Posted on 12/16/2012 6:08:28 AM PST by expat1000
All the regulations that are meant to prevent “tragedies like these” from happening don’t really work that well. Like most prohibitionist efforts, they are limited by the practical matter of human cleverness. People can and do find ways around most regulations if they really want to. A wall of regulations cannot stop a killer. Only armed people can stop an armed man.
A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation says the three guns found at the shooting site were legally purchased by Nancy Lanza, the mother of the suspect in the shooting.
And no background check would have found anything wrong with Nancy Lanza. The man who might have been flagged by the background check never had to go through it.
Yep. This tragedy would not have been prevented at all as the Mother legally purchased the guns. The amount of guns purchased is irrelevant to the story because even one gun would have resulted in the same outcome. I really wish lawmakers would look at this realistically. The kid was a dooshbag and leave it at that.
Instead of politically? Good luck with that. :-(
If Lanza’s mother did not have any guns, he may not have been able to perform his crime that day. It may have taken him more days or even years before he perhaps figured out a way to get guns or perhaps he would have realized it would be easier to make a bomb. He was highly intelligent. A bomb would kill even more people.
He himself was a ticking time bomb. The type of weapon is largely irrelevant to his story. He was going to go off. It was just a matter of time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
And this was done at a time when you could buy a Tommy gun over the counter at the hardware store.
In 1927 a massacre took place at the Bath School in Michigan. In that attack, 38 elementary school children where killed, 2 teachers, 4 other adults and the bomber himself. In addition, least 58 people were injured.
Several things need to be noted.
1. The world always has and always will contain disturbed individuals.
2. They often look like the rest of us.
3. When a disturbed person has locked in on doing damage, they will be flexible in how they do it. If they first want a gun and cant get one, they get a bow or a knife as we have recently seen. Some might choose a bomb.
4. A shooter, bow or knife wielder can be stopped by a trained person with a gun.
5. A bomber is not so easy to stop. Bombs can be hidden, have timers, wireless detonation, etc.
6. The law abiding are the only ones that feel the pain of governments trying to legislate safety.
But background checks are a point of law and this mass murder started with the murderer shooting his own mother in the face with a firearm that he stole from her. He then stole her car and drove away, and used those firearms to murder two dozen more people.
I hate to state the obvious, but in all of human history, murdering your own mother in cold blood is about the most horrible crime that anyone can commit, even in areas and circumstances where there is no government law that prohibits it.
This horrible incident shows the limits of secular law, a concept that never enters the minds of people for whom government is god.
We need to stop giving Ethnic Group/Protected Class status to the Mentally Ill
Too many today make excuses for the Mentally Ill, not make them responsible.
Confusing criminal acts with acts of mass murder like happened in Newton is a cop out, there is little connection between the two. Criminal killers function toward a definite goal: theft, paid assassination, singular murder etc while mass murderers seem to have no goal except death to as many as they can do and sometimes coincident suicide.
In the US, there is never a connection made between a few factors, besides the availability of guns, such as the prevalence of mind and mood altering drugs used both in our schools and in our social culture, violent video games, single parent households, dysfunctional family units, lack of morals and ethics taught in our schools (that would be judge-mental and we cannot have that) and movies that glorify mass mayhem. All these things are connected in my view and to single out just one as the culprit is myopic.
One of the biggest liberal mantras is that the 94 AWB (Assault Weapons Ban)should be reinstated. You hear it from them all over the place in relation to this massacre in CT. However nobody ever confronts them with the facts. That being that the AWB is still in effect and is still the law in CT. Every state that borders CT. (NY,MA,RI) also still has the AWB as law today. So how would implementing a law that is still in force prevent anything. Would two identical laws be better than one. The only thing I can think of is that their intentions are not to reinstate the 94 AWB, but to go beyond it.
First , as another thread on FR clearly explicates, it is the fault of laws passed by the federal and state governments (in this case Connecticut) which have created “gun-free zones” which have invited and even created the opportunity for shooters to attack defenseless citizens at work or at school or in a theatre or in a crowded shopping mall. This is the dividend gun control pays to its investors. Only an armed person can stop another armed person intent upon mayhem.
Second, the shooter’s father, an executive with General Electric, earning upwards of $1,000,000 a year in salary, just didn’t “know anything” about his son’s mental condition? Of course he didn’t. He was too busy living the life of Riley shacked up with a new “girlfriend” in Stamford, Connecticut, throwing bucks at his ex-wife who was trying unsuccessfully to deal with this kid. Where the hell was this man, how could he be so out to lunch regarding his own son’s condition since the divorce in 2008? And what about all the years before the divorce? When the father was living under the same roof as the son?
I place blame for the martyrdom of all of these children squarely upon the backs of the federal and state government, and I consider the father to be an enabler who allowed this to happen.
If this guy’s son had martyred my six or seven-year-old son or daughter, this guy’s life wouldn’t be worth a goddamn nickel right now.
As it stands, the victims’ families are going to church, joining hands, practicing forgiveness and singing kumbaya.
Death of a nation.
The politics are that the politicians have a need to be seen DOING SOMETHING. It doesn’t matter if what thy do actually does anything. Later they can claim they supported the reinstatement of the AWB even though it did nothing.
Does anyone remember the Kip Kinkle case in Oregon about 10 years ago. In that case the father bought his disturbed 15 year old son 2 guns, which he used a short time later to kill his father, mother and several people at his high school.
The problem here seems to be parents that are not too smart.
Ms Lanza knew she had an off kilter son. Was it responsible of her to have guns in the home, even locked up as he was probably smart enough to get past the locks?
Brilliant work! Now I’ve gotta figure how to get it copied of FR in time to show it to my NRA class today.
We don’t allow convicted felons to have a firearm in the home, even if it belongs to another family member. Maybe its time to extend that to homes where an occupant has a potentially dangerous mental illness. Perhaps the others should be required to store them off the premises.
That wouldn’t eliminate the risk, granted, just as it doesn’t with convicted felons. But it would cut off a method of quick, easy access to those firearms.
I can't wait for your other ideas about personal freedom.
Doesn't really matter. Obama wants an AWB. He wanted one in 2008 and he wants one now. He's made no secret of this.
The only thing I can think of is that their intentions are not to reinstate the 94 AWB, but to go beyond it.
I think the Dems now feel empowered by the favorable demographic changes that have occurred in the past two decades that they'll be able to take on the NRA and not suffer the catastrophic losses they did in '94. Sad truth is, outside of the ever-shrinking white male demographic, there's no great love in this country for AK-47s and high-cap magazines. In the wake of Friday's massacre, the Dems are going to offer a whole laundry list of new gun control measures. It will be to House Republicans to whittle this down to something palatable. But gun control is coming. You can count on it.
I wouldn’t expect it to win a popularity contest.
If it turns out she bought that AR-15 in a state without an AWB and brought it illegally in to CT., we're really screwed.
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