![praying_hands[1]](https://i0.wp.com/jonathanturley.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/praying_hands1.jpg?resize=125%2C150)
The 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
I707 – One step beyond the Vulcan mind-meld, to the Obama anal-probe… And for anyone who thinks the “gub’ment” doesn’t have a central file on gun purchases, you’re just deluding yourself. It’s tracked from the factory to first buyer, and sometimes beyond. All it takes is the risk to become a straw purchaser, then a victim on a firearms theft report (serial numbers not recalled) for a pistol or rifle to disappear into the ether.
I keep telling people that a fire arm is used because they think it is power. Piercing a person is perceived by the piercer to think they have power capable of piercing whoever. The devil through people pierced Jesus. A gun has bullets that pierce the body. Therefore whoever uses a gun to pierce a person is being influenced by the devil to use that weapon thinking it is power. The police, and military maintain that illusion of power in weapons that kill. Whoever Kills is the servant of death who is the devil. Continue to perpetuate the perverted concept of power will ensure that what is seen will be seen over, and over again. Police solidify that perverted sense of power in the human mind. They are not the answer.
JunctionShamus,
LOL. Hope you have a dog who sleeps lightly too.
Condescending is the least of the weapons used here. Ne’mind that.
Who disarms first. They are solving that too, but collecting id’s of all who are active gunners and use any form of public communications. Gun club members, hunting clubs, fishing clubs (for particular watching of those members) Etc..
You have heard of the new surveilance mandate to create dossiers on ALL Americans, including innocuous info/data which in future determination may help in crime prediction. investigation, and prosecution.
When they have XX percent gun owners defined, owners will be called by mail to fill in the blanks on the paper or on-line. Possession will not be a crime, but denying ownership will be. Or failing to file. You will also to declare if your guns are registered anywhere, and asked to provide a reason/purpose for each and every one of them, etc.
You will be required to bind yourself to being informed on future regulations and lawful decisions on threat of being declared a terrorist!!!!!
Then draconian federal laws will restrict gun purchases and and transfers.
And then your ownership will be forfeited a baseless in cause, and your guns confiscated with a generous recompense in response to the need of public safety.
A plan is waiting now to be used. Otherwise, we are being led by fools, and that I don’t believe.
Don’t you believe it? I suspect it will be so. Why else the complete surveillance and recording of all your transactions that can be done? Even what you buy and draw your card for at a shop will become centralized data for examination.
Warmest Happy Holidays, Keep on packin’!
Sorry, wrong thread, see SantaClaus.
You do not know Jesus who is the Lord God.
One cares about this world, The other about the world to come. One cares about the physical things that wear out, and break. The other cares about us with things that are eternal. You are walking in the dark not knowing where you are going.
AY,
Do you believe that we have a Sinterklaus here sponsored by CocaCola???
Who told you that? Or are you trying to prevent a comment from this end?
🙂
We don”t even have any sort of fat man who delivers the presents. Only something called Tomten, a non-human dwarf-like being, who uses a large goat to bear his bags. Coca-cola is not a popular Yule drink. That will be glogg, sockerdrycke, eller Apotekarn’s own with no alcohol. But the little nubbe of vodka, spiced or not, will not be far from hand.
Mark Esposito,
Glad whatever you are celebrating. And for the legend.
It at least exhibits a rich bishop giving at least a part to the needy.
Something missing in America.
Saint Nicholaus fame confirms by its strength how rare such a deed was and is today.
National Shooting Sports Foundation, Newtown Gun Lobby, Keeps Military-Style Guns Legal
Posted: 12/22/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/22/national-shooting-sports-foundation-newtown_n_2348465.html
Excerpt:
NEWTOWN, Conn. — Three miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School, a white Colonial-style building stands about 50 feet back from the road, an unassuming presence in a town that never got much attention until now. On a recent day, a security guard got out of a parked car at the end of the driveway and said he’d received instructions to turn away anyone who didn’t work in the building. It wasn’t hard to see why his employers might have hired him. In what appears to be a bizarre coincidence, the people working inside were among the country’s most adamant champions of the kinds of weapons and ammunition that Adam Lanza used to kill 26 children and adults just down the road last week.
The Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, or NSSF, is the nation’s premier gun manufacturers trade association, and in recent years the group has concentrated on marketing military-style assault weapons of the kind used by Lanza, James Holmes and other mass murderers. In the last decade, as the national interest in hunting has declined, gun manufacturers have increasingly relied on the sale of high-powered rifles, capable of killing many people in seconds. Behind the scenes, the NSSF has done much of the work of pitching those products to politicians, the media and gun buyers.
Doug Painter, a former NSSF president, delivered a pitch characteristic of the NSSF’s folksy approach in a video released by the group in 2009, a year when many gun-owners were worried that the newly Democratic White House would try to take away their weapons.
Holding up the same kind of rifle that Adam Lanza would eventually use to commit mass murder, Painter asked the camera, “Am I gonna trade in Ol’ Betsy for one of these?” He answered himself, “Maybe not. But there’s a more important point to consider. Anti-gun folks insist on labeling these rifles as ‘bad guns,’ as opposed to more traditional-looking ‘good guns.’ How can any inanimate object be considered ‘good’ or ‘bad’?”
Don’t mean to be condescending; but like with nukes – Who’s going to disarm first. And that just covers the defense perspective. Says nothing to the issues of shooting as a sport, hunting or other reasons why people may choose to own ANY legal weapon.
I’m working from a Kindle and I don’t have the necessary “thumb power” to address a response to some valid points of view. Later on.
PS I707 – No, two. It’s a tough ‘hood. 🙂
It doesn’t matter that only a small number of people commit massive front-page-above-the-fold mass murders with high-powered superguns. That doesn’t matter at all, in fact. And I don’t need to prove that large numbers of them do, and I don’t need to prove that only parents should pay school tax. The question is whether the society moves in a direction to disarm or moves in a direction to over-arm. When Japan was defeated in WWII one of the requirements of the agreement was disarmament. Our country is in a situation right now where law enforcement is often acting against a small minority of people who are armed to the teeth with weaponry that nobody needs to either hunt or maintain self-defense. Starting to get some control over that, and starting to move the whole country in the direction of domestic disarmament is a good idea whose time has come.
Furthermore, look at what FOrt Hood taught us: it taught us that not even our military can protect itself from armed individuals who have gotten into some kind of emotional hostility disturbance and who are well armed. If 13 of our military personnel were killed in a foreign country because of the rash acts of a single gunman who had a mental illness and was inspired by some violent rhetoric, would we think, “oh well what we need is better self-defense” or would we want that other country to disarm their lunatics more efficiently?
BTW, we lose the equivalent of a small village to gun deaths every year.
The UK per capita loses one thirtieth of that.
And as projections show, gun deaths will go on cars death in a couple of years. No we can’t ban guns or cars but we can regulate their use, availability, cost bearing and education and control. Those are your costs to bear.
Merry holidays. No irony.
JunctionShamus,
Do much cherry picking?
You say: 300 Mega persons and 300 mega guns. What PERCENT own guns. Education is a common resource, agreed many years ago.
Private gun ownership under constitutional protection is a Sct justice miscarriage. Even childless houseowners, screaming about school bonds and property taxes, benefit from having educated children who will care for them later in their dotage.
But your gun ownership and its contribution to a dangerous society should pay for the extra costs of guards and mental illness contributed by this love of solving issues with weapons. And then some of your tax burden should be used in preventing this sickness spreading. Just as we do for alcohol and tobacco.
And both persist in their evil production of sick people, without footing the bill for all the costs they burden the society with.
How would you like the UK system? Not much I believe. You did read Zwick’s listing of them. I think that I have a copy left which I can post for edification and education.
Where do you keep your guns for safekeeping? Do you sleep with one loaded and cocked beside the bed? Just teasing. 😉
“If all may derive a benefit, then all should pay.” Wrong. I am pointing out that all do NOT derive a benefit from the unregulated gun ownership that we presently have. The level of “regulation” of gun ownership is such that all are, in fact, deriving a detriment. In order to allow SOME to derive the benefit of the gun ownership, those SOME should foot the bill for remedying the DETRIMENT that the all are suffering. Gun ownership is making kids unsafe at school? OK, then, have gun owners take care of that by providing safety measures to the kids at school. Gun ownership is making kids who buy skittles unsafe on the way to the store or back? OK, then, have gun owners take care of that by providing armed escorts for people when they want to go buy skittles. It’s not rocket science.
AND it is not workable. That was my point. You cannot decrease a threat that is not quantifiable to start with because it is fueled by factors such as any old half-crazed (for reasons best known to himself, perhaps) person being able to get ahold of assault weapons and bullets in magazines that emit 100 of them in a spray of death that cannot be imagined. Even as LaPierre was giving his stupid speech, as if to prove him wrong and silly, some half-crazed gunman was mowing down victims willy nilly in Pennsylvania in an area where you could NOT have an armed guard waiting. And was Fort Hood not an armed camp? Hasan killed 13 people there in spite of the military base being in control of enormous amounts of guns and bullets and people trained to use them.
More mess is not the answer. There may BE no answer, but more mess is certainly not the answer. Less mess might give us a little movement in the right direction. We have yet to find out about that.
I must say this ,A gun does not save. Police do not save. Jesus in your soul saves to be like he is who does not retaliate not giving evil for evil thinking a weapon is a good thing. Had Jesus used a weapon to kill or even want to kill Satan would have claimed his soul when the flesh, and blood body of Jesus died. To die for Christs sake is gain, but to kill is to loss your soul. Religions don’t teach that. Don’t let the devil get souls to be in his jail to face a final end in Gods light which to evil is hell.
Malisha – Your arguments are a non-sequitur. You’re blaming the acts of a miniscule portion of the population on a very large number of people. 300M persons in the US, 300M firearms in the control of the public and only several thousand incidents a year. One is one too many, but its the United States, not the Utopian States of America.
Go back to your statement and add the word “responsible” before the phrase “gun ownership,” and see if it makes any sense.
Far from what you may think, Ft. Hood, which was once called, “the largest concentration of firepower in the Western World, is like any military facility, and restricts access to weapons and ammunition to cantonment and training areas. Interestingly enough, this prohibition was particularly enforced in medical treatment areas. Hassan might plead insanity, but his mission was a jihad, so, in my opinion, his situationd doesn’t meet the criteria of other mass-killing scenarios.
To support your argument is to say that since I’ve never had children, I shouldn’t be required to pay that portion of my property taxes that pay for schools. If you have a large number of children, you should be bearing a greater cost. Doesn’t work that way. We all pay for police/fire/EMS, which are governmental leeches, until what? Stuff happens, that’s what.
In closing, many urban school districts already have officers/guards in place. Why? To prevent student-on-student violence. It’s my understanding that approximately 450 students have been killed in the Detroit (which has very restrictive anti-gun laws) school system in 2012. If this is so, where’s the outcry?
OK so now the NRA wants an armed guard in every school. OK, then they need to pay for that. Gun-owners too. You have a car, you have to keep paying fees for it, year after year. The fees go towards the DMV, and there’s so much regulation that you can be deprived of your car at any time. Leave it in the wrong place; car gets taken. A light is out; get a ticket. Operate it wrong; pay a fee and maybe lose your right to use it. Test it, pay registration, pay insurance.
Just do that with guns. The money generated can be used to pay for armed guards at schools. If we want to turn the country into a big military based or a big armed camp, we can do that. We can show our kids that they need a uniformed, armed guard at the door to their school because otherwise somebody will shoot them. We can make our country the equivalent to a settlement on the West Bank, everybody looking at everybody else with suspicion and fear, gunshots every night, a big “inner city” so we can keep people safe. Let the NRA and the gun-owners pay for that, though. Because the retirees and working moms with three kids don’t have enough extra in their budgets to pay that armed guard and if you don’t pay him, he might get really resentful and one day shoot all the kids.
Wrong… If all may derive a benefit, then all should pay. That’s what taxes are for. Doubt that NRA members are the ones committing these mass murders. Maybe some; as Mrs. Junctionshamus uses aversion therapy on me when I use terms such as “always” and “never”.
I wouldn’t mind paying a reasonably capped (no pun intended) tax as a gun owner for this, but would object to footing the entire bill.
Absurdly, kids whose parents would pay under your system should be ID’d as such, and be priority #1 for protection. I don’t think that’s what you had mind. Neither have I, but there are some who would make this argument.
Our local district has a school resource officer program with the LE agencies where the schools are located. While not in every school, middle and high schools are covered on a random basis.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/12/externalities-and-the-dubious-defenses-of-gun-enthusiasts.html
Do we have a very tolerant blawg or don’t we? Even anchorites visit us.
War occurs because people see war – killing as the answer. When you have people thinking killing is the answer there will be I wail get a bigger gun mentality with each side trying to our do the other side. That is evil for evil. Jesus is not in it. .Don’t have Jesus in it have lost souls to be in the devils jail to await final judgment. When people see Jesus in people they will be like Jesus is. What have we shown people? How the devil is.
People thinking that the police are our savors will end in martial law. We are already in a police state. Next step will be tanks on main street firing live ammunition.
War occurs because people see war – killing as the answer. When you have people thinking killing is the answer there will be I wail get a bigger gun mentality with each side trying to our do the other side. That is evil for evil. Jesus is not in it. .Don’t have Jesus in it have lost souls to be in the devils jail to await final judgment. When people see Jesus in people they will be like Jesus is. What have we shown people? How the devil is.
People thinking that the police is our savor will end in martial law. We are already in a police state. Next step will be tanks on main street firing live ammunition.
Mespo, thanks for the reassurance, but naw. You’re in Virginia. The Commonwealth is blocked from my brilliant ideas; it deserves it. There is a negative force field all around the Commonwealth and my thought-rays do not go there. When I have my own country Virginia will be forcibly seceeded from the union. Don’t worry though, you can apply for immigration if you sign a pledge. 👿
Guns: Dangerous, Especially for Suicide, and Costly for America
February 2010
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848468/
Gun ownership is common in America. People report that they need them for safety and/or sport. However, having a firearm in the home actually increases the rate for suicide, homicide, domestic violence, and accidents. The presumed security is questioned, especially since owner and family suicide vastly outnumbers self-protective events. Gun-related suicide in America accounts for most of the violent death occurrences. This high suicide rate is shockingly under appreciated. The deaths, injuries, and disabilities significantly escalate healthcare costs, insurance premiums, criminal justice system expenses, and taxes. Nevertheless, regulation of firearms has neither been popular with the public nor legislatures; perhaps the degree of carnage might now kindle discussion about the way we control these weapons.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution states that, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Despite current gun regulations, firearms can be bought at gun shows or privately from unlicensed dealers with no background checks.
In 2005, out of a total of 541 firearm-related deaths in Kentucky, 375 were gun-shot suicides (69%), homicides accounted for 143, accidents claimed 11, nine died in police shootings, and three fatalities were unspecified.1 During 2006 and 2007, again, approximately 70 percent of gun-shot deaths were suicides.1 Most Americans are unaware that gun-shot suicide occurs much more often than all other shooting deaths combined. Suicide by gun fire is the fastest growing and most common means of suicide regardless of age, gender, race, or educational level. It is the leading cause of death in those who purchase firearms for the first time.2 Despite being obtained for personal security, 83 percent of gun fatalities in a home are suicide.3 Among 395 shooting deaths in Seattle during one year, 333 were by suicide, 41 were domestic violence incidents, 12 were accidents, and only nine involved an intruder.3 Women commit suicide three times as often when firearms are present in a home than in domiciles without them.4 Despite mental illness being an important factor, most suicide attempts are impulsive and done under stress, when upset and/or intoxicated, but without psychopathology. Awareness about the frequency of such unplanned acts is limited. Having firearms readily available increases the lethality of such impulsivity.
Guns are the most frequently used means involved in deaths by domestic violence, increasing the rate of killing an intimate partner. Five times as many women are shot to death in homes where such weaponry is available in contrast to households without them.4 Family member homicide is much more likely than stopping a trespasser. Sadly, many American children are shot to death every day.
Gun violence has a negative impact on society. Beyond death and disability, survivors of a shooting endure psychological trauma and grief. Violence-exposed children experience developmental consequences and adults also evidence personal compromise. Living in communities where fear of getting shot is common has detrimental effects on people and teaches inappropriate role modeling about responsible behavior to future generations.
Hospitals, trauma centers, and rehabilitation or nursing home facilities are flooded with victims of shootings. Acute healthcare expenditures for injured individuals are enormous and most of these patients are uninsured. The economic impact extends well beyond emergency treatment and continues with chronic dysfunction, rehabilitation, and long-term disability. Medical expense outlays increase for everyone, covered largely by government and ultimately affecting tax-payers. These costs inflate the price of medical, disability, and life insurance; escalating premiums are paid by companies, governments, and private individuals. Acute care medical bills for gun violence in the United States reportedly is over $4 billion per year, and it exceeds $100 billion annually, when including follow up and long-term care.5 A serious attempt to reduce healthcare costs, would include consideration at limiting gun usage.
Firearm use also adds to the expenses of police work, court prosecutions, legal involvements, and incarcerations, again borne by tax-payers. Loss of productivity, disability payments, and emotional or physical dysfunction all add to the cost. Guns are so much a part of our culture, that Americans have become accustomed to the resulting bloodshed and huge expenses.
Firearms have a negative impact on our society, both emotionally and physically. They heighten expenditures for us all in taxes and insurance premiums, but gun regulation still remains socially and politically controversial.
Americans can make choices. We should decide whether to accept our current status or whether a reassessment of our gun-regulation system is a potential legal alternative.
With regards,
Rupinder Johal, MD
Steven Lippmann, MD
University of Louisville School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
William Smock, MD
Cynthia Gosney, RN
University of Louisville School of Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine
Gun deaths to surpass deaths in traffic accidents by 2015: report
Gun deaths are on the rise, and in three years, more Americans will die from gunshot wounds than in car crashes, a report found.
BY PHILIP CAULFIELD / NEW YORK DAILY NEW
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/gun-deaths-outpace-traffic-deaths-2015-report-article-1.1223721
Excerpt:
“Buckle up” those bullet-proof vests.
By 2015, shootings are likely to surpass car crashes as one of the leading causes of non-medical deaths in the U.S., Bloomberg News reports.
Traffic deaths have dropped 22% since 2005, while shooting deaths — including suicides and accidents — have crept up from historic lows a decade ago, the numbers show.
In 2010, 31,328 people died by killer weapons, up from 28,393 in 2000. And in three years, Centers for Disease Control numbers forecast nearly 33,000 shooting deaths, compared to 32,000 traffic deaths, the report said.
This proves seat belt mandates and safety laws have made driving safer than ever, experts said, while lax gun control laws may have contributed to a bump in shooting deaths.
War occurs because people see war – killing as the answer. When you have people thinking killing is the ansewr there will be I wail get a bigger gun mentality with each side trying to our do the other side. That is evil for evil. Jesus is not in it. .Don’t have Jesus in it have lost souls to be in the devils jail to await final judgment. When people see jesus in people tyhey will be like Jesus is. What have we shown people? How the devil is.
People thinking that the police is our savor will end in maretial law. We are already in a police state. Next step will be tanks on main street firing live ammunition.
Clarfication: Grandpa’s edema was a serious strain on his heart, which was etc etc. Funny how a glass of water too many can kill you. And to exhilarate some, it won’t take long if you set your mine to it. You can get poisoned by pure water in large quantities. How large. Search for it.