I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

Suzieq. Your gun legislation was a result of a massacre in Tasmania. Not forever ago, because I remember it, and my sister was living in Canberra on a secondment from our Indian and Northern Affairs Department to the Australian equivalent. The people and the legislators acted. We (in Canada) had a horrible massacre of young women engineering students in Montreal. After A LOT of lobbying we got tighter gun regulations and a gun registry, which was just undone by the Conservative majority this fall. That government will fall, and we will try again. It is all so very wrong that people who wish to own guns feel that control is an attack on THEM personally. Control is just that, limiting access to major classifications of guns, requirements that owners meet very specific rules, including no prior violent acts, and that the guns be carried and stored in very specific ways. These rules will never eliminate gun violence, but they will make gun crimes less easy to perpetrate because guns will be less accessible to mentally ill or evil people. Less available.

HL's words "Grace, compassion, strength -- our President."  Know we were all crying with him.  This madness in the name of "freedom" - "the right to bear arms" - a distortion of the 2nd amendment, as we all know, we are NOT ALL ARMING A MILITIA.  Not with the guns they had in 1776.  What Athena, and others have said about the NRA, and the distortion, the hideous distortion, of the word "freedom."

As a community, it has long been known, accepted, there are some "rights" we give up in order to create a safe, civilized society.  Stopping at red traffic lights.  Is that a loss of someone's freedom?

What a terribly, terribly tragic day.

Suzie: That's why I said 1,000,000 million children would have do die first, and that we'd needing shootings in our neonatal units. Really.

Japan had to be brought to its needs to surrender in WW II - sadly, the same might be true here for gun laws.

Ultimately, the answer in some cases is, "no, they are not quite human." And in others "because they believe fantasy horror stories told to them by gun advocates."

America will have to be brought to its knees before it gets rid of its worst fanatical elements. This is all part and parcel of that paralell "flat earth" universe of people who really live in a different galaxy.

Some Americans see the right to own guns as the ultimate expression of their freedom and of that very American "exceptionslism." Gun owing and the supposed rogue independence cowboy tenacity - all those tropes associated with a supposed revolutionary spirit in their minds -- are glorified. These people believe that guns amount to God given rights - yes, they think God gives guns. They haven't gotten past Cotton Mather - they are still in the 1600s and 1700s. It takes more than a few dozens dead little children to change such fanatical beliefs.

I don't recognize myself in that warped vision of America. That's not American to me, it's not good values, it's not freedom and it is certainly not greatness. It is backward, repressive, cruel and small.

Makes you understand how some muslims must have felt after 9/11 - not recognizing themselves in that warped vision, I mean.

What a very sad day - there is blood on the hands of the NRA and the people who continue to support them - these are dead CHILDREN for God's sake - when is the madness going to end????

Here is a WashPost graphic on the deadliest shootings in the US:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/deadliest-us-shootings/

If you click on the numbers, you see details about the event as well as the weapons used. For ignoramouses like me, helpful pictures of the weapons are also included.

"Mother Jones" did an investigative report on mass shootings in the United States in September after Aurora and Milwaukee.



http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/mass-shootings-investigation?page=1



"In the wake of the slaughters this summer at a Colorado movie theater and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 61 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun. Moreover, we found that the rate of mass shootings has increased in recent years—at a time when America has been flooded with millions of additional firearms and a barrage of new laws has made it easier than ever to carry them in public. And in recent rampages in which armed civilians attempted to intervene, they not only failed to stop the shooter but also were gravely wounded or killed."



This must stop. We must rise up and we must stop this.



L

That's the trouble. As much as it pains me to say it, there should be legislation that allows for inquiries into psychiatric history - and if you have BOTH a mental illness and a legitimate security need for a gun, then a court should decide your case. I think it's perfectly reasonable for any gun background check to ask about psychiatric disorders. A simple diagnosis need not automatically constitute a denial fotr a permit, but many people with serious mental ilness will have at least a hospitalization. Men will often have reports of disturbances. Those may be telltale signs that, coupled with other factors (eg: a history of substance abuse) can weed out undesirable gun owners.

And I think the way our society has gone, people with mental illness who would normally not have freaked out like this are SEEING that others do it and get away with it. The person goes on a rampage and no one criticizes him or the guns. There is just sorrow. And we accept everything else. That doesn't help people with serious mental illness and it certainly does not help the victims or their loved ones.

Mental illness advocates frequently point out that the incidence of violence amongst the mentally ill who are being treated is no greater than amongst the general public. That s true, but the problem is that there are too many untreated or undertreated cases. There is insufficient public health awareness about how to spot warning signs.

There is the danger that harping on this will increase discrimination of people with mental illness. The more fair and equitable and privacy-respecting thing to do would be to simply make guns very hard to get.

Especially because we haven't even begun to discuss the psycopaths - the people who do this because they are mean.

Or the children who do this because their parents keep loaded guns around.

Off soap box - for now :-)

Ezra Klein from the Washington Post's Wonkblog has a very good column - 12 facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/nine-facts-about-guns-and-mass-shootings-in-the-united-states/



"If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it. 



Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. “Too soon,” howl supporters of loose gun laws. But as others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t “too soon.” It’s much too late."



Linda, I must agree with you. The continuing myth of American exceptionalism is a holdover from WWII, when the U.S. was the major power in a devastated world. Our talent and drive and industry drove us to great achievements, but our great achievements let us think that we just had to rest on our laurels. The U.S. is probably still the best place to go to make money, but our quality of life measures, our educational measurres, our health care measures, our economic measures are all plummeting. Strutting around saying "We're number one" doesn't make us number one. Resting on our laurels is soooo much easier. Change is hard, and we aren't used to hard anymore.



DH is devastated, too. He and his colleagues were talking about the first responders. Although he has never had to respond to a mass casuality incident, some of his colleagues have. You never get over it. You go on, but you never get over it. There were big strong grown cops tearing up today in his office.



L

Blue we could speculate all night, but we will never be sure of what rage drove this young man. Perhaps to hurt those he thought his mother loved more.........heartbreaking.

If today is too soon to talk about this, then can we set a firm date?  We always just seem to move on, despite thinking, could it getting any worse than this?  We just had a mass shooting in a kindergarten class.  I suppose it could be even worse, though my thoughts don't even want to go there, but what is wrong with taking this incident and saying "Stop, there is something wrong in the country."

Frickin gun toters..they think carrying concealed weapons would have allowed someone to shoot the shooter.  Who exactly would that be in this case?

Suzie - I was in Australian when they were buying guns back and melting them. I believe the city of San Francisco did this once, maybe other municipalities in the USA.  It's a start, I guess.

Yorkie -- Safe journey, and have a wonderful time!  We'll be waiting for pics!