Printable View
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2...nce-by-january
and so it seems, it has begun.
I wish it were not so. I wish we weren't so naive as to think we can 'fix' every problem that exists. I wish this had never happened.
Next I guess we'll ban yellow trucks, fertilizer, knives, and.......
.....freedom.
I just don't see good days ahead........man, I pray I'm wrong.
I don't really have a big issue with the assault weapons ban that was in place previously, but we still had gun violence while it was in effect and we'll likely continue to have it when its reinstated. As usual the politicians, and it ain't just the Dems or the 'antis', are looking for easy answers that will make their constituencies think they actually do something besides pose for the press and jerk each other off.
If we want to hope or pray for something we should hope or pray that we find out what causes these things to happen. That isn't easy or evident. It requires digging and hard work. One of the mantras of the media has been 'We can't just act like it didn't happen and go on about our business this time'. The same people, once an assault weapons ban is in place, will do just that. they want easy and fast answers and simple and meaningless solutions. Its the American way. You can see it on both sides. The answers from the other side are just as simplistic and easy. And because they have their pat answers, it'll all be forgotten until the next time and not one meaningful thing will have been done.
BKB
And what will we do when we find out there is no answer?
P.S.
Every weapon I ever saw, touched, owned, or looked at, is an Assault Weapon. If anyone uses that term, I ask them to please define what they mean.
I've said this before, people know there are no consequences to their actions. They don't have to work to live, a living is supplied for them. They can engage in self destructive behaviour such as alcoholism to their hearts content and society will put them back together and even go so far as to tell them not only is it not their fault, but they're heroes for going through such a time. Human life has no worth to these folks unless it suits them at the time. Our movie, music and video games reflect that. People have always been self serving to an extent but even our illustrious government says the same thing. Every one seems to get excited about finding a bacteria on Mars because that's considered a life. And we're killing our unborn. Everyone talks about the tragedy at Sandy Hook, and it was. Since there are some that don't believe in an afterlife why don't they see abortion as an even greater tragedy? At the very least those kids got a few years.
I agree, Gus. But what makes you think this is so new???
"When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint".
Hesiod, 8th century BC
"What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
Plato, 4th Century BC
"The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint... As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."
Attributed to Peter the Hermit, AD 1274
In the 1800s, hordes of teens and pre-teens ran wild in American city streets, dodging authorities, "gnawing away at the foundations of society", as a commentator put it. In 1850, New York City recorded more than 200 gang wars fought largely by adolescent boys.
"Juvenile delinquency has increased at an alarming rate and is eating at the heart of America"
US juvenile court judge, 1946
"In the late 1990s the number of drug users had decreased by half compared to a decade earlier; almost two-thirds of high school seniors had never used any illegal drugs, even marijuana. So why did a majority of adults rank drug abuse as the greatest danger to America's youth?"
(Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear)
How long until "they" decide the evil flintlock needs to be banned as well?
Got me to wondering what an assault flintlock would have on it. A composite stock and carbon ramrod?
BKB
I never said it was new, there is no perversion under the sun that is.
It's just more common, more acceptable, more protected by law if you will. Now instead of it being part of fringe society it's mainstream. After all it has to be somebody else's fault.
Pretty much everybody is a selfish, no good, rotten assed individual deep down. A real human works to rise above their nature and they also expect a modicum of "personage" from others.
Gosh, Gus, that's pretty much a doom and gloom outlook.
BKB
Got to say I agree with you on this Gus. What used to be considered depravity is now being forced into the mainstream and if you don't agree with it, you are a bigot.
People are being told that they need to sacrifice their beliefs in order to be more accepting to behavior that historically has been a social stigma. If certain types of behavior are so acceptable, why have they been shunned by society in general for generations? I could go on, but what's the point?
The whole issue I have with the "assault weapons" ban is that it doesn't really ban anything except make so that you can't buy magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds. They will still be out there unless they search every home in the country and confiscate any magazie with a capacity larger than that. The last time, I could still buy a AR-15, but it wouldn't have a flash supressor or a collapsable stock. It would be the same gun with a different appearance. How many fewer people would be dead it this shooter had magazines that only held 10 rounds instead of 30? If a shooter doesn't have anyone fighting back against him, he could kill just as many people with a revolver or a double barrell shotgun as with an "assault weapon".
I don't even know what network is what, but did any of you "noticers" happen to hear former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt when all this was breaking. Twice he brought up the fact (despite what they were alluding to) this kind of thing wasn't limited to the US and not to firearms - specifically the incident in China where the 22 kids were stabbed. To the best of my knowledge he hasn't been back on coverage since. Probably lost his "correspondent/consultant" job. Not at all what they wanted to hear, I'm sure.
The china thing WILL come up again, I bet. Kid slashed 22 people including kids with a blade. HOWEVER, they all lived. Ta DAAA.
The problem is about to be this........people with NO knowledge of weapons are scared, and are going to.........not maybe, they WILL........impose a ton of stupid sanctions on the rest of us, and we will be in the minority, and we will take it. The more liberal among us will try to make it ok, make it sorta valid, and try to live with it. The more radical will go nuts and probably use the very devices that the liberals hate so much.
I don't know how else to say it. I've said it for a long, long time. It has just seemed inevitable, although predicting when, or how soon, I couldn't do. But it just seems around the corner now........that we in this "United" country are no long united, on anything. And we can't continue like that. We WILL split up somehow, sometime. Probably bloodless this time, but we can't function this way for much longer. Too much hate on both sides. Name calling on both sides. Real hatred. Too much change, too fast. So many have said "Oh, be quiet, nothing is going to change, it's all going to be ok". But even if I'm way off base, it won't be "ok". It's a mess, and it's insolvable and it's permanent.
My wife watched the news last night. First time I've seen it other than watching info about the shootings, in many months.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Silliness. Invalid statements. Intensity. Fear. Incorrect facts. Made me appreciate Duck Dynasty. Then I went to bed, and hid under the covers.
I am personally of the opinion that mental health is the culprit here. Taken a lot of flack for saying so but this is where the problem lies and it is the one area where we can maybe do something that would actually make a dent in the problem of these types of rampages.
Is it going to be easy? No. Will it be done without playing one set of rights off against another? No. Will it cost a fortune and make some on the left and right go completely bonkers? Yep.
In a whole lot of these cases we have mentally ill people who have been identified as being so. In several of these cases they were even to the point of being institutionalized. And one peek at the percentage of prison inmates who have been diagnosed as psychotic should convince you that mentally ill patients who are a danger to others are responsible for a whole hell of a lot of the mayhem we endure.
I'm sick and tired of taking it on the chin for these folks.
Will
Willy, glad to see you post.
Let me give a first hand statement about the "Mental Health" part of this.
My BIL had a lot of mental illness. Bipolar, the whole nine yards. He was a major family problem for many years. He thought himself immortal when "high", and was despondent when "low". He would somehow figure out, deep inside, that he had a problem.......every once in a while........and he'd check himself into the state hospital. His problem was a true chemical imbalance.....so when they'd medicate him properly he became as sane as you or anyone, and would check himself out. Medicine made him sleep, drowsy, so he'd stop it to try and feel better. Bingo Bango, the cycle started again. Of course, once you commit your own self, then you can check out AT ANY TIME YOU CHOOSE.
Over a 30 year period, the family tried every way they could to have him committed. No dice. He threatened a State Cop that lived a half mile away, said he'd kill him. Told him on several occasions. Cop could do nothing about it. He tried to kill his sister, my wife. Nothing we could do. His Daddy, my FIL, tried to get him help, no dice.
The LAW says that these people have rights, that they cannot be committed against their will until they physically commit an act of violence, sufficient to convince a judge that he/she has to be committed. Threatening is against the law, yes. A crime, yes. But it won't get you committed to a mental institution.
So, I get a bit ticked off when I hear talking heads say "We need to recognize these signs and get these people out of society". Sorry, Jack, but unless you change all the laws......the laws that YOU (the liberal heart-feeling nonthinkers) passed, then you aren't going to do one dadgum thing to get Mr. Bad Sign out of society. Sorry.
Psychotics that don't act out their violence, or haven't YET, can not just simply be 'put away'.
Not now. Not as things stand. But I think that needs to be changed... and THAT is what has gotten me in so much hot water!
I know it is a tough issue. But in my VERY humble opinion there is no way that what transpired with your BIL should have been allowed. People who are sane only because they take medication should be locked up if they won't. There should be a system in place to MAKE them take their meds. And if the only thing keeping someone from a psychotic episode is the thin line of medication I have a real problem just letting them run around unsupervised while making the rest of us depend on their good judgment so that another murder of mass shooting doesn't take place.
So I absolutely do want the law changed. And that is making me very unwelcome in some quarters these days. I'm not saying we have to go back to the days of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". But what we are doing now is getting people killed. And a whole lot of them.
Will
Not as things stand now they can't. It is my willingness to change that which is making me more than a little unwelcome in some quarters now.
There is no way, no way in this world, that we should have to depend on the good judgment on someone who is psychotic to stay on their medication. People are getting slaughtered because we can't find it within ourselves to make the hard decisions about the mentally ill and step up and pay for what needs to be done. My god, most of these mass slaughters are done by people who have already been identified as potentially explosive. And then after the newscast which shows another line of body bags being brought out of a theatre or elementary school or whatever we wring our hands and wonder aloud what we could have possibly done to prevent it.
Sometimes I think ~WE~ are the crazy ones! :)
Will
Will, I rarely read anything over at the campfire as the level of discourse is so low. However, I did read your post and agreed with quite a bit of it. As expected, you really took a beating over it. I couldn't help but think of the old saying about not arguing with a barnyard sow.
The politicians are going to do what the politicians always do and that's make it look like they're doing something regardless of whether it's effective.
Bucky is correct in that the changes in the laws came about actually from a push by mental health professionals and that whole industry. (It really wasn't us 'touchy feelie people though) and considering how many abuses there were of patients rights in those days, its hard to look at things today in the context that they were back then. But I agree, we have to do something along these lines. One of the solutions has already been done in Obamacare, believe it or don't in just making regular insurance available to folks with mental health issues. But it has to go further than that. And a person with certain mental illnesses shouldn't be able to buy or possess firearms either. The person who really could tell us if any of this would have made a whit of difference in connecticut is unfortunately dead.
BKB
Yeah I have gotten to where the usual political arguments over there are so stale I cannot bare to take part. The economics issues are taken over by crazies and I even avoid those. I suppose I just ~had~ to stick my nose into that hornet's nest. For some reason I just felt like there was a whole lot not being said that desperately needed to be said and then defended.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chicken Dinner
As my cousin has told me more than once, when I most feel that I just have to say something is actually when I most need to shut up and mind my own business. :)
Barry that is something I believe too. Taking care of the mentally ill is not cheap and it is not going to go over well with a whole lot of the population. And those who most need it will fight hardest to keep from getting it. But after seeing so many of these shootings go down I am ready to roll up my sleeves and take part in the discussion.
Will
You think we're the crazy ones???
WTF??
I KNOW we're the crazy ones.
It all still comes down to personal responsibility which the left espouses but makes damn sure that it doesn't apply to them or their voting block. My wife, whom I love dearly, is a maternal/child specialist and she states a lot of problems are related to Fetal Alcohol Effects. OK, I agree but that still goes back to action=consequences. The parents for sure but even the kids that have the problem have to be taught there are consequences. It will be more difficult but to not take a role is to say "That person is too far gone to save." Bullshit. I'm probably stupid beyond measure but I believe even those little FAE kids CAN amount to something. To sweep them under the rug by giving the "less fortunate" all the "entitlements" they "deserve" is not only the lazy way out, a way to assuage your guilt but also telling that person they are nothing but worthless pieces of excrement that deserve pity. It's hard to describe the attitude these folks have unless you're in public service. Cap, Deppity and LW have all seen it and know what I'm talking about. We've pretty much ruined all the "outcasts" of our society because some folks want a caste system and others are to lazy to think or have been guilted into going along with the status quo.
My take on it....it's the dumbazz mother's fault....she shoulda had her day'um guns in a vault/safe....it's fine for her owning the guns, as she shot them for enjoyment at a range....but, she KNEW the kid was mentally challenged, and even was in the process of having him committed....that's just nuts!!!
The person who bought the firearms was sane as could be. NOTHING would have stopped her from buying them.
Sheesh.
The real culprit is Winchester Safes. They should have recognized the problem and force one of their best ones onto this lady.
OK, sorry for the sarcasm........but that's the sole, single, and REAL issue here. One lady wouldn't buy a safe to keep her guns away from everyone, including her sick son. That's the whole issue in the palm of your hand. Period.
Everything else is (to me) just blather.
ooops, I see Ed posted much of same thing above.
You must have access to facts nobody else in America has.
BKB
Going after the "mental" issue is neither politically correct, emotional or fashionable. If I can draw a parallel to one of my greatest pet peeves.. First - let me assure you I am not defending drinking and driving.. But according to much of society, a person who drinks and drives is the lowest form of scum on earth - right above (or below) a baby raper. Studies have conclusively proven it is *more* dangerous to talk on a cell phone, while driving, than to be impaired (I admit I don't know to what "level" impaired). But, I'm willing to bet a large percentage of the most rapid MADD group regularly talk on their cell phones while driving.. So why don't penalties for doing so equal or exceed those for driving impaired? Because it's not politically correct, emotional or fashionable.
I have been forced *completely* off the road three times in the last four years (maybe five now) and every time it has been by a woman on a cell phone. Throw them all in prison. Hell, I don't know - maybe they were drunk too. I'm done - carry on.
Hahahaha....reminds me of one of my rants. Don't get me started on fat women handicap parkers either!
BKB
Don't get me started on the fuckers meandering through the middle of a parking lot yakking on their phones and oblivious to the world. God help me, but I just want to run them over. While I'm at it, why is a "traveler" illegal in most states now? As long as a driver is under the legal limit, who cares if they're sipping on a beer or a pepsicola?
Okay.. and I've always atempted to be fairly tolerant - but "welfare" is another pet peeve of mine and if I have to stand for ten minutes behind one more fat woman at the grocery store, who may or may not be able to speak English, while she sorts her steaks, produce, laundry detergent, dog food, beer and cigarettes and then pays for them with various "cards" that I'm quite sure I'm paying for I will run screaming off into the cereal department tearing at what little bit of hair I have left and it's snowing like a mother and the wind is blowing 40+ and I'm stuck inside. Can you tell?
Posty, if you want to refute my claim, do so. I'm all ears.
But maybe you were talking to Eddie, I dunno.
I just got back from town (twice@!), and stores.......and the folks on phones, clogging aisles, either oblivious or very upset if you say "excuse me".......are on my Bah Humbug list. What jerks. It's like I'm a visitor on THEIR planet.
OH, and Hide...........she can't pay for dogfood with SNAP. I know this, because last year I was behind a cute couple buying a million dollars worth of steaks and lobster and whatever, and using SNAP. They had dog food. The clerk said "No dog food, sorry". The guy looked up, grabbed the dog food, handed it to his wife (?) and said, and I quote "Honey, take this back and get a big ham. Fido loves ham".
I stood and waited.
Gunther is a bit, um, forceful. But he's really right. Folks just feel entitled. "I flunked school because my mama was poor, and now I have no chance, and 1/2 of all white folks feel guilty and will give me stuff, and I deserve this steak as much as that fat white rich man, right?"
If that ain't the way it is, show me why not.
WTFO?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=de3lmAD5kXo
Huh? What's going on? These are not 'doctored' videos. They are clearly able to be checked.
Why is the press so hot now to get AR's and high-cap magazines off the market if that wasn't involved??
I'm starting to distrust a lot of folks.
Oh. About that video, this is what a certain person said, take it or not: "The firearm in the trunk of that car is not an AR. I've got an M4 next to me and have carried one every day I've worked for the last 13 years. I can tell you with absolute certainty that is not an AR."
http://times247.com/articles/media-i...o-gun-violence
Don't know what D.C. or NYC is. I'd guess even more. Three of the strictest gun laws on the books.
And legally, where we are all headed, plus some.
lol.. Oh, that helps. ;) This latest one was when the WICK program was going on - and - she had food stamps and at least one other plastic card. .. and she paid cash for the dog food, cigarettes and beer. I'm a bit better now - I've had two Absolut martinis on the rocks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buckrub
Yeah I saw that video too Bill. As far as I can tell it is not an AR but simply a shotgun with a pistol grip maybe. A turkey gun or something like that.
I am with you on the fact that these weapons were unsecured. I am very interested to know if the kid just walked into the closet and picked them up or if there was some attempt to keep them from him. I have brought access and security as a possible way to lend something substantive to the discussion. As expected that has not been received well at all. There have been suggestions that making safes mandatory, even for semi autos, would end up being a backdoor way to nullify that 2nd.
The level of paranoia from our side is pretty high and I believe it reaches the point where any attempt to do anything whatsoever to get crazy people off the street and treated or to do anything at all to try and limit their access to weapons is going to get stonewalled. Right now I think the gun community's response to any action at all will be "Tough noogies. We ain't moving."
A mistake, but an honest assessment I would argue.
Will
Some things are black, some things are white, and some things are gray. Wisdom is knowing the difference.