Now here’s something that neither the gun grabbers or the media have time for: the facts.
[Update a few minutes later]
Glenn Reynolds wants to have a real national conversation on guns.
Don’t hold your breath. And of course, the president demonstrates the magical thinking of the gun-control crowd:
Finally, a president who has the guts to come out against the murder of children. Not only that, but he is prepared to confront those who, for murky but clearly frivolous reasons, tolerate violence, oppose tragedy prevention, and shrink from saving innocent lives. Because “politics” cannot be allowed to obstruct the solutions that every decent, right-thinking person favors.
Such as? Well, the president did not say. Neither did New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday, when he scolded Obama for not taking a firmer stand against the wanton slaughter of elementary school students. “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this,” the president had said, “regardless of the politics.” Bloomberg was unimpressed:
Calling for “meaningful action” is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership—not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today.
In Bloomberg’s view, then, we need action that is not only meaningful but also immediate. Through leadership. By the White House as well as Congress.
What disgusting, pathetic hacks.
The logic behind “A attacks B, so that gives C the right to attack–that is, initiate force–against D”*–continues to elude me; but the Hive, like any other cult, generally eschews logic. As demonstrated by those of its members who post comments on this bog.
*”A” being mass murderer or assassin X; “B” being his victim or victims; C being “liberals;” and “D” being peaceful gun-owners (who constitute vast majority of gun-owners, as probably even the most blinkered Hivester can’t deny).
It makes more sense if you accept the (flawed) identification of D with A, which appears to be common for “hivesters”.
I meant, course, “blog,” not “bog,” although the Hive probably considers Transterrestrial Musings a morass of dangerous pro-freedom ideals.
“What disgusting, pathetic hacks.”
I’m more concerned about the idiots who keep voting them into office.
I’ll start taking Bloomberg seriously when that fascistic little turd gets rid of his armed body-guard.
The female elementary school teacher in a supposedly affluent neighborhood who owned a couple of pistols and a rifle (I refuse to call it an assault rifle because that is an insult to the people who invented the concept way back during WWII):
Here in Europe in most places regular people aren’t allowed to own a pistol. It is considered a concealable weapon which requires special dispensation to own. Any citizen without a criminal record can own hunting rifles of course provided they are of age and have a license which is trivial to get. Basically you need a doctor’s affidavit stating that you are considered physically and mentally fit to own a weapon. It is ludicrous how in the US you need to have a license for driving a car but you don’t need one to own a gun.
This could all have been prevented if the lady had stored her weapons properly locked away from her supposedly mentally disturbed son… Why is it that every criminal in the US is considered to be mentally disturbed in the first place is somehow strange to me to begin with. Any person is capable of committing a crime given the proper setup.
If you’re talking about the murderer’s mother, she had no connection to that school. That was one of the many pieces of erroneous information put out by the press last week. She may have been a teacher somewhere but her profession is irrelevant to the larger point. She owned multiple guns and apparently a lot of ammo, all obtained legally. You’re right that she didn’t properly secure those weapons from her son and she had to have known he had mental issues. Hell, he didn’t have issues, he had subscriptions. It was irresponsible on her part but not against the law.
Connecticut already has tough gun laws and she obeyed them. Would passing more laws reduce crime? History proves otherwise. Criminals, by definition, don’t obey the law. That’s a fundamental truth that most gun control advocates seem unable to understand.
M. Godzilla:
Je suis Texan, et je me ne se soucie pas quelle faire les pédés de Europe. Va te faire mettre.
Whatever dude. It is your country. If you do not consider the rate and impact of mass shootings in your country to be abnormally high that is your prerogative. I found a lot of nice things in the US when I was there. The drivers are certainly more civil than in Paris. The supposed weapon culture of the US is not one of those nice things. I can understand people wanting to have weapon skills. However you attach a lot of things to weapons which simply have no relation at all. C’est une espèce de merde.
Je suis désolé, mon ami étranger, mais ton avis n’est pas pertinente. Vous êtes licencié.
There’s a common assumption on the gun-control side: If a law is passed, nearly everybody will obey it.
I’ve read that people who smoked enough dope in college don’t remember doing so, but I didn’t believe it until recently.
Little discussed is the obvious fact that illegal guns (often cited as a reason for owning a legal one) are diverted (for the most part) from the supply of legal weapons. I haven’t seen it discussed, but it seems logical that most of the supply of illegal guns in the UK is diverted from the legal gun market (mostly the US one) also. The same applies to ammunition.
Which means that if there was a change in US policy regarding guns, and a serious crackdown on gun ownership, then there would be less illegal guns also.
Looking from outside, it seems to me that the way to sort this out is simply to apply the 2nd Amendment – but make sure that you apply all of it including the “well-regulated militia” clause.
Switzerland (sure, I know it’s more ethnically homogenous and a lot smaller) has a high-powered assault rifle in every household. But on the other hand, every Swiss male citizen is in the reserve, and all of them are required to train for a couple of weeks per year in military matters and initially to go through basic training and a period of national service (AFAIK). Works for them – despite the near-universal availability of high-powered military weapons, the Swiss homicide rate is a tiny fraction of the rate in the USA as a whole and an even tinier fraction of the rate in American inner cities. And, as another benefit, although no Swiss has fought outside Switzerland for centuries no-one sane would invade Switzerland.
Einstein said that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome. In the early 20th century, America passed a constitutional amendment outlawing alcohol. Unfortunately for the do-gooders, millions of people still wanted to drink. As a result, organized crime stepped in to meet the demand. Smugglers brought in booze from across the borders and illegal homemade production of alcohol soared. Those crime syndicates became very powerful and the crime rate soared. The criminals had so much money that they were able to further corrupt society by bribing cops, judges and politicians. Alcohol prohibition was repealed in the early 1930s but the crime remained.
Fast forward a few decades and you’ll see the so-called “war on drugs”. Once again, millions of people wanted to fry their brain cells so organized crime stepped in to meet the demand. This continues to this day with much of the criminal activity being conducted by criminal gangs. Drugs are smuggled in from across the borders and nasty home meth labs produced product locally. Once again, the money is corrupting society by bribing cops, judges and politicians.
Banning guns will have the same outcome. People will still want to own guns, so smuggling will meet the demand. If they couldn’t stop the smuggling of alcohol or drugs, what makes anyone believe they can stop the smuggling of guns? In the movies, it seems every two-bit gang banger has a fully automatic weapon. It has been illegal to own or sell fully automatic weapons with special (and very difficult to obtain) licensing since 1934. So, if they’re getting automatic weapons, where do you think they’re coming from?
I took a young Brit fishing while he was over here coaching soccer. He was amazed that people would leave boats attached to docks with nothing more than rope, leave semi-valuable possessions in open site on docks or in their yards, and leave the doors to their boat houses open. He said in GB, these people would have been robbed blind.
I tried to explain how culturally we are not thieves and the difficulty of actually stealing boats or robbing houses because every house has windows facing the lake, cabin owners know each other, there is a high likelihood that boaters are being watched, and a lot of people have guns.
I was thinking about this while reading the comments of DM stories about the shooting. Commenters were freaked out over the prospect of how much more violent the “hoodies” in GB would be if they were armed. After all, violent crime rates are through the roof in GB. The assumption seemed to be that only criminals would have guns.
Anyways, the British guy and myself had a peaceful day on the lake and no crimes were committed but the guy said he wouldn’t feel comfortable in a country where people could own guns, this was despite the strange feeling of safety he felt on a lake where no one feared crime. I responded that I wouldn’t feel comfortable in a country where people couldn’t defend themselves or their property.
Yup, we have many cultural differences with our formal colonial masters. I am not sure if our way is better but if Bookworm’s numbers are right, we have a much less violent society.
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/14/factual-weaponry-for-the-stalwart-foot-soldiers-fighting-on-behalf-of-the-2nd-amendment-in-the-cause-of-common-sense/
Nice link, Wodun. I would like to draw attention to the one commenter who said:
It’s odd how people want to reduce everything to a single paradigm. But, it does not have to be one or the other. It can be both. This kid in Connecticut was clearly mentally ill. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were not. One was totally out of it. The others were evil. We can do something about the former, before they reach the crisis level. The others can always find a way, and there’s not much we can do except be thankful that they are rare.