Posted on 12/15/2013 4:48:49 AM PST by real saxophonist
Bangert: Shooting at childhood school creates conflicted feelings about guns
So I’m intently watching the TV in our newsroom about the Friday afternoon shooting at my high school, Arapahoe, where I graduated in 1972.
I watch the view from a TV helicopter as students are lined up in rows around the school, to go through police checks. Although I haven’t been back in the school since my sisters’ graduations, memories quickly come to the surface of classes, friends, teachers, athletics and the school newspaper.
I watch as students and families are told to go to the nearby Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, which our family attended for more than three decades. More memories: Sunday school, confirmation classes with Pastor Fingerlin, being an acolyte (the one who lights the altar candles at the start of the service), and my sisters’ weddings.
And then an email pops into my inbox:
“Dear Randy,
“We’re giving away the top quality Colt 6920 AR-15 rifle pictured below!”
The email continues for several more sentences, and it’s signed by Dudley Brown, executive vice president of the National Association for Gun Rights. Brown encourages me to “click here” for my chance to win the rifle. Brown also is director of the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners association, the statewide gun rights group based in Windsor. I’m not sure how, but apparently I’m on the RMGO email list.
Once again, I’m confronted with my conflicted feelings — this time, in a more personal way — about gun ownership and the Second Amendment.
I was a gun owner and hunter as a young teen, even before I started attending Arapahoe. I’m still a gun owner and hunter. More memories: Hunting pheasants in eastern Nebraska with my grandpa, dad, uncle and cousin, and more recently hunting in eastern Colorado with my son and friends.
I don’t like the idea of the government taking away my guns, or my ammunition. But Friday’s Arapahoe shooting isn’t the first time I’ve been touched personally by the horrific tragedies associated with guns.
Just a few weeks ago, a co-worker’s 16-year-old son committed suicide with a gun. My son’s best friend throughout his school years also committed suicide with a gun, also at the age of 16.
Working in a newsroom, we hear about many tragedies involving youths and guns, some in our own backyard. We’ve had a couple sad examples in Weld County recently: The younger brother of a gun owner who picked up a gun sitting on the kitchen table and accidentally shot himself in a neighborhood southwest of Greeley two years ago; and the news just last month of a 3-year-old who found a handgun in his parents’ bedroom and accidentally shot and killed himself.
I was glad when District Attorney Ken Buck filed charges earlier this week against the mother of the 3-year-old. Turns out she had left her toddler son alone in the house with the loaded gun. Irresponsible gun ownership needs to be prosecuted and punished, in my view, when it takes the life of a child.
But as time goes on — in the year to the day since Sand Hook Elementary School shooting — I am conflicted more and more about our country’s obsession with gun ownership.
The argument against active shooters and mass shootings is that we need more good guys with guns who are capable of shooting the bad guys. But as Weld County leaders brag in a news release about our 10,000th concealed weapon permit being issued here, complete with a photo of the young woman and the sheriff, I’m still waiting for a good-guy citizen to stop a bad guy. And I’m wondering when gun rights advocates will notice that more and more children are dying, because of their easy access to guns.
A quick search on the web yields some sobering statistics: In the year since Sandy Hook, 173 children under the age of 12 have been killed by guns across America. There have been 23 mass shootings in the United States since Sandy Hook.
I’ll admit I don’t know what the answer is. But I’m troubled by the memories — of high school, of church, of hunting, of gun deaths — and the increasing frequency with which those memories seem to mix.
Randy Bangert is editor of The Tribune. He can be reached by email at rbangert@greeleytribune.com or on the phone at (970) 392-4435.
Well, Randy, I've known five people who were killed in car accidents. One was my best friend from childhood, one was a very beautiful girl with whom I was very much in love.
Somehow, none of that created conflicted feelings about cars.
As soon as the hoopla died down about this on the national news, I knew it was a lefty involved in the shooting.
Everything in this article is me me me my memory I did this ...
Working in a newsroom, and he claimed ‘.....I’m still waiting for a good-guy citizen to stop a bad guy.’ All the digging he did is to get the statistics about more gun deaths/gun violence. Completely one-sided if you ask me.
He’s waiting for ‘a good guy stop bad guy with gun’ story to drop right into his lap? Sheesh!
“Shooting at school creates conflicted feelings about socialism.”
Socialism is really the axiom to communism, via Stalin’s comment. “It is proof positive that you can break an enormous number of eggs and still not produce an omelet.”
What you are left with is a whole bunch of broken, spoiled eggs, producing vast amounts of stinky hydrogen sulfide.
It is heavier than air, very poisonous, corrosive and extremely unpleasant to smell. Socialism.
Further investigation probably reveal that this is another proggressive liberal pretending to be a conservative using a false pseudonym. They know that the weaker-minded will fall for it so they’re playing themselves off as “one of us”. Get ready to see images of mothers crying about their babies, children shot in schools (always done by liberals), and spots of rednecks carrying AR-15’s over their shoulders and getting into confrontations with police officers (staged of course).
Working in a newsroom, and he claimed ‘.....I’m still waiting for a good-guy citizen to stop a bad guy.’
The author needs to hang out on FR. I literally cannot tell you how many threads I've seen that detail bad guys stopped by good guy citizens. I was surprised that someone hadn't jumped on that by now, but it's early yet.
This article is really the same old, same old . . . "I'm a Republican, but this time . . ." or "I'm a gun owner, but this time . . ."
Rush calls these "seminar callers / writers" out all the time.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3101710/posts#18
Five years later, I still get free hugs whenever I see her.
BS. There's been 1 - the DC Navy Yard. The 23 figure comes from here, the reliably leftist Telegraph.
I’m definitely sending this thread to him and inviting him to visit us.
Hang on a minute. You might cause him to be “conflicted” with the truth once he presented with it. Seriously? This is the type of clown that doesn’t quite understand that inanimate objects are just that. He also doesn’t get the fact that bad people will do bad things regardless of any rules, regulations or laws that are enacted. Sounds like he needs to load up his SUV and tote his guns down to the local police and do the fine-stein thing. Turn em in before they go on a rampage. Didiot.
True down he is a hard core anti spouting the line I was a gun owner.
Thinking this well make his anti gun BS more believable.
He is anti.
Well, Randy, with your built in bias toward gungrabbing your ‘reason’ will always disappoint you. Plenty of good guys stop badguys everyday. It may not happen in the ‘gun free zones’ that YOU created in the places where children go and where psycho killers may roam unmolested, because well...
This quote from the article tells me that the journalist isn't paying any attention. This stuff happens all the time -- and has happened at some school shootings.
The guy is 100% anti-gun and is being dishonest about it by claiming to be "conflicted".
Randy is a 60 year old reporter (and, apparently - narcissist), who can’t figure out how he got on the mailing list of the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners Association. Wow!
Frankly, I think he should have more angst about nearing the end of his career at a small town paper that is of the same caliber as its nearby university. Greeley used to be the rape capitol of Colorado. Perhaps there’s a follow up story to that phenomenon that he could write about, and then tie it in to a (perhaps) well armed (or smartly armed) female population.
Rush calls these "seminar callers / writers" out all the time.
The more correct label is either "Fudd" or "Zumbo" where the writer claims being a "hunter" in order to get some moral high ground in his own mind. I notice he makes no reference to the firearm used by the Arapahoe shooter, a shotgun, same as what he has pursued pheasant with in the memories he relates in the article. Tends to erode his contrived "moral high ground," seems to me.
Is an anti.
Makes it a pain in the ass for pizza delivery people, but there have been no rapes since. Nope, none.
Randy's gonna love reading this thread. 8 ~)
A Sandy Hook liberal...disarming everyone but himself.
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