Politics Gun violence in CT

Hi snowy
Yeah. And you got me pondering. I couldn't come up with any clever sense, though. Just this.

Silent Jack, silent Jill
No stockings, only graves to fill.
No reindeer, only bullets rain.
No Santa's sleigh, only Christmas Slain.
Sleep in Heavenly Peace.
Sleep in Heavenly Peace.

 

Wise men failed to to stop the thief
Who stole the joy and brought the grief
Now presents wait beneath the tree
For a morning some will never see
Sleep in Heavenly Peace
Sleep in Heavenly Peace.

 

Its no joke

“Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to insure that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered.” [Larry Pratt, Gun Owners Of America]​

“Had Connecticut not had the no guns in school laws….Had the principal, the maintenance man, a teacher, been allowed to keep a gun in their office, maybe just maybe, this would have come out differently.” [Bob Irwin, The Gun Store]​

“I only wish the kindergarten teacher and principal in Connecticut had been armed.” [Dr. Keith Ablow, Fox News]​

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“Look at what has happened, all these attacks this year have occurred where guns are banned.” [John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime]​

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So 300 million guns in the US are not enough. We need guns (and God, according to Mike Huckabee and the religious right) in our public schools.

​

 

I'm not the first to say this, but the shooter's mom was a teacher and gun owner. Kind of lays bare the reality of the idea that this whole tragedy could have been averted if only someone with a legal firearm had been involved. The shooter killed a gun owner with one of her own firearms and then used it to kill a bunch more people.

It's too fucking simplistic to think that an armed teacher would have saved things. It's absurd. If only the shooter had slipped on a banana peel while walking down the school's hallway. Maybe we should line school hallways with banana peels.

Maybe if John McClane had been teaching that day things would have been different. But then maybe a lot of amateur shooters fancy themselves part John McClane. He was just a regular guy from Jersey. He was also fictional.

 

I agree. This issue is complex. So complex that there is nothing to wait for. No one problem with a solution around the corner. Either medically or regulatory.

Personally, it angers me to be told that this has nothing to do with guns. It's just our failure to adequately treat the mentally ill.

The body count in this situation had everything to do with guns. The guns that were used, were used in accordance with their conception. They produced a high, fast body count. They did what they were designed to do. While we are waiting around for our mental health care system to be perfected - a system that is challenged with 'fixing' an ever increasing number of Americans with afflictions that cannot be cured, only treated - how many more of these events are acceptable? How long might it take us to master the complex fragility and unknown capabilities of 'troubled" 20-year-old human beings? Who can answer that question for me?

This is yet another example of legally owned weapons used to kill large numbers of people by 'troubled' individuals. Yet, somehow, it is irrational to question the gun laws. It is irrational to question the accessibility of highly lethal guns in our communities that - if they are not being used to kill large numbers of people - serve no purpose other than to make a few collecting individuals feel like they have a radical piece to add to their collection. If it's more than that, please enlighten me. And then explain to me how that feeling coexists with the feelings of people who have lost friends and families in these fucked up, avoidable tragedies.

 

This guy Larry Pratt is a douche among douches. He's always screaming how "now is not the time to debate the issue" whenever something like this happens and in his next breath he attacking the supporter of gun control laws because obviously having every man, woman and child packing heat would have stopped the horrible event. He's wants to get his say in while commending anyone who disagrees with him. It'd always 'How dare you use this event! You're politicizing these death!" Then he immediately begins getting his points out there. Fuck him and others like him. I'm a gun owner, not just one or two either, and people like him are why I've never joined the NRA.

And the point of "now is not the time" is complete and utter horseshit in my opinion. If you had a night club fire and people died because the exit doors were locked I doubt many people would try to claim "now is not the time to debate fire safety and fire regulations in the clubs." But the gun lobby has got it out there that the topic is off limits in the wake of these tragedies. I watched a clip off MSNBC and even they were regurgitating the "now is not the time..." BS. If now is not the time when is the time? Because we're seeing these events about once a week lately. The same day the tragedy happened in CT there was another guy in OK who was busted before he got his attack started. So if the the time around the attacks is off limits and we have attacks all the time we'll never end up having the debate.

As far the "big picture" and reasonable solutions go I really don't have an good answer. I don't think you're ever going to get the guns off the streets and out of the hands of people who obviously shouldn't have them. I do think we have a major problem with the gun show loophole. I also think fully funding mental health services is absolutely a need and not optional. Other then those things I really don't know but I would think now is the time to take action, reasonable action. And I'd be open to listening to any and all suggestions that might stop the next school, mall, work place, theater shooting/tragedy.
--- merged: Dec 15, 2012 at 8:14 PM ---

As I stated above I own guns and I agree with you on here. This "it's not the guns it's a mental health issue" is a cop out. It just an attempt to shift focus in my opinion.

Getting the guns out the hands of those who have mental health issues is part of the problem. But the gun lobby thinks everyone has the God given right to own whatever firearm they can afford. Unless you believe private citizens should own nuclear weapons then that's a BS position.

 

This is relevant and worth watching (or re-watching):

View: http://youtu.be/PezlFNTGWv4
--- merged: Dec 15, 2012 at 8:19 PM ---
Also relvant:

 

Joniemack you are the best in putting things in perspective for me.

 

I was curious to see reactions from various discussion sites.
This one is up to 62 pages so far.
School shooting in CT - many children and adults reported dead - AR15.COM
( lots of rampant speculation, sprinkled with anger that the Kenyan Hussein dude is now gonna come for all the guns.)
i saw a handful of posts that asked people to hold off until more info was available.
but most were relying on their trusted FOX to tell the truth.
And photos/ fb info. of the 'suspected shooter were passed around freely. those photos are still there.

what troubled me the most was MSM - so rabid for ratings , they used unconfirmed tweets and other hearsay and ran them as accurate
info. I think it was Fox news that prematurely posted a picture of the older brother, declaring him as the shooter.

All MSM media butchered any semblance of ethical accurate reporting.

 

I'm not sure how to post a link on here with my phone but Morgan Freeman had a pretty nice stance on this whole thing. Not sure if I totally agree with him but very good points made and they are worth looking at...he is the voice of god after all.

 

I wonder if the police wouldn't of shot this guy on the spot, even if he was out of ammo. If he had been arrested, I think even the most ardent people against the death penalty would have to pause and think about it.

 

Saying that the gun problem would be fixed with more guns is like saying that the cancer problem would be fixed with more cancer

 

I think most folks who make this argument have seen Die hard and Lethal Weapon one too many times or think they're documentaries.

 

the unfolding of "the conversation" about newtown is already quite strange.

a. it's obvious that there will be some changes to federal gun regulations following on this...but a marker of the extent to which the nra-right has found its very considerable monies well spent is the justice department shelved a proposal to tighten up background checks for automatic weapons acquisition last year.

2-300 million guns out there. that is insanity.

b. while raising the various problems that have followed from american privatized barbarism for mental health care is a good and necessary thing, it's a bit strange to find it coming up as it has been in this context, which has the effect of framing the matter as a procedural fix the outcome of which would somehow result in snaring people like this shooter and preventing such things. i am not sure how that would work, really. and it's curious to find the logic of a security apparatus being imputed to the quite sprawling, fragmented network of services that is the mental health care system.

but on this, a basic thing: a main cause of the problems of access to mental health care lay with private insurance companies. mental health care is not easily quantifiable, is not merely giving pills and the problem will go away, so is a cost problem. that this matter gets moved to the center of the adhd media, even for a while, is a good thing, not only in itself but because it points beyond the current compromise system (that the right nonetheless loathes) toward a more comprehensive, nationalized health care system.

 

What number would not be insane?

I personally owned 17 firearms at one time. I now own 11. Thought of using one to shoot another human being would bother me greatly. However If someone were attacking my family at our home I'm certain I would but I wouldn't take the decision lightly and it would weigh on me for the rest of my life I'd think.

 

i had just seen that number before i posted, so i meant "that's insane" more as an expression of bewilderment over its size rather than as you took it, tully, which was to imply that there was a second number in my mind that would be ok.

they say that there was a considerable run on guns when obama was elected to his first term, motored to a significant extent by those fine ultra-reactionaries at the nra feeding into that anxiety that once was particular to the militia set but which is now mainstream conservativeland stuff that the evil socialist state (or the un, using black helicopters to move around) was about to confiscate the sacred gun implements and reduce the ultra-right to slavery. a cynical fellow, thinking about this, would wonder if there is some strategy behind such stuff to create the conditions that the right is afraid of. alot of folk---hard to know how many, but a considerable number judging by, o...i dunno...say the southern poverty law center's tracking of militias---have been playing soldier waiting for this to happen for a long time. maybe that's a childish recreation, playing soldier...or maybe it is what it appears to be, preparing for a civil war should there be a concerted move to reduce the number of guns floating around in the states.

such a move would make sense if gun regulation is to make a serious dent in the american pathology of liking violence and the use of guns in addled scenarios to mow people down in great number. but there's a kind of reactionary extortion that prevents it from being even considered as an aspect of a policy change aimed at reducing the pretty appalling numbers in terms of gun-related violence in the united states. from that viewpoint, massacres like newtown and all other forms of gun-related death and maiming that happen as simply collateral damage.

to my mind, this is a pretty dangerous game that's been played by the ultra-right and it's utterly irresponsible organizational expression in the nra (the politics of which have shifted right over the past decade or so) for it's own self-serving ends that has made of all of us potential collateral damage. and nothing more.

the way around that would be for the main arguments of the gun fundamentalists to be dis-credited: this would be the only good outcome of newtown that i can imagine. i would also imagine that a significant percentage of people who own guns would support a coherent change of gun regulation because they'd get that this did not mean the eradication of all guns, merely restrictions on their procurement and use. the argument can and should be made that the idea was not to fuck with gun owners in general, but to reduce the amount of violence related to guns in a legal framework regarding their control that has been largely gutted or ignored.

meanwhile, some information:

More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence? | Mother Jones

 

I'd say I have a collection and an arsenal, but that's just me. I don't own the weapons I own because I think the bogey man, governmental or simply mental, is coming to get me anytime soon. Strikes me as "doomsday" horseshit. So no, I'm not buying a 5 year supply of powdered milk and eggs either. So far through out history the doomsday predictions have been wrong 100% of the time. No, I own weapons because I like to hunt and I like to target shoot. One of the things I really enjoyed in the military was range days weapons training. Competitions in the military and while a parole officer were a highlight of those occupations for me. I look at my enjoyment of shooting much like I look at my enjoyment of travel. Had I not joined the military I might not have found how much I enjoy these two hobbies.

As for studies on whether or not conceal carry laws lower the crime rate I've seen both. Studies that prove they do and studies that prove they don't. I really don't know but I lean towards don't. After the theater shooting in Co. many pro gun folks wee saying it would have stopped cold if someone else in the theater had been packing. My first thought was "umm, hell no." The last thing I'd want is some untrained (or at least not specially trained in active shooter interventions) person pulling out a Glock in a dark and smokey theater and trying to take out the gun man. Just sounds like a way to increase the total body count.

 

this is a demonstration that the conservative interpretation of the 2nd amendment is bullshit ringed round with self-congratulation and little more:

To Keep and Bear Arms by Garry Wills | The New York Review of Books