Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
I was struck by a news story earlier this week, not only because of its importance, but because of how little air time it received in the mass media. Earlier this week, the victims of the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona had a chance to speak to the man responsible for those hideous acts. One statement was especially powerful and it was from the husband of Gabby Giffords, now a former Congresswoman from Arizona. I apologize for the length of the following quotations, but I think it is important to read most of what Gabby’s husband said to Mr. Jared Loughner, who perpetrated the crime.
“Mr. Loughner, for the first and last time, you are going to hear directly from Gabby and me about what you took away on January 8th, 2011 and, just as important, what you did not. So pay attention. That bright and chilly Saturday morning, you killed six innocent people. Daughters and sons. Mothers and fathers. Grandparents and friends. They were devoted to their families, their communities, their places of worship.
Gabby would trade her own life to bring back any one of those you savagely murdered on that day. Especially young Christina-Taylor Green, whose high-minded ideas about service and democracy deserved a full life committed to advancing them. Especially 30-year old Gabe Zimmerman, whom Gabby knew well and cherished, and whose love for his family and his fiancee and service to his country were as deep as his loss is tragic. Especially Judge John Roll whom Gabby was honored to call a colleague and friend and from whose interminable dedication to our community and country she gained enormous inspiration. Gabby would give anything to take away the grief you visited upon the Morrises, the Schnecks, and the Stoddards – anything to heal the bodies and psyches of your other victims.
And then there is what you took from Gabby. Her life has been forever changed. Plans she had for our family and her career have been immeasurably altered. Every day is a continuous struggle to do those things she was once so very good at. Gabby is a people person: she exudes kindness, creativity, and compassion. If she were not born with the name – “Gabby” – someone would have given it to her. Now she struggles to deliver each and every sentence. Her gift for language can now only be seen in Internet videos from a more innocent time.
Gabby was an outdoor enthusiast. She was often seen rollerblading with her friend Raoul in Reed Park, hiking in Sabino Canyon, or careening down Rillito Wash Trail on her bike, as she was the night before you tried and failed to murder her. She hasn’t been to any of those places since, and I don’t know when she’ll return. There’s more. Gabby struggles to walk. Her right arm is paralyzed. She is partially blind. Gabby works harder in one minute of an hour – fighting to make each individual moment count for something – than most of us work in an entire day.
Mr. Loughner, by making death and producing tragedy, you sought to extinguish the beauty of life. To diminish potential. To strain love. And to cancel ideas. You tried to create for all of us a world as dark and evil as your own. But know this, and remember it always: You failed. Your decision to commit cold-blooded mass murder also begs of us to look in the mirror. This horrific act warns us to hold our leaders and ourselves responsible for coming up short when we do, for not having the courage to act when it’s hard, even for possessing the wrong values.” CNN
It was hard for me to read the full statement without shedding a tear. Not just for Giffords and her husband, but for all of the families who suffered at the hands of a man who should not have been able to obtain the weapons and the ammunition that he had that fateful day. I am not advocating the rescinding of our Second Amendment rights, but I am pleading for common sense in how we turn a blind eye to the damage guns do, without ever caring about what we need to do to prevent these kinds of weapons and the size of the magazines that allow a mentally disturbed individual like a Jared Loughner, to kill and maim so many innocents.
Mr. Mark Kelly, the former Astronaut who is Gabrielle Gifford’s husband, did not stop with the perpetrator of the violence, he also took all of us to task for allowing our society and our politicians to ignore the violence and death that are brought every day to this country by people carrying guns. “Your decision to commit cold-blooded mass murder also begs of us to look in the mirror. This horrific act warns us to hold our leaders and ourselves responsible for coming up short when we do, for not having the courage to act when it’s hard, even for possessing the wrong values. We are a people who can watch a young man like you spiral into murderous rampage without choosing to intervene before it is too late.
We have a political class that is afraid to do something as simple as have a meaningful debate about our gun laws and how they are being enforced. We have representatives who look at gun violence, not as a problem to solve, but as the white elephant in the room to ignore. As a nation we have repeatedly passed up the opportunity to address this issue. After Columbine; after Virginia Tech; after Tucson and after Aurora we have done nothing.
In this state we have elected officials so feckless in their leadership that they would say, as in the case of Governor Jan Brewer, “I don’t think it has anything to do with the size of the magazine or the caliber of the gun.” She went on and said, “Even if the shooter’s weapon had held fewer bullets, he’d have another gun, maybe. He could have three guns in his pocket” – she said this just one week after a high capacity magazine allowed you to kill six and wound 19 others, before being wrestled to the ground while attempting to reload. Or a state legislature that thought it appropriate to busy itself naming an official Arizona state gun just weeks after this tragedy occurred, instead of doing the work it was elected to do: encourage economic growth, help our returning veterans and fix our education system.” CNN
The idea that any politician of any stripe could downplay the destructive magnitude of these high-capacity magazines and the weapons they feed is disgusting and sad. Without all of us taking a stand against allowing people with mental disorders from owning guns and without all of us saying it is not necessary in our society to allow these high-capacity magazines, how will the violence ever end?
Is it necessary to our Freedom as a society to allow unfettered access to guns and ammunition that is only meant to be used against innocents? Can’t common sense restrictions be put into place without the NRA and politicians crying foul? Recently in Cook County, Illinois which has seen more than its share of gun violence, the President of the County Board recently attempted to stem the gun violence by advocating a tax on bullets. It may not be the best idea, but it was an attempt to find a way to stop our youth from killing each other and her efforts were met with derision and she had to drop her ammo tax idea. Chicago Tribune
It is far past time for our society to wake up and agree that not everyone should have access to guns and high-capacity magazines, isn’t it? How many more killings will our country have to endure before We decide to put an end to it. The NRA and gun manufacturers have made a great living demonizing anyone who might suggest that common sense restrictions on gun ownership are necessary and they have made sure that guns sales are going through the roof. Will it take gun violence impacting our own families before we do anything? What can be done to stem the tide of violence with guns? It is a debate that we must have! Isn’t it? Don’t we owe it to the victims and the victim’s families to finally do something to stop the killings?
Tomorrow may be too late!
and lastly……
According to CCHR2:
“It is well documented that psychiatric drugs, particularly antidepressants, can cause a host of violent side effects including mania, psychosis, aggression, violence, and in the case of the antidepressant Effexor, homicidal ideation …
[P]eople with no prior history of violence (or suicide) became homicidal and suicidal under the influence of antidepressants. … However, despite all the documented violence-inducing side effects of these drugs, the FDA has never issued black box warnings on antidepressants causing violence or homicide despite the fact that at least 11 recent school shootings were committed by kids documented to be on or in withdrawal from psychiatric drugs.”
The expert testimony in this case was supplied by Dr. Peter Breggin, an outspoken critic of psychiatric drugs. The featured article quotes him as saying:
“These drugs produce a stimulant or activation continuum… That continuum includes aggression, hostility, loss of impulse control … all of which are a prescription for violence.”
You people can NOT possibly think that messing with a persons brain chemistry and then handing them guns is a good idea????
“Now lots of new studies show antidepressants not only don’t prevent suicide but they actually cause suicide and violence. So, why are so many people still taking them?”
As I mentioned before, how are you defining “mental illness?” Where is the line drawn? As I said, schizophrenics have a lower incidence of being the perpetrators of gun violence than the general population.
yes…. BUT…. The man Loughner who shot Gabby Giffords was indeed Schizophrenic….
and I do NOT recall anyone here only pointing to schizophrenics….
and here is a nice little article on Anti-depressants and Violence…..
and here you laughed my theory out of the water and dismissed it as being uninformed….
well…. Read this……
—————————————
— Police found anti-depressants in Duane Morrison’s Jeep
— FDA (Food and Drug Administration: Anti-depressants can cause homicidal thoughts…And paired with Psychiatry, antidepressants are ruining the lives of millions.
SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors)antidepressants sold as Paxil and Prozac, among others, are used by millions of adults and children for depression. But are the antidepressants doing what they are supposed to? After reviewing two dozen clinical studies, the FDA Advisory Panel now says these drugs [antidepressants] cause a small, but increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior. Symptoms include: suicidal thoughts, suicide and withdrawal symptoms.
Investigating the link between antidepressants and violence: Tragedies like this one in Pennsylvania and the one in Colorado last week seem to be inexplicable. But listen to this: More often than not, antidepressants are involved. In Colorado, for instance, Police found antidepressant in Duane Morrison’s Jeep.
Symptoms that antidepressants are supposed to be treating, actually make
them worse…
I will repeat this little excerpt…..
“More often than not, antidepressants are involved. In Colorado, for instance, Police found antidepressant in Duane Morrison’s Jeep.”
http://www.encognitive.com/node/885
raff,
What OS said.
That was supposed to say… brainwashed over HALF of the citizens….
damn auto correct… :-\
raff,
As I mentioned before, how are you defining “mental illness?” Where is the line drawn? As I said, schizophrenics have a lower incidence of being the perpetrators of gun violence than the general population.
Technically, a personality disorder is not a DSM-IV Axis I clinical diagnosis. Personality disorders are on Axis II where learning disabilities are also classified. It has been my experience that some of the most potentially dangerous people have Axis II personality disorders, not Axis I diagnoses.
Axis III is for physical limitations that impair ordinary daily living, such as blindness or being confined to a wheelchair. I am not in favor of the blind having firearms, but how about the deaf, paraplegic or obese? You will find those diagnoses on Axis III.
If a person is prescribed antidepressants for depression by their family doctor, what about those people? Depression is easily diagnosed and treated, but untreated depression can lead to suicidal ideation.
Then there is the issue of confidentiality. That is not going to go away.
I see no way around, over, or under the problem to get you to where you want to go.
Fact is… the reason why we can NOT have a commonsense conversation about this subject is because we have a HUGE Pro Gun Lobby that has brain washed over have the citizens in the USA…..
These people spend MILLIONS upon MILLIONS so that the truth is buried in a sea of lies and disinformation….
Some of you have NO IDEA how fanatical you sound…
Now, many of you, accuse those of us that wish for commonsense Gun laws that we want to take away your guns…. or that it is ridiculous to blame an inanimate object for these deaths…. or you go on to tout the stats of swimming pool deaths… and auto accidents…..
Swimmingpools are not primarily made to kill those people who drown….
Automobiles are for getting from point A- to Point B….
GUNS…. are made for Killing and harming LIVING Beings… PERIOD!!!!
They are not made to cool you off in the summer time….
They are for the killing of an animal or human…..
Cars are made for transportation…. NOT for killing humans or animals….
One of you said that it is a small number of Children that die each year from accidental shootings…. Tell that to the 3,000 children that die each year from Gun related deaths….
One of you points out that I was wrong in mentioning that 11% of the adult Population is Psych Drugs…. you say that… Gun crime of all types, including murders, have plummeted over the last twenty years. Your premise is wrong….
Gun deaths may have also dropped due to MEDICAL Technology….
The last 3 MASS shootings were men that were mentally disturbed….
Shoot of Gabby Giffords… That boy was so OUT THERE…. Mentally incapacitated … NOT the LEGAL Term of Mentally Incapacitated…. as we know… that has been twisted into legal term so that FEWER people, even if they are mentally disturbed, will be unable to claim an Insanity Defense….
NOT because they were not clinically insane….
That guy that shot up the movie theater in Aurora… Mentally unstable….
The Virginia Tech Shooting…. the boy was mentally unstable….
So, to tell me that having these men go through a Mental evaluation every few years… that these men would not have been found BEFORE they destroyed the lives of 50 plus families….
These 3 shootings took the lives of 50 people…. and injured far more….
Had they been forced to have a mental clearance once a year or every 2 years to own a gun … these 3 Massacres could have been avoided….
I am NOT saying that they would have been avoided….
Just that they COULD have…..
Many here say that what we suggest is just not going to work…..
OK… then what Do you Pro Gun people think would be commonsense ideas to decrease the Gun Deaths in the USA????
———–
By the way…. it is not wise to assume that just because we want to find ways to fix this issue that we are anti gun…. I actually love shooting guns…. and have done so many time…
I just don’t have this idea that I will suddenly become the girl in Alias if I am attacked… MOST of the time when somebody is attacked.. they can NOT get to their gun… and if they do… they freeze and it is taken away from them….
I think it is a false sense of security…
Lastly… I am from the USA… so I am very used to guns….
HOWEVER….. I feel far safer in Sweden, than I do the USA…
I was in Kingman Arizona over the summer….
I saw the kind of people that carried their guns everywhere…
NO.. I did not feel safer seeing those people carrying guns…
To me, they just looked crazy and unstable….
If you ever go to Kingman, you will see what I mean….
Why not go all the way and just have a totalitarian police state? Would we be safe enough then?
“Racist! Who me? Why ol’ whitey been phucking me in the a55 for years, and I am still smiling. Seeeee!
Of course, I have shot a few, but that’s called justified homocide in my neighborhood. Where’s ma gun? You better disappear!”
“Racists, I don’t see no racists. I see stupids, but that is colorless they say, and I would be inclined to agree.”
“I also see those longing for the good ol’ days when you could shoot Injuns, rope cattle, rape the mares, and carry your .45 on your belt in town, and all knew you for a man. Those were good times.”
Now this is just the point that I would jump in and say something—-but LK says that is “let’s you and him fight” tactics. Oh, the terrible itch. LOL
Jason,
Are you suggesting that somehow restricting persons who have been declared mentally ill or diagnosed as such should not be prevented from owning weapons? Isn’t that a reasonable request?
Mike,
My half-African-American daughter would call you an @$$hat. If she could talk, that is.
Eddie,
I’m all Jewish and I can tell you there are Jews who hate Jews. There were even Jewish NAZI’s. Tell me instead how my statement to you was wrong in terms of what you wrote:
It seems you differentiate between “White good-old-boys” and “Black thugs”. It seems to me a “thug is a thug” regardless of skin color, but then perhaps you have a preference there.
Mike,
Do yourself a favor. Put words onto someone else’s keyboard and keep the race-baiting to yourself. It’s juvenile.
Eddie,
Don’t like your words read back to you and interpreted for what they imply?
It’s your words. As for me being a race-baiter, that is these days the imprecation used by racists against those that call them on their bigotry. Why ot tell me how what your words didn’t mean what I interpreted them to mean. Were you being ironic? Improbable.
john530,
That is a WordPress issue. You’ll have to take it up with their support services.
Gene: Roger that! I figure it costs me about $500/hour to fly so infrequently. Sweet Jeebus! What a nasty habit.
Back OT, this drooling neantherthal — despite my camo-wearing neighbors — hunts not at all. So why on earth would I ever need a high-powered carbine and semi-automatic pistols with large capacity magazines? And please point out where in the Constitution hunting is even written? Discuss amongst yourselves.
“A well-organized network marketing team, being necessary to the achievement of The American Dream, the right of the people to keep and sell Amway products, shall not be infringed.” — George Jetson
Rafflaw-
” I am not advocating the rescinding of the Second Amendment, but reasonable restrictions are not only allowed, they are necessary to attempt to save some lives.”
Again, the problem is that almost all of the “reasonable” restrictions proposed aren’t at all reasonable, whether because they are unworkable from a political or logistical standpoint, won’t actually do anything to reduce crime, etc.
Most gun control proposals are of the, “We have to do SOMETHING,” ilk. Which almost never results in good policy.
Messrs. Turley and Rafferty:
No. Just plain No.
You and your ilk have been floating this nonsense for a good solid twenty years now. That is to say the Standard Capacity magazine nonsense along with the Crazy Person Being Able To Buy A Gun tact. You’ve been reduced to this because your real goal, total prohibition, won’t fly.
We’ve had the “reasonable discussion”, the plea that all too often precedes an article such as this. Guess what? You lost.
At least one of you has a law degree. Reaquaint yourself with the term “third party indemnification”. In plain English, that means that if every other gun owner went out and shot somebody, and I didn’t, I’m not responsible for what they have done. To be even plainer, you can p!ss off if you think that you can hold me in any way accountable for the actions of others.
You want to reduce crime and shootings? I’m right there with you. Blaming an inanimate object is both silly and a waste of time. Put on your big boy pants and face the unpleasant reality that we (that’s all of us) need to address the people who shoot others, even if their skin contains more melanin than ours does. And that’s the real reason that cowards such as you two bleat about guns: you don’t have the stones to take on the vested interests in the minority communities. Dare I also mention that the overwhelming majority of the local governments whose benign neglect of the areas that most crime happens in are politically aligned with you?
People choose violent crime when there aren’t viable alternatives. That’s what we need to work on, not this silliness.
“Put on your big boy pants and face the unpleasant reality that we (that’s all of us) need to address the people who shoot others, even if their skin contains more melanin than ours does. And that’s the real reason that cowards such as you two bleat about guns: you don’t have the stones to take on the vested interests in the minority communities. Dare I also mention that the overwhelming majority of the local governments whose benign neglect of the areas that most crime happens in are politically aligned with you?”
Geeze Dweeze,
Up till now this has been a discussion about the pros and cons of gun prohibition, but suddenly you and Eddie make it about skin color. Why is that? I think it’s because you are an ass that hates Black people, or in other terms a bigot. I love people who call others cowards, when in reality they are so afraid of being attacked by Black people that they need to feel the have a larger penis by carrying a gun. Many people here are gun owners and users, other like myself support the Second Amendment’s current interpretation. you, however, are obviously in a different league: a gutless racist.
I can call you that because I spent 15 years working in NYC’s black communities, at all hours, alone without a gun. I worked in Ocean Hill, Brownsville, Bed Stuy, Harlem, Jamaica, Long Island City and the South Bronx. I worked the South Bronx when it was called “Fort Apache” and the word in the white community was that no policeman would patrol there unless with a partner. I walked through heroin shooting galleries and passed Black Panther Headquarters with a crowd hanging out in the streets and nobody ever attacked me. Usually, they’d say “good morning” or “good afternoon”, or “good evening”. Now this was at a time where there really was a high crime rate there and NYC had the highest murder rate in the country.
Why do you think I was able to do that. Perhaps it might occur to your bigoted brain that maybe the bad publicity about the “Big Bad Black Community” was tailored for scared racists like you, who wouldn’t have the guts to do what I did without a ton of weapons.
Today the crime rates all around the country reflect the fact that they have been dropping for years. But the media always like to play up to the fears of people like yourself, who are so afraid of their own shadow that they imagine they need guns for protection.
Yes many people here own guns and are gun enthusiasts. However, they are not racists like you and own their guns for good reasons, other than unreasoning fear.
A year or so back I forgot my login password so I created a new account using my middle name (John). Now when I log in my first post is under my first name (Chris) and all subsequent posts are under my middle name. Can someone help me fix this?
Wait a second, Eddie. I thought a Cessna was a hole in the tarmac where you threw in money? Speaking of which, what is time again? 😉