A Facebook friend posted the following comment in response to the school shooting in Connecticut:
Evil has always been, and will always be, a part of the human condition. To realize that there is very little than one could have done to stop yesterday’s abomination is to understand that we are sometimes powerless in the face of evil, however much we shout about it [Facebook comment, 2012.12.15].
Let's test the validity of this statement by imagining it in another context. Imagine hearing the above statement on September 12, 2001. Amidst the smoldering ash and the immediate revving of a global war machine, does this resignation to evil still ring true?
If the #NRA was labeled a terrorist organization, would that make Wayne LaPierre eligible for trip to #Gitmo? RT @SoDakLiberal
Almost every religion and every government is based on the premise that your friend is dead wrong, Cory. I can't think of any worse organizing social principle. Wouldn't we all still. E huddling in caves -or perhaps even extinct by now- if we all bought into that logic?
Larry,
Isn't calling for gun control pretty much the same as calling for the patriot act? If I understand it propperly either way you are calling for a reduction of someone's rights in the attempt to protect them.
We can stop crazy people 99 times but they only have to succeed once to create havoc on our world.
Pray for all the victims. Good post Cory!
Prayer never brought in no side-meat, said Tom Joad.
Universal health care and closing the gun show loophole could counter the need for an assault weapons ban, in my view.
Ther are laws that stipulate how many shells you can have in your hunting gun and/or rifle. Seems like maybe 3 or 5. Presumably that's so the hunter doesn't shoot too many animals or maybe to give the creatures a chance to escape. Shouldn't a murdering psychopath have to change clips once in while, Larry?
Recall that the arms referenced in the 2nd amendment were single shot muzzle loaders. Also recall that the writers of that document were slaver owners who didn't allow women to vote. Times change.
Evil is a subjective construct of the human brain, but only the most fevered of minds among us would find what happened on Friday in Connecticut anything but the utmost of evil. As long as there are people we will have this sort of evil to deal with, but deal with it we must . To resign ourselves to it would make us complicit. I don't pretend to have any answers, but I do believe that there are avenues that we can take as a people to help contain these sorts of incidents. I just don't know if we are up to the task of putting our individual ideologies aside so that we can find the same common ground in seeking solutions, that we have in recognizing this as evil.
Mayor Bloomberg (of NYC) laid out a clear, sensible policy this morning on Meet the Press. I recommend it to all.
Death penalties are probably not much of a deterrent to murderers who commit suicide. Conservatives have now blamed liberals for keeping God out of the schools, so that means kids can be slaughtered there, for turning loose mental patients, for not allowing guns in schools (and dorms) so teachers and students have no protection.
Tornadoes don't kill people, God kills people.
Bill refers to the following recommendations from Mayor Bloomberg:
"What the president can do is number one: through executive action he can order his agencies to-- to enforce the laws more aggressively. I think there’s something like 77,000 people who have been accused of lying when they applied for a gun permit. We’ve only prosecuted 77 of them. The president can introduce legislation even if it doesn’t get passed. The president campaigned back in 2008 on a bill that would prohibit assault weapons. We’ve got to really question whether military style weapons with big magazines belong on the streets of America in this day and age. Nobody questions the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, but I don’t think the Founding Fathers had the idea that every man, woman, and child could carry an assault weapon. And I think the president through his leadership could get a bill like that through Congress. But at least he’s got to try. That’s his job" [Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NBC: Meet the Press, 2012.12.16]
Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) to Introduce Assault Weapons
Ban. http://tinyurl.com/ck7bey2
Mr. Wilken. I am hunkered in with my guns, I do not acknowledge Mr. Howie's "god" and I refuse to submit to your form of communal welfare. I am less insaner than you.
CT has fairly strict gun laws and these guns were not his.
Either we need serious security in schools or teachers need to be trained to protect children.
Schools need to find a way to deter violence. These predators pray on schools, malls and shopping centers because they know it's unlikely someone will be able to stop them instantly. There is a reason they aren't attacking police stations.
Prohibition doesn't work and makes outlaws of otherwise sane people hoping to arm against real bad guys.
Educators deserve professional wages because they bring marketable skill sets and we only live in a dystopia when hopelessness beats us to do bad things.
Video games are teevee on crank: just say no.
We also need to look at new avenues of mental health. Cleary writing a prescription for some individuals is not enough.
Yes, Mike, agreed. Another point Bloomberg touched on was the population and synchronization of medical databases to help prevent gun purchases by people with mental health promlems. Also elimination of the social stigma of being treated for mental disorder and easy access to affordable mental health care.
Bear in mind that cannabis use precludes gun ownership: unacceptable in a purportedly free country.
http://interested-party.blogspot.com/2011/12/medical-cannabis-card-turn-in-your-guns.html
Expect to see more taser training.
This is an outline for the 'well regulated' part of the 2nd Amendment, Grudz and Kurtz. You guys are both regular aren't you?
This is already a red state, blue state issue: expect this dealio to just get uglier.
Some whack job is always going to be able to put one past us. This particular whack job had no criminal history. Sure, we should enforce the existing laws with more fervor. We should eliminate the gun show loophole, and also have some sort of mechanism to hold individuals accountable for giving guns to barred individuals. We also need to have some discussion about where to draw the line for what guns people can have. I personally don't think tanks and stinger missiles ought to be owned and operated outside of the military. I kind of like the bowling ball canons sometimes seen on Pawn Stars though. And I wish I could afford that Gatling Gun they tested out.
There are some great points made here. Close the gun show loophole is the only one that deals with guns that is going to have much effect on the evil that lurks within those that want to do evil. Even then not so much. There are already to many assault weapons in the general public to fix that problem.
The Mayor of NY isn't saying anything new, or useful.
Dianne Feinstein is never going to get that dog to hunt.
Mike says "These predators pray on schools, malls and shopping centers because they know it's unlikely someone will be able to stop them instantly." How true, more on this in a little bit.
LK "Prohibition doesn't work and makes outlaws of otherwise sane people hoping to arm against real bad guys. " And "Video games are teevee on crank: just say no." Exactly, when you can see someone get killed over and over again without any ill effects you start to have a warped sense of reality.
I've always said that the first thing a young hunter should get to do is put a wounded animal out of its misery, see it suffer, hear it. Lasting images, that's what stays with ya.
DW says "Tornadoes don't kill people, God kills people." If you believe in god that would be true but if you don't who you gonna blame?
Mike absolutely we need to find new ways to treat mental health problems without meds that take six weeks to start working and then probably not.
BF " Another point Bloomberg touched on was the population and synchronization of medical databases to help prevent gun purchases by people with mental health problems." Are you really willing to go down that road? The patriot act isn't bad enough?
Now to my point. The one thing that we can do to slow the problem that we are talking about is take bullying seriously. Stop those that bully, and help those that are being bullied. Most of these people have a history of being bullied to the point that they lose contact with reality and think that they can live their own fantasy of getting even, with a gun.
Lets face it there are way more bigger problems we need to look at as far as people getting killed. Chemical attack, biological attack, dirty bombs, the list is almost endless and is as close as the net. Even a simple mind can do a lot of damage if the instructions are written out to follow.
"Prayer never brought in no side-meat," said Tom Joad.
Cory I like my side meat cooked crisp with some Alpine Touch and lots of pepper. You can pray and pray and pray but I have never seen it appear on the table when I wanted it to be there.
The Blindman
Here is an idea that would go a long ways to preventing so many deaths in a school setting. I'm asking teachers out there to weigh in as to its feasibility. I think everyone knows what Lifeline is, a "necklace" that you wear around your neck and push a button if in trouble, summoning help instantly. How about a similar necklace with two buttons on it, one a silent alarm that would go out to all personnel in the school (all personnel would wear one) alerting them to a potential problem in another area. And the second button would automatically lock the steel reinforced door to that teacher's individual classroom, office, etc. It would at least buy time and prevent mass shootings. And it would not seem to be that expensive. Thoughts?
More sensible policy solutions from Harvard prof David Hemenway:http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/features/review-guns-politics-hemenway/index.html
--get serious about background checks
--require training
--ban high-capacity magazines
Dithmer, right now if you register to buy a gun, they ask you if you have mental health problems. It's a reasonable question and it would be good to have it verified. Yes. I'm for it in terms of gun ownership. We have to conform to regulations like this to buy, sell and drive cars. Why not other lethal weapons?
What stops a drive-by with RPGs?
or a truck bomb through the front door?
We are the only ones talking about this: it only galvanizes the right.
This is why I am for Mexican statehood for the tribes.
Linda, we don't even need the necklace. Just get a smartphone app for every teacher. Those radio-receiving steel doors are going to cost some money, though.
I'm not particularly eager to work in a fortress. My daughter and my students are still safer in their classroom than anywhere else. How about we take the money we might spend hardening our school bunkers and instead spend it on mental health care?
Or fund it with weapon registration fees... plus the fines we will dish out to any gun owner who lets his/her weapon fall into the hands of any unauthorized user.
Make people pay a little bit to go to school, use it for better food, raises for the best teachers, and better locks and windows on the bunkers. Actually just arm the school cops. maybe one more school cop per school and you fix this. And pay for that new cop by eliminate the reserved parking for the fat-cat administrators and make the administrators and teachers bring sack lunches.
Grudz, you're not helping. Focus. (But what's this B.S. about lunch? We all buy our lunch. I brown-bag it every day.)
Maybe a 2 day waiting period where the potential gun buyer has to see a counselor and make sure that they understand what they are doing and that they are fit to make that decision. It might be inconvenient for those that have to travel a long distance to the few counseling centers set up by the state. But we are talking lives here.
Heck, if they decide after coerced counseling that they want to go through with the purchase they then should be forced to have a tans-vaginal ultrasound device inserted into an orifice to make sure they understand the impact of their decision.
Oh, that medical device that is forced into someone against their will, there is no medical purpose...it's just to shame someone for going through with something that is legal that other people don't agree with.
Public education is supposed to be free. Armed teachers isn't the answer. The more guns in a location the more people will be injured or killed in the crossfire. The second amendment giving the right to bear arm was intended to form a militia being there wasn't an army at that time. Now we have an army so why do we need a militia. Also the people that want to have weapons that can fire many rounds rapidly should be required to be in the military and have to report regularly for mental health checks and follow any other rules that might be required. I also think it should be much easier to have a person committed for mental health counseling.
"Maybe a 2 day waiting period where the potential gun buyer has to see a counselor and make sure that they understand what they are doing and that they are fit to make that decision."
That will just set up another industry of fake professionals, like bankruptcy reform of 2005 did with adding "consumer counseling" which doesn't prevent anyone from filing a much needed bankruptcy, or help them afterwards, but gave a bunch of middlemen another source of income.
Or the SATOP classes for DWI sentencing. They created another industry, but we don't seem to see any real benefits from them where we are.
Divorce and custody mediators - same way.
Gun shops would set up an in-house counselor signing mental hall passes, and guns would still fly out the door.
Censor television, movie, and game gratuitous violence. Couple that nonsense with football, hockey, etc violence and kids loose touch with the reality of pain and death.
The violence in media is becoming the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater...only now "fire" means shot to kill indiscriminately with maximum violence.
I think if the NRA was a serious organization - serious about gun rights and not just for lining their pockets - they would propose a 20% excise tax on all gun sales, and the 20% be given to a mental health fund, overseen by a different org.
Incidentally, I tossed in the God as the real killer for those who don't see that their God kills and in parallel with the idea that guns don't kill people, people kill people with guns. Unfortunately, we may have about as much chance of stopping tornadoes as we do of stopping gun violence with 300 million guns spread around the US.
maybe let people have all the guns they....but ban the bullets
So Taunia it is the gun industry that is causing the mental health problems in this country?
Bret: is the gun industry helping give people with mental problems the capability to act on their wishes of notoriety and delusions of grandeur in the quickest, most notable way?
Give the tribes guns AND Mexican statehood and then build a tunnel to patrol the mental illness.
Grudz: wtf are you even talking about and what's your purpose? Is it that you really enjoy seeing your words in instanteous print? Because I rarely see you add anything to a conversation but some kind of babble.
Bill, you're mistaken by any measure: "there are way more bigger problems we need to look at as far as people getting killed." How many died in the US from chemical attack (these are psychological weapons, not mass casualty weapons anyway); from biological attack; from dirty bomb attack - in the past 18 months? 0. How many died from US gun violence in the past 18 months - it's MORE US citizens than died from the "terrorist attacks" and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem is here. Now. The solutions are self-evident merely awaiting our will.
Other Bill, the founding fathers knew what was a repeater via a double-barrel pistols (concealed too), rifles, and shatterguns. They also armed Lewis and Clark with a 22-shot 46 caliber repeater - the Girardoni Air Rifle, used to impress tribes with their firepower. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_Air_Rifle The founding fathers knew some citizens had modest cannons and that some communities organized their efforts to pay for and build ships of war. Fact is we do have a Second Amendment. Another fact is that it's utility as a check on government acting illegitimately slipped since the modern advent of civil disobedience - as shown by Gandhi, King, Mandela, etc.
More important than all that though is the modern insanity we brought upon ourselves and children by imprisoning them, locking them in their schools. Sandy Hook Elementary was doing this for a few years. Still those children were not safe from our collective foolishness. We must change or our society will certainly die.
A gun is a tool the most convenient tool but it is not the cause. I believe Mr. Wiken might be closer to the cause....
Bret: there are lots of corps/orgs that donate and/or set up funding for social and medical causes. They work hard to put out a good, community friendly corp image or to repair their public image when they screw up. And it's not always product liability they're making up for, but public image.
I think the NRA has a lot of damage control to do, and probably irreparable. Damage control in this sense, unfortunately, is doing what can be done in light of hundreds of dead kids in schools, churches, movie theaters, et al from the product they fight so hard for.
Using that logic automobile manufactors should be held responsible for deaths resulting from DWI's and all the costs associated with it?
Do mentally ill people intentionally use autos to kill mass amounts of people? Do impaired/drunk drivers generally intend to kill themselves or anyone else? Are you using your car to "hunt deer"?
If you want to compare guns to cars, then I guess you are stipulating that gun ownership should come with a written test, a using test, a license registration, an insurance mandate, a taxing mandate, and all with expiration dates? If so, I'm good with that.
And a serial number.
I think we could be really good friends if you're agreeing with this, Bret. ;)
I think firearm education should be a must and it could be done in our schools. Because lets face it they are here and are not going away any time soon. Everyone should learn the inherant risks and dangers associated with guns. Better to learn in a controlled setting than from television, video games or the internet.
And speaking of taxing lets also tax gratuitous violence in movies, televsion and violent video games. There is a ratings system already in place to determine rates. All three of the above have been suspects in these types of incidents. And I would love to be your friend Taunia....
Check out this video, Bret.
Concealed Carry permit holders live in a dream world (VIDEO)
The controlled study documented in these videos show that concealed carry permit holders are fooling themselves if they think they will be able to react effectively to armed aggressors. Most CCW holders won’t even be able to un-holster their gun. They will more likely be killed themselves or kill innocent bystanders than stop the aggressor.
For more details, see “Unintended Consequences: Pro-Handgun Experts Prove That Handguns Are a Dangerous Choice for Self-Defense.” http://tinyurl.com/dy87g6g
Somehow I don't think changing the gun laws would have stopped this guy. He was intent on killing people and once he was in the classroom he was in total control. These were very young kids who would have had no idea what to do.
It's incredibly sad.
A real sollution probably lies more in the mental health isses rather than stricter gun control. CT was already very strict.
Quite possible, Mike. Drivers exam and license requirements also don't stop all highway fatalities. But they help.
Where did the shooting take place? In a school that bans Bibles and guns. So not only do we fail to reduce evil, the teachers were defenseless against it.
Schools don't ban Bibles. Our library has a Bible. Students can carry Bibles and wear crosses around their necks.
Shooters don't go to schools because schools ban guns. They go to schools because of hatred, madness, and the concentration of vulnerable targets. More guns in schools increase the chances of accidents. Even Israeli schools ban guns.
Cory -- Perhaps one gun in school with a trained security officer holstered to it? Many corporations and businesses have security officers even some large Churches. It is a norm in our society for protecting people and valuables and what is more valuable than the children in our schools?
Cory, your postmodern irrationality can only survive by denying truths. Do you teach students how to read the Bible in French? What do you think the kids learn more from, that Bible collecting dust in the library or the violent video games they play?
Sorry, Sibby. There is yellow crime scene tape around the rabbit hole this week. Sane people aren't going down there. And you shouldn't either. Take care, brother.
Fleming, you seem to like the gun ban rabbit hole that is being pushed by the irrational left. Again, did the shooting take place where guns are banned?
All crimes take place in locations where they are banned, Sibby. That's why they are called "crimes." Go back to sleep.
"All crimes take place in locations where they are banned"
False.
" Owen Reitzel
2012.12.16 at 20:57
maybe let people have all the guns they....but ban the bullets"
A TV documentary on Williamsburg indicated that either the weapons or the ammunition were kept in an armory. Citizens did not have both the guns and the ammunition.
I wonder if that was part of the concept behind the "militia" mentioned in the second amendment.
If the US Constitution and interpretation interest readers here (they should), you might want to check my review at Dakota Today of Prof. Donald Dahlin's book WE THE PEOPLE.
Don't wonder about your duties and responsibilities to the Militia, go read the SD Constitution. It will tell you what is required of us.