuously, it is barely noticeable that a would be shooter has the gun in an easy grab spot where they can reach in pull it out, then put it back and take off running.

The other prong to the combination of shooting then running and ether never caught or it takes a while for authorities to catch up to them, that often occurs, is the outfit and clothes the suspect shooter is wearing is dark, an blend with the dark hours of the night or early morning. Often, not always, violent crime involving small guns, these days, occurs somewhere between as soon as it gets dark, and early in the morning as the last trickles of weekend businesses like late night coffee shops, lounges, and night clubs, start to close down.

About 75% of the top news stories today, February 5, 2022, have to do with gun violence. From those numbers, about 75% of the gun violence involves teenagers as the victims.

Issues now are the availability and accessibility of criminal firearm use to smaller firearms. Whether purchased from a store, or built off the record, such as ghost guns.

Because of the lessened efficacy of smaller guns, would be shooters have figured out they need to be closer to the victim to do more injury to a potential victim. That might explain why a number of recent shootings, in addition to being during dark hours, are in situations where the shooter and victim are close to each other, such as in the same driveway of a house, inside a lounge, and gas stations, where a conversation and altercation can take place between the individuals.

Now a trademark of the type of crime has emerged, that when an altercation is going on where individuals are a few feet from each other, that it could be the setting for a small firearm discharge.

Of course the vulnerability found in teenagers' naivety is often exploited where they are lured into an argument, their egos are manipulate nd they want to stand up or themselves; then for the slightest reason or provocation, out comes a small firearm.

The small gun shooting spates are spoiling the constructs in society of coming together. Ways to bring about change, markedly reducing small gun shootings, or any size gun, should be developed.

Reports are most of the violence during the span from today through this past January involving protesting occurred in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

To summarize to get the facts on an outward level of what has occurred in about the last 30 days, as viewed by outsiders, terminology only used for the sake of brevity in time, is this:

• On or about January 5th, protesting emerged about rising oil prices.
• The protests turned increasingly violent, and even looting got involved.
• The protests were suppressed.
• Numerous persons were arrested in the process.
• By January's end it is said that at least 200 persons were fatalities.
• Complaints are surfacing now, about 3 weeks after the 'initial' protesting, that human rights abuses at a large enough scale to make headlines, occurred during the crackdown on protestors.
• About 3800 persons are estimated to be currently detained, as of the moment of this article.

On the political dimension, the current President of Kazakhstan, is said to have performed restructuring insofar other political figures angles of involvement in the power structure at large. There were officials that may have resigned.

Although the main story or aspects of it, such as dates of heightened events, might be borrowed from other news sources, at HCN we strive not to simply reiterate the common stories of their analysis or perspectives of what happened.

The reason why, is sometimes the backstory of where things are today, is not presented alongside the shocking and attention grabbing events that just happened, the events that can drive increased views to a website, increase revenue and so forth.

Some of the backstories, or perhaps background and history, might show that what happened in Almaty may have been a heightened level of unrest, but the inner unrest over certain issues has been around for years. Discomfort with oil prices and other oil related issues in Kazakhstan has existed for years, how many years back, softly, assessing comfort levels going back to when oil first started to take-off as a major industry in the region in the modern era, might be a good starting point.

Oil as a major resource in the region, recognized as wealth producing, for this conversation, was around the start of the 20th century. 1899, 1911. 

A government building might have been set on fire earlier this January, however, there have been other incidents.

In December of 2011, there was the Zhanaozen incident. Oil field workers went on strike.

It seems every few years to decade, a large protest with oil in the subject, evolves.

Kazakhstan is currently ranked somewhere between the top 20 and top dozen oil producing countries. The amount of money involved at the number one through five spots is immense. A few tiers down is still a huge amount of financial complex.

Who does the oil fields belong to?, was a central topic in the late 1980s, early 1990s, as the days culminating with USSR becoming 'disunionized' started to materialize; the options essentially Russia or Kazakhstan.

In 1991, Kazakhstan declared independence from the USSR, (a historical assessment at a very basic level for illustration).
In about 1991, on the more politically open playing field, global companies involved and so forth, Kazakhstan started appearing as a major presence on the world oil production and trade stage.

Year 2000 thereabout saw the development of the National Fund of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

There have been ongoing privatization issues.

In today's modern era, general discomfort with the current government establishment or establishments in the past two decades thereabout, is a common phenomenon that is found in a number of regions near the 'East-West' threshold. So, when violent protests emerge, and become world news because of the number of physical fires involved, it may be a fusion, of some aspects of oil, some aspects of differences in culture, political views, and never to leave out the possibility of foreign elements penetrating into the region and inciting riots.

Who is 'in' (accepted by groups of people), who is 'out', insider, outsider, accepted, not accepted, regarding political groups, and of course, what comprises the people doing the complaining, can be more complicated than a quick review of the looting in an online media news story that has not run a story on Kazakhstan in ten years.

'Okay, we have oil, a gift from above, for our people', is a known position that can be taken by a number of countries gifted with oil; 'our people' and the baseline responsibilities thereunto such as for their health, is sometimes distinguished from the politics of a given time. Hence, through that way, and likely among other ways, is how the question came to be, which comes first, the economy (affected by oil), or politics?, which is popular in Kazakhstan.

Events of January 2022 also come at a time when concerns over the Ukraine Russia border have resurged, and consider that there is a border of several thousand miles between modern day Russia and Kazakhstan.

As towns are still being won and lost, reflective of how things were the onset of the turbulence between the new government and the previous, The US and some EU nations are providing guidance of caution against doing business in the region, citing it would leave business entities that do so anyway, especially in certain business sectors, vulnerable to being 'associated by link' to the the current military dictatorship that wields influence over major pillars involved in the business sectors.

Omicron.
It sounds like the name of a space ship in a futuristic sci-fi movie, like Star Trek.
It almost can be mistook for Omnicron.
Remember the Dodge Omni?, not to condescend but sports and luxury car fanatics were not up in arms about the Omni when it came out.
When you run Omicron and Omnicron together, it almost tells the story of this supposed COVID/coronavirus variant.

Just like a futuristic spaceship that still is not here yet, with thousands of people walking around on it, eating, drinking, and partying, Omicron is sort of a bell that tolls that we are reaching into further depths of time. 
For many places in the world fortunate enough to have medicine and hospitals at a certain level, diseases like smallpox for the most part are concerns of eras past.
So in order to test us sort to speak, along comes this thing called Omicron. Omicron as we speak today, December 18, 2021, has now made headlines all over the world as a huge threat.
Now remember, this thing, Omicron or a virus under a microscope, does not act alone; it acts in the ecosystem, the environment, interacting and interfacing with other factors that could cause people to get sick, such as air pollution, attitudes that people have about cleanliness, what the majority of the population know about how to defend themselves against diseases, and of course levels of self-care. 

An aspect of the mistakes made in preparation, or lack of preparation to fend off COVID-19 when it started to emerge a couple of years ago, on a world level, was it (COVID-19) started off seemingly benign, or nearly harmless, and eventually made its way further and further up the danger ladder. Eventually it started claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, even in some of the most advanced countries of the world.
Again, what happened?
What happened was, the principal of how the great divider works, and how his foot soldiers work, are involved.
The foot soldiers of the great divider are many times not like us, human beings or people, but rather teeny tiny microscopic sized creatures, hardly and rarely visible, which as evident now, could show in the form of a virus, coronavirus.
Evil today, and the dangers to society and a healthy well-being of large populations, comes in the forms of the little things, not the great big obvious things.
When signs of danger start to emerge, and they seem small, those are what could turn out later to really hurt society.
That is what COVID-19 did back when it came out big in late 2019, and that is what Omicron is doing.

And Omicron in terms of how it is a variant from that COVID-19 virus of 2 years ago, is that it basically has built in it, ways it is immune from the expected methods to crush it.
An analogy is immune abilities of rats. If you keep spraying the same rat poison all over town, as New York City for example went through a few decades back, eventually, the poisons don't work on the rats anymore because the new wave of rats have adapted and become tougher, immune from the poison, so now you need a stronger poison or some other methodology to get rid of the rats.
Omicron same thing; we need some new techniques to get rid of the problem; and while at it, clean other aspects of the world we live in up, such as the air and drinking water in general.

The issues list means situations that need to be resolved as soon as possible. There has been a lot of talk, a lot of hype, the raising of awareness by newspapers including this one in the effort to reduce school shootings. Nevertheless, the frequency of shootings is so alarming it is as though little has been done to stop them. Fortunately, there has been work done, and may be among the reasons why things are as good as they are. There is a long, long way to go -to get school safety to where it should be.  
It is Monday, and the first of the major news stories seen, is of a shooting in a high school which took place about 20 minutes ago.
That keeps being the morning news over and over.

The bottom line is school shootings must be reduced immediately.

What has been noticed, by looking at the stories set below, as of today September 20, 2021, is that Mondays and Wednesdays seem to be the days when school shootings of this sort are occurring most often, take since the beginning of 2021. Medium towns, not too far from bigger cities. Medium caliber handguns involved. Emotionally charged disputes pointed as among motives.

It is very likely, the list here is not all; and, there have been high school shootings in other places on the globe this year. In chronological order from today to further back: