After the UCSB Killings

National Review Online ^ | May 26, 2014 | The Editors

[neverdem]

In the wake of a mass murder in Isla Vista, Calif., critics of America’s gun laws have been predictably quick to trot out the classics, advocating the passage of new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms and blaming the National Rifle Association for opposing what are invariably termed “common sense” reforms. On Sunday, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut took to Face the Nation to claim that if Congress had passed his preferred measures last year, it would have “finally” put a “stop the madness” and brought an “end the insanity that has killed too many young people.” This is nonsense.

The bill to which Blumenthal refers would have made it illegal for gun owners to trade their firearms privately without undergoing a background check, prohibited magazines that held over ten rounds, and instituted a new ban on what politicians have termed “assault weapons” — that is, standard rifles that boast certain cosmetic features. Blumenthal seems unaware that California not only has all of these rules already — and many more besides — but that the shooter, whom we will not name, broke none of them. Local police have confirmed that all of his guns were bought legally from licensed dealers; that he used only ten-round magazines (he purchased and loaded 41 of them); and that he went nowhere near a so-called “assault weapon,” preferring to use three handguns. Pace Blumenthal, it remains the case that one cannot stop abominations with parchment barriers. Gun crime continues to drop, despite a widespread loosening of the firearms laws.

The explanation for the killer’s crimes, offered in a terrifying 140-page manifesto, will likely be pored over and seized on by everybody who has an axe to grind. Ostensibly, he had deep-seated issues with women, whom he wished to “punish” for preferring others to him and to routinely rejecting his advances. At one point, he suggested that for this they should be herded into concentration camps and executed under his watchful eye. At another, he expressed disgust that the girls at his college were attracted to black and Indian men. It makes difficult reading. But there is no indication that his ramblings were anything other than an ugly expression of his deeper problems. These will likely be given a host of other names: evil, disturbed, insane, troubled, narcissistic. Whatever we choose, though, one thing is for certain: This was a young man who needed more serious help than the therapy he had been undergoing for years but who didn’t get it — a theme common to almost all acts of mass murder. If we are serious about focusing on what went wrong, that is the place to start. (See E. Fuller Torrey’s piece on Representative Tim Murphy’s bill to make it easier to treat people with severe mental illness.)

Weapons are the instrument and not the cause. It is at this point something of a cliché, but it should perhaps be offered anyway: If someone is determined to kill a substantial number of people, he will almost certainly manage to do so. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, the killer stabbed half of his victims at close range and shot the rest with a type of gun that has never been banned anywhere in all of American history. Had he had his way, his rambling manifesto reveals, he would have killed far, far more — and by any means possible. At Halloween, he suggested, “there would literally be thousands of people walking around that I could kill with ease.” What thwarted this plan? “It would be too risky. One gunshot from a cop will end everything.” As it happens, the killer had foreshadowed his own death. The rampage ended when good men with guns closed in and returned fire, prompting their target to turn the gun on himself. It was ever thus.

[neverdem]

These gun grabbers never noticed how the rats took Congress in 2006!

[anonsquared]

It should be obvious to everyone that it is not gun control that is needed in America, we need...
“Mixed-Race, Narcissist With Chip On Shoulder” control.

[latina4dubya]

The fact is, had one of the early (non-BMW victims) been armed, it might have come to a very, very quick end. As it should have been.

exactly!

[heartwood]

Three of the people who died were stabbed in their apartment.

He hit others with his car. At least it wasn’t a SUV.

Unless you think that the mere availability of guns to John Q. Citizen is what gave rise to Elliot Rodger’s fantasies of slaughter, you can scarcely blame guns. He was a versatile killer.

[nathanbedford]

Leftist gun grabbers, with many of us on the right, especially libertarians, who wish to legalize drugs, face a similar dilemma. That is, half measures, partial "progress" is worse than useless because they actually aggravate the problem which motivates both leftist and libertarians on their respective issues.

Legalizing some drugs like marijuana but not others, such as cocaine and heroin, leaves the profit motive intact, the addiction problem intact and the corruption unimpeded. Similarly, to tinker around the margins with gun control rather than confiscating all guns makes the situation worse because it simply renders the law-abiding more and more vulnerable to criminals who will continue to illegally possess and use weapons.

Even assuming that confiscation of all guns will greatly reduce mortality and putting aside the problem of the Second Amendment, there is no political will to confiscate all guns and so the left is reduced to half measures like reducing the size of magazines which only infuriate people who associate gun ownership with liberty and increase the mortality count. The left does not admit and cannot admit that it wants to confiscate all guns which must, of course, be their goal because it is the only rational solution from their point of view.

People on the right with a pesky libertarian streak (which I confess to), similarly are afraid to forthrightly maintain that all drugs, even the most pernicious, dangers and powerful drugs, should be legalized if the idea of taking the profit motive out of the drug business is to succeed. Both the left and the right find themselves flummoxed, the right by its inability to sell individual liberty and the left by its furtive yearning for the collective.

So we go on generation after generation at loggerheads on both issues confounded by our own rhetoric and, at least in the case of drugs, by our unwillingness to confront the reality of a war on drugs lost.

[MuttTheHoople]

I blame Modern American Liberalism. It was a Leftist Regressive who raised him to be the monster he was. Barack Hussein Obama sent out wolf whistle Code Words for him to murder women.

[Lazamataz]

Three of the people who died were stabbed in their apartment.

To the left, this merely proves the need for much more stringent gun control.

[tflabo]

Son of a leftist and spoiled brat richkid with an inferiority complex blaming others instead of working on his own issues.
Add in violent video games addiction, often absent father, no job and no religious activities —results in a slightly saner version of Adam Lanza. See a pattern here?

[Rio]

The bill to which Blumenthal refers would have made it illegal for gun owners to trade their firearms privately without undergoing a background check, prohibited magazines that held over ten rounds, and instituted a new ban on what politicians have termed “assault weapons” — that is, standard rifles that boast certain cosmetic features.

These laws are already in place in California.

[Rich21IE]

That’s all very true. But you forgot another similar problem, i.e., immigration. Half measures to deal with the problem have only made the problem all that worse. If the southern border were subject to total closure with shoot-to-kill enforcement tactics, it would end illegal immigration. Similarly, if the US simply abandoned border enforcement and granted work visas to all comers, the problem would be solved.

But here’s the thing I see........the half measures are taken because, they are, simply profitable. Opening the borders to all takers would result in the unemployment of tens of thousands of Border Patrol personnel, INS employees, etc. As well, it would end the underground economy in bribes and kick-backs of myriad sort to tens of thousands of government employees and their families. Same issue with drugs. Half measures have resulted in a “war on drugs” business economy.

So........in the final analysis, nothing ever gets fixed, it only becomes more broken. That result is having two peculiar effects. 1) Washington DC is declining in relevance to the denizens of fly-over country, and 2) the charade that these national elections are is becoming near cartoon-like, so much so that anymore, practically no one is paying attention. And that’s precisely why the Dems win! They got the buses and the welfare plantation and the unions and they vote for the donuts and coffee and free ride to the community center.

[Osage Orange]

Good post!!

[bray]

It is easier to blame guns than a crumbling society that doesn’t value life.

Pray America wakes up

[RedMonqey]

Son of a leftist and spoiled brat richkid with an inferiority complex blaming others instead of working on his own issues.

Although I haven't see evidence of it, where did Rodgers get the idea that all beautiful (blonde) women just dropped their panties for every "alpha male" in the area code?

I think he, along with his video game obsession, had a porn addiction as well..

He sure didn't get this attiude from Bible study...

[ClearBlueSky]

Ironically he suggested the real prevention for crimes like his. Roundup paranoid schizoprhenics LIKE HIM and put them into camps. They usually end up causing their own executions anyway-but they also kill innocents before. Mental patients have turned society into the asylums they need. We are “understanding” and “protecting” the dangerously mentally ill at the cost of sane,innocent lives.

[DPMD]

“Blumenthal seems unaware”

Blumenthal doesn’t care. His sole purpose in the public appearance was the public appearance being coupled with his name, for future use. It was the same with Andrew Cuomo in being the first governor to pass a monstrous anti-gun bill following the Lanza killings. Be first, get the name recognition, plan the presidential run.

[libstripper]

“Son of a leftist and spoiled brat richkid with an inferiority complex blaming others instead of working on his own issues.”

When I was his age was busting my ass to make high grades in law school and earn enough money to help pay for the next year of school. I didn’t fly anywhere on a commercial airliner until I was in the Army and self supporting. My first car was a used car that my agents sold to me in my last year in law school. A bit of genteel poverty and the effort to overcome it can often be very good for a person. Somehow, I don’t think this particular over-privileged subhuman ever had any such experiences.

[anonsquared]

I guess commenter #5 did not get my joke that “Mixed-Race, Narcissist With Chip On Shoulder” was referring to another psychopath - the one occupying the White House.

Tip of the hat to the Moderator who removed the comment before I could get in here and explain intelligent humour to the lad. Also a $100. donation made in honour of said Moderator. :)

[Albion Wilde]

The article links to this excellent article, Addressing Serious Mental Illness, about how government is standing in the way of better mental health treatment; and shockingly (/sarc), how Democrat political gamesmanship is being used to prevent improvement:

What emerged from Representative Murphy’s year-long series of hearings and studies was a far-sighted bill to improve our mental-illness-treatment system, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (H.R. 3717). The proposed legislation attacks the problem at multiple levels, including improving mental-illness-treatment laws, increasing the availability of public psychiatric beds, amending the privacy provisions under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, strengthening NIMH, and reforming SAMHSA. Murphy worked assiduously to make his proposal bipartisan, soliciting input from Democrats and from a wide variety of mental-health organizations. The bill has 49 Republican and 27 Democratic co-sponsors and has been endorsed by many organizations and newspapers, ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post. Given the overwhelming evidence of the need to improve the nation’s mental-illness-treatment system, one would have thought that bipartisan common sense would prevail.

But that would underestimate the partisan sentiments and small-mindedness of some members of Congress. On May 6, Representative Ron Barber of Arizona and four other House Democrats introduced legislation aimed at directly competing with the proposed Murphy legislation. The Democratic bill provided funding for expanding the mental-health status quo while omitting all the provisions in the Murphy proposal that would produce actual change. It was widely rumored that Nancy Pelosi was behind the introduction of the Barber bill, to prevent the Republicans from taking credit for improving the system, a cynical move that the Wall Street Journal called “the basest form of Washington politics.”