Posted on 02/26/2013 6:15:56 PM PST by Graybeard58
The "national conversation" Americans demanded after the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre is fast turning into a diatribe hinged — in some instances unhinged — on government "doing something," no matter how meaningless or expensive.
Increasingly, proponents of stricter gun laws and "mental-health reform" claim their demands are rooted in "common sense," a strategy that attempts to pre-empt reasoned debate that surely would unmask them as counterproductive, unaffordable, unenforceable or useless. When the cost of their proposals is challenged, the do-something crowd quickly deploys its "if-it-saves-one-life" excuse and demonizes its critics as enablers of future mass shootings.
Still, they're finding the Second Amendment is a tough enough nut to crack. Police can't be everywhere, so even rabid gun-controllers such as Vice President Joseph Biden admit a loaded gun is the best defense against armed criminals.
Moreover, mass murderers will find a way to get banned weapons and defeat society's best defenses. Bulletproof doors and windows and computer-controlled locks will make illegal entry to schools more difficult, but far from impossible. And if a Smith & Wesson beats four aces in a poker game, how do you think a school staffer armed with an "emergency response button" would fare against a Bushmaster-wielding intruder?
Calls for more appropriate care for the estimated 14 million mentally ill Americans who the government says are potentially violent are proving problematical, too. Proposals to empower the government to order psychiatric holds and tests for those judged, often by laymen, as capable of rampages face high constitutional and liability hurdles.
Before there can be expanded mental-health treatment, there must be more mental-health infrastructure. And if the public uproar and court challenge arising from a plan to house up to 95 mentally ill criminals in a former nursing home in Rocky Hill proves anything, it's that people want better care for mentally ill criminals as long as it doesn't occur anywhere near their backyard.
This is hardly a quandary for government, however. If the people won't bow to its wishes, it will simply will exercise its eminent-domain powers "to get these people the treatment they so desperately need to ensure a tragedy like Sandy Hook never happens again."
Unelected bureaucrats would pick the sites, being careful to create ample buffers between them and their homes. Politicians would frame these facilities and the "investment" of hundreds of millions in new borrowing to build and operate them as job-creating economic stimulants, rather than the drains on dwindling public resources and dampers on real economic growth they will be.
Since mentally ill people predisposed to crime and homelessness already gravitate to cities, most facilities would sprout in inner-city neighborhoods and on urban brownfields, which in a better tax and regulatory climate might provide fertile soil for entrepreneurs.
And since public good would flow from these nursing homes and hospitals, judges would waste no time dismissing NIMBY challenges.
No, the do-something gang, politicians, bureaucrats and judges will press on and will continue to ignore the truth that mass murderers don't fit a single profile, and they are not deterred by barriers, gun laws, or even psychiatric care and meds.
And once honest citizens have been disarmed and the mentally ill have been locked away and sedated, the shootings, rare as they may be, will go on because these measures and others being hashed in America's one-sided national conversation on gun violence are merely salves. They don't even pretend to address to root of evil here: the government-shaped and -abetted culture that lacks respect for life.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this ping list, let me know.
The very first line of this editorial is a lie. There was no “national conversation” demanded by Americans. It was all scripted political theatre released on cue by the Reichstag going up in smoke.
“The very first line of this editorial is a lie. There was no “national conversation” demanded by Americans. It was all scripted political theatre released on cue by the Reichstag going up in smoke.”
Exactly, the only people talking about it are those pushing for gun control.
When they allocated all their resources to investigating Joe the Plumber’s trade license and the DNA of Trig Palin, instead of Baraq Obama’s fabricated life history, we all knew there was no hope.
Actually, getting the seriously mentally ill off the streets is a good idea. It seems to me that James Holmes, Jared Loughner, and maybe Cho Seung-Hui and Adam Lanza, were as crazy as shithouse rats. But nobody will know for sure, and commitment policies won’t stop all the massacres.
Here’s what the gun-grabbers don’t seem to realize: over the past 50 years, all but one of these mass shootings occurred in places that were effectively gun-free zones. Congress and the President should work to get rid of the gun-free school zones law and allow concealed carry reciprocity, to make these massacres much less likely to happen. Private establishments such as malls should also drop their gun-free zone policies.
But they won’t, as far as I can tell.
Actually, I meant Congress should FORCE concealed-carry reciprocity between the states under the power given to them by the Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution.
The truly mentally ill responsible are in Washington D.C. right now deciding our collective fate over the lobster bisque and a bottle of Dom.
This may work out well. Soon there won’t be a liberal in the U.S. that has a gun.
I don’t remember having these “national conversations” before Obama was elected in 08. I don’t recall the term during the Bush admin.
Yeah there is.
The legislation we are proposing is “common sense.”
We should do it even if it just saves the life of one child.
The NRA gets its money from the gun manufacturers and doesn’t represent its members, follow the money.
The 2nd Amendment only covers smooth bore muskets.
If there is a firearm in your home you are five times more likely to be killed by a gun than if there was not gun in your house.
Background checks should be on all transfers of firearms and there should be a gun registry that allows the police to trace and hold responsible the last “legal” owner of a firearm.
All firearm owners should be held financially liable for any damage done by a firearm they own, until it is legally transferred to another lawful owner.
There is no valid reason for owning an AR or assault weapon.
There aooear to be gun control talking points.
that is something to worry about.
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Actually there was. He didn't say all Americans. But, the truth is "some" Americans demanded it.
While you may not like the statement there is nothing wrong with it.
Also, I "demand" we have this conversation. Unfortunately, those who think like we do are not invited or listened to.
i really don’t think that changing public policy as grief therapy is a good idea.
if the residents of newtown want to scrap their school, or build a new one when this one is perfectly good, they should pay for it themselves, and not with state/federal money
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