We can’t wait for the tears to dry to take action. That’s the sentiment of so many who embrace the political will to obliterate access to the assault weapons massacring kids. No one could have imagined the horror that visited Newtown on Friday, but cities across America including Connecticut’s largest city have experienced far too many shootings and killings that don’t make the national news.
President Barack Obama has largely taken a hands-off position from gun control, part of a campaign strategy to avoid a potential wedge issue in battleground states he won such as Ohio and Virgina and others. But now he has four more years and he’ll be a relatively young man when he leaves office following his constitutional term limit. He’s got nothing to lose. Last Friday was the bloodiest assault on children in U.S. history. What more does a president, a congressman, senator, or anyone else need to take a stance, damn the potential political consequences, against the dubious power of the National Rifle Association?
In paraphrasing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with the toughest gun laws in the country, Obama can longer be a wimp. The question becomes how far should we go and what can be passed? United States Senator from California Diane Feinstein says she will introduce at the start of the new legislative session a ban on assault weapons.
Gun rights advocates will want to keep the emphasis on mental illness, as they always do, mired in the handcuffs of ideology. Guns don’t shoot people, people shoot people, yadda, yadda, yadda. Does anyone do this sort of thing out of an act of sanity? And yet the United States leads the world in wiping people out via guns. You don’t give a rats ass what other countries do? Maybe you should because those countries do not experience even remotely the kind of bloodshed as America as a result of limiting access to guns.
Adam Lanza’s mother Nancy, according to law enforcement officials, was a gun collector whose assault weapons were turned against her and then 26 other innocents including 20 kids with hundreds of rounds fired.
Obama preaches often about change coming from the bottom up. If the bottom represents the moms and dads rising up, it will happen. But maybe the top should show more cashews than to rely so much on the bottom.
So what’s reasonable? Limiting assault weapons to law enforcement officials as some countries do? What becomes the definition of a hunting weapon for the law-abiding living off the land? What becomes a reasonable weapon inside your home for self defense?
What say you?
Too many opened-ended questions. I do find it odd you are required to pass psychological evaluations for many elective surgeries yet nothing similar is required for purchasing a gun. However this lunatic wasn’t a registered gun owner so would it even matter if laws were in effect? The sad truth is no matter how many laws you invoke, you can’t stop crazy. Continued prayers for Newtown.
Thanks Lennie, for this version of “Over The Rainbow.” Just like the victims of this massacre, IZ died way too young. But as we can see, he had a chance to save his own life, but his lifestyle bespoke of gorging. What a wonderful entertainer.
I’m tired of people trying to pass laws to regulate and deter those who ignore laws. If every “assault”-type weapon never existed, he would have used the two handguns he had stolen and those kids would be just as dead, so let’s not get sidetracked into taking action that will do nothing to solve the problem.
As I see it, the problem is our kids are defenseless. If those kids weren’t defenseless, he’d still be dead, but far fewer or none of them would be. If money were no object, I’d have armed police officers in every school, every day, not just as a short-term reaction like Finch did for the Bridgeport schools.
But money is always a concern, so I want the next best thing. I want every qualified adult in our schools to be armed. By qualified, I mean every adult in schools who can pass the same requirements and training we have for our police officers to be armed.
If there had been some armed administrators/teachers in that school, there would have been a very different outcome.
*** Assault weapons and ammo, etc. is not needed for the sport of hunting by the average citizen, so a ban is needed. Will it stop the senseless killing in America, “NO” but it certainly won’t add to it by use of these weapons! It’s out of hand and whatever measures are taken within reason, is better than nothing at all. *** SAFETY IN AMERICA SHOULD BE PRIORITY ONE ***
I’ve been saying that for just about 20 years now, Lennie. When I left my digit in Hartford close to 19 years ago, I spent about 6 hours in a hospital room with a nurse assigned to stay with me and we had a long conversation about guns, gun crime punishment, and gun violence. She understood where I came from and why I believe what I believe better than anyone after the six hours we spent talking.
In most of the interviews that followed that day of March 8, 1994, I was asked what I would say to those of the opinion that I and my position on gun punishment is simply crazy. My response was, “If anyone thinks what I did is crazy, they haven’t seen crazy yet.” A little over a year later, the Oklahoma City bombing occurred and I knew I hadn’t seen crazy yet.
Crazy is the unknown number of people who are actually contemplating committing a much deadlier massacre than the one currently on US record. Deep-down inside I know these sick people have been watching these tragic events unfold on the television or computer, getting turned on and motivated to do the inevitable. When and where will it happen? Time will tell.
One way to curb the use of guns would be to force the gunmakers to produce safer guns. We can track your dog, your cell phone and your car but we can’t track a stolen gun? You can open a door with a digital fingerprint but we can’t implement some type of chip to curb an unauthorized trigger finger. The anti-drinking and driving movement was forwarded not by legislators but by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The Civil Rights movement certainly was inspired by the marches in the south.
People, unfortunately, are motivated by need, greed and fear. You will see in the next few months an increase in gun, ammunition sales and a spike in their stock prices. Our government pension plans and socially progressive investors need to send a message to the boardrooms of America if you don’t change your technology we will short your stocks.
I don’t want to hear the Big Brother argument. Big Brother has been here for a long time. I want Big Brother to protect me, my little sisters and little brothers.
We should all join CT Against Gun Violence based in Southport. They are the only statewide group that works to help make our communities, our families, our children safe from gun violence. More about this great group:
www .cagv.org
Perhaps it is a little ironic Sturm Ruger is HQ’d in Southport and RGR will be paying a special dividend to shareholders on 12/21/2012.
And the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the second most powerful gun lobby in the country, is located in Newtown CT. That is not the point …
No points intended, just even more ironic.
Here is to Follow the Money’s point.
www .ruger.com/corporate/news/2012-11-19a.html
For now, we don’t have to change the laws for GUN CONTROL!
For now, we just have to CHANGE THE TAX!
None of the guns this guy had were ‘assault’ weapons. None of them would have been banned by the assault weapon ban. I am sure we are about to see another attempt to control societal ills through legislation rather than education. This will be no more effective that prohibition, the war on drugs or any other of the unenforced laws we have already. Blaming guns for this tragedy is no more valid than blaming cars for drunk driving.
It would appear we are about to rush off and do what we always do. Find something that does not work and do it more than we are already. After all, the politicians need to appear to be doing something. The article states New York has some of the toughest gun laws, yet New York still has gun violence. So I guess if we had tougher laws than New York we would be OK. We could look at England where guns are banned entirely. But alas, they still have gun violence although it was 0.25/100K. New York with the strongest anti-gun laws had a gun death rate of 4.4 per 100K people and Kentucky, with some of the weakest gun laws, had a gun homicide rate of 3.57. These stats do not include all gun violence just gun homicides. I do not know what the answer is but we should look at the problem a little before jumping in with both feet.
Those who don’t understand weapons think assault rifles and other assault weapons were used in this evil act. The weapons used were legally obtained by the mother. The person who did this travesty (I’ll never write or speak his name) tried to obtain a legal handgun, but wouldn’t wait the required period. He stole his mother’s guns. Why in God’s name did she have so many, or any, guns in the first place?
Reports I read said an AR-15 was used in Newtown:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-15–doesn’t look like an ordinary rifle to me.
As previously stated “no matter how many laws you invoke, you can’t stop crazy.” You might, however, make “crazy” more difficult–Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s idea was “Guns don’t kill people, bullets do” and he proposed high taxes on ammunition … probably, though, most survivalists (as the Newtown boy’s mother was described) have thousands of rounds designed to inflict maximum damage and high-capacity magazines stashed to fight off the hordes of refugees coming after the apocalyptic collapse, or defend themselves against “politically correct” leftists in the upcoming civil war. A whole new industry has been built around survivalism, and taxes might be a moot point if you’re rich enough to afford an $800 Bushmaster to defend your wealth… Also, we might want to ask teachers how they feel about being armed in a school. If arming teachers (and training them to use guns) doesn’t fly in CT, one could always “vote with their feet” and move to a more accommodating state.
Statistics can be made to represent any point of view, but I thought this chart at Wikipedia was interesting:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country
In England, you would be lucky to get as much as a shotgun for skeet shooting or hunting. And their cops don’t carry guns, as I recall. Finally, maybe we need to re-examine the ways we treat “crazy,” and instead of cost-cutting and pharmaceutical shortcuts that are of great benefit to their manufacturers, find a better way. These are all hard problems, but as things spiral out of control they will become even more difficult.
I have thought about this for a long time and there are no hard and fast answers to this problem but it’s time to face a few hard realities.
1. While guns do not kill people, people kill people. I see no reason for the sale of assault rifles to anyone. You cant hunt with them, the only thing you can do is shoot at a range or shoot people.
2. We need to put people with mental issues into treatment centers. Mainlining kids with problems is a mistake just ask any teacher who has to deal with these problem kids daily.
3. We need to restrict the sale of violent video games to all because there are dumb-ass parents who will buy them for their kids. these videos make shooting deaths run-of-the-mill occurrences.
4. We need to change much of the violence shown in today’s movies. R ratings and X ratings are not keeping kids out of these movies.
I suggest everyone read today’s front-page article in the Post written by a mother with a troubled child.
I am not a fan of assault rifles but I am a fan of civil rights. You should be careful, Andy. Next time an octogenarian drives through a crowd of people the general public may start to believe retired people do not need cars. They have nowhere to go and it is just too dangerous to have them behind the wheel. We have public transportation and people to places is free. Their cars just pollute the atmosphere and use up the old person’s money. We would be doing the old people a favor. It would probably be best to put them all in homes so they could be taken care of and looked after more cheaply. It would save Medicare. It is a funny thing about rights. Take the right of free speech. The hardest and most important time to protect the right to free speech is when someone is saying something you do not want to hear.
Sadly, one of the OIB posters here is absolutely correct. The AR 15 ‘Bushmaster’ used by Lanza merely resembles an assault rifle. The firing characteristics of that weapon are the same as any lawful semiautomatic weapon used by sportsmen and women. We have NO chance of bucking the NRA lobby to get that particular weapon ‘type’ off the shelves. BUT … we do have a credible chance at controlling the magazine capacity for ALL semiautomatic weapons. A 30-round capacity is outrageous and invite mass shooting by the deranged. I am confident even the NRA will support semiautomatic magazine capacities.
Why do you insist on wasting our effort and time on something that, even if it were already law, would not have saved even one child’s life? I can tape two magazines together so I can very quickly reverse them and reload. Do you really think the 10 seconds it would have delayed him to insert a fresh smaller magazine would have saved even one child’s life? He had all the time in the world, there was no one there to stop him.
Now, how many children’s lives would have been saved if there were a cop permanently stationed at that school? Or an armed administrator/teacher?
We have armed air marshals on airplanes these days, in addition to all the extra security intended to keep terrorists/crazies from boarding. I want the same for our schools. I want our children to be defended, not vulnerable to any crazy who can steal a gun.
Why do I insist on limiting magazine capacity? Because I feel strongly about it. A shithead wannabe like you is not going to influence me. Go ahead, tape two 30-round magazines together then shove them both squarely up your ass.
All “assault weapons” available to civilians merely resemble the assault rifles used by military and police, since fully automatic capability has been illegal for ordinary citizens for quite some time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon#Attributes_in_assault_weapon_definitions
However, these civilian versions are not purposed for hunting, and target practice is vital for skillful use in the situations for which they are intended–so the market is pretty good for the manufacturers of the ammunition and the product that uses it–highly recommended in survivalist circles to have the upper hand in a gunfight.
/what-can-be-done-about-guns/#comment-52247
Where there is a will, there is a way.
www .youtube.com/watch?v=fw1A2vCsL0U
FYI–the second gun in the video could have been made at the old, no longer existing, GE plant. It was a Mosin–Nagant.
www .youtube.com/watch?v=y5JicO2bKec
Thanks, Jim. Beautiful.