Posted on 12/22/2012 3:50:12 PM PST by Olog-hai
If Congress is going to make a meaningful attempt to reduce gun violence, it will have to stand up to the National Rifle Association. The NRA’s cynical and insensitive response to the Newtown, Conn., massacre is motivated more by self-preservation than public safety.
President Barack Obama has provided a reasonable framework for beginning to tackle the complex nature of gun violence. It will require the courage of both Republicans and Democrats to ignore the NRA and put meaningful reforms in place that honor the 26 children and adults killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. …
(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...
I prefer to couch the arguments in the only terms that many on the left understand; the emotional:
We use guns to protect our politicians.
We use guns to protect our movie stars.
We use guns to protect our rock starts.
We use guns to protect our banks.
We use guns to protect our bankers.
Aren't our children at least as important?
The left also wonders why we need an "assault weapon"; why when need so many guns; why we need high capacity magazines.
How much effectiveness should we be limited to when protecting our families and our children?
Outstanding examples.
I’m using that anywhere I can.
Thank you!
“The NRA’s cynical and insensitive response”
If you really want to hurt a lefty’s feelings, call him “insensitive.”
This calls for an insensitive shooting/hunting anecdote.
It’s a cold day during duck hunting season down in the bayou and Boudreaux and Thibodeaux are sitting in their flatboat with trusted houn’dog, `Boudain’ waiting for ducks.
Thibodaux turns around and notices Boudreaux reaching out his hand and sticking his index finger into Boudain’s rear-end, then pulling it out and calmly rubbing the finger across his lips.
Surprised and shocked, Thibodaux averted his eyes, couldn’t speak and thought to himself, “What in the worl’s he doin’?”
An hour went by and again Thibodaux notices Boudreaux reaching his index finger into the retriever’s bottom, pulling it out and rubbing it across his lips.
This time Thibodaux could not contain himself: “Boudreaux!” he says, “`ow come you done stick your finger in dat dog’s smelly sout’-end, den you pull it out and rub it cross your lips like dat?”
“Well”, Boudreaux responds, “you know I done got me dese really bad chapped lips, and dat’s the only thing that helps.”
“It helps? You mean it makes them better?” asks Thibodeaux
“Well, no.” answered Boudreaux, “But it keeps me from lickin’ ‘em.”
Tampa Bay Times - voice of the obamanation.
Looks like “Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals” are in full force against the NRA. We’ve seen them work like a charm on the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and others. Gee, what people ought to be ridiculing, like Code Pink, Occupy Wall Street, etc.; they aren’t, and decent people they ARE ridiculing. Up is Down, Down is Up, Good is Bad, Bad is Good. It’s nutty.
The Facts about Mass Shootings - It’s time to address mental health and gun-free zones.
National Review Online | December 16, 2012 | John Fund
A few things you won’t hear about from the saturation coverage of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre:
Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.
In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.
The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.
Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.
Almost all of the public-policy discussion about Newtown has focused on a debate over the need for more gun control. In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness and the growing body of evidence that “gun-free” zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don’t work.
First, the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.” New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobsen have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened. “Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement?” asks Professor Jacobsen. “I doubt it.”
Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting. Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.
Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.
I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.
“Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks,” Lott told me. “A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.”
Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”
There is no evidence that private holders of concealed-carry permits (which are either easy to obtain or not even required in more than 40 states) are any more irresponsible with firearms than the police. According to a 2005 to 2007 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Bowling Green State University, police nationwide were convicted of firearms violations at least at a 0.002 percent annual rate. That’s about the same rate as holders of carry permits in the states with “shall issue” laws.
Despite all of this evidence, the magical thinking behind gun-free zones is unlikely to be questioned in the wake of the Newtown killings. Having such zones gives people a false sense of security, and woe to the politician or business owner who now suggests that a “gun-free zone” revert back to what critics would characterize as “a wild, wild West” status. Indeed, shortly after the Cinemark attack in Colorado, the manager of the nearby Northfield Theaters changed its policy and began banning concealed handguns.
In all of the fevered commentary over the Newtown killings, you will hear little discussion of the fact that we may be making our families and neighbors less safe by expanding the places where guns aren’t allowed. But that is precisely what we may be doing. Both criminals and the criminally insane have shown time and time again that those laws are the least of the problem,s they face as they carry out their evil deeds.
The NRA may not be all things to all people, but it has its place, I think.
It is said that the NRA has at least four million members. Imagine the clout if it had 12 million in time for the next election.
There's not much I can do about this. I'm a Life Member. So is my wife. So is my daughter. So is my best friend.
Perhaps you could do something. It would be a shame if the liberals in their ignorance committed more infringements, not knowing that there are more than four million Americans who oppose destruction of the Second Amendment.
And well you might, sir! My poor pyloric sphincter nearly ruptured from the pressure peak .... I'm going to have to have a 500-psi artificial brass one installed next week!
</mock severity>
This is the part that I brought up to a friend this evening (before I found your post):
"magical thinking behind gun-free zones"
I brought up that same thing today, because it is the problem with people who do not want to know about evil and war --- they want to deny what "good, and sometimes very rough men" have to do in order to protect people including the deniers.
The deniers of the statistics re mini-holocausts about which Dr. Lott keeps tabs, in addition to their denying what good people do nearly every day when they use a weapon to protect their family, their home and property, themselves or some other person(s), yet the deniers want to believe that "something must be done about it*" in order that "this never happens again.*" (*Ripped from the recent headlines.)
Yet, it does happen again.
What is really troubling them, is that they have a duty:
a) to pick up Arms and then fight against "the hood" / violent gang members / Islamic jihad, orb) at least be in support of those of us who accept the greater burden of shouldering Arms.
Instead, the deniers believe that they can, by using magical thinking, strip others of the ability to fight, then *the deniers* themselves have an excuse: "Hey look! I cannot fight because I'm not carrying any _____!" ... and thereby be relieved of the responsiblities of standing up.
They *are* holocaust deniers.
We all wish that the last holocaust "would be the last," but history has proven that disarming responsible people has *never* made that so; to the contrary, disarming people has made them most often victims in larger numbers.
In the U.S.A., there are many 10's of millions of responsible people who are armed, and they do not commit any of the crimes for which they are unjustly accused with political charges uttered from socialists who are determined to define so many good people, as being criminals.
Death by government ranges from a low of 100 million to around 265 million people in the twentieth century.
You would think this fact would sink in even in the densest liberal head. This number doesn’t even include war or abortions.
It never occurs to them. Because, in their mind, it's not they who are being eradicated. It's us.
Liberals have no difficulty conceiving of, say, 25 million fatalities as simply the necessary price for Utopia. See Ayers, William.
Most, of course, have no taste for actively participating in the slaughter. But they have glowing admiration for those who do. See Guevara, Che.
It’s time for Congress to stand up for the Constitution.
To paraphrase George S. Patton when he defeated Rommel, we read your book!
My my how things have changed over the years.
Back in the 1960s the ultimate evil was the 5 shot bolt action army surplus rifle and small foreign handguns.
In the 1970s the Libs found all handguns to be evil and proclaimed military rifles to be constitutionally protected. They often quoted the MILLER decision of the Supreme Court as proof.
In the late 1980s, suddenly military style rifles and shotguns became the ultimate evil.
As you can see, the evil gun is,-the 5 shot bolt action rifle, the small handgun, the large handgun, guns with too many rounds, guns with ugly looks, small caliber rifles, large caliber rifles, single shot .50 rifles, any gun the antis get a urge to hate.
Now think, is there ANY firearm the antis have said they will never try to confiscate?
the problem is crazy people and the left forcing us to deal with them in society instead of locking them up
blaming guns for shootings is like blaming pencils for spelling mistakes
Yet, the families are being deceived by pro-police state, nationalizing socialists.
None of the guns, the chemicals, the guard dogs, nor the electrified wire "did it" to the Jews during World War II.
The German government police state created and carried out the NAZI holocaust upon the Jews and an almost like number of non-Jews.
Time to stand up to idiot press!
Code Pink showed up at the NRA's news conference to try to disrupt it, screaming epithets, slogans, and various wild, emotive accusations. Eeeeeeevvillllll NRA! NRA eats babies! Etc.
When a mental image of “Code Pink” comes up in my mind; it is the image of that grossly obese obese woman dressed in pink, sitting on a chair, with her huge belly dragging down to the ground. I don’t know if that was photoshopped or not, but, ouch.
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