A few days ago it was a mall in Oregon; last July a movie theatre in Colorado — all places we never even think about getting shot by a crazed gunman. Today its an elementary school in Connecticut… Connecticut for crying out loud! You know what all these events have in common? In a week it won’t be on our radar screen anymore…until its another mall, school, restaurant, workplace or whatever.
I read this meme on someone’s Facebook page:
“We are better than a country in which citizens can be shot to death in shopping malls, movie theaters, and houses of worship.”
Are we though? Or is it all “lip service?” Amercians seem love their right to “bear arms”…no matter what. The argument for stricter gun control has been going on for years, decades even, and it doesn’t seem to matter how many innocent people are slaughtered — the pro-gun lobby remains strong.
If I hear one more argument about our Founding Fathers and how they decided it was our God Given right to protect ourselves, I will jump off the Fiscal Cliff! The Founding Fathers lived in a time before assault weapons. What would they think about the 2nd Amendment now? Can someone explain to me exactly why we need a weapon that can kill so many people with one clip? Exactly who are we supposedly protecting ourselves from? Anyone with half a brain knows that if our government decided to turn against us…no one has enough bullets to stop it. Its a false sense of security at best.
A quote from “Sheep No More” on Facebook claims that this tragedy could have been prevented if teachers were armed. Seriously? I don’t want to live in a society that has armed guards in schools. Do you? The NRA has not given their response yet, so let me guess what it will be…”What a tragedy. blah.blah.blah. We don’t need more gun regulation. Guns don’t kill people. blah. blah. blah.”
If you ask me, the time to do something about assault rifles was before they went on the market. There are way too many weapons in the United States and I don’t know any gun owners willing to part with their precious 2nd Amendment right. The only public figure I know of with the balls to speak about gun control is Bob Costas and he was crucified for using his precious airtime to speak about something other than football.
We have to have this conversation on a national scale and take meaningful action. These are our babies! Little children should be safe in their schools. 11,000 deaths a year in the U.S. by guns? ELEVEN THOUSAND! Why aren’t we treating this as a national tragedy? Years ago my little12 year old brother, who received a 16 gauge shotgun for Christmas, almost blew his bloody little head off cleaning an “empty” gun.
Criminy! Breaking news. It is rumored that the shooter’s mother worked at the school & was one of the victims. Did he get a gun for Christmas?
If you want a chilling experience, start looking at the schools here in OC as to the ease with which, on many campuses, anyone can walk into the campus and keep on going toward classrooms, playgrounds, etc. Newer schools seem to have been designed with some effort to at least provide some control, but older schools – including middle and even high schools – are easily accessable by any nut case seeking to do harm and many don’t even have video camers linked to the school office to enable people there to monitor the facility. It is a sad situation. When the inevitable tragedy happens, then people will ask how it could happen. It would be better now for school districts to hire a security consultant to assess vulnerabilities and develop plans on how to reduce those vulnerabilities.
I’ve taken down the other Sandy Hook post briefly to add some more cogent thoughts. It should be back up by 4:30 or so.
My initial Sandy Hook Elementary School post is back up with an essay added after the video and photo of Obama.
I am sorry, but I will respectfully disagree. This was not an everyday NRA member who hunts his meat during deer season. This was a crazed lunatic intent on taking lives, and if a gun was not available he’d have used a machete or whatever might be available. Evil will always be with us, it is a cindition of the broken human experience and evil will continue to rule this earth until Christ calls us home to the only place that is perfect and free of this horror. Despite being illegal, people will do drugs today, and some will hurt themselves or others, we cannot legislate bad behavior away by controlling the tools that evil may use. Like water finding the path of least resistance down a slope, evil will find a path, or tool, be it a gun or axe or hypodermic needle or a Cadillac racing down the street and into a schoolyard. Taking away my right to defend my home does not make those babies any safer. It just makes me less safe when I see some evil bastard kick in my door intent on harming MY babies. So no, I am sorry, but I do not blame the guns, I blame the son of a bitch, the twisted sick bastard who snapped today and took lives with him.
Do you think that a person should have the right to own ANY kind of gun he or she wants?
*How about fertilizer and fuel oil? Get serious Anon!
You can’t hide fuel oil and fertilizer in your waistband.
He’s right, Ron. I’ve tried!
To defend your home, Cynthia, do you need a semi-automatic? How much ammo do you need?
Of course what you’ll see as the debate unfolds is that for someone like Cynthia, having a debate about the KINDS of guns people can own = people want to strip her of her right to own ANY gun. Why people continue to make that leap is beyond me.
I can’t speak for Cynthia, but I suspect that her answer will be: “whatever it takes.”
The execrable Larry Mantle of KPCC made a point today that children should be reassured that their schools our safe because after all your child is safer at school than she is in a car. I think that Cynthia’s reaction explains the problem with that. We’re willing, because we accede to its inevitability, that we may lose our loved ones to accident or negligence or stupidity. (Cynthia’s apparent belief that heaven awaits them likely makes that easier. If you don’t believe in an afterlife, it’s harder.) We rebel, though, against the idea of losing our child to human malevolence, to a “twisted sick bastard.” Our instinctive (or not much less than instinctive) recognition of this distinction was probably a very helpful reaction, despite its coming down to the same thing in terms of toting up the death of loved ones, for us to have developed over the course of our evolution. A loved one’s dying is a tragedy; a loved one’s murder is both a tragedy and an affront.
What I am saying is that this type of evil will always be with us. And it will always find a way around any safeguards we put into place. We outlaw drugs but people find them, and the criminal culture that evolves to provide that opportunity is worse than the original environment we were trying to prevent. The same with guns. So if the criminals have obtained semiautomatic weapons illegally and as a law abiding citizen I am limited to a pea shooter, any opportunity I have to defend myself, my home, my children, is negated by the greater fire power of the bad guys. We are no safer by outlawing what scares us. We will never stop the behavior of those intent on doing harm to others, take away all the guns and they will use sticks and rocks to kill, and the one with the biggest sticks and most rocks wins. I would greatly prefer to see the money that would be spent on gun control enforcement instead spent on mental health services to reach those who are about to snap. But no, I do not see a war ion guns being effective any more than the war on drugs has been.
“We are no safer by outlawing what scares us. We will never stop the behavior of those intent on doing harm to others, take away all the guns and they will use sticks and rocks to kill, and the one with the biggest sticks and most rocks wins.”
So, for example, in the wake of 19 hijackers getting through airport security with box cutters and flying planes into those targets on 9/11, we should have done nothing about airport security and tightened up on what you can take onto a plane?
Why is it that we can look at an event like 9/11 and not ONLY look at the evil minds of the perpetrators, yet something like Sandy Hook or Columbine happens and that’s apparently ALL you want to address?
And your sticks and rocks example is ludicrous;
Since March 2010, there has been a spate of mass killing attempts in China by individuals using non-gun instruments like knives and cleavers.
Of those 6 attacks, a total of 25 people were killed, for an average per attack of 4.2 people.
27 were killed in this one attack at Sandy Hook by a man using guns.
If you don’t think that the kinds of guns mass killers are using plays a part in the high numbers of those dead, you are in a serious form of denial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_%282010%E2%80%932011%29
Yes, the criminals may well be able to get semi-automatic weapons — look, I’m educated enough not to use the term “assault weapons!” — illegally, although making their private possession illegal would be enough to allow them to be snared, held, and convicted more easily. And if I thought that all you could have to respond with was a pea shooter, your argument would have force. But I’m not saying that.
The compromise proposal where we might be heading is something like this: you get to carry a pistol outside your home and you get to have a shotgun and a non-automatic rifle (or many of them) as well as a pistol — and you can have many of them — inside your home for home protection. You just don’t get to have automatic or semi-automatic weapons, just like you don’t get to have grenades or mortars or poison gas or flamethrowers.
In other words, we can address the Columbine-Virginia Tech-Sandy Hook problem of killers strolling through schools with automatic weapons even without solving the problem of individual school shootings, simply by not allowing individuals to have these weapons. The shooter might well have killed 4-6 people, let’s say, before some armed bystander shot him or some unarmed bystander beat him over the head with a chair. But it would not be 26. (Yes, he could have stabbed 23 people — mostly kids — with a knife, as happened the same day in China. None of those kids died.)
In a more perfect world, I might want to restrict you to a peashooter outside (or even to protect your home), but that’s a non-starter here and now. I think that there’s a good case to be made that you should be able to defend your home with a rifle and/or shotgun — but I’d also want to make you liable for the the consequences of their use, including by their theft. (In other words: show due responsibility by securing them.) But you don’t need, and are probably demonstrably more unsafe, by having a semi-automatic weapon and (consequently) by allowing others to have them legally.
I hope to be presenting this as a moderate position. Does it make any sense to you?
Dr D– might help if you defined “pistol”. It’d probably be more helpful if you defined a proposed limit on magazine capacity.
The effectiveness of limits on magazine capacity depend on time it takes to reload a magazine. One wants the profligate shooter to run out of ammunition quickly enough, and obviously enough, so that they can be rushed and brained with a chair.
Defining terms like “pistol” is one reason that we have the Winships around. (I’d ask Stanley, but it would probably have some sexual connotation.)
I only bring it up because you’ve got some contradictions. You’ll be very hard pressed to find a pistol that isn’t semi-automatic.
Just trying to narrow down what your compromise looks like is all.
Ryan: head down that way — vvvvv — to continue the conversation.
One of the most important lessons you can teach your children is:
“Sometimes bad things happen to good people”.
They will be much better prepared for life in the real world.
What a waste of life.
Why did this coward pick a grade school instead of a gun range?
Could it be that people at a gun range can protect themselves while people (children) in schools are required to be defenseless?
How many young lives would have been saved if the principal or vice principal were required to bear arms for the protection of their schools, like cops.
Because he was fucked in the head Cook.
Insane, crazy, bad wiring. Cowardice has nothing to do with it.
Doesn’t sound like a socipath (aka Dylan Kleybold), but more like Jared Laughner, a lost soul.
Not defending anything he did. Just being realistic.
Scary part is there are millions of fucked up people just like those two out there.
He killed his mother, then he killed what had been her purpose in life.
If cowardice represents fear of death, privation, etc., he knew that he was going to die and in fact delivered the fatal shot to himself.
Even by asking your question of the “principal or vice principal” you make them more likely initial targets for shooters. Trying to cut teacher pay wasn’t enough for you?
My question is: how many young lives would have been saved if a gun that you would have said, if informed of its protection the day before the shooting, had been safely stored away actually had been safely stored away? And who was supposed to tell her how to do it or make sure that she’d done it?
Would you pay a tax on guns and ammo, cook, to give every gun owner a biometric safe?
“Would you pay a tax on guns and ammo, cook, to give every gun owner a biometric safe?”
That sounds like a good idea to me.
Guns are dangerous tools, mine are locked away on one floor and the ammo is locked away on another. And now I am going a step futher and taking out the firing pins and locking them away in a third location.
She loved guns……..
Sounds like you are drinking the NBC/CNN kool-aid too!
Wait and see…….
The reports still say so. Taught her son how to shoot, too.
The vital guestion:
What corrupted the soul of the teenager to the degree that he murdered his father in his home then drove to the Kindergarten School to murder his mother and then some 20 Kindergarteners? Was it Satan worship? Was it ethical nihilism? I find it hard to believe that the teenager could have murdered his parents and Kindergarteners absent a monster mentor. I don’t believe he became this evil independently.
You may say that it’s Satan that “corrupted his soul”; I think it’s more likely that despite (or maybe more avidly on account of) his mental illness, he learned from our culture that guns are a good means of solving one’s problems. (We can do a lot more about the latter than the former.) A monster mentor, perhaps, but not in the sense you meant.
I presume that these factual errors were inadvertent, Robert, but for the record, so far as I can tell:
(1) He wasn’t a teenager, he was 20.
(2) I’ve heard nothing about his murdering his father at all.
(3) It was his mother whom he murdered in her home.
(4) He went to what was (or had been?) his mother’s classroom, but the adults he killed at the school were others.
(5) I haven’t heard either way, but I didn’t get the sense that all 20 of the kids killed were in Kindergarten.
What we wrongly state as factual now can get repeated as established fact later. I only bring this up because you made all five of those errors in one thirty-three word sentence.
I think its more than guns are a means to solve problems…its violence as a means to solve problems. Look at all the violence in television and I don’t just mean shoot outs. Its the reality shows that seem to promote violence, even if its in the form of words. Bullying someone on tv seems to be the norm and we Americans lap it up or they wouldn’t still be on tv. Hateful rhetoric constantly spews from the pulpits of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.
Don’t even get me started about how we conduct our foreign aid…by dropping bombs via drones (on children I might add) Why aren’t we looking to change the paradigm and stop the madnes…whether its with words or bullets or machetes or whatever.
I am a believer in that we create our own reality and right now that reality looks pretty bleak. Maybe that gunman was crazy or on psycho drugs or thought he was hearing Satan….the fact is we Americans go along with the program because its too *hard* to have this debate…we have shopping to do! We have our own problems to worry about! The guy next door might be getting more “entitlements” than me!
Until we value the lives of other children like we do our own, nothing will get better.
As more information about this tragedy comes out we can debate the merits of things like gun control and mental illness.
I encourage people to read Dave Cullen’s wonderful book: COLUMBINE.
Many of the popular myth’s are dispelled and the stark facts chill any parent to the bone. It is a well researched description of events, both political and personal.
Someday we may get the same thing here, until then it’s easy to blame the “coward”, The “animal” or even the irresponsible dead Mother, who reportedly owned the weapons legally but failed to secure them (from her “coward”, “animal” Son), which if true, it could be argued her irresponsiblility caused this tragedy.
So while Matt Lauer and Anderson Cooper tell us who we should blame, the Political talking heads talk about “GUN CONTROL” (Dan C. chimed in wiith in an hour or two!), Parents wonder WTF Happenned. I am going to wait. Sift through the garbage broadcast and make my own determination (just like when I vote).
Thats what makes me rare around here.
There is a reason for the Judy Clarke’s of the world and thank God for them.
You’re going to wait, eh? You’re rare around here?
This event is like all the others…just a different place, different people.
When it comes to the issue of what kinds of guns people should be permitted to own, what more information do you need?
Well by waiting………….
We’ve learned a lot: The principal wasn’t shot in the foot. The Mom Did’nt teach at the school, The gunman was misidentied, He used the “machine gun”, not a handgun………..and on and on……..The Dad made $500K+ per year helping GE avoid taxes……How long efore that one comes up.
Nothing is going to bring these kids back, certainly not knee jerk political suggestions.
I am increasigly disgusted by the reporting by the likes of Bill Weir……
At my workplace, the news of this massacre involving so many children left us in tear, in sorrow and anger. The questions of another massacre, the mental health of the killer, the availability of guns, and the issues of fate and faith were topics of conversation throughout the day. Thinking about the parents of those children, about the families of the adults killed, about their pain, was emotionally challenging.
I listened to a NPR interview of a Mother Jones reporter who investigated facts on the mass shootings. “In the fierce debate that always follows the latest mass shooting, it’s an argument you hear frequently from gun rights promoters: If only more people were armed, there would be a better chance of stopping these terrible events. This has plausibility problems—what are the odds that, say, a moviegoer with a pack of Twizzlers in one pocket and a Glock in the other would be mentally prepared, properly positioned, and skilled enough to take out a body-armored assailant in a smoke- and panic-filled theater? But whether you believe that would happen is ultimately a matter of theory and speculation. Instead, let’s look at some facts gathered in a two-month investigation “
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
I only heard the first part of that interview, but it was excellent.
He was mentally ill. He had been his whole life. Everyone knew it. He got ahold of guns that his mom owned and he punished everyone he could think of. Sad sad day in the USA. Top notch security at the elementary school as well. He shot through the door and got through. Then did his dirty devil work. Mentally ill are very very dangerous people in all regards at almost all times. Be careful for the next week. With all of the talk of the world ending I predict this will happen several more times. This world has gone nuts.
*Good late news report. Reports say mom was a “gun nut collector” and “competitive Shooter”. Here is a thought…..A middle aged man gets in an loud argument with his wife. The next door neighbor calls the cops. The cops say the guy is yelling at his wife (no physical issues)….they cite him for “Domestic Battery”….arrest him and take every gun in the house. He doesn’t get them back ever. He has been cited and convicted…..if not convicted it usually takes three years to get those guns back.
The Mom had “her kid living with her” that had serious mental problems….why
did she have her guns available. Did he first knock her over the head, kill her, take the key to the gun cabinet and go from there?
Third: The TSA makes 70 year olds remove their shoes, before they get onto a plane. The terrorist are all 18 to 30 year olds. This is the same group that watches violent video games on their laptops, Androids and Computers endlessly….getting their adrenalin rush. Those Video Games need to go…….
and certainly should not be available to anyone under 21. Have our CA Legislators do the right thing and implement the Violent Video Law…..immediately.
“Police Beg Reporters: Leave Grieving Families Alone”
(Reporters acting ghoulish)
http://www.breitbart.com/breitbart-tv
Not just reporters now…it seems that the Westboro Baptist Church is gearing up to show “Gods” love by acting like Satan worshippers.
http://www.examiner.com/article/connecticut-school-shooting-westboro-baptist-church-planning-to-picket
The film ‘Bowling for Columbine” dealt with these questions a decade ago. This is what the film’s director said on July 24th, 2012:
…“Both conservatives and liberals in America operate with firmly held beliefs as to “the why” of this problem. And the reason neither can find their way out of the box toward a real solution is because, in fact, they’re both half right.
The right believes that the Founding Fathers, through some sort of divine decree, have guaranteed them the absolute right to own as many guns as they desire. And they will ceaselessly remind you that a gun cannot fire itself – that “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
Of course, they know they’re being intellectually dishonest (if I can use that word) when they say that about the Second Amendment because they know the men who wrote the constitution just wanted to make sure a militia could be quickly called up from amongst the farmers and merchants should the Brits decide to return and wreak some havoc.
But they are half right when they say “Guns don’t kill people.” I would just alter that slogan slightly to speak the real truth: “Guns don’t kill people, Americans kill people.”
Because we’re the only ones in the first world who do this en masse. And you’ll hear all stripes of Americans come up with a host of reasons so that they don’t have to deal with what’s really behind all this murder and mayhem.
They’ll say it’s the violent movies and video games that are responsible. Last time I checked, the movies and video games in Japan are more violent than ours – and yet usually fewer than 20 people a year are killed there with guns – and in 2006 the number was two!
Others will say it’s the number of broken homes that lead to all this killing. I hate to break this to you, but there are almost as many single-parent homes in the U.K. as there are here – and yet, in Great Britain, there are usually fewer than 40 gun murders a year.
People like me will say this is all the result of the U.S. having a history and a culture of men with guns, “cowboys and Indians,” “shoot first and ask questions later.” And while it is true that the mass genocide of the Native Americans set a pretty ugly model to found a country on, I think it’s safe to say we’re not the only ones with a violent past or a penchant for genocide. Hello, Germany! That’s right I’m talking about you and your history, from the Huns to the Nazis, just loving a good slaughter (as did the Japanese, and the British who ruled the world for hundreds of years – and they didn’t achieve that through planting daisies). And yet in Germany, a nation of 80 million people, there are only around 200 gun murders a year.
So those countries (and many others) are just like us – except for the fact that more people here believe in God and go to church than any other Western nation.
My liberal compatriots will tell you if we just had less guns, there would be less gun deaths. And, mathematically, that would be true. If you have less arsenic in the water supply, it will kill less people. Less of anything bad – calories, smoking, reality TV – will kill far fewer people. And if we had strong gun laws that prohibited automatic and semi-automatic weapons and banned the sale of large magazines that can hold a gazillion bullets, well, then shooters like the man in Aurora would not be able to shoot so many people in just a few minutes.
But this, too, has a problem. There are plenty of guns in Canada (mostly hunting rifles) – and yet the annual gun murder count in Canada is around 200 deaths. In fact, because of its proximity, Canada’s culture is very similar to ours – the kids play the same violent video games, watch the same movies and TV shows, and yet they don’t grow up wanting to kill each other. Switzerland has the third-highest number of guns per capita on earth, but still a low murder rate.
So – Moore’s response to the question “why us?” is in the link below.
http://michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/its-guns-we-all-know-its-not-really-guns
*Just a slight word of caution. At the outbreak of World War II……..there were not enough firearms available for troops to practice their marksmanship with. We actually used broomsticks. Oddly enough the same was true at the outbreak of our own Revolutionary War. The Founding Fathers knew that they could not field an adequate armed force without volunteers with their own firearms.
The 2nd Amendment does make us different from every other country. Both parties have declared us…..the “Global Policeman”. We now have a completely volunteer military. Right now, we will be drawing down our forces. This might proceed for several years, but just when you think we do not need a larger military…..things have a way of happening.
It is totally outlandish to think that a 20 year veteran of the Marine Corps that retires to his farm in Iowa…..is ill equiped to have his own Military Style firearm. First off it is like a old friend. When you have been sleeping with the same AR-CAR…..of M-4 for 10 years…you know both the dangers and the safe operation that will not endanger anyone.
This is why…one Law does not fit all occasions. Well, except the one about Mental Deficiencies or Mental Disability. Which we already have on the books and may need to be better enforced – by a damn site!
*Guess you should buy a couple of tickets to “Red Dawn”….or buy the original with Patrick Swayze.
“First off it is like a old friend. When you have been sleeping with the same AR-CAR…..of M-4 for 10 years…you know both the dangers and the safe operation that will not endanger anyone.”
So by that reasoning the bubblehead serving on the submarine who sleeps in the bunk on top of the Polaris Missile, should be able to keep one of those under his bed when he retires and moves to Montana.
What could go wrong there ?
When global warming makes submarines appropriate for Montana, we might all want our own Polaris missiles.
Is it Winship Weekend again already?
*Polaris missiles? All you need is training for the Montana horseflies. As large as my big toe!. Then you’ll want screen doors on your submarine.
I mean that you’ll need them to deter the stinking Dakotans from across Lake Teton.
Ryan, I guess that I am one of the people that Wikipedia warned me about, using “pistol” as a synonym for handheld firearm. Let’s put it this way: I don’t want civilians owning semi-automatic rifles, including handheld carbines like the Bushmaster used in this attack. There’s an intermediate position saying “OK inside the home for self-defense, not OK outside the home” — but I’m just not sure that that works. (I don’t want police having them at home either due to the risk of theft. They can check them out from station armories as need be and keep a semi-automatic pistol with reasonably limited magazines at home.)
Having barred shoulder and hand-held rifles from private civilian use, the question is what handheld firearms (including the possibility of limitations on magazines taking into account time to reload) people should be able to have for personal protection. My opening bid is: something less than would allow them pull off a massacre like this before someone brains them with a chair. I’m open to debate, though.
Another issue concerning Walmart, gun sales:
“Although it is not yet clear where the Bushmaster AR-15 used by Lanza (and registered to his mother) was purchased, the model is familiar to many Walmart shoppers. It’s on sale at about 1,700 Walmart stores nationwide, though the retail chain pulled the weapon from its website early this afternoon. While last week’s deadly rampage in Connecticut has finally and unmistakably highlighted the madness of making these weapons so readily available, it’s a concern many people with a Walmart in their community have been trying to address for much longer”
http://www.thenation.com/article/171808/how-walmart-helped-make-newtown-shooters-ar-15-most-popular-assault-weapon-america
Thanks for doing a post on this. Most blogs with feelings did one. I noticed that the FFFF Bushala blog didn’t even mention it one time or do a post or a picture or anything. Shows the heart they have over there and where their hearts are. Sick.
It’s too bad. I’ve been trying to figure out what their take on this would be. The “blame public employees” angle doesn’t leap out at me.