Massacre in Connecticut

I'm going to avoid coverage of this one. Friends of facebook are calling for SuperMax style schools.

Well...that didn't take long.

Woke up to this news this morning (Japan time).  Horrible.  And sadly, so America.

 

What is it about American society that leads to these crimes?    And, though I don't believe that guns cause the crimes all by themselves, I believe they may make the crimes far easier to commit and thus possibly easier to consider.  Let's face it, if this guy had only been armed with knives you would sadly still have had deaths, but far fewer.  He may even have not chosen to go to the school.

 

Something needs to be done soon about the underlying failing of the society, whatever it may be, that leads so many to such violence.  Something also needs to be done about the guns.  

 

The guns were bought by the guy's mom, a school teacher.  Legally.  Why does a school teacher need to buy guns?  Many members of my extended family in the US are teachers; not one owns a gun nor has considered buying one.  

 

Not a week ago the NRA said the wife of the NFL player could have defended herself had she had a gun.  They have had no comment (yet) today.  It would be hard to claim that the kids could have defended themselves with guns, or that the teachers should be armed.  Their argument from last week evaporates.  A new discussion needs to ensue.

 

 

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/14/us/school-shootings/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

 

 

Of course, many will choose to ignore the common thread between these stories: guns were always involved.

Edited by Bergermeister - 12/14/12 at 4:14pm

Record gun sales in the US this year.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/gun-sales-2012_n_2303513.html

What is the job of the media?

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/reporters-interviewing-children-connecticut-school-shooting_n_2303656.html

 

I saw one of the CNN interviews of a kid and could only think how the media puts itself first; the story, the story, the story.

 

  Who cares about the victims.

Edited by Bergermeister - 12/14/12 at 4:37pm

And we keep hearing from the gun supporters that violent crime has not decreased in Australia (which is not at all true when you look at trends rather than absolutes) but one thing is for certain. Massacres have decreased in Australia.

 

Notice the false dichotomy here. It's either guns or knives. Or...even the assumption that someone, properly motivated, would be unable to get the guns anyway.

 

 

 

What do you suggest?

 

 

 

What difference does it make. Is this part of the solution: That everyone who wishes to own a gun must justify it?

 

 

 

Perhaps not the children, but why not the teachers? Why do you exclude this possibility out of hand?

 

 

 

No it doesn't.

 

 

 

Really? What, according to you, does that discussion need to be?

Sobering:

 

http://timelines.latimes.com/deadliest-shooting-rampages/

22 school children injured in an attack in China by a knife wielding nut and not one child killed. This guy comes a long and in a few minutes kills nearly thirty people. 

 

There's a simple solution. Mandatory 30 years for the possession of any gun. They'll become very scarce very quickly.

 

There it is again. This whole "if guns were illegal they'd only use knives" bit. It's astonishing to me what a lack of imagination you guys have. First, you assume that if you make guns illegal, people who want to kill other people won't have them or get them. Second, you assume they would simply fall back to knives. Priceless.

 

Is this simply wishful thinking, unimaginative thinking or just plain stupidity?

 

 

 

Uh huh.  

"The Glock, made in Austria, and the American-made SIG Sauer can fire up to five bullets a second at a velocity of 1,200 feet a second.

 

Scott said the shooter likely used hollow point bullets, “"The bullet is meant to open up like a flower ... The nose of the bullet and spreads open, creating a devastating wound through tissue and organ that sends the victim into almost immediate shock."

 

"Wearing a military-style vest, Adam Lanza killed his mother at their house, then stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School carrying a Glock 9 mm handgun, a SIG Sauer handgun, killing 26 people, including 20 children, before turning the gun on himself.

The two pistols were found inside the school and a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle was found in the back of his mother's car in the parking lot."

~ http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ct-school-shooter-made-combat-weapon-article-1.1220431

So this guys mother would risk a thirty year jail term to own the guns? I don't think so. That would have left the shooter having to purchase or steal some very expensive and very well guarded guns from very serious criminals, which if he had to have done, he would likely have been caught in the process of trying.

 

Uh huh.

 

You liberals always have such an amazingly simplistic analysis of these things its astonishing that none of your grand plans for engineering Utopia ever work.

That makes a refreshing change from the usual intellectual elite charge. I don't know which I prefer more being it's coming from a self professed Libertarian who's famous for his utopian ideals. Even to the point of believing that anyone in the US should have the right to own rocket launchers. You can't make this stuff up!

 

Not really. You all think and act like you're the intellectual elite.

 

 

 

I don't have Utopian ideals. That's just the caricature you've created of me in your head.

 

5 Average number of child deaths in gun-related accidents or suicide EVERY DAY

9 Number of kids under 19 years old killed by guns EVERYDAY

32 Number of states in the US that allow ANYONE to purchase firearms without an ID or criminal background check

40 Percent of gun sales in the US occur without an ID or background check requirement

40 Percent of American households that contain both children and guns

83 Average number of Americans killed by guns EVERYDAY

1,260 Average number of annual firearm homicides in the European Union (pop 376 million)

10,821 Average number of annual firearm homicides in the US (pop 282 million)

34,000 Average number of Americans killed by guns EVERY YEAR

$33,000 Average medical cost (80% uninsured) of a gun related death

$300,000 Average cost (80% uninsured) of a gun related injury

70,000 Average number of gun-related injuries EVERY YEAR

655,000 Number US service men and women killed in all Foreign Wars combined

1,035,000 Number of gun deaths in the US over the past 30 years

 

 

 

 

Edited by Hands Sandon - 12/14/12 at 8:00pm

Here we go again. 

 

P.S. I like this in particular: "655,000 Number US service men and women killed in all Foreign Wars combined"...Very cleverly played.

 

P.P.S. How about this:

 

"More broadly, attempts by armed civilians to stop shooting rampages are rare—and successful ones even rarer. There were two school shootings in the late 1990s, in Mississippi and Pennsylvania, in which bystanders with guns ultimately subdued the teen perpetrators, but in both cases it was after the shooting had subsided. Other cases led to tragic results. In 2005, as a rampage unfolded inside a shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington, a civilian named Brendan McKown confronted the assailant with a licensed handgun he was carrying. The assailant pumped several bullets into McKown and wounded six people before eventually surrendering to police after a hostage standoff. (A comatose McKown eventually recovered after weeks in the hospital.) In Tyler, Texas, that same year, a civilian named Mark Wilson fired his licensed handgun at a man on a rampage at the county courthouse. Wilson—who was a firearms instructor—was shot dead by the body-armored assailant, who wielded an AK-47. (None of these cases were included in our mass shootings data set because fewer than four victims died in each.)

And yet ironically you'd allow American citizens to arm themselves with the same type of drones if they wished. Imagine if this most recent shooters mother had a drone.

If you've paid attention, I do support a constitutional amendment to address the problem of the obsolete second amendment.

But barring that, why don't we work on a more viable solution to the problem? We have reached a point where thumb scanners or owner proximity identification devices are not an impractical solution. That, combined with heavy penalties for unauthorized gun possession or use of any kind would solve the problem. Require all gun manufacturers to require owner identity technology. It will add less than $5 and minor technological changes to implement in future gun models. Who would oppose such a thing?

Not only does gun ownership need to be curtailed, but the news itself needs to stop turning these assholes into celebrities, while the rest of society needs to stop stigmatizing mental health issues.  It's a problem on three fronts.  All three need to be addressed.

The reason is clear, as Huckabee said on the right wing broadcasting network:  we took God out of the schools.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/mike-huckabee-school-shooting_n_2303792.html

 

 

 

Yeah, you read that right.

Edited by Bergermeister - 12/15/12 at 2:13am

I love reading about the solutions to gun safety from people that have never even seen a gun in their life.

 

Guns are always involved if your common thread is murders at schools involving guns. If your stories were drunk driving, drug overdoses or other things that murder people, then that would be the common thread.

 

Let's be honest. These stories touch because they are in schools, involving young people and they people are seen as innocent. Yet the largest cause of murder in the U.S. for young boys and men will be gang killings. There isn't a law yet that won't have been passed forbidding all the variables of those killings yet they will still take place.

 

If legislation could solve this problem, then this incident wouldn't have happened because nothing about what took place was allowed by law. All school campuses are zero tolerance of weapons of any sort. The law declares this murderer couldn't even show up with a nail file let along an automatic weapon. How did legislation prevent this from happening?

 

Perhaps they will just switch to Sarin gas instead right Berger?

 

 

How many massacres in Switzerland this year? Also why does it matter if it is one person and one incident versus perhaps hundreds of possible incidents? Being in a gang is against the law. Killing other gang members is against the law. Being on probation precludes any right to associate with other felons, own a gun or break the law. Yet there will over 2,000 gang murders this year.

 

Legislation has a limit.

 

 

Perhaps what needs to be curtailed is violent imagery that Democratic donors and Democratic media fat cats engage in more than any other group on earth. Blue Democratic Baston's are the home of all the sick filth that is fed to our society. You don't need to take guns from the millions of Americans who keep and use them properly. However Hollywood, New York, Chicago and other blue media mecca's have almost all the violence and produce almost all the violent imagery that feeds our society.

 

It is American films that show bullet shells falling like raindrops while a full orchestra plays. It is America media that glorifies violence unendingly in gangster rap videos, albums and other media. It is American companies that sell every more realistic and violent videogames where kids fill their minds with these images daily. These have been and are protected by the Democratic Party.

 

It is also the Democratic Party that declares that tolerance is the buzzword that must be practiced no matter the outcome. Don't we dare ever judge and declare that those kids that act errant, strange or that actually harm their fellow students should be educated away from others. We all just need to suffer a bit more, tolerate a bit more and just shed a few more tears when the fates turn them lose on us.

 

I assure you that as the media digs into this and the story will be the same and will be ignored. We saw it in Columbine. We saw it at Virginia Tech. The people that cause these problems are like a train going down a track heading towards a collusion with a wall. They are actually in the system, have been diagnosed as troubled several times, often have even received help in numerous forms but we don't want to judge and we allow them to stick around causing trouble.

 

If you are going to point fingers for political purposes, point them at all the groups advocating mainstreaming no matter the outcome. Point them at gang/violent culture and how it is fed to our kids through movies, music and videogames. Point them at the people who ask for us to tolerate the troublemakers until our kids are dead.

The "guns are great" opinion: Armed teachers could have prevented or minimized the situation:

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/connecticut-shooting-armed-teachers-gun-advocate_n_2304654.html

 

From about 1:54

What is your great answer to stop these senseless killings in our country now?
 

 

You're right. Let's freedom to own guns and freedom of speech at the same time. Then your grand plans will be complete and the perfect society will have arrived.

"How many massacres in Switzerland this year?"

Switzerland hs a socialist support system. There is no angry white man/angry black man/angry latino etc. there. Also, Switzerland has conscription. All males are taught by the government for two years the proper use of a firearm.

I bet you 100% that if we had (effective) socialism and conscription in the US, we wouldn't have massacres and accidents where dads shoot their kids in a gun shop parking lot.

There is a reason there are no massacres in Switzerland. and it's not because everybody owns guns.

I'm glad you advocate for proper firearm training. That's why I bought my 8 year old his 22 rifle so he can go to the range with me. 

Are posts just disappearing now?

 

 

I'm sure the people in Norway will be happy to know that there were no attacks there and we just imagined them even though they follow the Nordic model that is features many aspects of socialism.

 

Switzerland has had massacres as well. Just not this year. Obviously Switzerland is heavily socialized as you mention. So the point is they occurred in both places even when, per your hypothesis, they shouldn't occur because no one should be angry due to the government providing for all basic needs.

 

 

 

Gun ownership doesn't need to be curtailed. If anything needs to be curtailed it is profiteering from violent entertainment. Likewise when we see people who are increasingly authoritarian and intolerant in their town, who repeatedly belittle, attack and accuse others in a paranoid manner, they need to be addressed, not ignored. That would include yourself and the very angry tone you have on these forums where you accuse everyone who disagrees with you of harming society, humanity, and the planet. When people like yourself let their perspective about those they disagree with get so out of whack, it isn't surprising that their response to them could involve violence.

OK, surely we can all now finally admit that America has a (massive) problem. 

 

Its not about firearms. Banning guns and trashing more of our Constitutional liberties is (a) unworkable, and (b) will never solve the problem, in the same way that the wholesale trashing of our rights, overseas wars, and Big Government® domestic surveillance and security measures in the wake of 9/11 has done NOTHING to reduce terrorism (if anything, it's increased). Other countries such as Canada, Israel and Switzerland have comparably high proportions of gun ownership, but have a far lower proportional rate of firearms related homicides. 

 

No amount of security can prevent these terror type events from happening.... and who (in their rational mind) wants to bring up our kids in militarized penal style institutions, masquerading as "schools" where teachers do more policing and security duties than teaching, in which fear is king, and where paranoia and surveillance rules? What kind of generation will result in that kind of "schooling" environment? (uh, scary, and that trend is ongoing).

 

Its not about video gaming or the "cheapening of life" via the ongoing spate of blood 'n' guts themed action movies. All nations of Earth watch Hollywood fare (love it or loathe it), and don't have the same regularity of apparently motiveless mass killings, or homicides in general. Its not about the internet, its not about illegal drugs, or pornography, or secularism, or socialists, or Scandinavians, or gays, or blacks, or multiculturalism, or Muslims, or the demise of capital punishment - or any of the usual red herrings cited by US traditionalists when trying to explain this, or societal problems generally.

 

What is happening, to such a relatively greater extent in the US than elsewhere in the industrialized world, that drives people to kill each other so regularly, as is evident by the horrendous homicide and violence statistics? Dare we look in the mirror, or peel back some of the layers and examine our own society, and acknowledge that there are some fundamental flaws which are resulting in a sense of such utter desperation, hopelessness, self-doubt, and rage, and a sense of no hope for the future - that a tiny proportion of our most unstable (younger) citizens are taking the ultimate step by taking out as many people around them as possible (and killing themselves in the process)? In Gaza and the occupied territories, there is a similar sense of utter hopelessness, in their case brought about by foreign oppression, and a small number of their people don a suicide bomb as the ultimate statement of revenge. The Tibetan people are also under the thumb of a brutal regime (the Chinese authorities) - and small number are doing in in their own unique way - by self-immolation. (Perhaps their Tibetan Buddhist tradition is preventing massacres - but as they get divorced from their spiritual roots by Chinese and materialist influence - that may change). Here in mainstream America, there is not the type of foreign oppression as exists in the examples cited above - but something far more subtle and less tangible - figuratively akin to odorless, tasteless gas, that is triggering these horrific outbursts. It may have something to do with the gradual demise of community and the entrenched attitude that a caring society is a sign of weakness, or intrusive government. We need to get to the bottom of this, if we dare, because this violence is not going to stop on its own, and its not going to stop by the use of force.

 

Here in the US, we are still playing out the last throes of the "macho, cowboy, rugged-indivisualism" mentality, which was the traditionalist way of America in the 1700s to 1800s - and now its remnants are butting heads with modern industrial society, where the dubious privilege of dog-eat-style of capitalism (minus the social safety nets that would be required meet basic civilized tenets within such a system) come up against a population awash in deadly weapons. Keeping things the way they are is obviously unacceptable... and just like at some point, a killer (or group) with fully automatic weapons will open fire in some place with many more people in a densely packed environment (such as a large crowded theater or sports stadium), where the potential death toll won't be a couple dozen, but perhaps hundreds, or even thousands. 

 

Every time this happens, we wring our hands and mourn the dead, the media spouts its usual crap - talking around the problem, naive do-gooders on the left yell "more gun control", and those on the right yell back "hands off the 2nd Amendment". And then, in our microsecond attention span society, we forget, until the next massacre or shooting spree the next week. It's as if we are carrying on the same way, expecting things to change.... which is the very definition of insanity.

 

Unfortunately if, as you mentioned, you have no training, then more likely you would have ended up as another of the casualties. That also applies to most casual gun owners in my experience.

 

The high level of private ownership of weapons in the US really is a double-edged sword (please excuse the unintended pun). The higher probability of encountering armed victims has to be a deterrent against many types of crime, especially the home-invasion variety, and offers a very real measure of personal protection. On the other hand, it obviously makes this kind of act easier to carry out. Sure, he could have acquired those weapons illegally if he really wanted to, but that would required a much higher level of determination and planning than needed just to steal his mother's guns. Lowering barriers to any behavior increases the probability that the behavior will occur, and this kind of access enables such impulsive acts.

 

So while it's very difficult to maximize the benefits and minimize downside of widespread gun ownership, I agree that improved control over who has access to weapons is a much more realistic goal than banning or heavily restricting private ownership.

"Police in Bartlesville, a community about 40 miles north of Tulsa, arrested 18-year-old Sammie Eaglebear Chavez shortly before 5 a.m. Friday on charges of conspiring to cause serious bodily harm or death. He remained in Washington County Jail on Saturday on $1 million bond, and he is due in court Jan. 11.

 

 

"Sammie tried to recruit other students to assist him with carrying out a plan to lure students into the school auditorium where he planned to begin shooting them after chaining the doors shut," Bartlesville Police Lt. Kevin Ickleberry wrote in the affidavit.

Chavez told the students he planned to place bombs at the doors that he'd detonate when police arrived, and he threatened to kill students who didn't want to join him, police wrote.

Investigators said Chavez told a teacher earlier this month that he had bought a .45-caliber gun and had been learning to shoot it. Also, the affidavit said Chavez had been trying to obtain a diagram of school facilities and had used a school computer to seek information on a .22-caliber rifle that could be mounted on a machine gun platform."

~ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/15/sammie-eaglebear-chavez_n_2307864.html

 

So much for banning guns.

Please continue.