From CT Against Gun Violence:
We invite you to the CT Against Gun Violence screening of the new documentary, 91%: A Film About Guns in America, followed by a panel discussion featuring Josh Koskoff, the attorney who represented the families of Newtown victims in the lawsuit against Remington, the maker of the AR-15 assault rifle used in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14, 2012.
Additionally the panel will include director, John Richie, Carolyn Vermont, CAGV’s Director of Urban Initiatives and Harold Dimbo, Bridgeport Manager, Project Longevity. The film and discussion take place on October 26 at 6pm at the Bijou Theater, 275 Fairfield Avenue, Bridgeport. Admission is free, but please click here to register.
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The lack of comments is a very loud message. The people of Bridgeport don’t care nor are they receptive to this type of film. Bridgeport is full of dumb a***oles.
The flip side. Open Carry in Georgia. What’s the LAW?
youtu.be/FE0XNcl8Wgk
The Newtown shooting was an incident that shocked a lot of people. However why did it take a shooting in a sleepy town to wake people up? Why are politicians suddenly interested in gun crime? Hell, look at the major cities across the country where shootings are all too common. Does anyone know what the homicide rate is in Chicago this year? How about LA, Detroit or Dallas?
Why is the gun manufacture taking the blame for their product? The gun performed like it was intended. It was not defective, what was defective was the person who put their finger on the trigger.
Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford all have seen their share of murder over the years. Where are the politicians when it comes to these cities? The murder in these three cities far outweigh the murder in Newtown combined. Yet the focus in on the bushmaster.
No focus on Glock, Smith and Wesson, Colt, the list goes on and on.
Let’s put some money into mental health services, perhaps there will be fewer people killing each other when those in need of help get it.
Let’s enforce the laws on the books and put people who use guns in jail and keep them there.
Stringfellow, look, use your real name and don’t hide. You asked, “The Newtown shooting was an incident that shocked a lot of people. However why did it take a shooting in a sleepy town to wake people up?” Are you joking, those being killed in Chicago, LA, Detroit, Dallas, Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford were black and in Newtown CT you had 20 white children who were killed.
Let’s be clear. Every time there is a mass shooting the politicians start ranting about guns and gun control. You do not hear them say it’s the courts that have to apply the laws currently on the books more effectively. Stop the plea bargains and trying to reinvent the wheel with new laws.
Trying to ban guns altogether is like bringing sand to the beach. Where has the common sense gone? Nobody seems to want to address the lack of mental health services, they want to attack the gun and not idiot with his finger on the trigger. How do you change people who do not have the ability to solve an issue without resorting to violence? Look at the video from the fight in Harding last week. The mob mentality; these kids know nothing about walking away. All they know or seem to care about is violence.
It did not matter to them to settle their issue right there in the lunch room. These kids don’t care about fighting wherever they are. I have seem fights in the mall and on the street. So Mr. Mackey, these black kids who fight and shoot each other for no reason, their future is bleak. Somehow, some way, someone has to reach them and change the way they think. Violence is not the way to solve a problem, it only adds to it.
It seems addressing the black on black crime is not held in high regard these days. Where are the black leaders on this when black kids are shooting and killing each other? Why aren’t the black politicians and clergy speaking up?
This cycle is going to continue until something changes the heart of people. Violence is colorblind, it hits where it hits. Since people and their beliefs are often at the core of violence, how do you change someone’s mind or what they believe? The NAACP, sororities, fraternities and leaders of color all need to speak up and address the violence in schools and on the street. Not come out if the shooting involves a white officer.
Let’s put the blame where it belongs. Don’t blame Corona for the drunk driver or blame Glock for a shooting. Let’s try to focus on fixing the plague of violence that can touch us all anywhere at anytime. I know I was a bit off the subject as Mr. Mackey pointed out. The issue of race seems to distract from the problem.
Stringfellow, you said, “Let’s put the blame where it belongs. Don’t blame Corona for the drunk driver or blame Glock for a shooting. Let’s try to focus on fixing the plague of violence that can touch us all anywhere at anytime.” Here’s where you start, the NRA. Congress and the President can’t fight the power of the NRA so how in hell are the NAACP, sororities, fraternities and leaders of color going to fight and change the law? What is your real name and stop being a coward.
The NRA and similar lobbies are not the root of the violence in this country, no more than Phillip Morris causes lung cancer. In my opinion in order to try to fix the violence you have to change what is in a person’s heart, not the law. Not an easy task.
Perhaps if the courts did their job and applied the laws that are on the books, perhaps that could be a start. I am not a member of the NRA or any other group. I think the NRA wants guns in the hands of lawful responsible people and not in the hands of criminals and mentally unstable people. The NRA is not in the middle of a drug deal that goes bad and someone gets shot and killed. We can debate the second amendment all day but this is not the place for it.
The NAACP and their ilk need to address the communities that are infested with violence to stop the killing. Reach out to the youth under 12 tell them, show them, teach them violence is not the answer and you do not have to be a product of your environment.
The Atlantic:
Indisputably, for much of American history, gun-control measures, like many other laws, were used to oppress African Americans. The South had long prohibited blacks, both slave and free, from owning guns. In the North, however, at the end of the Civil War, the Union army allowed soldiers of any color to take home their rifles. Even blacks who hadn’t served could buy guns in the North, amid the glut of firearms produced for the war. President Lincoln had promised a “new birth of freedom,” but many blacks knew that white Southerners were not going to go along easily with such a vision. As one freedman in Louisiana recalled, “I would say to every colored soldier, ‘Bring your gun home.'”
After losing the Civil War, Southern states quickly adopted the Black Codes, laws designed to reestablish white supremacy by dictating what the freedmen could and couldn’t do. One common provision barred blacks from possessing firearms. To enforce the gun ban, white men riding in posses began terrorizing black communities. In January 1866, Harper’s Weekly reported that in Mississippi, such groups had “seized every gun and pistol found in the hands of the (so called) freedmen” in parts of the state. The most infamous of these disarmament posses, of course, was the Ku Klux Klan.
The reference to the Black Panther Party probably refers to the Mulford Act enacted in 1967 under Ronald Reagan during his period as Governor of California. This act effectively restricted citizens from carrying guns in public and created one of the country’s most strict gun control regulations. This was a direct reaction to the Black Panther Movement’s rise in California and in the 1960s, the NRA would not yet have been a hard-line advocate for gun ownership rights. In the 1980s Reagan changed his opinion on the subject. He would begin to actively encourage 2nd amendment rights to keep citizens safe from the despotism that could be enacted by government, just what African Americans had been hoping to achieve in the 1960s when he had instead endorsed the Mulford Act. The post 1977 NRA endorsed their first presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan, after both had switched to a more strict 2nd amendment rights defense.
It should also be noted by the time Reagan changed his mind in the ’80s, the Black Panthers had already been “resolved” through the government’s Cointel program, thus no longer considered a threat to the status quo.