Criminal law, Politics, Society

Send God, Guns, and Money: Sandy Hook Shooting Becomes Rallying Point For Political Advocates

praying_hands[1]300px-M4-TransparentThe murder of 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary has spawned an array of commentary from calls for new gun controls to greater funding for mental illness in the United States. However, Fox commentator and former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said that the shooting was not surprising after the removal of prayer from public schools. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas, did one better, he wished God ensured that Principal says Dawn Hochsprung had an M-4 assault rifle at the school before she was killed.

Gohmert told Fox News “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.” Wouldn’t it be a bit more direct to pray that God had stopped Lanza from going to the school or that he was institutionalized before his mass murder?

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?

As for prayer, is that what caused Lanza (with a history of mental illness) to kill? Lack of school prayer. His first murder was at home. After shooting his mother in the face, would Lanza have hesitated at the schoolhouse gate because he recalled morning prayers in civics class? By the way, those terrorists we read about daily do a lot of praying. It does not seem to have the same impact on them.

Putting aside the desire to try a tragedy to a favorite cause, there is often a search for meaning in tragedies. The most frightening thought is that such a terrible loss would not have meaning. It was an unspeakable crime committed by an unstable person. We are all emotionally shredded by this tragedy. However, we know that this is likely to happen again. Even with gun controls, people will still have guns, which are constitutionally protected. Some will have multiple guns. We do not have to shrug and do nothing. There is a need to better deal with mental illness in this country. It was not that long ago that another unstable young man committed a massacre at Virginia Tech. However, as with gun controls, it is not clear that much would have changed in this case. Lanza’s mother decided to keep him at home and tried to deal with his instability on her own. If a parent keeps a child at home and addresses such problems privately, it is doubtful that new programs would have had any impact.

Nevertheless, I would prefer to discuss expanded mental health programs over assault weapons in schools as a starting point of any reforms.

Source: Hill

310 thoughts on “Send God, Guns, and Money: Sandy Hook Shooting Becomes Rallying Point For Political Advocates”

  1. from the Rude Pundit:

    Guns and Minds:
    I’ve had a gun pointed in my face by a mugger on a dark New Orleans street. I have pointed a gun at an intruder in my apartment in a crime-filled neighborhood. Had he come closer instead of running, I believe that I would have shot him. I have had another apartment in a clean, nice neighborhood strafed with automatic weapon fire when one gang member was pursuing another down my street. I pulled the bullets out of the stoop and the door. I have had to duck behind a garbage can at my college campus when a man who robbed the bursar’s office was in a shootout with police. I have had a loaded gun pointed jokingly at my heart. I was on a street in Chicago when a young man ran by and a car chased him. The car stopped right next to me and a hand holding an AK47 (I think) came out of the sun roof and pointed at me before driving on. I have been target shooting with handguns at ranges multiple times in my life. I have been hunting with rifles that fire buckshot and rifles that fire bullets. I have not done either of those things in years. Growing up in Louisiana, I hung out with friends at their houses where sometimes one of them would ask, “Wanna go shoot some stuff?” and so we’d line up cans and bottles and shoot stuff. We were not using BB guns. I have never fired a semi-automatic rifle, although I have been with people while they were firing them. I have known people who died by gunshot. I know people who saved their own lives by shooting others who were attacking them. I do not come to this discussion naively. I do not come to it clean. I come to it honestly, with almost the entire spectrum of experiences one can have with guns, a spectrum wider than most of the people who believe that the ubiquity of firearms is our only defense against firearms. I have never been shot. I hope I die without that experience.

    We need to dwell on horror, on the horror that those children faced in Newtown, Connecticut. We need to imagine how their 6 and 7 year-old minds processed what was happening. We need to individuate them: how many were exposed to enough violence in our culture, through movies, through TV, through online videos, through video games, and, yes, through their own lives to comprehend that they were going to die? How many were kept from that awful knowledge of the evil that exists in world so that they couldn’t process the shots, the noise, their classmates bleeding and falling around them before they were hit? It’s terrible and it hurts, Christ, it hurts to write this. But you need to know it. You need to know that Adam Lanza walked into one classroom and killed everyone in it, 14 children and 2 teachers. He could do that because he had 30-round magazines. He didn’t even have to reload. One man. Everyone in the room. Imagine that. Imagine that.

    Before they move on to the level of abstraction and statistic, the children and the adults who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School need to be remembered for their lives, most certainly. But they need to be remembered for the nightmare of their end, vividly, to where it’s an ache that can’t be soothed, can’t be talked away, so that whenever it’s mentioned, we all have a kind of trauma, a PTSD that must be treated. We know how. But we refuse out of some sense of misbegotten pride and willful ignorance.

    There are many things that must be confronted, that should have been confronted long ago. While I don’t agree with everything here, Chuck Todd et al wrote today about the possibility of getting greater gun control through Congress, “[T]he president is going to have to tackle every issue associated with these heinous crimes: gun laws, our gun culture, mental health, the desensitization of violence thanks to Hollywood and video game makers, and of course parental responsibility. If it’s a larger policy discussion, it’s much harder for the most ardent NRA-supporting lawmaker to walk away.” I would argue with the violence in Hollywood and in video games part since whenever we start to walk down this road, we turn those into easy scapegoats rather than blame a broken mental health system and a paucity of limitations on gun ownership.

    And as far as cultural influences, I would say that a nation that sanctions capital punishment, use of extreme force by the police in many situations that don’t call for it, and the murder of people overseas by drones is a nation that has stated, in a quite official way, that violence is the answer to one’s problems. I would say that as far as unintended effects go, those things have done more damage to the American psyche than all the versions of Grand Theft Auto we could play.

    The first descriptions of Lanza have talked about his mental illness, but they have also talked about the video games that he played. You could lock yourself in a room and get into Resident Evil 6 until your hands were bloody from pushing buttons. Let’s say it warps your brain in some way that it wasn’t warped before. It’s not likely, but let’s say it made you bloodthirsty for real, not zombie or creature, blood. If you don’t have access to guns and large magazines, you are not going to do what Lanza did. It’s that simple. No, really, it’s that simple. Bottom line. Ask any cop, any member of the military, any responsible gun owner. Secure the weapons. Always secure the weapons.

    We’ll talk more about this (and more rudely) this week. Today, mourning. Tomorrow, solutions.

    When I had that gun pointed in my face all those years ago, I didn’t think, “Damn, I wish I had a gun, too.” I didn’t think, “Damn, I wish someone else with a gun would come along and save me.” I thought, “Damn, I wish he didn’t have a gun.”

    As have many children and adults alike.

  2. With apologies to Professor Turley, saying that more guns will reduce gun violence is like saying that having more lawyers will reduce lawsuits.

  4. “By the way, those terrorists we read about daily do a lot of praying. It does not seem to have the same impact on them.”

    The prayer-in-schools advocates would probably claim it’s because they’re praying to the wrong God.

  5. This:

    “Obviously, the conservatives have set the precedent that one may have a right, but severely resticting one’s ability to exercise that right is perfectly okay. ”

    rcampbell

  6. Good point rcampbell; there is a Constitutional amendment allowing abortion, but we see all sorts of laws and restrictions being put in place in every red state in the land.

    Some to the point of no access to abortion at all- Mississippi could close the only clinic left because of these laws.

  9. Let me give a paraphrase of more from the column cited above. Why? Because it supports a thought that Mikes is in on.

    We are suckers being led by ALEC and NRA into a gun-toting society. This movement, accdg to column writer, will ONLY give weight to more calls for suppression with a view of domestic (ie USA) mass violence.
    Running on toes of fear or strutting with the macho creed echoing, we hasten to letting “them” take over, with gun massacres as a reason.

    It also, quite simply, guarantees that no one opens his/her/their mouths, when a shot can be the reply, under the protection of SYG laws. etc.
    .
    So where did free speech disappear to?

  10. Thanks for the post prof. I too, agree, that the focus on the gun laws is, for the most part, misplaced with one exception – guns that shoot bullets at a high rate, or are capable thereof, should not be made available to the general public. While this will most likely not deter similar tragedies from happening entirely, it may very well reduce the severity, or at the least, make it more difficult.

    I think the overall media’s reaction and handling of this tragedy is disgusting and despicable.

  12. Gene,

    If you can think that both sides have unhinged contingents. Just the one side has more weapons. Anything, I mean anything used improperly or immorally is bad.

  13. I apologize for the misspellings and missing “N’s” in my comment above. It was written with the immediacy of anger and posted without spell checking. Filling in the missing blanks should be an easy task.

  15. Cross-posting a NYTimes column excerpt from Mayan thread:

    idealist7071, December 17, 2012 at 9:20 am

    MAYA! SMAYA. WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING METEORS!

    I don’t know what you are thinking of, but for me it is Newtown, Conn., aka Ourtown, USA.
    From the NYTimes Opinionator column:

    http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/the-freedom-of-an-armed-society/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121217
    ===================Excerpt

    “That incident brought home to me what I have always suspected, but found difficult to articulate: an armed society — especially as we prosecute it at the moment in this country — is the opposite of a civil society.

    The Newtown shootings occurred at a peculiar time in gun rights history in this nation. On one hand, since the mid 1970s, fewer households each year on average have had a gun. Gun control advocates should be cheered by that news, but it is eclipsed by a flurry of contrary developments. As has been well publicized, gun sales have steadily risen over the past few years, and spiked with each of Obama’s election victories.

    Furthermore, of the weapons that proliferate amongst the armed public, an increasing number are high caliber weapons (the weapon of choice in the goriest shootings in recent years). Then there is the legal landscape, which looks bleak for the gun control crowd.

    Every state except for Illinois has a law allowing the carrying of concealed weapons — and just last week, a federal court struck down Illinois’ ban. States are now lining up to allow guns on college campuses. In September, Colorado joined four other states in such a move, and statehouses across the country are preparing similar legislation. And of course, there was Oklahoma’s ominous Open Carry Law approved by voters this election day — the fifteenth of its kind, in fact — which, as the name suggests, allows those with a special permit to carry weapons in the open, with a holster on their hip.

    Individual gun ownership — and gun violence — has long been a distinctive feature of American society, setting us apart from the other industrialized democracies of the world. Recent legislative developments, however, are progressively bringing guns out of the private domain, with the ultimate aim of enshrining them in public life. Indeed, the N.R.A. strives for a day when the open carry of powerful weapons might be normal, a fixture even, of any visit to the coffee shop or grocery store — or classroom………….
    ===============

    I have no solution. Does any of us?
    Gun control? People control (yearly psych exam)? The psych sick are those who do the massacres, but the individual killings seem all of us capable of doing.

    Do we cliing to our guns for use in a standoff with the Feds?, the personal OK Corral?, the power we get in an otherwise powerless environment?—-where our politics are bought, and we are part ot the deal?. Do we change our self-image to become those who abhor violence, and turn our guns in?
    Do we teach our kids to love and not karate?

  16. “Even with gun controls, people will still have guns, which are constitutionally protected. Some will have multiple guns.”

    Yes this is quite true and yes tragedies will still occur, but we can regulate the use and sale of firearms, just as we do the the licensing and registration of automobiles. People will still be allowed to have their guns, but perhaps they will have to suffer some inconvenience in their purchase and some restriction as to what kind of weapon they could own. To understand the parameters of this issue a look at proposed gun legislation by the NRA and ALEC look like and think about the implications (from Alternet):

    “9 Horrible Gun Laws Backed by the Right Wing
    The corporate-backed American Legislative Exchange Council works hand-in-glove with the National Rifle Association.
    December 17, 2012

    It makes sense that everyone’s eyes angrily turned to the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the wake of the mass killing in Newtown, Connecticut. For too long, the NRA’s deep war chest and lobbying apparatus has shaped the debate over guns in this country.

    But there’s another group working hand-in-glove with the NRA that deserves scrutiny: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC, the Koch Brothers-backed group that is funded by big corporate interests, first attracted attention in the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing. The group, which brings together corporate interests, right-wing lobbyist groups and conservative politicians, passes model legislation that politicians take back ready-made to their state. The NRA has funded ALEC and co-chaired ALEC’s “Public Safety and Election Task Force,” which passes model bills on guns.

    By way of the Center for Media and Democracy’s ALEC Exposed project, Digby’s Hullabaloo blog posted links to some of the model legislation on guns the group is pushing. Here are 9 of the awful gun bills ALEC wants to bring to a state near you.

    1. Guns on Campus
    Dubbed the “Campus Personal Protection Act,” this model legislation would allow handguns to be carried on campus. The ALEC bill would also “limit” regulations that the governing boards of colleges imposed on the carrying of guns on campus. The bill is part of a wave of “concealed carry” gun laws that have passed around the nation–some with ALEC’s help. As the Center for Media and Democracy notes, “allowing ‘concealed carry’ has been a long-standing part of the NRA-ALEC agenda, passing in Wisconsin a year ago at the urging of Governor Scott Walker, who was given an award by the NRA for making this item law along with a version of the controversial ALEC-NRA “Stand Your Ground”/”Castle Doctrine” bill. A concealed carry law also was just passed last week in Michigan.”

    2. Immediate Firearm Purchases
    ALEC wants you to be able to get your gun–and get it fast. Blueprint legislation passed by the group’s NRA-chaired “Public Safety and Election Task Force” would prohibit waiting periods from being used on gun purchases. “The imposition of ‘waiting periods’ for firearms purchases is a diversion of scarce law enforcement resources away from violent crime and criminals,” .

    3. More ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws
    The Trayvon Martin case made “stand your ground” laws, or “Castle Doctrine” laws, a household name. Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, claimed that he acted lawfully in “self-defense” when he shot the unarmed teenager. Florida has a “Stand Your Ground” bill on the books that makes it more difficult to prosecute people for killing someone if they claim “self-defense.” ALEC wants to bring more of these laws to your state. Here’s how they sum up what the bill does: “This act authorizes the use of force, including deadly force, against an intruder or attacker in a dwelling, residence, or vehicle under specified circumstances.” Many states already have have “stand your ground” laws.

    4. No Borders to Firearm Movement
    This ALEC bill would, if passed, require states to recognize “concealed carry” permits or licenses from other states. This would mean that the state where guns are being carried in would have no recourse to go after people with guns if they have a permit and came from a state that allows “concealed carry” permits.

    5. Annulling Local Regulations on Guns
    For all its talk of federalism and love of local democracy, ALEC still wants to be able to impose its agenda–even if a locality wants nothing to do with it. One model bill the group wants passed in states is a provision that would “prohibit local jurisdictions from independently enacting restrictions on the possession of firearms.” If a city wanted to restrict guns, they’d be out of luck–this bill would take away their authority to do so.

    6. Defending an Unregulated Gun Market
    Governments, local officials and law enforcement groups have tried to push for gun manufacturers to adhere to some basic ground rules for the sale of weapons. One way to do this is by pushing for a “Code of Conduct” that gun manufacturers adopt. One example of what a “code” like this would do is getting a pledge from firearms makers to not promote weapons for extremely dangerous uses, like killing police officers with special bullets.
    ALEC wants none of that. A blueprint for legislation calls such codes “politically-driven.”

    7. Guns for Emergencies
    This ALEC-backed legislation would prohibit states from confiscating firearms in the wake of a declared “state of emergency.” The group claims such a law would run afoul of the Second Amendment. It also calls for public employees who confiscate firearms to be found “guilty of the crime of larceny of a firearm or ammunition,” if such a law were on the books.

    8. Semi-Automatics for Everyone
    The killer at Sandy Hook Elementary School used a semi-automatic rifle to carry out his massacre. ALEC wants to restrict regulations that would curb the use and sale of semi-automatic rifles.A resolution pushed by the group decries laws and regulations concerning semi-automatic rifles. The “American Legislative Exchange Council recommends the rejection of current proposals at the local, state, and federal levels that arbitrarily restrict the possession of the semi-automatic class of firearms by law-abiding American citizens,” ALEC writes.

    9. Bolstering the Second Amendment
    The Second Amendment is not going anywhere. But ALEC remains worried about attempts to regulate firearms, and passed a resolution decrying gun control while celebrating the amendment. The “American Legislative Exchange Council recommends the rejection of further restrictive firearms laws that only serve to limit law abiding citizens in the exercise of their Constitutionally guaranteed rights while having no effect on the activities of the criminal element in our society,”.” http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/9-horrible-gun-laws-backed-right-wing?paging=off

    During my time on this blog I have continually supported the Second Amendment and the people’s right to bear arms and I still do. This tragedy and the ones leading up to it this year like Aurora has caused me to re-think my position. Knowing from Mespos fine and well commenterd upon Guest Blog this weekend I understand that some have chastened people for reacting emotionally, rather than with the cold logic of philosophers. Would that all of us lesser humans, who do not have the comfort of an absolute philosophical belief in their favorite philosophical idol, be able to control our emotions that well. I can’t any longer. I frankly don’t know how the parents of those dead children can carry on in life with any joy still possible. Yes I understand, perhaps better than most, that unexpected tragedies occur all the time in this tenuous we know as life. And yes we ca’t protect all people at all times. As for emotional decisions my philosophy of life which has kept me alive is the Gestaltist’s “Trust the wisdom of your feelings” and actually that is closer to human nature than the intellectual pretensions of one philosopher or another.

    But damnit if I have to pass a drivers license test to drive and pay for registration for my car each year, why don’t gun owners have to do the same? There are also rules nationwide about oversized, unsafe vehicles, so why aren’t there rules to not permit certain over the top weaponry? Please don’t even give me that crap about the desires of collectors, because I’ll the as you why the possession and importation of ivory is illegal, since I’m sure there are some collectors dying to own it. I think hunting, while ot my cup of tea, is a valid sportsman’s activity. Of course there is real hunting and then there is Dick Cheney quail hunting. Any hunter using a weapon than ca fire multiple rounds in seconds is a Dick (Cheney) type of hunter.

    The truth is, as shown in the quote above, that the “tender concern” for our Second Amendment” liberties, is more the work of greed and pandering to a portion of the population sold on the “Myth of The Cowboy” sold to many of us. That myth is a fantasy, just as John Wayne who personified it, was a fantasy hero and those deluded by it shouldn’t have primacy in our country.
    We must stop being controlled by the fatasy’s of emotional children, that leave little children dead in their wake.

    Finally, the underlying reason that I’ve been such a supporter of gun rights in this country has been the mistaken belief on my part that our country is heading towards Corporate Feudalism and perhaps gun ownership would give us a chance to fend it off. The mistake wasn’t in the fact we are heading towards Corporate Feudalism, but in the not realizing that many of those with guns, as represented by the venal and maniacal NRA, would be the revolutionary force most likely to destroy freedom and bring about repression. If I can re-think long held beliefs and pre-judgments at my age, maybe others would also have the ability to look into ans re-evaluate their own thinking on the matter.

    Oh….and yes. This entire comment was written completely as an outpouring of sadness and rage and I’m proud of it.

  17. Guns are synonymous with perceived power. If used correctly you have very few issues, if used unwisely you have trouble…. I’m not a member of the NRA but could become if this right is abridged. But who the heck needs an assault rifle? If civics don’t why do the police?

    This event unfolding is very tragic.

  18. Senator Schumer has to admit that neither he nor the gun lobby has actually read the Second Amendment. There is NO Constitutional right to bear arms outside the context of a well regulated militia. Senator Schumer is another one of those people who loves to appear rational while generating false equivalencies between what those of us who support robust gun control need to admit and what the gun lobby won’t even READ! I admit there is a Second Amendment but I also admit that I have read it and there is No constitutional right to bear arms. Show me a wel regulated militia and then we can talk about arms, Senator Schumer!

  19. Senator Schumer stated that the left has to admit there’s a Second Amendment. I accept there is a Second Amendment. Whether I agree with their decision or not, the Supreme Court has affirmed an individual right to guns based on the amendment. I have to accept it, it’s the law of the land.

    The Supreme Court has also affirmed a woman’s right to get a safe, legal medical procedure to end a pregnancy–an abortion. That the Supreme Court ruled that a woman has that right has not prevented conservatives from putting all manner of obstacles in front of a woman seeking to exercise that Supreme Court affirmed right. There are time restrictions, notification issues, legal obstacles and even outright physical attacks on providers and the State of Virginia sees fit to require women submit to an entirely medically unnecessary, involuntary, invasive vaginal probe and a requirement to endure anti-abortion rhetoric before getting her safe, legal medical procedure. Obviously, the conservatives have set the precedent that one may have a right, but severely resticting one’s ability to exercise that right is perfectly okay. That seems to provide ample justification for strict controls on who, why, when, where and how guns are purchased, stored, training, etc. Perhaps we should demand anal probes so potential buyers can be in closer contact with their brains to consider why they’re doing something so stupid as buying a gun.

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