Showing posts with label connecticut. Show all posts
Showing posts with label connecticut. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

NRA's Scary Tone-Deaf Message

Photobucket
Graphic from an Apple App
Put out by the NRA on the
Anniversary of the Newtown Massacre

It’s offensive. I can assure you they didn’t call me before they chose the date. How outrageous can your behavior be? How tone deaf can you be?
~ Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy

From the New York Daily News
Simply app-alling
The NRA's new shooting game is truly sickening
Let us recap: After the Sandy Hook massacre, the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre deflected blame from the gun lobby onto anyone and anything but firearms. A chief culprit: video games and a “callous, corrupt and corrupting shallow industry that sells and sows violence against its own people.”
Then, exactly one month after 20 children and six adults were cut down by a maniac with an assault rifle, the same NRA released a callous, corrupt and corrupting game for iPhones and iPads.
Players shoot high-powered firearms at coffin-shaped targets. There are red bull’s-eyes where the heads and hearts would be.

This morning I blogged about a new target-shooting app – NRA: Target Practice – that has gotten a ton of media attention because it is advertised as being for ages 4 and up. I suggested that this was, even by NRA standards, so tasteless that it must be a hoax.
Little did I know.
~ Bill Keller on New York Times

~ From Alexander Abad-Santos on Atlanticwire
Now, fine, you aren't shooting actual people in this game, which could explain why the App Store rating rules deem games like these okay for children who are of pre-school age. But you have to remember that it was a little less than a month ago when NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said this:
And here's another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.
... And then they have the nerve to call it "entertainment." But is that what it really is? Isn't fantasizing about killing people as away to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography
And here's from the game's description:
It strikes the right balance of gaming and safety education, allowing you to enjoy the most authentic experience possible.
Now, fine, you could argue that you're just using your sniper rifle to hone those deer-hunting skills. But there are no deer in this game, and the set of targets pictured above do have red areas around the human head and heart, so — well, maybe they're grizzly bears or something. Don't expect the kerfuffle over the game or the organization's perceived hypocrisy to rattle anyone in the NRA, of course: Last month LaPierre had no qualms taking Hollywood down, even though his organization's flagship museum was simultaneously hosting an exhibit showing off famous weaponry in movies.


~~~~~~~~~~~~

Are the president's kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he's just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.
Protection for their kids, and Gun-Free Zones for ours.
~ From an ad for the National Rifle Association, released the day before President Obama was scheduled to announce his plan for gun control reform

The ad signals the NRA's intention to fight a campaign-style war with Obama. The White House response: Bring it on.
~ The Atlantic

It is no secret that the NRA has done a stunningly poor job of handling their business—such as that business is—since the disaster at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
After remaining silent for the week immediately following the shocking events of that terrible Friday, the organization finally took to the press conference stage to blame everyone and anyone they could think of so long as it wasn’t someone who happened to own a gun.
The answer, they told us, was more guns put in more hands.
It has been downhill from there in what has become a classic case study of how to screw up a public relations challenge.
~ Rick Ungar on Forbes



From Morning Joe, January 16, 2013
Joe Scarborough: What’s wrong with these people? You have children that had no say in the decision on whether their father was going to step forward to be President of the United States, to run for President, one of the most bone-crushing, sacrificing things any husband or wife can do to their family. And the second they make that decision their children and their entire family have targets on their backs.

Mika Brzezinski: (whispers) Yeah.

Joe Scarborough: And the NRA is putting something out like--What’s wrong with these people? Putting out apps that four-year-olds can play on the anniversary of the Newtown murders and now putting out an ad talking about the president’s daughters?

Mika Brzezinski: They are out of step, out of sync, and totally out of the mainstream of our society. And quite frankly, after seeing that I think some of the people who run that thing are sick. I really do. I think they’re sick in the head. I'm serious - I'm embarrassed right now. I'm embarrassed for our country. We have a section of our society—the NRA—which should have a voice certainly, trying to protect a Constitutional Amendment. I understand that. There’s a really legitimate debate there and they just took it and brought it down to the lowest, most base level. Now—it’s fringe. It's fringe.

Joe Scarborough: They need new leadership, is what they need.

Mika Brzezinski: Whatever.

Joe Scarborough: Their leadership has dragged them over the cliff. They are now a fringe organization with millions of mainstream Americans, gun-hunting - guys and women that love to hunt--

Mika Brzezinski: Yeah, you should be embarrassed to be part of the NRA at this point.

Joe Scarborough: --and believe that they have the right to protect their families. What the NRA once was, it no longer is. This extremism is so frightening, and just over the line.

~~~~~~~~~~~~


. . . over the past 30 days since the Newtown shootings, the NRA has brought a sledgehammer to the debate, not even attempting nuance or persuasion. First the combative Wayne LaPierre press conference at the National Press Club. Then LaPierre’s uncompromising appearance on “Meet the Press.” And now this web video. The NRA is acting as if this were 2001 -- after beating Al Gore and facing a cowed Democratic Party. Instead, this is 2013 -- after the NRA was unable to beat Obama and after Democrats expanded their majority in the U.S. Senate.
~ NBC News First Read

NRA Response to President Obama's Gun Control Announcement
Throughout its history, the National Rifle Association has led efforts to promote safety and responsible gun ownership. Keeping our children and society safe remains our top priority.

The NRA will continue to focus on keeping our children safe and securing our schools, fixing our broken mental health system, and prosecuting violent criminals to the fullest extent of the law. We look forward to working with Congress on a bi-partisan basis to find real solutions to protecting America’s most valuable asset - our children.

Attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation. Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, December 24, 2012

American Gun Nuts Shoot Out a Petition to Deport Piers Morgan of CNN

Photobucket
White House Petition to Deport Piers Morgan





From Sky News
Thousands of Americans have signed a petition calling for British CNN host Piers Morgan to be deported over his criticism of the country's gun laws.
Just two days after it was posted on the White House website, it had already garnered more than 30,000 signatures by late on Sunday, surpassing the 25,000 required to get a response from the White House.
. . . a Texas journalist posted a petition on the White House website alleging Morgan "is engaged in a hostile attack against the US Constitution by targeting the Second Amendment".
"We demand that Mr Morgan be deported immediately for his effort to undermine the Bill of Rights and for exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens," the petition says.

Photobucket







































Piers Morgan on CNN, Transcript December 18, 2012
PIERS MORGAN: The AR-15, as we've now seen from the last three mass shootings in America, Aurora, the shopping mall in Oregon, and now at Sandy Hook school, is the preferred choice of weapon for disturbed young men who want to commit mass atrocity, can fire hundreds of bullets at rapid speed, if you have the right magazines.

The president of the United States has indicated he wants to ban assault weapons like this. What is your view?

LARRY PRATT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA: I think we need to ban gun control laws that keep people from being able to protect themselves. The problem is not going to go away if we ban this or that gun. We've tried that. That doesn't work. Doesn't even work in England. You have mass murders there all over Europe. There have been mass murderers.

MORGAN: You're talking complete and utter -- you are talking complete and utter nonsense.

PRATT: The solution is for people to be able to defend themselves at the point of the crime and not wait for 20 minutes for the police come after everybody is dead.

MORGAN: What you've just said, Mr. Pratt, was an absolute lie. The gun murder rate in countries like Britain or Germany or Australia, we've all suffered massacres many years ago, similar nature, have -- there are 35 people killed a year. Your country has 12,000.

PRATT: Your murder rate has -- your murder rate is lower than ours, that is true. Your violent --

MORGAN: Lower? It's 75 against 12,000 in Australia.

PRATT: Your violent crime rate --

MORGAN: They had a massacre. And they got rid of the assault weapons.

PRATT: Your violent crime rate is higher than ours as is the violent crime rate in Australia. America is not the Wild West that you are depicting. We only have the problems in our cities, and unhappily, in our schools where people like you have been able to get laws put on the books that keep people from being able to defend themselves.

I honestly don't understand why you would rather have people be victims of a crime than be able to defend themselves. It's incomprehensible.

MORGAN: You're an unbelievably stupid man, aren't you?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, December 21, 2012

NRA Wants Armed Guards in All Schools

Photobucket









National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre at a press conference on the Newtown massacre, held Friday Dec. 21, 2012
Full Text Here
. . . As brave, heroic and self-sacrificing as those teachers were in those classrooms, and as prompt, professional and well-trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable — through no fault of their own — to stop it.

. . . You know, five years ago, after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy. But what if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he had been confronted by qualified, armed security?

Will you at least admit it’s possible that 26 innocent lives might have been spared? Is that so abhorrent to you that you would rather continue to risk the alternative?

Is the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America’s gun owners that you’re willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal left to surrender her life to shield the children in her care? No one — regardless of personal political prejudice — has the right to impose that sacrifice.

. . . Our training programs are the most advanced in the world. That expertise must be brought to bear to protect our schools and our children now. We did it for the nation’s defense industries and military installations during World War II, and we’ll do it for our schools today.

The NRA is going to bring all of its knowledge, dedication and resources to develop a model National School Shield Emergency Response Program for every school that wants it. From armed security to building design and access control to information technology to student and teacher training, this multi-faceted program will be developed by the very best experts in their fields.

Former Congressman Asa Hutchinson will lead this effort as National Director of the National School Shield Program, with a budget provided by the NRA of whatever scope the task requires. His experience as a U.S. Attorney, Director of the Drug Enforcement Agency and Undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security will give him the knowledge and expertise to hire the most knowledgeable and credentialed experts available anywhere, to get this program up and running from the first day forward.

If we truly cherish our kids more than our money or our celebrities, we must give them the greatest level of protection possible and the security that is only available with a properly trained — armed — good guy.

Under Asa’s leadership, our team of security experts will make this the best program in the world for protecting our children at school, and we will make that program available to every school in America free of charge.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~






No one seriously believed the N.R.A. when it said it would contribute something “meaningful” to the discussion about gun violence. The organization’s very existence is predicated on the nation being torn in half over guns. Still, we were stunned by Mr. LaPierre’s mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant.
~ New York Times Editorial

Their press conference was a shameful evasion of the crisis facing our country. Instead of offering solutions to a problem they have helped create, they offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe.
~ Mayor Bloomberg of NYC

Did the NRA just help "seal" the message that we really need to talk about this more than we ever did before? Because if their meaningful contribution is that all of us have a target on our back and all of us need to carry a gun, then we have big problems.
~ MSNBC Thomas Roberts to Michael Steele

I don’t even know where to begin. As a supporter of the Second Amendment and a supporter of the NRA (even though I'm not a member of the NRA), I just found it very haunting and very disturbing that we are country talking about arming our teachers and principals in classrooms. What does that say about us? I do not believe that’s where the American people want to go. I do not believe that is the response that should be coming out of the tragedy in Newtown.
I just think that this was a missed opportunity to create another conversation at a higher level where the American people are right now. This incident cut to the bone. This is unlike anything that’s come before it because it did involve such precious young people and it really starkly called us to think about our society, those issues, not just gun control laws but mental health and a whole bunch of other things I think the NRA could have brought to the table, the idea that the message, the top line message out of this press conference is let’s put a gun in the hands of teachers in our classroom and I do not think that’s where rank-and-file NRA members expected this to go to.
~ Ex-RNC Chairman Michael Steele on MSNBC













Their solution to resolve the issue around guns is to put more guns in the equation? If anything it would be less safe for kids. You would be putting them in the midst of potentially more gunfire.
~ Hank Grishman, Superintendent of Jericho, NY, schools

This is not an Old West shootout. We're talking about an elementary school.
~ Helen Gym, Philadelphia Community Activist

CodePink-AntiNRA

From Alternet
. . . the National Rifle Association today broke its silence with an extraordinary press event in which Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre blamed everybody and everything but the gun culture it has fostered for the deaths of 20 children and seven adults last week at the hands of Adam Lanza.
. . . Twice during his speech, LaPierre was interrupted by protesters from CODE PINK, each of whom stood at the front of the room, before the velvet-draped barrier, some four feet high, that appeared designed to protect the NRA speakers from the press. The podium was set back some 10 or 15 feet from the barrier, evoking the sense of paranoia that drives America's gun culture.
The first sign, held up by a male protester, was a pink banner that read: "NRA KILLING OUR KIDS." After unfurling it, he was escorted out of the room by security. About 10 minutes later, CODE PINK founder Medea Benjamin stepped with her own banner, which I could not read from my vantage point. Receiving the same treatment as the previous protester, Benjamin shouted: "Ban assault weapons now!"






Everyone was to blame. The media and their corporate owners. The political class in Washington. Video games. Violent movies. The mentally ill. But at no point did he point his finger back at the NRA, the one institution that has made it difficult, if not impossible, to bring about common-sense firearms legislation in the country.
~ Jonathan Capehart on Washington Post







. . . Columbine High School had a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the school who engaged the shooters almost immediately in 1999 and wasn’t able to stop the massacre. At Virginia Tech, there was an entire armed police force on campus that was unable to stop the worst school shooting in US history.
As we chronicled last week, there were sixteen mass shootings in the US this year alone—they occurred at shopping malls, spas, movie theatres, and coffee shops. Does LaPierre want armed guards there, and everywhere?
~ George Zornick on The Nation











Photobucket

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Charlotte Allen's Insidious Sandy Hook Op-Ed in National Review

Photobucket

Charlotte Allen on National Review
There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school’s public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.

. . . Parents of sick children need to be realistic about them. I know at least two sets of fine and devoted parents who have had the misfortune to raise sons who were troubled for genetic reasons beyond anyone’s control. Either of those boys could have been an Adam Lanza. You simply can’t give a non-working, non-school-enrolled 20-year-old man free range of your home, much less your cache of weapons. You have to set boundaries. You have to say, “You can’t live here anymore — you’re an adult, and it’s time for you to be a man. We’ll give you all the support you need, but we won’t be enablers.” Unfortunately, the idea of being an “adult” and a “man” once one has reached physical maturity seems to have faded out of our coddling culture.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



The school was K-4. There was a male janitor there. There were male teachers employed at Sandy Hook. This article is disgusting.
~ comment by Gina F.N. on National Review

OMG CHARLOTTE ALLEN YOU'RE INSANE! ("Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers") And, men are what, soaring superhero eagles? They have firearms implanted between their eyebrows? A genetic spidey-sense that allows them to anticipate the outbreak of violence? OH, and Adam Lanza's mother SHOULD HAVE KICKED HIM OUT OF THE HOUSE? How do you even remember to breathe?
~ comment by Suzy Cakes on National Review

Ah, yes, had a man been at the school, he could have thrown a bucket at a heavily armed killer. That would have stopped EVERYthing.
~ comment by Cartoon Peril on National Review

LOL for Ms. Allen's remark that we have to keep our troubled kids from getting into our cache of weapons and that we need to show them the door. Lord knows that if the choice is between the child and the guns, the kid has to go.
~ comment by padfoot on National Review

It shouldn't go without saying on this forum that the Ms. Allen's cruel and delusional ideas aren't just about women being "helpless," but about what is right for a 20-year old with horrible psychological issues. She advocates kicking them out of the house as a solution. Which is ridiculous, if not sociopathic.
We're all deep in mourning for these children and adults. We're all casting about for answers. But Ms. Allen's delusional rant is no answer.
~ comment by LacyM on National Review

I have to wonder how the author would explain the Ft Bragg massacre - where there were more than enough big burly men around, and even lots of big macho weapons - and yet it happened, with 12 deaths and 32 injuries. Perhaps her low regard for women's intellect and strength comes from self-observation.
~ comment by Shari Lewis on National Review

Charlotte Allen should be fired. As should the editors who thought this article was a worthy contribution to the conversation. Disgusting, ignorant, and ill informed.
~ comment by sophebe on National Review

Yeah, what a difference that made at Columbine when the entire football team rushed...oh, wait.
Well, Virginia Tech that was definitely better when all the burly men...hmmm, nope, not there either.
Of course Fort Hood is the perfect example because it's full of Miss Allen's dream of
real men so no one died in that shooting rampage...
Nope, this is just another of Miss Allen's attempts at controversy to gain notoriety.
Congrats! You're unfavorables are now on par with those of Westboro Baptist's and the plague. Well done.
~ comment by LLG on National Review

Because there's no way a madman with a Bushmaster could have stood up to a couple of husky 12-year-old boys, right? Allen's is possibly the most foolish commentary yet about this horror.
~ comment by Julie G. on National Review

I think this Ms. Allen's piece demonstrates the level of credibility that the National Review deserves--none.
~ comment by Mary G. on National Review

Is this site just trolling for page hits at this point? This post reads like satire. I'm sitting here rereading it and looking for any semblance of accuracy... or value for that matter.
As an Army Infantry vet, as someone that's worked security in one of the most dangerous parts of Washington DC, as competitive grappler, as someone that's been in physical altercations on the street, as a person that's lived out the male stereotype you're trying to invoke with this trash of a post - you, your publication, and any people that accept what you've written as fact...
You disappoint and embarrass me.
You are part of the problem.
You and the other Anne Coulters of the world are ruining the country my friends and family have served and died for.
You are a disgraceful and unnecessary caricature.
Please stop before someone takes you seriously and gets themselves killed.
~ comment by Shawn Lord on National Review

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Today's McArdle Award Winner

In which we memorialize the dumbest punditry connected to the schoolhouse massacre in Connecticut by measuring it against the thoughts of Megan McArdle, who believes that human-wave attacks by toddlers would have been the best solution.
Here we have Charlotte Allen, who thinks the basic problem was that there weren't enough manly men around Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday.
. . . OK. I've thought about it. THEY'D ALL BE DEAD NOW, TOO.
Give Allen credit. At least she's upped the age for the schoolchildren who should be used for suicide missions against armored gunmen into the pre-adolescent range.
. . . American conservatism has been rendered a parody of a burlesque of a puppet show. And Charlotte Allen should be shunned by decent people. Hell, people who think like this should be shunned by bacteria.
~ Charles P. Pierce on Esquire

Via afeminizedsetting.tumblr.com/

Photobucket

Photobucket

tumblr_mfb63xqly81s11zbko1_1280

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Cuckoo Time ~ More Guns in School (with Updates)

Photobucket

A sixth grader in Utah told classmates yesterday his parents encouraged him to bring a gun to school in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy. He was apprehended by teachers after he was found with an unloaded .22 caliber handgun, according to local station, Fox 13.
. . . at West Kearns Elementary School, in a suburb of Salt Lake City. He reportedly took the gun out of his backpack during recess Monday afternoon and showed it to classmates. Isabel Rios, a fellow student, told teachers he pointed the gun at her head and said he was going to kill her.
A spokesman for the school district told Fox 13 that although they were not notified immediately, teachers apprehended the student in “30 to 45 seconds” once they were alerted to the weapon. He was then taken to the principal’s office.
Local parents, however, aren’t satisfied with the school’s reaction. John Klaus, a father, complained, “There was no lockdown. No one was called. Nothing was done. And then we had to hear it from our kids.”
~ Reported by Mediaite

I wish to God she (the deceased Principal of Sandy Hook Elementary) had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out ... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.
~ Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-TX

That some right-wing lawmakers and commentators have responded to Newtown by calling for teachers, principals and campus security guards to be armed is beyond obscene — and beneath contempt. More guns, with amateurs firing every which way, surely would have meant more dead children and more grieving families.
~ Eugene Robinson on Washington Post

Blood is on the hands of members of Congress and the Connecticut legislators who voted to ban guns from all schools in Connecticut. They are the ones who made it illegal to defend oneself with a gun in a school.
~ Statement from Gun Owners of America

Until the facts are thoroughly known, NRA will not have any comment.
~ Only Statement from the NRA so far, via spokesman Andrew Arulanandam
UPDATE: The NRA made a statement this afternoon:
The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown.
Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting.
The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.
The NRA is planning to hold a major news conference in the Washington, DC area on Friday, December 21.
Details will be released to the media at the appropriate time."

They (NRA) go into possum mode every time something like this happens. That’s the reason why we exist. They think that if they don't say anything that it will go away.
~ Mike Hammond, Legal Counsel for Gun Owners of America

Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns than guns.
~ Bill Moyers

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Photobucket

. . . You can't ban guns. That ship has sailed.
You can't ban them because the Supreme Court has now ruled, twice, that you can't. You also can't ban them because there are hundreds of millions of guns in circulation in the United States--no one knows exactly how many, but we are either approaching, or well past, one gun per adult citizens. Other countries that banned guns started with a less absolutist attitude towards civil liberties, and also, a lot fewer guns.
. . . I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. Would it work? Would people do it? I have no idea; all I can say is that both these things would be more effective than banning rifles with pistol grips.
~ Megan McArdle on Daily Beast

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THINK ABOUT IT: If everyone is armed at all times, then everyone can kill any mass murderer. Indeed, why not require all of us to carry two weapons, thus DOUBLING OUR ABILITY TO SHOOT DOWN A MASS MURDER? How can ProgressVA, Lowell or anyone else argue with the math?
Moreover, if you don't carry your weapon one day, and get killed; you are to blame, not the politicians, not the gun control laws, not the NRA, not a breakdown in morality or even the craziness of your killer. If you leave home without your two weapons, it is your fault if you get killed by anyone for any reason. That's the logic of the situation.
~ GoldmanUSA on Blue Virginia

This sacrosanct notion that we cannot do anything but have gun-free zones is just a fallacy. What we’re dealing with here is people who don’t care. They’ve erased their moral compass. They don’t care about the law, and they are intent on horrific acts.
~ Oklahoma Rep. Mark McCullough, R-Sapulpa

I could not be in more opposition to that idea. Schools are not a place where we should be arming combatants.... Our job as educators is to try to create an educational environment and try to teach students how to love one another and try to get along with one another so these kinds of tragedies that occurred in Connecticut never happen again. That’s our job. Our job’s not to try to kill an intruder.
~ Kevin Burr, Sapulpa, OK, School Administrator, referring to Rep. McCullough's idea

I don’t think the answer to our gun problem is add more guns into the equation. I don’t think he probably really understands how schools operate. Schools can be emotional places at times. Kids can get emotional. Teachers can get emotional. Parents come in emotional. Throw weapons into that mix, and it can be dangerous.
~ Ed Allen, president of the Oklahoma City American Federation of Teachers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

School teachers
Should they be armed with big-ass rifles? Yes. They must protect our children from rampaging shooters. They should preferably be armed at all times, because when you’re around emotionally immature, irresponsible young people, you want to be able to shoot whatever marauder they’re all screaming about like he’s f***ing Justin Bieber, with murder.
~ Wonkette (this is snark, in case you're wondering)

Photobucket

In our zealousness to protect people from harm we’ve created all these gun-free zones and what we’ve inadvertently done is we’ve made them a target. A helpless target is exactly what a deranged person is looking for where they cannot be stopped.
~ Florida Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala

Must every tragic mass shooting bring out the shrill ignorance of “gun control” advocates?
The key fallacy of so-called gun-control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.
~ Thomas Sowell on National Review

Children ages 5 to 14 in America are 13 times as likely to be murdered with guns as children in other industrialized countries....
. . . American schoolchildren are protected by building codes that govern stairways and windows. School buses must meet safety standards, and the bus drivers have to pass tests. Cafeteria food is regulated for safety. The only things we seem lax about are the things most likely to kill.
~ Nicholas Kristof on New York Times

It is not that the people are allowed to arm. It is that the government is disallowed to disarm them.
. . . Those upset with the order of things are welcome to try, and doomed to fail, to repeal the Second Amendment via the constitutional process. But the guns of America aren’t going anywhere any time soon, and generic calls to “do something” — even insofar as doing something is desirable — must reckon with this fact.
On Friday, the president promised “meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” We doubt that something like this is possible, in a way consistent with the principle and the fact of the Second Amendment.
~ Editors of National Review

We have to do everything we can to make sure those types of evils are restricted the best they can be. One thing I hope I don’t see is knee-jerk reaction from Washington, where they come in and think they know the answers.
In the state of Texas, if you go through the process, have been trained, and you are a handgun-licensed individual, you should be able to carry a gun anywhere in the state.
~ Governor Rick Perry of Texas

Photobucket

I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn’t exist, or he’s irrelevant to me and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences too.
And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that’s what’s going on.
~ Christian Radio Host James Dobson

~~~~~~~~~~

People carrying concealed pistols are not the ones shooting innocent victims. It is criminals who have no intention of following any law that are the perpetrators of these crimes. Strict gun-control laws do not stop criminals from committing evil acts, they merely infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens who might be able to take action against evil if given the chance.
~ Ari Adler, spokesman for Michigan House Speaker, Jase Bolger

I haven't made a decision one way or another on it ... I need to see what it says. But the shooting gives you clear pause to say, 'Would this be appropriate?' That was a terrible thing to happen.
~ Michigan Governor, Rick Snyder, noncommittal about whether he will sign a law allowing concealed handguns in schools and day cares

UPDATE:Gov. Snyder of Michigan will VETO concealed guns bill:



~~~~~~~~~~

Photobucket

How the NRA Defeats National Tragedies
First it scares people into thinking the government is coming for their guns. Then it quietly asks the public to pray for the victims of the next rampage.
. . . The “appropriate time” never arrives. It’s an ingenious communications strategy, one that removes the NRA from stories about the latest national outrages. When the outrage fades, the NRA returns in full flush. Just a week before the Newtown, Conn., shootings, Arulanandam told a reporter that the NRA was “planning for the worst” and had “told people to plan for gun bans and a Supreme Court stacked with anti-gun judges.”
David Weigel on Slate

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, December 17, 2012

Who Needs Assault Weapons? (Updated)

Photobucket

On Dec. 14, the day an armed citizen killed 26 unarmed women and children at a Connecticut elementary school, the NRA's Twitter account went silent. It has not tweeted since. Meanwhile, its Facebook page has disappeared, along with those 1.7 million "likes." Navigating to www.facebook.com/nationalrifleassociation now redirects to the Facebook homepage.
~ Slate



I wish to God she had an M-4 in her office locked up so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.
~ Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-TX, on Fox News

If school teachers are now to be armed, wouldn’t the teachers have to carry around their assault rifles at all time since they would not know when an attack would occur? Indeed, given the low likelihood of such an attack, should they also be equipped with ebola-medical kits, rabies treatment packs, floatation devices, and other equipment for more likely threats. The average soldier, after all, carries as much as 135 pounds depending on their unit. Should our teachers carry less to protect our children?
~ Law Professor Jonathan Turley

. . . teachers are not soldiers, nor do the vast majority of us want to be soldiers. Could we ever train teachers and other school personnel as well as we would need to? Realistically, can we create an armed line of defense between these peculiar Rambos who want to kill us for reasons none of us truly understand? I don’t think so.
However, the ethical and moral question is: do we want to give over every safe space we have — even our homes, churches and schools — to violence? Do we want to make every caretaker — every parent, minister, teacher, coach, nurse, Scout leader — into a potential soldier? I say no. And it’s time to tell the NRA, the multi-billion dollar arms business and the government that we refuse the escalation of violence.
Teachers: we are not soldiers.
~ Claire B. Potter, Professor of History at The New School for Public Engagement, New York,

Who needs an assault rifle to go hunting? You can't even use the prey that you kill with an assault rifle if you indeed do it. No one needs an assault rifle to go out and shoot a deer. No one needs an assault rifle that's capable of shooting 10, 20, 30 rounds off at the same time to shoot a duck or to shoot quail. It does not make sense.
~ Don Lemon on CNN


In the coming weeks, I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement, to mental health professionals, to parents and educators, in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this, because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine.
Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?
Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?
. . . We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.
~ President Obama speaking at the Newtown, CT, Prayer Vigil

Photobucket

After mass shootings, it’s always said we must improve our mental-health system and the treatment of those who may be prone to violence. Of course we should. But this noble sentiment is too often part of a strategy to evade any action on guns themselves.
Not this time. Americans are not the only people in the world who confront mental-health problems. We are the only country that regularly experiences horrors of this sort. The difference, as the writer Garry Wills has said, is that the United States treats the gun as a secular god, immune to rational analysis and human intervention.
We must depose the false deity. We must act now to curb gun violence, or we never will.
~ E.J. Dionne on National Memo

It's time to move beyond rhetoric. We need to sit down and have a common-sense discussion and move in a reasonable way.
. . . Everything has to be on the table.
~ Senator Joe Manchin D-WV, and member of the NRA

We cannot simply accept this as a routine product of modern American life. If now is not the time to have a serious discussion about gun control and the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our society, I don’t know when is. How many more Columbines and Newtowns must we live through? I am challenging President Obama, the Congress, and the American public to act on our outrage and, finally, do something about this.
~ Congressman Gerald Nadler, D-NY

Joe Scarborough on MSNBC's Morning Joe, via Blue Virginia
You know me. I am a conservative Republican who received the NRA's highest rating over four terms in Congress...There's no easy ideological way forward...I come to you this morning with a heavy heart and no easy answers. Still, I've spent the past few days grasping for solutions and struggling for answers, while daring to question my own long-held belief on these subjects. I've always taken the libertarian's approach to Hollywood's 1st amendment rights and gun collector's 2nd amendment rights, and I stood by those libertarian beliefs after Columbine, after Aurora, and after Arizona..."
I knew the ending of this story because we've all seen it too often. I knew that day that the ideologies of my past career were no longer relevant to the future that I want, that I demand for my children. Friday changed everything, it must change everything, we all must begin anew and demand that Washington's old way of doing business is no longer acceptable.
...our Bill of Rights does not guarantee gun manufacturers the absolute right to sell military-styled, high-caliber, semiautomatic, combat assault rifles with high-capacity magazines to whoever the hell they want. It is time for Congress to put children before deadly dogmas...
We've already given up too much ground across America. We've already ceded too many schoolyards, too many shopping malls, too many movie theaters, and too many college campuses. We must give no more ground.
For the sake of my four children, and yours, I choose life and I choose change. It's time to turn over the tables inside the temple, and for the sake of our children, we must do what's right. And for the sake of this great nation that we love, let's pray to god that we do.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, December 16, 2012

The Newtown Massacre

Photobucket



Previous Post:
Snark Amendment: Now is the Time for Gun Control
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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







~~~~~~~

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Now is the Time for Gun Control

Photobucket


Immediate response from National Rifle Association: 
NO COMMENT


STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT ON SCHOOL SHOOTING IN NEWTOWN, CONNECTICUT
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
3:15 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: This afternoon, I spoke with Governor Malloy and FBI Director Mueller. I offered Governor Malloy my condolences on behalf of the nation, and made it clear he will have every single resource that he needs to investigate this heinous crime, care for the victims, counsel their families.

We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. And each time I learn the news I react not as a President, but as anybody else would — as a parent. And that was especially true today. I know there’s not a parent in America who doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do.

The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own. Among the fallen were also teachers — men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams.

So our hearts are broken today — for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these little children, and for the families of the adults who were lost. Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children’s innocence has been torn away from them too early, and there are no words that will ease their pain.

As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago — these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.

 This evening, Michelle and I will do what I know every parent in America will do, which is hug our children a little tighter and we’ll tell them that we love them, and we’ll remind each other how deeply we love one another. But there are families in Connecticut who cannot do that tonight. And they need all of us right now. In the hard days to come, that community needs us to be at our best as Americans. And I will do everything in my power as President to help.

Because while nothing can fill the space of a lost child or loved one, all of us can extend a hand to those in need — to remind them that we are there for them, that we are praying for them, that the love they felt for those they lost endures not just in their memories but also in ours.

May God bless the memory of the victims and, in the words of Scripture, heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)