Thoughts on the Newtown Shootings
Details about the horrible school shooting in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown, Connecticut, are still emerging. According to some reports, the shooter had “a dispute” with his mother, and so targeted her and her kindergarten class. As of this writing, it seems that 20 children and 7 adults, including the 20-year-old mad man who murdered them, are dead.
What can one say? The horror is particularly close to home for me and my family if only because until this year our son went to school in Newtown (but not at Sandy Hook). Mute horror seems appropriate as a first response to such obscene displays of malevolence. But already one is hearing the predictable homilies about “gun control,” as if depriving people of their liberties would somehow contravene evil. Some wacko loads up some firearms and murders a couple score innocent people, ergo certain moralists conclude that they must confiscate guns from the rest of us. Had a few teachers been packing heat, the twisted soul who murdered his mother and those school kids might have been stopped after getting off but a couple of shots. Who knows how many lives might have been saved?
I had similar thoughts a few years ago when another wacko killed some 30 people at Virginia Tech. At the time, I had this to say:
Of the many things that can be said about the horrible shooting at Virginia Tech today, one thing that we have already heard too often is that the shooting is offers a compelling argument against citizens owning guns. Right on cue, Jim Sollo, representing Virginians Against Handgun Violence, told reporters that “We live in a society where guns are pretty well accepted. There are 200 million guns in this society and obviously some in the wrong hands.” Well, yes. And that means? That we should concentrate all instruments of violence in the hands of an increasingly bureaucratic and meddlesome state, thus rendering ordinary citizens even more defenseless? I don’t think so, but that is what well meaning people like Mr. Sollo, appropriately horrified by such slaughter as we have seen today, conclude. My own feeling is that if a few responsible students and faculty had been in possession of the requisite firearms they might have made the death toll a lot lower, or even–had they been especially alert–eliminated it altogether, or at least reduced it to the gratifying number of one, that of the perpetrator. A famous Roman military historian noted that si vis pacem, para bellum: if you want peace, prepare for war. Good advice, that. And if you want domestic tranquility, an armed and responsible citizenry ready and able to protect life and property is not a bad way to start.
As you prepare for the inevitable onslaught of efforts to exploit this tragedy in order to curtail our right to defend ourselves, it is worth pausing to remember that Roman’s words of wisdom.
Also read: Evil Is to Blame
Couldn’t agree more. Take guns away, and the crazies will use bombs, acid, poison, clubs, knives, and fire.
The problem lies in a culture that doesn’t have a reasonable basis for its values. Okay, here’s a mini-course for private-school educators (let’s face it, any mention of values among high-school parents evokes argument-to-deadlock).
What do people want? They want, according to Albert Einstein, the Vedas, and anyone with common sense – to experience greater happiness and avoid suffering.
What’s the shortest path to achieve that happy goal? By using the five tools of human action and perception expansively: employing body, feeling, will, mind, and soul in ways that increase health, love, strength, wisdom, and joy.
Is it possible to achieve this with young people? You bet. Exhibit A: the non-sectarian Living Wisdom Schools (www.livingwisdomschool.org).
Forget the common sense bit, it doesn’t penetrate the ideology of the left, that’s a deadend.
Wrong. If you take the guns away the thugs and crazies will keep right on using guns. And yes. They knowp the guns are against the law, they just don’t care. Thats why they are criminals.
True, If you want real slaughter, wait until they begin using pipe bombs filled with finishing nails or ball bearings. There is no way to stop people making them as they can be made from perfectly common household ingredients. Fill them with finish nails as shrapnel and instead of 20, you’ll get 200 dead. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, Which does the more damage, guns or IEDs?
Klebold and partner Harris of the trench coat mafia (Columbine massacre) had a backpack full of pipe bombs filled with tacks and nails. Thank God they left the pack somewhere where a door locked behind them, denying them use of the bombs in their rampage. If they had had ten or fifteen pipe bombs and chucked them into rooms with lots of people, the death and maimed count would have been in the HUNDREDS, not dozens. Someone in Russia chucked a single pipe bomb filled with ball bearings and killed several. A homemade bomb derailed a train in Russia and killed 26. How did most of the children and teachers die in Beslan (Russia)? Not by guns, by explosives.
Making things explode is ridiculously easy. You can make a bomb with sugar as the main ingredient. You can make Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP), a very powerful and brisant liquid explosive, from stuff you can buy in any WalMart. No way to stop mad bombers, especially if they are suicidal.
From Psalm 10, King James Bible,
Why standest thou afar off, O LORD?
Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?
The LORD is far off because he has been barred from our public schools.
Wow, and all along I had thought God was omnipotent…
You should have payed more attention in school.
More gun = more safety. Elementary school should not be the scene of “war”. America is sick, sick, sick, and more guns will not cure the sickness. Thanks for the prescient post.
re:”More gun = more safety”
If that were the case then Africa would be the safest place on earth.
You cannot compare a healthy, functioning society to a place where civil war is rampant. Besides, even there, your argument does not fit the facts. Machetes were a popular weapon in some of the conflicts.
The cold hard reality is that guns do improve safety. The one exception to mass killings at school shootings is the Appalachian School of Law incident. There, two armed students stopped the shooter before he could get too far.
America would be a more dangerous place if we couldn’t own guns! Trust hugo-bama? It takes a thug seconds to shoot you even if a cop is a minute away!
The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. End of argument.
Laws that disarm people who would defend children from mass murderers are immoral. We’ve done the experiment. Gun free zones are killing zones.
More guns more commonly in the hands of the just make for more holes in the unjust.
That would be a good start.
Back in old times our ancestors were all armed, but there were no shootings of children. Maybe there is something wrong with people not guns?
No but people used to have duels in the street- I’m not sure you can make the statement that there was less gun violence in the good old days.
You can if you dont take your history from tv and the movies. Actual history shows shootings and duels in the streets exceeding rare.
True.
Most gunslingers were notorious cowards, preferring to pounce on their intended victims by surprise. The shootout at the OK Corral was heralded as an anomaly to the culture of the times, even when it occurred.
Cowboys carried firearms to fend off critters and varmints, not to engage in gunplay against a person.
TV, movies and pulp fiction have turned the history of The West into a cartoon.
Duels, when they did occur, happened under a code duello that was very specific in defining the parameters of the duel. These were not random events in busy streets, these were personal vendettas among usually high ranking people and there was elaborate formality surrounding them.
Roger, you couldn’t be more correct. Unfortunately, we live in a nation of clueless dolts who couldn’t be more unaware of the fact that the Gods of the Copybook Headings limp closer every day. There is one Hell of a price to be paid for the idiocy this nation has accepted as given and payment of that bill is long overdue. When it hits this country is coming apart at the seams like a piece of sun-rotted canvas.
The solution here is obvious….public school officials have repeatedly failed and refused to protect our kids at public schools….so eliminate public schools and go to either private schools or home schooling…I hope the parents of those dead kids sue the balls off that local school district
I agree that public schools have to go, but for different reasons. Unfortunately, eliminating public schools will not fix this problem. In Nickel Mines, PA, a gunman shot up an Amish one room schoolhouse a few years ago.
Homeschooling protects kids from shooters, bullies, and even garden variety propagandists.
“If God does not exist, everything is permitted” (F.Dostoevsky)
I believe it’s always important to examine ALL the data. Otherwise you’re tempted to cherry-pick data to support preconceived notions.
First of all, mass shootings aren’t limited to the U.S. In fact, there are far more mass shootings outside the U.S. than in it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers
So any theory of what to do about these rampages, needs to be able to account for such rampages no matter where they occur.
Secondly, those who claim that teachers should be armed, ignore the fact that most teachers are liberals who will refuse. We’ll never know if these particular teachers who were killed today would have been willing to pack heat. It wouldn’t surprise me if they weren’t.
Wasn’t that Amish school a gun-free zone also? Public school = gun-free zone.
Private school = gunfree zone. Public theater = gun-free zone. Damn!
Gun-free zone = Killing field.
Got it?
So the man totally without a conscience, the Gun Running Merchant Of Death, Obama, who sent thousands upon thousands of guns (mainly assault weapons) to Mexican drug gangs, getting hundreds, if not thousands, and that’s so far, of men, women and children, including toddlers, brutally shot to death expects us to now believe he is heartbroken over the shooting deaths of a small fraction of that number? Who could possibly be stupid enough to believe this?
To quote NY City detective Sgt. Nick Yemana, “Very well put.”
I couldn’t agree more.
“Who could possibly be stupid enough to believe this?”
So many people believe it it’ll make your hair stand up.
For some reason, I didn’t turn off the radio when Herr Obama spoke today. Just a radio listen and I could hear how fake this cat is and could almost taste the crocodile tears over the airwaves.
When I watched the clip, oh my gawd. It was 1000x worse than I thought. Calling the Academy, we have a nominee for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
And every single MSM article and news clip today fawning over “his emotional press conference” (Sawyer) and “he repeatedly wiped away tears and paused to control himself.” (Tapper)
WTF?!!! North Korea ain’t got nothin’ on us. We are in deep, deep doo-doo people.
I agree, thought_criminal. And who the heck is Obama to prattle on about “SOMETHING must be done”?
First of all, he’s a narcissist: being out of control infuriates him. I couldn’t watch the video: the sound of his reptilian, weirdly inflected voice makes my skin crawl. IF he were crying, it’s because he’s not in control—not for the kids.
His “This violence must be stopped” meme is a cruel scam. Remember, “To a knife fight, bring a gun”, “Get in their faces”, “Punish your enemies, “Vote to get revenge”. . . This guy is “Mr. Vengeance” himself: a Chicago thug, pure and simple.
This tragedy was not caused by guns: it’s the culture. God has been put into the closet and violence stalks the land: self-referential, permanent adolescents; life-is-cheap abortion on demand—over ONE MILLION unborn victims/year; media and internet violence: vampires, zombies, massacres 24/7 . . .
Take a Godless, narcissistic culture (including a Narcissist in Chief), with violent images and narratives everywhere and virtually no consequences allowed for anti-social behaviour—I’m a teacher: I know all about that—and what else would one expect?
I can see Obama using this tragedy to further straightjacket American freedoms: that, after all, is his goal.
If God had had the forethought to include in the tablet He gave to Moses some few thousand years ago (that have served as the blueprint the Hammurabi, Jewish, Christian, Greek, Roman, European, British-American, Napoleonic and European Legal Codes) a few simple rules like honor your parents and teachers, don’t steal your parent’s property (such as their tools, vehicles and weapons), don’t trespass onto other people’s property, don’t kill children or anyone, don’t abandon your children or leave them without honorable adult role models of both genders and don’t do anything so shameful that requires you to kill yourself to avoid legal prosecution. Those rules somehow Moses never got, but we can fill these gaps with gun control from the same people that gave us drug control and, during Prohibition, liquor control, and took care to prevent the attacks on Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, The Bataan Death March, the Fall of Corregidor, Wake Island and a hundred other disasters like the drowning of New Orleans and the recent Sandy disaster. Yeah, gun control will work like a charm just like the 1920′s arms and Naval Treaties and League of Nations prevented World War II and then the United Nations brought Peace to Africa. Gun Control will make a liberal feel better for a day though.
If the guns this madman used were traced back to the Fast and Furious gun-running fiasco, do you think we’ll ever be told?
Excellent observation. (There’s also Obama’s rumored gun running to Syria via Libya). I thought Obama’s eye rubbing was a theatrical gesture, nothing more.
Liberals? Progressives? Democrats?
The real question that needs to be asked is why are we increasingly producing these amoral monsters. I remember the day when Richard Speck murdering 7 nurses in Chicago was unfathomable and the only random mass killing I recall from those more civil days was Charles Whitman in the tower at the University of Texas. Now they are semi-regular events as American society descends into madness.
Is it the cheap and tawdry popular culture that sears young people’s souls? Is it the collapse of families triggering rage in children cast aside? Is it violent video games or the demonic?
I held my fragile, smiling beautiful little grandbaby last night. To think this soul dead heartless bastard snuffed out the lives of somebody else’s babies breaks my heart. God help us , evil stalks the land.
I think the problem goes beyond the issue of societal decadence. The US health care system deals very, very poorly with the issue of mental illness, personality disorders & other anomalies that prompt people to do insane things. Until they figure out a way to get a better grip on these issues, they will be poorly prepared in the future to head these sorts of tragedies off at the pass. Talk of gun control is useless, as all it does is keep guns out of the hands of the law-abiding. The young man in question at today’s tragic event did not have legal access to guns, so any discussion of employing stricter gun control is void of any credibility. What we need is better nutcase control.
I’ll buy that, that we need to better get control of mad dogs. I guess the question is how? Are there accurate predictors of who’s going to go off? I think the fragmentation of society is a factor because it’s indisputable that random acts of murder are becoming more common. I’ve quoted it before but I think it’ prescient of our age, these lines from W.B. Yeats’ “the Second Coming”:
hit the wrong button. Here’s the lines:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
To my mind the root of the problem lies with the hobbling of the ability to employ one powerful tool due to its declared status of being not politically correct. What’s this tool? Profiling!. Thus, these dangerous people literally fall through the cracks & manage as a result to trespass across boundaries that allow them to rob us of the things that mean the most to us: Our freedoms & our children. If only the signs of this young man’s instability (which will likely come out into the open over th course of the next few days if not weeks) could have been exploited as a means to contain him & make available to him the help he needed, resulting in the protection from him his victims so desperately needed! Much work must be done, & it doesn’t start with yet more restrictive gun control laws!
I agree with most of what you say, but apparently the shooter DID have access to legally owned guns. They were purchased legally by his mother, and she apparently gave the guns to the shooter as gifts which appears to be legal under Connecticut law as long as the giftee is age 18 or older.
One in a million,no,one in 300,000,000.{do the math} Not bad! Never let an opportunity go to waste!
Well, there are some things that can be done to get better control of those mad dogs. For one thing, the power to forcibly commit the mentally ill to institutions was severely gutted in the 1970s. Prior to that, however, there was a substantial amount of abuse of the commitment power and very poor treatment of those subjected to it. Perhaps we simply went too far in the other direction in the effort to right that wrong, and it is time to reevaluate at what point it is justifiable to commit the mentally disturbed. Therein is a whole other pandora’s box of questions like “Who gets to decide what constitutes severe enough illness?”, but it’s a starting point.
I think the more serious answer is the one nobody really wants to admit: bad, even horrible, things will happen and there is no way to stop all of it. Society seems to be animated by the idea that every bad thing is preventable if only we did this, did that, took rights away from this group or that. Thomas Sowell refers to this as the “unconstrained vision” of liberals versus the “constrained vision” of conservatives. The latter recognize that not every contingency can be accounted for or ameliorated, and that the effort to do so can sometimes introduce more anguish.
Agreed. And even families, friends, etc. that have ID’d those close to them as potentially violent don’t have a lot of options beyond keeping a close eye on the person.
Remember that article from a few months ago? It was titled something like “Can you really call an 8-year old a psychopath?” In the article, a family of married parents and three children had a son that they were pretty sure was a budding psycho. The kid was manipulative, violent, and seemed to have no empathy for others or remorse for any of his actions. Naturally, the parents were seriously concerned about the kid’s ability to do harm in the future, but there wasn’t much they could actually DO about it.
In the case of yesterday’s shooter, and with the Viriginia Tech killer as well, it seems that quite a few people had recognized that they were deeply troubled individuals. But again, beyond keeping them away from weapons, what do you actually DO with people like that? Institutionalize them? I just don’t know.
I think that today’s problems can be traced back to the day when the libs prohibited parents from spanking their kids. A lot of kids probably lacked the love and nourishing being brought up, as well. I know I can remember a few whoopins that I received 45 or so years ago and looking back, I felt that I deserved them. It made me respect my dad and others as well. A lot of kids are running about all willy nilly these days with no clue of real values.
“Is it the cheap and tawdry popular culture that sears young people’s souls? Is it the collapse of families triggering rage in children cast aside? Is it violent video games or the demonic?”
I say all of the above. Good post.
The crazies used to be locked up, which had its own set of problems, of course.
Everything in life is a tradeoff, despite what libwits think. You can’t be absolutely “fair” to everybody who exhibits anti-social behavior, and not expect some horrific incidents.
We currently are medicating our kids with psychotropic medications at rates never before imagined.
Those medications actually carry a black box warning in Britain that a person on those medications or who has just gone off of those medications can experience suicidal and/or homocidal thoughts.
Now imagine kids being medicated with this stuff for decades. What happens when these kids grow up and get out into the wider world on their own with no responsible adult to make sure they stay on their meds.
Most of the kids who end up with these prescriptions are white males.
Most shooters are white males.
Every single shooter I have reserched was on some type of psychotropic medication.
Coincicence? I doubt it….
Thank you for making this point.
trangbang68 — Liberals? Progressives? Democrats?
almost the stupidest article yet.
Yup. Arm all teachers with automatic weapons, and the kids with snub nose pistols (easier to pack in lunchboxes or backpacks. Blast away. Yup. That’ll fix it, Roger. What a maroon.
I now formally resign for ever reading another PJ article. All the gun nuts can post whatever they want about me, I won’t see it.
Don’t let the door give you a concussion while you’re heading out. And have a proctologist look at that soon, you could suffocate.
And yes, this and the Aurora shooting would almost certainly have ended sooner and with lower body counts–and quite likely not happened at all–if there had commonly been armed teachers there.
Why do you think police–who generally receive inadequate training in their use, compared to civilians–carry guns? To use them to stop people efficiently, generally resulting in their death, but if they live for trial, so much the better.
Well, intially, The Darwin Effect would have its way…but in two or three years, things would settle down, dramatically.
I have a more pressing question about the trend the author mentioned, in passing.
The pattern I see, or a part of it, anyway, is this:
Demonize the right.
Get a left-wing activist with celebrity cred to float a trial balloon, ‘Obama oughta jail his opponents.’ (Variations include punishing the left’s opponents in some fashion.)
Rinse and repeat until you gain popular support for jailing Obama’s opponents.
Same-same wrt anything else. Whatever happens, demonize the right until enough of the population goes along with the idea that you can take full and complete power from the right…and dispense with any opposition at all.
Obamacare sets up a tyranny, in all but name. Read it, even a part of it, and you’ll see what I mean. The right gave us the DHS and TSA, which quite openly instituted a police state in all but name…but those departments are now filled with left-wingers.
Left-wingers either have control, or will soon have control, of the DoD and The Pentagon.
They already have the CIA, FBI and other alpha-bits. (They’ve owned the state department for years.)
Once they have the Supreme Court…all they need to do is to cripple the Republicans in the House, the latter of which has been all but achieved.
Meanwhile, conservatives are complaining about it, and attacking each other …in their echo chambers on internet forum…as if they were little kids who are whistling past the graveyard.
Which is what the left wants. A splintered, ineffective, powerless, oppostion.
Now, what do we do about it?
You are right about these things, and the 2nd Amendment is the last standing constitutional defense against the future they have planned. And that is why they will see it dismantled at any cost. That was the entire purpose of Fast & Furious.
sinz54: false. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers:_School_massacres
China has a population of 1 billion, and they have stringent controls on guns, so according to your logic, 4x as many people should have died in school shootings in China, say, in China than in the United States, right?
It’s really no use arguing with people who believe that the right to bear arms in the Second Amendment leaves no room for taking proactive measures to prevent psychopaths from buying assault rifles. I’ll just leave you all with a quote from Adam Gopnik’s excellent piece in the New Yorker today:
“The people who fight and lobby and legislate to make guns regularly available are complicit in the murder of those children. They have made a clear moral choice: that the comfort and emotional reassurance they take from the possession of guns, placed in the balance even against the routine murder of innocent children, is of supreme value. Whatever satisfaction gun owners take from their guns—we know for certain that there is no prudential value in them—is more important than children’s lives. Give them credit: life is making moral choices, and that’s a moral choice, clearly made.”
Tens of millions of chinese people were killed to implement those strict gun control laws by the emerging communist government. Tens of MILLIONS, but I guess that is a small price to pay for gun control from the left and the ability to enforce their enlightened rule upon the ones who would not resist tyranny by an oligarchy.
So if guns were made completely illegal for any person to own, or for police and military to have outside of their duty status, there would be no crime, correct? Timothy McVeigh killed more people the morning of April 19th 1995 with a car, some fertilizer and some gasoline than all the school shootings combined. Three airplanes taken over by men with box-cutters took the life of over 3,000 on September 11th. Please tell me again how guns are the problem.
Funny, I don’t see the Belsen School crisis on that list of rampages. I guess when 380 Russian children are killed by Chechen Islamic radicals it doesn’t count.
Here is your answer on China. The killers will find a way.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20723910
I tend to see all of this as a very painful off shoot in the culture of death.
Walker, your perception of what is and what is not moral is a day late and a generation lost.
yep we are just as complicit as the do-gooders who shut down the insane assylums, the liberals who lobby to allow crazies to sleep in the street, the psychologists who lobby to label insanity as just another minor ailment that can be treated with the right powders, the media people who sensationalize every crime that happens (thus encouraging copy-cats), the movie industry that bases 90% of its content on violence, the liberals who have destroyed black families and created a culture of violence in black communities, the mentality that encourages people to expect everything they see on tv without working, and dozens of other causes that people like you conveniently forget in your blind rush to take guns away from law-abiding citizens, which conveniently also just happens to remove one of the few remaining roadblocks to liberal tyranny.
And of course, the news is making a lot of hub-bub about the fact that “the guns were legally purchased”…which they were…*by Nancy* (the shooter’s mother). So this shooting was carried off with *stolen* (ie. illegally obtained) firearms.
Murder and violence are most cherished themes of Hollywood.
Take look at computer games – teenagers are so excited to watch how they kill everything moving.
Video games and movies, both protected by the 1st amendment, have less to do with this than guns and the 2nd do. The violence rate has generally been falling, and the games and movies are if anything more prevalent and more violent.
The violence rate has generally been falling? Where in the heck do you live? Pluto?
Right here, in the US, where the violence rate has been falling for going on two decades.
Don’t imagine we don’t see your fraudulent bait and switch there. No one objects to adjudicated psychopaths being deprived of weapons, at least not any more than think NAMBLA has a good point. Gopnik is wrong, there is no union between the set of people who acknowledge the obvious meaning of the 2nd Amendment, that the government has no just power to deprive the common people of militarily relevant means to insurrection, and the set of people who commit mass murder with firearms vaguely resembling such (which such in any case the 2nd Amendment protects a right to make, move, trade and sell, own, carry, and procure ammunition and training for).
This was intended to be directed at Walker, #12.
“It’s really no use arguing with people who believe that the right to bear arms in the Second Amendment leaves no room for taking proactive measures to prevent proactive measures to prevent psychopaths from buying assault rifles.”s from buying assault rifles.”
Your comment “….proactive measures to prevent psychopaths from buying assault rifles” is rather amazing. All to many people are brain washed by the self proclaimed social psychological experts. Psychopaths are defined as persons with an antisocial personality disorder **manifested** in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse. Every charateristic listed is subjective in nature and degree and affects 99% of all human beings at some time and circumstance in their lives. Get a grip on reality!
Assault rifles. Any of various automatic or semiautomatic rifles designed for individual use in combat. Okay, take all “assault rifles” off the market and that takes care of that….right? Wrong! In a matter of a few short ‘minutes’ any clip fed handgun and rifle can be converted to an automatic weapon. Get a grip on reality!
If you don’t like the idea of a free society protected by a constitution and can’t bear the occaisionaly negative consequences, then there are any number of other nations available to you to live in.
The reply to link failed — intended for Walker #12
Matthew 11:23
“And you, Capernaum! You won’t be lifted up to heaven, will you? You’ll go down to Hell! Because if the miracles that happened in you had taken place in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. “
If we cannot protect the baby in the womb, we cannot keep children safe period!
What we are seeing is a complete lack of value of human life period.
Mother Teresa made that case at a prayer breakfast during the Clinton administration. She shook her bony finger at the power brokers in DC and told them that they had loosed a spirit of murder in the land because of abortion.I don’t believe she was applauded or invited back.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/12/14/connecticut-school-shooting-gun-control/1770345/
Shooters have no fear of punishment, unless by their own hand. What punishment have the Ft. Hood, Aurora, Tucson shooters received? Publicity, endless investigations and court proceedings, psychological evaluations, shifting blame to societal environments. These shootings would greatly diminish if there was swift and fatal punishment.
Questions
Did Nancy Lanza belong to a teacher’s union?
Did she put her son and many other male students on Ritalin or other such drugs?
Was she a feminist?
Did she make the kids sing songs of praise to Obama?
Was she a warrior in the War on Men?
If so, Adam Lanza may have killed her in revenge for her emasculation of him and then the kids to prevent her evil spawn from replicating.
Self-pimpage: Societal Necrosis
With a gun, you are still defenseless.
Because the funny thing about bad guys is that they shoot *first*. A gun is not a shield.
And when the bad guy has shot first, and all of you stream out into the hallway, your weapons drawn… How do you know who to shoot? Everyone is armed. Everyone is *visibly* armed, visibly upset, visibly looking for a target.
A well-armed society is a society in which a lot of people die from firearms. The end.
More americans own cars and cell phones and use them improperly than Americans with guns who can aim them properly.
The real end.
Incoherent *and* irrelevant.
Create a law that every adult should own and carry a gun.
Like I said before: The Darwin Effect would be in play for a few years, but after that, things will settle down, dramatically. The bad guys (and even the nutcases) would at least hesitate to open fire in a public place of any kind. …and even if they used fully automatic weapons, they might not, or probably would not, survive the experience. We might still lose a few citizens, here and here, as is the case now, but we will no longer lose them in job lots.
No. I’m completely serious.
Freedom at any price, at any cost.
Anything less is tyranny and slavery.
…and I’m not just talking about the left’s policies and programs, here, either. That was a huge part of the reson we were given The Second Amendment: To keep everyone more or less honest about trying to use government to force others to do things they don’t want to do, or shouldn’nt be required to do. It doesn’t matter which party is in power. The Second Amendment applies towards keeping all of them in check.
You are probably serious. But your suggestion is not. Neither is it sane.
“A well-armed society is a society in which a lot of people die from firearms. The end.”
Brilliant! Now, pray tell, what do lots of people die from in an unarmed society? Rope, machetes, axe handles, flaming tires soaked in gasoline, swords, spears, pillows over the face, baseball bats, knives of all descriptions, physical beatings, bombs, cars driven into crowds, airplanes into buildings, starvation…..the list is endless. One can’t even say “the end”. If you wish to be defenseless and be totally at the mercy of a crazed loon who would bash your head in with a rock then that is your right. Go for it.
I think you might want to aquaint yourself with the effects of gunshot wounds.
Yesterday there were two attempts at massacre. One in the US, one in China. In the US a gun was used. In China, a knife. There were approximately the same number of victims. Death toll: US 28. China zero.
Number of people murdered by the Chinese Communists (the guys who implemented gun control): around 75 million.
Kind of takes some of the luster off their “success” in minimizing societal violence.
If we’re going to have a discussion, do you think it would be possible if we could at least keep the goalposts on the same continent? I have no inclination to go chasing butterflies with you.
The robbers who storm liquor stores “shoot first” too. But an armed owner stop them from time to time.
If you entered a room with 40 people who were armed, you’ll get mowed down. If you escaped into the hallway, someone will recognize him. They’ll scream “that’s him” or “the guy wearing all black is the shooter”. Or something.
You assume that anyone will *know* who the shooter is. But the more people with guns there are, the more likely it is that someone will be wrong, and after shooting someone else, they in turn will be assumed to be the shooter, and so on. Chaos. Instantly. And the more people with guns, the more chaos.
Is this so hard to understand? The real world does not give out perfect information, and in a situation like this, wrong information and a gun will create more problems, not less.
If you are in a place where a shootout starts: Run or hide. Your legs are your best defence. A gun will get you killed. And if you are really lucky, you’ll kill some other bystander as well. The chances of you getting to be a hero, or even someone who fired a gun and survived, are not good. *Really* not good.
“With a gun, you are still defenseless.”
Did you just wake up stupid this morning, or were you educated that way?
Do us a favor, and quit spewing CRAP with no basis in reality whatsoever.
Ad hominem. Content: None. Would you like to try again?
“Try again.”
Why?
All of your other posts are full of mostly nothing but conjecture.
You have already drawn your conclusion and you obviously won’t let little things like facts get in the way.
You will dismiss outright ANY attempts at showing you where armed victims not only reduced the carnage, but in most cases, stopped the perpetrator COLD in their tracks.
Since it also doesn’t fit your warped preconceived thought processes, you will ignore that MOST people that choose to carry DON’T just waltz down to the local gun store, plunk down the cash then stuff it in their pants then walk out the door.
MOST people I know learn tactics and get training in shoot/no shoot scenarios, legal ramifications, etc. Ever hear of Gunsite? How about “Hogans’ Alley” scenarios? Jeff Cooper? Masaad Ayoob? Firearms Academy of Seattle? I could go on, there are many many training sites across the nation that cater to both civilians and law enforcement.
Oh, BTW, which organization in the US trains the most cops in firearm handling?
I’m waiting…. (I’ll give you a hint, it is a three letter acronym, starts with “N” and ends with “A.”)
I think that you don’t even have a clue of how trained people would respond, thus the ‘they will just shoot each other,’ because that is what you fervently HOPE will happen.
You might want to exercise that grey matter that is keeping your skull from imploding and look up the statistics on cops vs armed civilian ‘bad shootings.’
Also pay attention to ‘shots fired’ vs ‘hits on target’ between the two groups.
Wanna hint? (The cops accuracy isn’t really that good compared to the ‘civilians’..)
I see you tried again.
Firstly, dear. You did not include any facts. You did not even try to include any facts. Your post *only* included name-calling, and the only reason I replied to you was that otherwise you’d be the only one not getting a reply and you’d be sad.
“You will dismiss outright ANY attempts at showing you where armed victims not only reduced the carnage, but in most cases, stopped the perpetrator COLD in their tracks.”
I cannot dimiss what you don’t include, sadface. Would you like to have this discussion, or shall we proceed (as you already seem to have done) to the conclusion that I win? It would save you some time, but I’d be less amused than I am likely to be if you keep trying.
As for the rest of your screed, it merely suggests that yes, it takes a lot of training to be even minimally proficient in a tactical situation. Which *again* suggests that “more guns will make us safer!” is utter bullcrap. Thank you for making my point.
@Mjuam
“I cannot dimiss what you don’t include, sadface.”
Ad hominem yourself.
No, I expect YOU to look at the relevant statistics generated by the various law enforcement agencies across the US. I expect YOU to run the search engine of your choice and look for mass shootings stopped by armed citizens and maybe throw in a few foiled armed robbery/carjacking/etc. while you’re at it.
If I sent you links to the myriad of situations ‘resolved’ by armed citizens, it wouldn’t matter. You’d just brush it off as ‘Romney’ research.
Perhaps it is because if you were HONEST and did the research, you’d find out the truth.
“Ad hominem” is a term for a rhetorical attack in which one claims that the opponent can be ignored because he is an idiot. I claimed you were an idiot because you did not include any facts for me to dismiss, then claimed I dismissed facts. This is not an ad hominem. It’s pretty much the opposite, in that I claim that you’re an idiot because your claims are incoherent and irrelevant.
Thank you for playing.
““Ad hominem” is a term for a rhetorical attack in which one claims that the opponent can be ignored because he is an idiot.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself, but no, you are not an idiot. Far from it. You have a highly developed sense of what you want to believe in, facts be dammed. Your debate technique is related to strategies put forth by Cloward, Piven and the often quoted Goebbels.
You attempt to redirect,obfuscate, and then when that doesn’t work, stoop to attempting to denigrate the opponent, but on no occasion challenge the facts head on.
However, the problem with those techniques is related to trying to apply them to arguments where the facts just don’t support your point of view, and the people you are debating with know it.
Obfuscation, you are a master of, not…
Steve…
Still no facts. Just a rant about me. This isn’t about me. It is about facts. Facts your side still hasn’t been able to trot out. As seen below, when trotting out “facts”, you so very often just play right into my hands because you do not understand the statistics and you read things into event-descriptions that just aren’t there.
I’d ask you to try again, but I fear I have no more time to play with you. You have been amusing, if neither constructive nor original. My thanks.
“The end,” says someone who has never given such scenarios a second thought. Of course, death by gun is worse than death by anything else… Gun control advocates like to trot out the number of suicides by gun in the USA. Here in Japan, there are more suicides committed per capita than there are gun deaths per capita in the USA, and the Japanese manage to accomplish that feat without a whole lot of firearms. There are a lot of ways to kill people – always have been and always will be. Do you get my point? Probably not.
Strawman. There is no need to even mention suicides when you have *40* times the firearms murders of the UK, adjusted for population.
Strawman? No, you are the strawman. You deliberately ignore the point, because that is the only way you can ‘prove’ your argument.
Take away the guns held in the hands of the law abiding civilians, and the >victim< count goes up. Period.
Proven around the world, year after year.
The amount of guns in circulation in the US is at an all time high, and the overall crime rate is falling. (Especially if you ignore the areas that have the strictest gun control laws.)
When I say “strawman”, I mean a strawman argument.
“A straw man or straw person is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.”
No-one needs to claim anything about the suicide rates because the US murder-by-firearms -rate is so insane. Hence your strawman argument falls on its own utter lack of logic.
As for your (unsubstantiated) statistics on crime rates, I must assume you shop for your statistics in the same place as the Romney campaign did. I would also add something about correlation and causation, but you’d probably only get (even more) confused.
@ Mjaum
First of all, stop trotting out the “gun deaths” BS. Compare murders to murders, a murder with a gun is no worse than one with a knife. Claiming that the UK has 40 times less “gun deaths” is a false argument because you never directly compare overall violent crime rates, the actual important indicator. I couldn’t care less what the instrument of murder was, just that the murder occurred. Further you should compare rates of violent crime generally, including those not ending in death. In my opinion an attempted rape where the rapist is shot and killed by the would be victim is preferable to a case where he rapes her but nobody dies. Similarly, statistics have shown that a criminal in the US will case a home they are intending to rob for on average 3 times as long as a criminal in the UK. In the US they try and make sure that nobody is home before breaking in so that they won’t get shot, in the UK breaking in while everybody’s home just gives them some extra fun.
And finally, areas of the US with the strongest gun laws have the highest crime rates. Areas with few firearm restrictions and high rates of concealed carry have lower crime rates. Further, the number of guns in the last 20 years has gone up while the violent crime rate has dropped. You simply cannot show that guns drive crime in this country because all the data suggests the opposite, so you resort to the age old tactic of making sh*t up while trying to act snarky and superior to your opponents.
Oh, and one final thing. If you love the laws of the UK so much I encourage you to move there. No really, GTFO and both sides will be happier.
Dear TPM.
The UK has a higher rate of crime than where I come from. Including higher murder rates.
And the statistics you quote are ones no-one has shown to exist. Links please. And be sure that I will check whether these stats say what you claim they do. The last set was ridiculous.
Look up the Appalachian School of Law shooting. It’s the one nobody’s ever heard of.
HEY DUNDERHEAD!! The first shot doesn’t especially mean anything. The first HIT is the only thing that counts. As to your theroretic ‘everyone holding a firearm when shots ring out’, only about 5% or less of ccw permit holders are always armed. So you’ve lost that arguement too, on numbers.
Need to clarify: the above comment was for Mjaum.
You idiot! What fool are you, or what fool do you take us for!
Sometimes the bad guys are the ones surprised, frequently they miss. Sometimes they are far outnumbered, and sometime they run when they hear the shotgun racked when they are five and the homeowner is alone.
Sometimes police, fibbies, and even secret service personnel leave their arms in cars which are stolen, and even just flake out and leave them in public restrooms and bathrooms. Yet, even still, they should be armed so should we.
What fool are you to think firearms are only an opportunity for mischeif, or even mostly.
Once the malefactor no longer has a monopoly on the means of inflicting violence, they usually take their own lives. This feature has held true in more of these mass murders than I care to remember.
These people are malevolent cowards…it’s no fun shooting a gun when your intended victims are not unarmed and essentially helpless.
Were I a governor, I would mobilize my State National Guard and post them at my state’s schools with but one order:
Protect the lives of the students.
Remove the probability of the evildoer being the ONLY one armed on the premises.
I agree that teachers and administrators should be armed and ready
to defend against this. The mere knowledge that there may be armed
resistance at the school will be enough to stop these cowards.
They target schools because they are gun free zones and the sick
Individual knows he can destroy without fear of anyone stopping him
Now
Yes, the solution is to increase the number of guns! What a sad country this has become.
Anybody else notice that since Israel mandated armed teachers and support staff that there haven’t been any school shootings?
Since the beginning of history there has been only one conflict in human affairs and that is between the individual and the corporate i.e. state, religion, etc.; that is a clash as to where ultimate responsibility for a human life is rightfully placed. In this country to a radical degree, in writing, and for the most part in practice, we have placed sovereignty with the individual. A great trust this, that man can and will conduct their lives, in sum, responsibly. This idea took the breath out of the corporate world of the eighteenth century and as we can see it still steals the breath from many today.
When you accept sovereignty, you are responsible for everything; there is no “Well, if only the universe were made better in the area of _______ then I and everyone else could finally be fully responsible for the lives we choose to live.” Nor can you claim failure to be responsible because of witches, alcohol, guns, etc., you embrace that a human being after everything is stripped away, is, responsible for their lives and, in sum, what that life has produced. Winston Spenser Churchill did many foolhardy things but, in sum, I would argue him as the greatest man of the 20th century.
In a liberal democracy it is a must that you puzzle this out for yourself and once your world view places responsibility for the individual and corporate a lot of political and social issues of themselves.
Myself, I’m for gun control, absolutely, one hundred percent but past that point my path and many others diverge radically as to where responsibility for that control shall be vested. And take care responsibility isn’t just about guns, it’s about abortion, marriage, education, the poor, the rich…
May I invite substantive instruction from the group?
Remove a sovereign’s ability to defend himself, he’s no longer sovereign. he’s just another victim waiting to be enslaved or killed.
How can anyone offer anything “substantive” when you are being totally non-substantive when you use the almost meaningless term “gun control”. What are the details of your proposals for gun control and, most importantly, to what (utopian?) end? You say that you are for it. What is the “it” that you describe as “gun control”.
Society breaks down into three groups: Wolves (the shooter), sheep (the kids and adults at the school), and sheepdogs (police, military, and armed citizens).
Any school that doesn’t have at least five concealed-carry-weapons permit holders is a school that should be closed (until they do). The training and certification of such individuals would put “teeth” into an otherwise killing field that sicko cowards are drawn to. And, it doesn’t cost much. Notice the perp didn’t attack a gun range or police station.
Also, evil is among us. They have landed, and they are here (and have been for some time). The right to defend yourself and kindergartners is embodied in the 2nd amendment. Use it. A tool is used to ‘fix’ things and a gun is just another tool.
We need more people (sheepdogs) who know how and are willing to put this tool to its proper use. Five and six year olds smile at you with their baby teeth believing that you can do anything. And you can, if you follow the directions. Our founders weren’t fools, they created a blueprint that should have been ‘fool proof’ and would have protected these little toddlers. Over the next few days we’ll witness the ‘fools’ who’ll demand a divergence from their wisdom. Just watch.
The answer is simple: there should be no killing fields in America. Our right to keep and bear arms is the firewall to such atrocities. Anyone desiring to take a bite out of America should know that she’ll bite back, and hard. Little smiling faces thought we could, believed that we could protect them and yet we couldn’t. The armed citizen wasn’t there. And hasn’t been, far too often.
The Europeans love to act far superior to us with their “effective” gun controls. That’s why a madman in Norway can get away with killing 73 young people at a political meeting. why? Because no one else within ten miles had a weapon.
I live in Europe/Hungary.
When in a bad neighborhood a car slow down next to me It don’t cross my mind that maybe 2 UZI owner sitting in the car.
No one own a gun only cops and some hunter (hunter rifle, not automate weapons) and that’s why so strange us that someone can go in to a school and shoot some kid.
In your country you own 200million gun. Please tell me, ever happened that someone shoot the serial killer before he started the rage? Your argument is that you want defend yourself. Than please link any precedent when 1 of that 200million gun stooped a mass murderer.
You guys just cant count! 10.000 death / year in your country by guns. You prepare to war and you got it. We don’t prepare to war and we can live in peace without worry.
/sry for my English, I’m still learning the language/
Yes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting
Other students went to their cars, retrieved their legal weapons, and stopped the shooter.
Don’t be surprised that you’ve never heard of it…
I did read your link.
The guns fetched were never fired, the shooter may have disarmed or been out of ammo before the “heroes” arrived, and we have several different versions of the story, making it at best 50% likely that the guns were relevant at all.
If this is the best you can do to show how guns make people safer or stop shooters, you don’t have an argument.
No, there’s only version of the story in reality. The shooter stopped struggling when confronted with armed responders, just other students if I recall, who told him to stop.
Mr. Perkins…
The link was given by someone who believes as you do. I merely tell you what it says. If you want a better “reality”, then said link is not a good match for you. However, it wasn’t chosen by me, it was chosen by you lot. If your proof does not support your conclusion, that is not my problem.
Would you like to try again?
Mjaum,
I am not replying to the link.
“You guys just cant count!”
Sure we can. According to the UNODC the annual murder rate (in the most recent year they could find data for), there were 24,012 murders in Europe at a rate of 3.5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The United States had 12,996 murders for a rate of 4.2 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. There isn’t very much difference in homicide rates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
The big difference between the United States and the nations that comprise Europe is that we don’t have periodic episodes where the same sort of governments that forcibly disarm their citizenry, then use their enormous unchecked power to slaughter millions of unarmed people (e,g. the Nazis, Communists).
At least that hasn’t happened here yet.
No offense, but Europe has a much bloodier and more violent history than America does. And anyone who wants to avoid that would be well advised NOT to emulate European modes of behavior.
I was wondering where you got those statistics… So I had a look.
17000 of the 24000 murders in “Europe” are in fact from Russia and the Ukraine. Giving quite a different image than the one you want.
If we look at Western, Northern and Southern Europe, excluding eastern europe as a whole, the homicides per 100,000 inhabitants is at 1.3-ish compared to the US’s 4.2. (Norway, where I come from, is at 0.6)
You, sir, have either no clue, or are deliberately changing the numbers so they look like you want them to.
So no, you can’t count.
No, he can count and you cherry pick. You’re a fool and a liar–on purpose deception is a lie.
If you get to exclude Russia and the Ukraine (both all but exclusively European) from European murder stats, we get to exclude those centers of Democrat Party control called city center from our murder stats.
Guess where it falls then?
Also, guess where the “gun control” unavailability to general citizens of firearms is most prevalent…those urban areas.
Mr. Perkins…
Including Russia and the Ukraine in “European” statistics makes as much sense as including Mexico in the US.
You may not understand this, but the differences between the social democracies of western, southern and nothern europe, and the former and current cleptocratic dictatorships of eastern europe is enormous.
Of course, if you want to claim superiority by including Russia in these statistics, comparing yourself *unfavourably* to a former communist dictatorship… Feel free. You obviously still can’t count.
Mjaum, you are claiming the Russians and Ukrainians aren’t European.
Have you heard of a map? Such things exist. What is to the west of the Urals is Europe, and the Russians wherever they are are culturally European.
You have presented yourself unarmed in a battle of wits.
I think you may be… No wait. I *know* you’re wrong. Norway has a higher average number of firearms per person than the US. Hunting weapons and the “Frivillige Skyttervesen”. You may also look into “Landsskytterstevnet”.
And all this did not make us safer. Not when our SWAT-team sank their first boat due to overloading and then still overloaded their second boat, and thus spent precious tens of minutes being idiots. Not when the leader of Arbeiderpartiets Ungdom, the political organization organizing the whole thing, ran away with the only big boat (a former military armored landing craft). Not when our police did not have good enough communications to know what car Breivik was using (and drove past him several times on his way to the island). The police fuc*ed up. Repeatedly.
Guns? Haven’t really been a talking point. We’ve spent more time singing songs the bastard didn’t like than talking about guns.
Well, Norway on paper has a higher count of firearms per citizen, but you gloss over the availability of those firearms to the civilian ‘in the field,’ which is precisely why Breivik was able to run amok without meeting any armed resistance.
I wasn’t aware of the FUBAR aspect of the SWAT response, though.
Pretty much makes the point, though, don’t ya think?
When seconds count, the cops are minutes away…
Then the general citizens should be commonly armed and well versed in the use of their arms.
To go by what else he has written here, Mjaum is enough of a fool and liar we need to spell it all out for him. If most are like him, it must be why Swedes have Norwegian jokes.
What point did you think you were making? Because I have to inform you, there isn’t one in what you wrote.
Of course there was a point in it, Mjaum. You just aren’t bright enough to see it.
Because the cops are only minutes away when seconds count, the common citizenry should be armed and well trained in those arms’ use.
I’m telling you guys, it has to be spelled out for the Europeans, the smart ones already left for America.
That’s a general rule of course, there are exceptions.
Just not here today.
So let’s just boils this down to its essentials …
Schoolteachers are now supposed to be “packing heat” just in case a student gets armed to the teeth and goes on a rampage. Not just to defend themselves, no – but also to protect innocent bystanders.
That’s your solution?
So what WAS a right is now becoming an obligation. Just so that you don’t have to give up your right to own really cool bang-bang sticks, supposedly so that you can defend the country, or some similarly deranged fantasy.
Wow. Now there’s no obligation to even protect teachers looking after children – they should be protecting themselves now. With guns. Brilliant.
I would like to make you aware that I went through 12 years of public education at which point I then earned my graduation certificate.
In those 12 years I was quite aware of the several school counselors and assistant principals concerning discipline. Although I had very little need for them, I was also quite aware that they were very busy.
Would it hurt to weaponize them as part of the job? If it is cost prohibitive. Could we not do with less cheerleading coaches or maybe charge a little more for school lunches? My local superindendant’s salary is quite high. As CEO of the district she is in the 1% of salaries. Maybe reduce her salary to the 99% range and hire a few more armed conselors to keep an eye on the more troubled youth?
“Would it hurt to weaponize them as part of the job?”
Yeah. It would. And you’re only just thinking of the last incident. To avoid simply moving the problem around, you’d have to “weaponise” people at any location where vulnerable people gather – hospitals, retirement homes, scout troups, little athletics leagues ….
And it would make a lot more sense to just make it unnecessary.
I grant you, though, it’s probably way, way too late to do that for the US.
“Weaponisation”is a large part of the problem in this country.
The presence of a gun puts the perp on notice prior to their decision to go on a rampage that someone may fight back and hurt them. Not every teacher must pack heat to get the benefit of deterrence. We could pay a cash bonus to those that do carry and happen to score a direct hit on a shooter that could pay for their weapon and training, and then some. What’s a child’s life worth to you?
Apparently some of the teachers did what they could to protect children sans a gun. They locked them in bathrooms, huddled in corners, etc. Think about what went through the minds of those teachers who may have had a gun at home for self defense but none at work to confront an attacker?
The second amendment obligates no one to protect anyone besides themselves, unless they happen to care about others. In which case, kindergartners might be very high on the list. My list, anyway.
When it comes to defending the country with ‘bang sticks’ and other deranged fantasies, tell it to the Minutemen. If you don’t come away with a gun-butt to the forehead consider your liberal self lucky.
“The presence of a gun puts the perp on notice prior to their decision to go on a rampage that someone may fight back and hurt them”
Indeed. It means they have to change their tactics. And try to remember – most of these guys aren’t all that concerned about being killed, as long as they can do some damage first.
“Not every teacher must pack heat to get the benefit of deterrence”
But the idea of teachers carrying guns into classrooms doesn’t worry you in the slightest?
“We could pay a cash bonus to those that do carry and happen to score a direct hit on a shooter that could pay for their weapon and training, and then some”
And then you’ll hang them out to dry the first time that they make a bad call. I guarantee it. It would take a LOT of money for any sane teacher to take on that responsibility.
“What’s a child’s life worth to you?”
I put the same question back to you – how many kids will it take before you decide that easy access to rapid-fire weapons is a bad idea?
“When it comes to defending the country with ‘bang sticks’ and other deranged fantasies, tell it to the Minutemen. If you don’t come away with a gun-butt to the forehead consider your liberal self lucky”
Minutemen. Seriously – that’s your response? Do you imagine yourself as a minuteman? The days are long gone when your average suburban schlub can tool up and head into the mountains to defend the commonwealth. That little adventure would end the moment you came face to face with proper military-grade weapons. At best, you’d get in the way. At worst, you’d end up making things worse by attacking the wrong people.
That’s what I mean by a deranged fantasy – the idea that maybe, just maybe, Red Dawn could be your personal story.
Wow, #29, you’d better stay far away from open flames with all those strawmen you’re packing.
Adam Lanza was likely on medication. We don’t blame drugs or failed treatments. Adam Lanza was the victim of his parent’s recent divorce. We don’t blame divorce. Adam Lanza used a gun. GUNS KILL!!! GET RID OF THEM!
“GUNS KILL!!! GET RID OF THEM!”
I think you’re onto a really rational soultion! Get rid of eveything that can kill people! Guns, cars, trains, airplanes, tractors……..and PEOPLE!
I was wondering if there might be serotonin inhibitors involved. There seems to be some correlation there in past incidents.
Complete BS. The idea that SSRIs are to blame is medically ignorant propaganda.
Cars kill! Baseball bats kill! Knives kill! Water kills! Gravity kills! Chainsaws kill! Bungie-jumping kills!
A few gallons of gasoline used as a FAE in a building will pretty much level it and probably kill everybody inside!
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Lets get rid of them, too!
Typical of the liberal/progressive mind-stink that fits the butt of the old joke:
What is the main difference between a liberal and a conservative? A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
Most of the time, the mere APPEARANCE of a gun wielded by the ‘victim to be’ sends the gremlins fleeing, no perforations required, no ‘killing’ involved, no hospital visit needed. (And no news report, either.)
You would take away the tool that the 105lb 85 year old granny used that stopped a 250lb burglar/rapist COLD with the introduction of her ‘lead projector’ to the equation?
Oh, but the cops will protect you.
Sure.
Right.
Just keep smoking whatever it is you are smoking…
Me, I’ll just keep on packing, and just like the seat belt in my car, I hope I don’t need it.
Here are some practical suggestions:
- Return Ten Commandments back to schools
- Introduce censorship in computer game industry
- Introduce censorship in the movies
- Add antidepressants to the list of controlled substances that automatically exclude gun ownership
The mixture of the mentioned about factors leads to what happened this morning.
Blaming video games, movies, and “antidepressants” for individual human sins/crimes is as stupid as blaming “guns” for acts of murder, or blaming air-travel for 9/11.
I think of the great lyric line from Neil Young’s song On the Beach:
“the world is turning, I hope it doesn’t turn away”
What if instead of gunning down the children,he waited in his car and ran them down while waiting for the school bus ? Would the liberals demand that automobiles not be allowed on school grounds ? In Connecticut, during the Clinton years, the residents of state mental hospitals were released into group homes. I’ve seen them attempt to direct traffic on Main Street,Middletown CT,carrying a hockey stick and wearing a goalies mask….. in July . We have to put the crazy people away where they can no longer endanger the rest of us . Their “civil” rights end when they endanger themselves and others. Connecticut has very strict gun laws and an evil black weapon ban . The first thing we need to do is make sure no crazy person (including police officers ) are allowed to have access to weapons .
Bloomberg – kiss my white gun toting ass.
The killer belonged to GOTHS. This subculture, or better to call it mental perversion, embraces death and horror. His mom happened to have a lot of guns that were not properly stored. I wouldn’t be surprised to know that that maniac was on antidepressants. The result of this combination you know.
Really, Roger? Seriously? Let teachers carry guns into the classroom? Do you have kids? Truly, that’s one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever encountered…the more so from one who asks to be taken seriously as an intellect. Good grief.
Isn’t that an adult’s JOB?
Defending children is the mark of an adult. All adults supervising children should be equipped to do it.
Be it insane individuals, or criminals, or terrorists, it is so easy to kill innocent, unarmed, unsuspecting human beings. And as with 9/11, we know that “guns” are not necessary to accomplish such evil. We never see it coming, even in a nation of 312 million souls. But what we can see coming, every single time, is Big Government politicians looking to exploit such horrific acts. Just ONCE, it would be so reassuring to hear a Bloomberg call for specific actions to be taken against the actual perpetrators, rather than the good and decent American populace as a whole for such atrocities.
OK now tell me this O! most wise gunslingers – what would you be saying if your 5 year old child was shot to death?
Would you advocate that all school children be equipped with weapons that allow one to kill someone at a distance?
Should the 10 commandments be amended to include “Thou shall carry a gun”?
Is, in fact, the God Of America a gun?
Damn, Max, I haven’t seen that many strawmen since the scarecrow convention left town.
If my 5 year old were shot, my first question for the school would be “Were your teachers (that’s adults) equipped and trained to defend the children?”
Some questions that should be asked & never are.:
If more guns = more death & destruction, then why isn’t America like Syria since U.S. govt figures say that Americans have 200-300 million guns?
If more guns = more death & destruction, then why do U.S. govt crime statistics show that the violent crime rate has been decreasing for 20+ years despite a steady increase in gun purchases?
If it’s wrong to hold all African-Americans & Muslims responsible for the violence committed by some of them, then why doesn’t the same rule apply to gun owners?
If it’s wrong for govt &/or law enforcement to single out all African-Americans & Muslims for special scrutiny because some of them commit violence, then why doesn’t the same rule apply to gun owners?
If it’s wrong to restrict the rights of all African-Americans & Muslims because some of them commit violence, then why doesn’t the same rule apply to gun owners?
And finally, is there anyone out there who has the guts to ask the above ‘inconvenient’ questions & the intelligence to not be distracted from getting straight answers to them?
Cassandra (of Troy)
Some questions that need to be asked & never are.:
If more guns = more death & destruction, then why hasn’t America long ago become like Syria since U.S. govt figures say that Americans have approximately 200-300 million guns?
If more guns = more death & destruction, then why do U.S. govt crime statistics show that the violent crime rate has been decreasing for 20+ years despite steadily increasing gun sales?
If it’s wrong to hold all African-Americans & Muslims responsible for the violence comitted by some of them, then why doesn’t that rule apply to gun owners?
If it’s wrong for govt & law enforcement to single out all African-Americans & Muslims for special scrutiny because some of them commit violence, then why doesn’t that rule apply to gun owners?
If it’s wrong to restrict the rights of all African-Americans & Muslims because some of them commit violence, then why doesn’t that rule apply to gun owners?
And finally, is there anyone out there who has the guts to ask the above ‘inconvenient’ questions & the intelligence to not be distracted from getting a straight answer to them?
Cassandra (of Troy)
OBAMA WIPES AWAY FAKE TEARS OVER CONNECTICUT SCHOOL SHOOTING
I reviewed the clip several times of Obama speaking yesterday about the kindagarden shooting in Connecticut; and while he seemed somewhat overcome by emotion at times I didn’t see him truly tear up as MSM said that he did. He went through the motions of showing sorrow for the victims and their families and thrice wiped his eyes; but I couldn’t see any real tears in the closeup shots.
I know Obama, I’ve seen him tear up, really tear up and this was a show as I believe I can prove. On the day following his reelection victory in Chicago as he was thanking a group of young supporters he broke down and teared up, really teared up with tears visibly wetting his face. The emotion and tears were honest and real that day. But not yesterday. What we saw was a phony act of pretended tears to show how human he was.
Moreover, this shooting wasn’t the most heartbreaking and tragic of Obama’s presidency. That took place at Ft. Hood three years ago where 13 soldiers were gunned down-one of them pregnant-by a fellow soldier turned traitor as he went over to the darkside of Islamic jihad and terror. But in his statement on the shooting that night Obama showed little emotion and no tears, not one, not even faked. If he didn’t tear up then why would he do so now? Aren’t murdered soldiers on a military base, many enroute to Afghanistan who’d be risking their lives in the defense of our freedoms, more deserving of tears than school kids whose lives are less valuable terrible though their deaths were? There were no tears then and there were none yesterday, and that’s beacuse he had none to give.
When I saw Obama wiping at either eye yesterday, I thought of his weird behavior in the aftermath of Ft. Hood, giving a “shout out” to some guy he was kissing up to in the audience before even beginning his canned remarks.
(Will he and his stable of dissembling wordsmiths write this travesty off as “workplace violence” too ? Doubt it.)
Then I thought of Beslan Russia where in 2004, after Islamists had seized an elementary school, 186 children and 148 adults wound up being massacred.
And wondered how many Americans were devastated by that far off horror.
I wouldn’t wade into whose life is less or more valuable.
That stuff belongs to Obamacare wonk and policy adviser Dr. Zeke Emanuel whose little scheme (QALY, quality adjusted life years) sets forth the level and degree of medical care to which you’re entitled as a function of your age and stage in life, based his personal opinion of your value to society.
George Bernard Shaw had some similar kinds of ideas.
Gives me the creeps.
You are insane.
You claim that the lives of soldiers are more “valuable” than the lives of kids? Just so you can attack your president for being “more upset” about one thing than another?
I have words for what you are, but I doubt you have the cranial capacity to understand them.
Those tears were real.
They were tears of joy.
He thinks he can push through draconian anti Second Amendment legislation. He thinks that polls and petitions, grass roots or astro turf, can be used to create the impression that the American people are demanding to be turned into disarmed, helpless slaves. He believes that he can bypass normal Constitutional and legislative c hannels and use an EO to disarm the American people…That no one will stop him, regardless of the illegality and Unconstitutionality of such a move.
Congress? Excuse me while I wipe a way tears of laughter.
The USSC? The same court that ruled earlier this year that every cent Americans earn is the property of the federal government, and they have a right to command us to spend what they deign to allow us to keep as they wish, by forced purchases from a private company of something the consumer may or may not want. (eg, last I read ALL insurance policies MUST contain maternity benefits, regardless of whether the individual has the slightest desire to reproduce-a stance that the same ‘childfree by choice’ women who thought a clumsily expressed comment about “binders full of women ['s resumes]” reason enough to vote for BHO.
The judicial elites and the political elites, Democrat and Republican alike, agree in their utter contempt for non elite Americans.
BHO thinks he can see a USA in which only the TSA, the police*, the inner city thugs and those in the country illegally will have the right to protect themselves from violence, random or planned. The rest of us will be at their mercy…But that’s what we deserve , for being such racistsexistxenophobichomophobicAGWscepticalneanderthals.
Those were real tears.
Those were tears of joy.
*(There are many good people in the ranks of state and local law enforcement especially. But every GD day I read online about people’s pets being gunned down for fun, men and women slaughtered, and no matter how egregious is the shooting, the end result is always the same : Some big bellied slob in a JC Penneys suit standing in front of the camera smugly telling the press conference , “We believe the officers acted in accordance with their training”. Too bad about that deaf woodcarver…The 65 year old man…The 80 year old lady…The guy at the misidentified apartment, about which the police were recorded LAUGHING over shooting him…The Marine with the legitimate CCW license…The list goes on and on and on. (And the pets they’ve slaughtered include breeds like miniature dachshunds, yorkshire terriers, labs-they aren’t all pit bulls and rotties, and many were in their own yards or restrained while gunned down. They HAVE to be doing this for the sheer fun of it.) Too many cops seem to be rhoided up thugs with a legal right to murder what they so cutely call “civilians” with impunity, punished-if at all-with a nice paid vacation.I just cannot begin to fathom the stupidity which I am seeing all over the net, of people thinking guns should be confiscated “-so only the police have them!!!111!11″ )
PS Wait till you see the tears of joy when he signs onto the OICs ban on “defaming” their pedophile, murderous, slave trading prophet. First Amendment? Who needs that! All we need are aborion on demand and same sex marriage to be free! Just ask any obama voter.
“….but that is what well meaning people like Mr. Sollo, appropriately horrified by such slaughter as we have seen today, conclude.”
I disagree, Roger; people such as Mr. Sollo are not at all “well meaning.” Those who seek to make all of us defenseless because of the unfortunate and despicable acts of a very, very few are just as evil as the perpetrators they aggrandize to serve their goals.
I’m an admirer and long-time reader of Mr Kimball, and I subscribe to his magazine. I am also a conservative. But I have to say, in this case, Mr Kimball is simply wrong. He’s wrong in the same way that liberals are wrong to presume that gun control would have stopped the massacre. “If only we had more laws…” “If only some sane adult was armed…” I’m sorry, but we live in a fallen world, and terrible things will always happen, and there is no fix or solution. The utopian fantasy of an armed citizenry preventing mass violence is as unreasonable as the utopian fantasy of an unarmed citizenry not having the wherewithal to commit mass violence. There is no solution to the problem of evil. That said, as conservatives, we ought not focus on the guns in this incident at all; we ought to focus on why, yet again, someone dangerously mentally ill is free to terrorize us. We ought to work to undo the left’s emptying of the asylums. The one thing that might prevent a few of these horrors is to protect ourselves from the mad man. As it happens, that’s also more charitable and compassionate to the mad man as well.
” I’m sorry, but we live in a fallen world, and terrible things will always happen, and there is no fix or solution.”
Bullshit. Your fatalism is itself a dire sin.
Improvement should always be striven for, and a better course than the worst is always possible.
There’s nothing at all utopian on the pro-gun side. There is simply a recognition of the indisputable fact that the only effective counter to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. That is, after all, what you are summoning when you call the police: an armed person to come and do violence on your behalf.
So the idea of allowing responsible adults who already carry concealed weapons everywhere else to begin doing so in these presently “gun free zones” is far fetched and ridiculous? But retroactively un-inventing a mechanical contraption that has existed for centuries, 200 million of which already exist in this country, through clever legislation is somehow not ridiculous?
And news to those who blithely assert that armed citizens “never” prevent things like this: they do so all the time. Every single day smaller, but very personal, tragedies are prevented by armed citizens. We do not collect statistics on crimes-that-didn’t-happen and they aren’t to be found in the national news, but it is only a combination of ignorance and hubris that could make someone assert they never happen.
after the last one of these I found a reference to
God, the Gunman & Me JEANNE ASSAM
you may recall Jeanne was commended by then President Bush for bravery
the book can be had as Kindle from Amazon but I strongly recommend downloading it not just licensing it . some of this material has a habit of disappearing
I had trouble getting a replacement for my copy of
_Stop Teaching our Kids to Kill_ by Col. Grossman
this shooting is another tragedy
we definitely don’t want to hear from the current administration on this– which has recently been providing illegal guns to the dug lords in Mexico
I don’t have any prescriptions for the horrors of yesterday.
Rather than evil, maybe I’d cite faulty brain wiring (seems to be going around a lot), the culture (seen those movies Hollow-wood pumps out for the male teenage brain ?), the dissolution of the family and decline in providing structure for children.
I’m sure I could work in the permissiveness of leftists & postmodernists, where “morality”, right and wrong, is a function of your personal opinion about it.
I don’t like it when political leaders who own guns advocate so strongly for gun control for the population at large, individuals who might arrogantly assume that gun ownership is responsible in their exalted hands, the rest of us, not so much.
Diana Feinstein is a case in point. Does Mayor Mikey (“the nanny”) Bloomberg own guns ?
The originators of the Republic had a lot to say about the right of a people to arm itself.
Granted, they had little notion of how low their splendid experiment in self-rule might sink.
“A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
Just to see what was being said, I tuned into MSNBC this morning. The anti-gun talking heads were sitting around a table blathering about “we need more gun safety.” You see, they have backed off on the divisive word “control.” It is disgusting that these repellent lizards are using this horrible tragedy to further their own agenda of eventual confiscation. Not once during their conversation did they mention a single proposal that would have prevented this particular shooting. Because it is not important to them. The fact that 10 people happened to be shot in Chicago last night where guns are illegal is also unimportant.
I’ve said it before: This country is suffering from a severe, possibly fatal cultural illness and until we fess up and start focusing on the root cause(s) we will see more of this insanity.
” … to disarm the people – that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
– George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380
“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms … The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard, against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.” Hubert H. Humphrey, Senator, Vice President, 22 October 1959″
[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”–James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46
“That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms … ” – Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (Pierce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850)
Correct me if I’m wrong. It seems to me that the gun grabber sare suggesting that if no one at that school had been armed except the lunatic, nut job-killer, this massacre would not have happened. I really can’t follow their logic here.
Start with Hollywood.
Take a look at the Apple website for “movie trailers” to see the coming violence publicized
as art. Then, call a conference – see if Barrack will come (he likes Hollywood types) – and bring in Tom Cruise,
Jason Stratham, Arnold, Sly Stallone and Jennifer Lopez and ask them what they can do to rid this American culture
of violence aided and abetted by the Hollywood brand of culture.
See if Jay- Z will come and ask him about the culture of violence celebrated by his “O so talented” rappers.
Get Quentin Tarantino to chime in too; he must have something to add.
How many abortions were there last week? Those kids never made it out into the light of day.. But that’s OK with the media, you know, the all knowing all powerful dictators of the earth.. Every place in my life that a question comes up, I ask ‘What would the media recommend?’.. Gee I should call a journalasshole and ask what to do.. should I have meat or vegetable? Should I use one sheet or two? Should I be a doctor or a union worker? How about being a father? Maybe I should convert to being gay.. what would the MSM do? Why does the media ‘permit’ all the evil in this world? Since they know all about evil, why can’t they stop the evil before evil acts? Why does the MSM allow bad things to happen to innocent people? Why Why Why?
bad guys can always get guns, it is good guys ( law abiding people) who would respect the law and
be disarmed
how hard is this to comprehend?
the mass murders only take place in states that have no “open carry” statutes.
in an open carry state the would be mass murder would, in fact, be killed before he goes to far.
There are more children killed every hour of every day in government sanctioned abortion clinics and not a word from Democrats about closing them down! The hypocrisy is mind-bending.
“With a gun, you are still defenseless.”
No doubt that explains why our political class is constantly surrounded by armed guards.
These are the same armed guards who have standing orders to throw themselves in the way of the shooter. Not try to shoot him, but catch his bullets with their bodies.
The reason this is standing orders is because experience has shown that just trying to shoot the perp is likely to get you a dead principal.
A gun is still not a shield.
(And you really should have been able to reason this out for yourself, but I guess you were too busy patting yourself on the back.)
A gun is not a shield, however being a bullet sponge is not most people’s profession.
I suspect this significant fact has escaped your attention.
Carrying a bulletproof shield is a skosh inconvenient, in fact prohibitively so, and so far all the models available only protect you from about 20 lateral degrees of incoming, far easier to take cover and train a pistol or long arm on a bad guy, than to sit there and try to play tennis with lead balls. In fact, one-shot-stops being almost impossible to obtain, simply standing sideways while placing your shots works pretty well, most criminals are not well trained shooters, they miss a lot. Even more than the police, who miss a lot.
You miss my point. Again.
The point, since it must be explained to you using small words: Even the bodyguards of your political elite are aware of the fact you gun nuts keep missing. A gun will not save you from someone with a gun. I know that this is counterintuitive to you people. But a gun will allow the other guy to kill or hurt you so much with his first shot that you will get no chance to return fire. So unless you go around shooting everyone who approaches you just in case they were about to shoot you (not a suggested strategy), a gun will not keep you safe.
School shootings are ambushes. In an ambush, you do not shoot back. You extract, because the enemy has chosen the ground and the situation, and staying is what they want you to do. They want you to stay, they want you to die. And you, by your gun-nuttishness, are playing into the shooter’s hands. Good luck with that.
You are watching to much TV, methinks.
One shot, the person falls over, completely incapacitated.
Not the truth. (Do look up ‘rag-doll’ + ‘sniper’ for some of the exceptions to the rule, though.)
I take it you haven’t done any research on the physiological (and OVERRIDING psychological,) effects of gunshots in high stress situations? I would suggest doing so, it will surprise you what ‘fatally’ injured people are able to accomplish in the few seconds or minutes before death depending on their motivation.
Hunt much? Ever seen a heart-shot deer run a hundred meters or so before keeling over? How about the occasional charging bear/moose/elk _insert other large animals_ that were drilled through the chest with a high power magnum class rifle that still managed to reach the hunter and do some serious damage?
My father is a retired medical doctor, plus I was an EMT for nearly 20 years, so I DO have a fairly good understanding of the principles involved.
Think I’m full of crap? Find out for yourself. Ask some law enforcement personnel about some of the ‘hard to stop’ people they’ve dealt with.
Mjaum, my point is you don’t have one.
Police commonly carry pistols and not shields because, the pistols are of more use.
“A gun will not save you from someone with a gun.”
Sure it may, and in fact is likely too, to go by all statistics of their defensive use in this country. You just either have to be at worst more lucky or skilled than the other shooter; or, quite frequently, just have to make known your possession of it and intention to use it. And the bad guy runs or surrenders. Or offs themselves.
“So unless you go around shooting everyone who approaches you just in case they were about to shoot you (not a suggested strategy), a gun will not keep you safe.”
Well clearly you are someone who should not carry a weapon, you’re murderously stupid, and you imagine everyone else is.
“School shootings are ambushes…Good luck with that.”
The correct approach to take with an ambush by a smaller force where the enemy cannot have prepared the ground, is to assault them and overrun them. If you’re infantry. In this case rather, you only need to occupy the shooter for one or maybe if the local police are real slow, five minutes, and that’s easy to do. The bad guys can’t do what they came to do without dealing with you, and once you engage them you have an advantage; they have to kill you, you just have to make them deal with you first.
Many will then take their own life as this one did:
http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html
I almost feel bad for you that reality so badly undermines your heartfelt delusions.
They want our guns. Period. This tragedy may be the moment the progs have been hoping for to begin the crackdown on guns.
I want someone to explain to me how this is going to work with a porous Southern border that the Administration refuses to seal and protect. Lots of armed illegals sneaking through that we can’t ask for any kind of ID and we are supposed to be disarmed and therefore sitting ducks? Really?
211 children were killed by drunk drivers in 2010. Is anyone calling for alcohol to be banned? Didn’t think so.
This isn’t about stopping tragedies. It’s about control. It’s about disarming every law abiding citizen in this country.
Wake up America. Unfortunately there are 51% that voted for this phony royal family in the white house. And, remember most police officers are union too. They will turn against conservatives. They have changed as has the military.
PRAY for this country
No doubt, the teleprompter text instructed him: Touch eye, now. Feign a hint of tears.
Who are “they”? Who do you refer to when you say “our”? I know life-long Republicans who have never owned a gun and life-long Democrats who are avid hunters. If my father, who served in WWII, always voted Republican, and was a big-game hunter and expert with firearms, were alive today, he would have been shocked by the powerful weapons, many designed specifically for the rapid killing of groups of human beings, are so readily availble to the average American. He would have been horrified by the suggestion that arming teachers and
children (he regarded, rightly, high school and college students as children)
makes us a more secure country. Like most men who have actually experienced combat, he had no illusions about the so-called glory of war, and little tolerance for those obsessed with it, or what he called the “psycho fringe” of the NRA which began to emerge shortly before his death in 1976.
Houston,
So your WWII veteran father “would have been shocked by the powerful weapons, many designed specifically for the rapid killing of groups of human beings, are so readily available to the average American”? If that’s true, then he naturally opposed allowing “the average American” to buy & use “powerful weapons” like the caliber .45ACP M-1911 & M-1911A1 pistols, the .30-06 M-1903 & M-1903A3 Springfield rifles, the caliber .30-06 M-1917 Enfield rifle, the caliber .303 Lee-Enfield rifle, & the caliber .30-06 M-1 Garand rifle as they were “designed specifically for the rapid killing of groups of human beings”, right? And he doubtless was a dedicated foe of the Dept of Civilian Marksmanship & its mandate to not only make said “powerful weapons” & their ammunition “readily available to the average American”.
Since he died in 1976 he might not have had knowledge of or familiarity with either the .223 Remington or 7.62x39mm rifle rounds as they didn’t become popular until very recently, but as you’re allegedly the adult child of an alleged “big-game hunter and expert with firearms” (& as such by sheer osmosis should have picked up some knowledge of firearms & ammunition) & also someone who came of age when the .223 Remington/5.56x45mm & 7.62x39mm rifle rounds became well known military & sporting calibers, your classifying them & the guns that use them as “powerful” in comparison to those listed previously is rather puzzling unless, that is, what you’re really trying to do is get people who don’t know anything about guns to believe something that isn’t true by parroting the propaganda of the anti-Second Amendment cult. You wouldn’t be doing a naughty thing like that, would you Houston?
And as far as your alleged father’s alleged “horror” at “the suggestion” of arming teachers & his alleged regarding “high school and college students as children” is concerned, he’d despise Israelis for doing exactly that as one response to Palestinian attacks on schools & also would have (rightly) believed that “children” such as high school & college students shouldn’t be allowed to have access to automobiles & the voting booth since they can’t be trusted to be responsible with firearms, if what you claim is true, that is.
Cassandra (of Troy)
As opposed to this being evidence of “evil” manifested by a general societal decline, it tracks better with some of the newer classes of pharmaceuticals becoming more widespread. The list of common side effects for even supposedly benign antibiotics you can find online may astound you. e.g. flouroquinolone class antibiotics (Cipro is one) cause wicked panic attacks in some people. Not all, not common, but happens nonetheless. For some the tripwire between panic attack and even weirder behavioural change is terra incognita for the medicos (not enough data to list as a common side effect.)
This ought not be surprising, either. The medical establishment knows that statin drugs work although they don’t know fer certain exactly how. And statins are regarded as well understood.
Take a look at teen suicide rates and then dig a bit and just as often as not you see said teen was being treated for X where X is anything from acne to the flu.
Summary: arming teachers isn’t the answer, it’s not video games, it’s not movies, and it’s not the release of eeeevil due to a downturn in piety. Not that I expect any of the far right to be able to get this… sigh.
Let’s just say that this tragedy has just gone full circle from the family to the schoolroom. 25 years ago the schools and social services said that we can’t spank our children, basically discipline them. They knew better of course. Then they decided that the somewhat troubled boys should be labeled as ADHD and Ritalyn would be a good way to make things better. Well I suppose that is a good effort to make the world a better place, but once in a while logic slips through the cracks and we end up with a tragedy. Maybe parents are better at discipline than teachers in this day and age. And NO, I can’t imagine teachers packing heat to try and head off disaster at the heat of the moment. They wouldn’t have a clue how to handle a situation as that.
“Depriving people of their liberties”? “Our right to defend ourselves”? Come off it. When did owning a firearm become a fundamental liberty, like free speech? And “our right to defend ourselves” is a motherhood statement. Of course we have “a right to defend ourselves”. Why does that necessitate a gun for all?
These copycat school killings happen often in the US — they happen rarely in other western democracies. That they happen so often because of easy access to guns is perfectly obvious, just as every sensible person knows that easy access to child pornography is the reason why no parent can allow their grade school children to walk to school anymore. It’s only the academics, the bien-pensant liberals and the MSM who claim there is no link. How ironic to observe the same sort of folly, the same intellectual dishonesty from the gun enthusiasts (and their cheersquads – presumably on the basis that my enemy’s enemy is my friend).
And really. This notion that the solution is to arm everyone is pathetic and facile – and utterly beneath an intelligent observer. The solution is gun control.
“When did owning a firearm become a fundamental liberty, like free speech?”
The second humanity evolved a conscience. Well over 100-250,000 years ago. Just the same as any other lethal implement which can be directed against an aggressor.
“Why does that necessitate a gun for all?”
Because it is a very effective tool for that, and of course, only for the willing, and because it the only thing that can serve in many circumstances. Also, because a right to property exists which cannot be abridged until and unless it is misused, and not by the state until and unless a jury finds so.
“These copycat school killings happen often in the US — they happen rarely in other western democracies”
No not really although I expect a rash of them now. We gave the killer what he wanted on TV, and we have these “gun free school zones” where we might as well hang our children on hooks for nuts to shoot at.
“That they happen so often because of easy access to guns is perfectly obvious, just as every sensible person knows that easy access to child pornography is the reason why no parent can allow their grade school children to walk to school anymore.
Actually easy access to guns is how they are used defensively 1 to 1.5 million times a year, and it is perfectly safe (even safer than it used) to let your kids walk to school, violent crime of all sorts is down. Pornography certainly has nothing to do with it, many of the worlds most pornographic cultures are it safest with respect to, for example, rape.
“This notion that the solution is to arm everyone is pathetic and facile – and utterly beneath an intelligent observer.”
The solution is to de-stigmatize the carriage of arms and have be common among all who are willing. The intelligent notice that every bad effect predicted from the more constitutional concealed carry laws has failed to materialize, instead only the benefits have been seen.
Did you notice the plenitude reports that the Clackamas Mall shooter last week killed himself after a CCW holder confronted him and demanded his surrender?
The wise are persuaded by example.
“The solution is gun control.” – Brilliant. Ok, I’ll bite on that one. What additional gun law(s) would you propose that would have prevented the latest tragedy? Be specific please and don’t bother to repeat any of the 20,000 gun laws already on the books.
While we’re at it. “Fundamental liberties?”
Free speech: First amendment
Gun rights: Second amendment
Enough said: Our founding fathers were obviously more intelligent observers than yourself.
So, you think Gun Control is a good idea?
Let’s assume that your wet dream comes true and firearms are banned, maybe only the scary ones and maybe all of them.
Where do we start? Obviously the NRA members are a good place to start, send in the agents and get those membership lists, by force if needed, because those NRA members are evil, like the Nazis and the KKK.
After all you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
But the NRA has maybe 5 million members and we know there are at least 70 million gun owners.
Well, Republicans are evil and greedy Capitalist bastards who love guns and religion so get those voter registration records, use force if necessary!
A few more broken eggs, but it is all in a good cause.
But what about those Southern Democrats and Independents and unregistered voters?
The only real answer is house to house sweeps to round “em all up, as the famous lady said.
Because it is truly a noble cause.
So, when the SWAT team kicks in your door at 2 A.M. and kills the family dog and wounds your 13 year old daughter, remember, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs and it is truly a noble cause.
Because, when you think about it, you really can’t put a price on safety.
Guns are only a MEANS. This is the worst (based upon numbers killed and injured) episode of school murders in the US that I have found (from Wikipedia):
The Bath School disaster is the name given to three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, on May 18, 1927, which killed 38 elementary school children, two teachers, four other adults and the bomber himself; at least 58 people were injured. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–14 years of age[1]) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest mass murder in a school in U.S. history.
The bomber was school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe, 55, who was enraged about a property tax levied to fund the construction of the school building.
On the morning of May 18, Kehoe murdered his wife by beating her to death, then set his farm buildings afire. As fire fighters arrived at his farm, an explosion devastated the north wing of the school building, killing many schoolchildren. Kehoe had used a detonator to ignite dynamite and hundreds of pounds of pyrotol which he had secretly planted inside the school over the course of many months. As rescuers started gathering at the school, Kehoe drove up, stopped, and detonated a bomb inside his shrapnel-filled vehicle with his Winchester rifle, killing himself and the school superintendent, and killing and injuring several others. During rescue efforts searchers discovered an additional 500 pounds (230 kg) of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol planted throughout the basement of the school’s south wing. Kehoe apparently had intended to blow up and destroy the whole school.
First I’ve heard of this:
http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html
Found on http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/
Hey mjaum, ‘bullets flying everywhere’ eh?”
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/12/16/virtually-unreported-ccw-holder-likely-prevented-larger-clackamas-mall-d
http://www.volokh.com/2012/12/14/do-civilians-armed-with-guns-ever-capture-kill-or-otherwise-stop-mass-shooters/
A couple of suggestions that have been offered as disqualifiers for gun possession &/or ownership are having mental problems &/or being on the terrorist watch list which seems reasonable until one recalls that infants, children, & Congressmembers have been found to be on the TWL & that the American Psychiatric Assn is proposing inclusion of shyness & grieving in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And when one also remembers that recent Dept of Homeland Security(2007) & Government Accountablity Office(2012) reports recommend that tax protestors, veterans, & numerous other groups should be considered possible threats to national security, using the previously mentioned criteria to determine who is & isn’t ‘safe’ to have access to guns is at best very troublesome & at worst a simple way for govt to easily deny guns to Americans without violating the Constitution.
Cassandra (of Troy)
It is my opinion that much of the discussion here lacks common sense about the undeniable problem of gun violence in the United States. The First Amendment to the Constitution is not read as an absolute right nor should the second one be. Certain guns can cause as much damage to the public welfare as certain words have been recognized to cause and should be regulated or banned accordingly. Assault rifles have zero utility as weapons for self-defense in civilian life and are best held by our own “well regulated” militias in the form of the country’s various national guards. In my state, people will soon lose the constitutionally-protected right to vote if they lack a government-issued ID. Courts have been upholding such laws, so why can’t states choose to take away the right to hold a gun without appropriate training and vetting as defined by their duly-elected representatives? States should be free to decide on what laws and licensing mechanisms are appropriate for their particular citizens and situations. Many people outside of this echo chamber would not find mandatory background checks, waiting periods, the end of gun show loopholes, magazine limits, and safety training administered at the state level to be unnecessarily restrictive of their choices for self-defense or recreation.
In any case, beyond my own views, the best response to the coming debate about firearms is probably to double down on federalism, a principle that many conservatives still claim to uphold. If one really wants to test the proposition that more guns equals less gun violence (which appears to be the consensus of the comments here), then let’s also allow citizens who disagree with this course of action their own democratic gun laws and see whose choices are most effective. I suspect that the majority of people in this country who desire to make mass murder with firearms less common will fall somewhere between the idea of arming kindergarten teachers and outlawing most gun sales.
After Australia’s worst mass shooting in 1996 (and after several in the previous few years), national gun laws were enacted which restricted the sale and licensing of military style weapons. Australia has not had a mass shooting since. Sure, the criminals still take pot-shots at each other’s houses and cars, but the public has not been targeted.
Legal gun ownership has increased. People have accepted the bureaucratic restrictions as a worthwhile price for avoiding massacres which have, alas, become so commonplace in the USA.
I am the last person who generally recommends more regulation and government control, but, just as I don’t want jihadists opening fire in public places, nor do I want other murderous individuals doing so. In the case of the jihadists, I assume that the USA authorities are taking concerted action to prevent their doing so. It seems that very little action is taking place to prevent non-jihadist murderers from opening fire.
‘A famous Roman military historian noted that si vis pacem, para bellum: if you want peace, prepare for war. Good advice, that.’ (Roger Kimball)
Would this Roman historian, by any chance, have been among the stalwarts engaged in the slaughter of Christians referred to by your fellow columnist J. Christian Adams?:
‘The Romans were dumbfounded by the strange stubborn Jewish sect that prayerfully martyred themselves to Roman savagery…Rome crumbled while the philosophy of those martyrs transformed the world.’
The faux classicism sprinkled liberally throughout your writing is all of a piece with your references to the ‘mad’, the ‘wacko’, and the ‘twisted’. There is no evidence that the mentally ill are any more prone to violence than the so-called ‘normal’ of society. Finally, your regret that teachers of 6 year-olds were not ‘packing heat’ is confirmation that the hilly-billy sometimes wears a shirt and tie.
“Assault rifles have zero utility as weapons for self-defense in civilian life and are best held by our own “well regulated” militias in the form of the country’s various national guards.”
Tell that to the shopkeepers in the middle of the Los Angeles riots.
Tell that to the rancher that is out in the middle of the night running off a pack of wolves or coyotes attacking his heard of sheep.
Certain chemicals can cause grievous harm to the public if misused as well, but we go about our daily lives using them with out even a thought of how dangerous they can be.
Again, you gloss over the reason for the 2nd Amendment in the first place: As a final check and balance against the very government you want to have setup the controls.
ID to vote? How about the ‘purple thumb?’ At least the illegals would only get to vote ONCE…