Sunday, December 16, 2012

The Newtown Massacre

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Previous Post:
Snark Amendment: Now is the Time for Gun Control
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We are living in an era of slaughter. I admit to having thrown up my own hands against the NRA, arguing that they have too much power and it wasn't worth the risk to take them on. I'm done with that. We're living in a f***ing abbatoir, now drenched in the blood of little children. We have to do something.
~ Michael Tomasky on Daily Beast

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.
All of that is a truth, plain and simple, and recognized throughout the world. At some point, this truth may become so bloody obvious that we will know it, too. Meanwhile, congratulate yourself on living in the child-gun-massacre capital of the known universe.
~ Adam Gopnik on The New Yorker

America has a gun problem . It's time for action. I, and my siblings,(born in the mid-sixties) grew up without bicycle helmets, and graduated sizes of car seats. Our parents used mercury thermometers, to check for fever, and we played on asphalt playgrounds. Everyone I know survived. Yet, there were accidents; So our government legislated safety guidelines. Yes, it makes sense. Cribs that collapse, cars with faulty breaks, contaminated food get recalled. Why? Because they're dangerous. However, the most dangerous, man-made instrument, whose sole purpose is to destroy; is ever evasive of thoughtful, logical legislation. There is an unbelievable disconnect here. How many more innocent Americans, need to die unnecessarily, by gunfire, before something is done? The Bradys' worked very hard to make intelligent change. We need to reinstate the assault weapon ban, close the gun show loop-holes, and hold gun manufacturers accountable. If this government can legislate benign objects; Why can't it legislate deadly weapons?
~ comment by SeaSprite23 on The New Yorker


Do We Have the Courage to Stop This?
The fundamental reason kids are dying in massacres like this one is not that we have lunatics or criminals — all countries have them — but that we suffer from a political failure to regulate guns.
. . . We even regulate toy guns, by requiring orange tips — but lawmakers don’t have the gumption to stand up to National Rifle Association extremists and regulate real guns as carefully as we do toys. What do we make of the contrast between heroic teachers who stand up to a gunman and craven, feckless politicians who won’t stand up to the N.R.A.?
As one of my Facebook followers wrote after I posted about the shooting, “It is more difficult to adopt a pet than it is to buy a gun.”
~ Nicholas D. Kristoff






We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?
~ Mike Huckabee on Fox News

Walk-Back:
Yesterday, I was on Neil Cavuto. He asked me, you know, where was God? I said, you know, we've systematically removed him from our culture, from our schools. Well, I've been barraged by people who have said that I said, well, if we just have prayer in schools, this wouldn't happen. That's not my point.
~ Mike Huckabee Walking Back his Previous Statement on Fox and Friends Saturday







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It’s a fact that there is only one policy that has been shown to reduce the incidence of multiple shootings. There’s always going to be crazy people in a country of 300 million people. Only one policy has reduced these mass shootings and the number of casualties, and that is concealed carry permits. If you want to reduce the number of dead, and the number of times this is going to happen in an area, you sort of sense this, because although it’s been a long time since a school shooting, post offices, places that are gun free zones.
~ Ann Coulter on Sean Hannity








The right wing fairy tale that more concealed carry permits will reduce mass shootings is based on several flawed assumptions. The right assumed that the person who is carrying is at the ready. They assume that the individual with the gun won’t be targeted first. They also assume that the rampage shooter will have no element of surprise. They assume that those who find themselves in a mass shooting situation will be in a position to retaliate.
The idea that adding more guns to a school shooting would somehow reduce the violence defies common sense, but it is also symptomatic of where the discussion has quickly gone after the Newtown shooting.
~ Jason Easley on PoliticusUSA

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CNN Piers Morgan Transcript Dec. 14, 2012

JOHN R. LOTT, JR, AUTHOR, "MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME": I'm telling you, people can go and look up the statistics themselves. What you find is that for decades the murder rate was falling in Australia. It basically stopped falling. If you just compare the average over two decades where it's falling to what it was afterwards, it makes it look like the average before is higher than average afterwards. But if you look on a year by year basis, there wasn't that fall.

MORGAN: Why does Adam Lanza's mother, who sadly as killed by him today -- why did she need to have these three weapons?

LOTT: Can I follow-through on the Australia thing?

MORGAN: No, I want you to answer this. Why does she need to have these three weapons, legally purchased, including this semiautomatic Bushmaster. Why would a woman teacher at a kindergarten need these weapons in her home? Allowing, therefore, a clearly deranged son to take them and commit this atrocity?

LOTT: Whatever that gun looks like, it's a semiautomatic rifle. Any hunting rifle, just about, is a semiautomatic rifle. Just because it looks different on the outside doesn't mean it functions differently.

MORGAN: He fired over 100 rounds in several minutes with this apparently harmless rifle.

LOTT: Nobody said guns were harmless. Guns make it easy.

MORGAN: You just tried to make out, it's just an average old gun. He fired over 100 rounds and he killed 20 children. Twenty Children between five and 10. At what point do you gun lobby guys say, we get it? It's time for change?

LOTT: Right, it is time.

MORGAN: Time to do what?

LOTT: To get rid of some of these gun laws that cause --

MORGAN: To get rid of the gun laws?

LOTT: Look at what has happened, all these attacks this year have occurred where guns are banned. Look at the Aurora movie theater shooting.

MORGAN: What the hell has that got to do with it? Seriously? What has that got to do with it?

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