Pretty simple. It’s the Perfect Storm of Leftist opportunity.
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” -Rahm Emanuel
BZ
P.S.
You want some actual facts involving firearms — facts that can buttress your arguments based on statistics and logic? Go here.
As the result of the recent Newtown, Connecticut shootings, the White-Plains, New York newspaper The Journal News (at lohud.com) published the article “The gun owner next door: What you don’t know about the weapons in your neighborhood.”
The point of the article was this:
“I would love to know if someone next to me had guns. It makes me safer to know so I can deal with that,” said Thompson, whose group counsels youths against gun violence. “I might not choose to live there.”
That is: according to the author, Dwight Worley, people need to know who has a gun in their home so that potential neighbors can decide to avoid that person and/or area. The further intimation being: because you can never quite tell when that heinous gun owner will uncork and shoot up the community.
Using the Freedom of Information Act, the article also included an interactive graphic that displays the specific name, address and telephone number of those persons holding firearms permits in Rockland and Westchester counties in New York state. See: “Map: Where are the gun permits in your neighborhood?”
Weasel Zippers weighed in here on the matter originally.
But wait; there’s more. Weasel Zippers then thought it would be appropriate to reveal the address and phone number of the article’s author, Worley, along with those of the newspaper’s president and editors. That article is here.
A bit of tit-for-tat, so to speak.
Because I’m certain those journalists would want their personal information displayed on the internet for all to see as much as lawful gun owners would.
As does The Politico, whose bias is indicated by its title: “Right up in arms over paper’s gun map.”
Anyone besides me believe this is 1) reprehensible, but 2) only fair that the publishers have their personal information revealed as well?
BZ
I love it: the Left investigating the Left.
And the Left thinking it is somehow, magically, mystically, immune from its OWN laws.
From Breitbart.com’s Big Journalism:
A first thought: hoisted upon the petard of your own making, yes? And so, Gregory, how does it feel to have your own loving government instigating an investigation which may result in some form of criminal prosecution?
In a discussion about gun control, host David Gregory brandished a 30-round magazine purportedly for an AR-15 or similar “assault rifle.” The discussion took place on December 23, during the broadcast of NBC’s Sunday morning political talk show.
Washington D.C.’s gun laws, however, state that even possessing such a device is a violation. Meet the Press is filmed at NBC’s D.C. studios.
Quite admittedly, the shadow of Schadenfreude has reared its ugly head here.
And I suspect: there is much more of it to come in the next two or three months.
BZ
P.S.
Mr Gregory, do you perhaps wish that the Second Amendment was more highly enforced and guaranteed — now? Just a question in passing. . .
I wrote that guns weren’t the problem in Newtown, Connecticut.
I believe that the individual psychotic or mentally-impacted person is the issue.
Three days before 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year-old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.
“I can wear these pants,” he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.
“They are navy blue,” I told him. “Your school’s dress code says black or khaki pants only.”
“They told me I could wear these,” he insisted. “You’re a stupid bitch. I can wear whatever pants I want to. This is America. I have rights!”
“You can’t wear whatever pants you want to,” I said, my tone affable, reasonable. “And you definitely cannot call me a stupid bitch. You’re grounded from electronics for the rest of the day. Now get in the car, and I will take you to school.”
I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.
A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7- and 9-year-old siblings knew the safety plan—they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.
That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn’t have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.
We still don’t know what’s wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood-altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work.
At the start of seventh grade, Michael was accepted to an accelerated program for highly gifted math and science students. His IQ is off the charts. When he’s in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who. He’s in a good mood most of the time. But when he’s not, watch out. And it’s impossible to predict what will set him off.
Several weeks into his new junior high school, Michael began exhibiting increasingly odd and threatening behaviors at school. We decided to transfer him to the district’s most restrictive behavioral program, a contained school environment where children who can’t function in normal classrooms can access their right to free public babysitting from 7:30 to 1:50 Monday through Friday until they turn 18.
The morning of the pants incident, Michael continued to argue with me on the drive. He would occasionally apologize and seem remorseful. Right before we turned into his school parking lot, he said, “Look, Mom, I’m really sorry. Can I have video games back today?”
“No way,” I told him. “You cannot act the way you acted this morning and think you can get your electronic privileges back that quickly.”
His face turned cold, and his eyes were full of calculated rage. “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. “I’m going to jump out of this car right now and kill myself.”
That was it. After the knife incident, I told him that if he ever said those words again, I would take him straight to the mental hospital, no ifs, ands, or buts. I did not respond, except to pull the car into the opposite lane, turning left instead of right.
“Where are you taking me?” he said, suddenly worried. “Where are we going?”
“You know where we are going,” I replied.
“No! You can’t do that to me! You’re sending me to hell! You’re sending me straight to hell!”
I pulled up in front of the hospital, frantically waving for one of the clinicians who happened to be standing outside. “Call the police,” I said. “Hurry.”
Michael was in a full-blown fit by then, screaming and hitting. I hugged him close so he couldn’t escape from the car. He bit me several times and repeatedly jabbed his elbows into my rib cage. I’m still stronger than he is, but I won’t be for much longer.
The police came quickly and carried my son screaming and kicking into the bowels of the hospital. I started to shake, and tears filled my eyes as I filled out the paperwork—”Were there any difficulties with… at what age did your child… were there any problems with.. has your child ever experienced.. does your child have…”
At least we have health insurance now. I recently accepted a position with a local college, giving up my freelance career because when you have a kid like this, you need benefits. You’ll do anything for benefits. No individual insurance plan will cover this kind of thing.
For days, my son insisted that I was lying—that I made the whole thing up so that I could get rid of him. The first day, when I called to check up on him, he said, “I hate you. And I’m going to get my revenge as soon as I get out of here.”
By day three, he was my calm, sweet boy again, all apologies and promises to get better. I’ve heard those promises for years. I don’t believe them anymore.
On the intake form, under the question, “What are your expectations for treatment?” I wrote, “I need help.”
And I do. This problem is too big for me to handle on my own. Sometimes there are no good options. So you just pray for grace and trust that in hindsight, it will all make sense.
I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am Jason Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.
According to Mother Jones, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. Of these, 43 of the killers were white males, and only one was a woman. Mother Jones focused on whether the killers obtained their guns legally (most did). But this highly visible sign of mental illness should lead us to consider how many people in the U.S. live in fear, like I do.
When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”
I don’t believe my son belongs in jail. The chaotic environment exacerbates Michael’s sensitivity to sensory stimuli and doesn’t deal with the underlying pathology. But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise—in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population.
With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill—Rikers Island, the LA County Jail and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nation’s largest treatment centers in 2011.
No one wants to send a 13-year-old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”
I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.
God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.
God help us all. Because our government isn’t helping. Nor is it interested in helping in a personal or cultural fashion. It involves mental instability. PROFOUND mental instability.
BZ
First, outright confiscation is advocated by MSNBC’s Leftist Ed Schultz on Twitter:
Ed Schultz @WeGotEd @gt500cws who’s facts ? I have a fact for you. We are the Constitution and we as a people can change whatever we want. Get ready Dude !
Ed Schultz @WeGotEd @gt500cws a Glock pistol qualifies as an assault weapon.
Ed Schultz @WeGotEd The NRA needs to state the case why assault weapons are needed by anyone.
Ed Schultz @WeGotEd @gt500cws a Glock pistol qualifies as an assault weapon.
Ed Schultz @WeGotEd Write all the feel good laws you want, it’s the confiscation of these types of weapons that counts and will have an impact.
Ed Schultz @WeGotEd Why should anyone own an assault rifle ? We need to be realistic about the 2nd amendment..society has changed, views have changed.
“Write all the feel good laws you want, it’s the confiscation of these types of weapons that counts and will have an impact.”
Two Demorat senators want an outright assault weapons ban here.
Fornicalia Senator Diane Feinstein, 79, said on Monday:
“This is really the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I’m beside myself over this.”
She’s going for “assault weapons,” she states.
Adam Lanza was, in fact, “deranged.”
And so-called “gun-free zones” do nothing but guarantee, to an offender, that they will not be met with resistance of any kind. A bit of an obvious conclusion, yes? But, of course, not to Leftists, Progressives and Demorats, who possess not the capacity to understand such concepts. They act and react only upon emotions, not logic or common sense — a sense of which is not common any more.
Further, let us harken back to Eric Holder in 1995: “we need to brainwash people against guns.”
How about this, Mr Holder: we portray crime and criminals as they are? Losers. Cultural losers. And to whom are you aiming this ire? Truthfully: to large and compacted cities such as Detroit, Chicago, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles — cities that are packed with a high “minority content” (Though, in Fornicalia, as a Caucasoid I am now the literal statistical minority.) that belong to gangs because they have no two-parent families. A paradigm that was eliminated by the very federal government with which you now work. At one time the black family was the tightest nucleus possible. But when you — the federal government — paid black women for more children absent a male in the household, the nuclear black family was inexorably doomed. By Demorats. Leftists.
But what will Demorats and Leftists and Progressives fail to mention? Yes. That would be statistics. As in: violent crime has been trending down for the past 20 years.
Yoni the Blogger writes more truth:
Rampage violence is not solely an American problem.
It is a world wide problem. Since 1904 the world has seen over 1,261 such incidents.
They happen in free countries such as America, and they have happened in dictatorships such as the former USSR and China.
The weapons range from edged weapons, firearms and metal bars.
I predict that America will see new gun control, over the latest school shooting. Despite the evidence of the good that guns have done in two of the latest incidents.
But prepare to be confronted with Truth that NO ONE in the DEM/MSM has mentioned, and that most persons fail to mention. Truth:
We know that the shooter in Oregon was confronted by a civilian that was carrying a pistol, the civilian held fire because of people being behind the shooter. The shooter was working to try and clear a malfunction in his rifle, he saw the civilian aiming at him.
The shooter only fired one more round, the one that took his own life.
We know at the Sandy Hook, that when the shooter heard the first responders approaching he took his own life.
It is time we have a serious discussion about the positive aspect of gun ownership.
Guns in the hands of good people, prevent violence.
Israel proved that guns in our schools, stopped our schools from being targeted by terrorist.
Gun free zones create a pool of victims for these sick individuals.
I promise you, let a teacher kill one of these crazies and the rampage violence at schools will stop.
Precisely. Because America and American politicians are addressing the wrong issue. They are — of course, once again — taking the EASY WAY “out.”
Just as cash is an “answer” and is completely impersonal, so is addressing the tool in violence — the gun — an “answer” and is completely impersonal. Because “impersonal” won’t cost votes.
Because Demorats and Leftists and Progressives and the DEM/MSM refuse to address the true issue: PEOPLE.
Why?
People VOTE. Tools and cold pieces of paper and metal do not. People — voters — don’t want to hear or read that they are the problem.
However, the Second Amendment has been upheld:
Most recently, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 11 struck down an Illinois law that prohibited most individuals other than hunters or law enforcement personnel from carrying weapons in public. The ruling relied, in part, on a 2008 Supreme Court decision striking down Washington, D.C.,’s strict handgun ban.
“The constitutional right of armed self-defense is broader than the right to have a gun in one’s home,” Judge Richard Posner wrote in striking down the Illinois law.
There are serious issues here.
Issues that the Demorats are truly unwilling to address.
BZ
P.S.
I will write about the “mental health” factors later — a much-needed issue to be discussed.