GUNS?

Abe F. March wrote:

“One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport.
Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns.”
~John Oliver

Why no mention of regulation of the mentally ill? How about forced incarcerations? It might violate their civil rights, but taking guns from people who aren't going to go on a shooting spree violates their civil rights. Guess it comes down to whose rights you want to violate. I prefer to get the defectives out of society.

How do you know who is defective?

Didn't you just describe one on another thread?

Yes and nothing was done.

I was told if I was bothered by his actions, to get help for myself . He was turned in by his best friend as a Green River killer suspect.

I was interrogated by a member of their taskforce, he felt sorry for me, but could do nothing.

Well, I suggest those laws be changed (the ones that can do nothing about defectives running around unchecked).

The person in this latest case was a clear defective, obvious to everyone except his mother. Well, it may have been obvious to her, too.

Good luck!

I have an easier idea, since the gun owners are so sane and sensible and wish only to protect themselves and children--how about them giving up assault weapons?
Voluntarily!

Also, There is no illness worse than a mental illness.
Defective is not a proper term for their sad and painful situation.

I don't have a problem with giving up assault weapons. I don't know why anyone needs to own one. Is a rifle an assault weapon, though? I guess hunters need them. I just don't want to see handguns banned.

Defective = doesn't work right.

Quote :

I have an easier idea, since the gun owners are so sane and sensible

BTW, I wouldn't phrase it like this. It's not that gun owners are sane and sensible, it's that many sane and sensible people own guns. Why punish them and let defectives run unchecked?

Do you refer to a diabetic as a "defective"?
Their pancreas doesn't work right?
Just curious.

Their pancreas certainly is defective. But no, I wouldn't call the whole person a defective as in the case of Lanza. What part of "defective" do you think not applies to him?

I just listened to a MSNBC report that said he was never violent, was a VEGAN, because he was against even killing animals for food.
His mother was concerned because he was reclusive.

Obviously after one kills several children, we know they are seriously ill.

He was a fellow human being who suffered an undiagnosed and untreated mental illness.

How about a government buy back of weapons?

What scares me is how harmless he appeared to be.

It's much like the monday morning quarterbacks. We have the answers after the deed. As for identifying defectives, there wouldn't be enough jail room to house those identified.

"Among the world’s 23 wealthiest countries, 80 percent of all gun deaths
are American deaths and 87 percent of all kids killed by guns are
American kids," stated by Bill Weir of ABC.

Those who flaunt the 2nd Amendment as their right to bear arms, they need to read it again and understand it.


The settlers did not have an army and were
not allowed to bear arms under the English rule so they would not rebel. They got the guns they needed and rebelled
anyway. However when the constitution
was written, it was to have the “right to bear arms” as for an army. And it was written for that particular time
because they didn’t have an army. They
wanted a continental army.

We have an army and we have police. Using the second amendment as a reason to have a gun is crap. We would be better served to make a change to the constitution to provide some clarity. Times change and so must we. We must change our thinking and adjust to the times. We have many laws to govern the use of a car. I don't think they had speed limits for a horse and buggy. When the constitution was written they didn't have automatic weapons, either.

Good points, Abe.

Gun control is a very good thing.

It's another one of those issues that many people see as all or nothing. It isn't that.

My son is one of many - including Abe, who are "sharing" this poster on Facebook:


(Incidentally, I just noticed that it is being distributed through the Occupy Movement)

Having tighter regulations for those who own guns, and for those who wish to purchase them is an important part of the solution.

But it isn't, in and of itself, going to stop the violence. Violence is a product of rage. Rage stems from powerlessness. Perceived powerlessness is a part of mental illness.

Mental illness has many causes and takes on many forms.

The article Shelagh linked gives an example of one form of mental illness connected to uncontrollable anger and rage.

It is completely different from the illness of this latest shooter, whose behavior, as Alice has pointed out, did not show signs of anger or rage. He kept it bottled up inside.

Two extremes - both very frightening and dangerous.

As a former teacher, I know that it is illegal to ignore knowledge of child abuse. If you have reason to suspect it is happening to a child you know or know of, and you don't report it, you are committing a crime.

Not all mental illness is the result of abuse. Sometimes it is physiological. Often there are elements of both.

Too often, a child with symptoms is simply drugged, and those drugs can mask symptoms and make things worse.

This is the 21st century, and yet we still tend look at mental illness from a 19th century perspective - as something to be ashamed of, as something to be shunned and locked away rather than dealt with openly so that it can be treated at an early stage....So that we can study the symptoms and effects as carefully as we do physical conditions....So that we know when to administer medications and when to focus on counseling and therapy - when hospitalization is the best, even the necessary approach.

All this care is expensive, and yet, only a fraction is covered by insurance, if covered at all.

It is a cultural issue, and that makes it a political issue and it needs to be a community issue.

If good can come of this horror, maybe it will be to put it on the table and discussed. Maybe it will lead to funding and research that will help us understand the causes so we can approach a cure.

Those are all good things, but my mind keeps going back to Toffler's take on the sources of power: knowledge, wealth, and violence. Take away the right to learn, the sources of wealth, and you leave an individual with violence as his only means to survive.

Taking away his guns is a temporary stop-gap. He will find the weapons if his intent is strong enough.

Regulating sales is part of the solution, but regulations are only as effective as those who are selected to enforce them - like any other laws. Without a change of heart, they will have little effect.

Thank you, Ann.
A very good reasonable perspective.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html

Quote :

"Among the world’s 23 wealthiest countries, 80 percent of all gun deaths are American deaths and 87 percent of all kids killed by guns are American kids," stated by Bill Weir of ABC.

How many of those 22 other countries have large areas of the population that are poor and powerless?

When we first opened the night high school in a near north suburb of Houston, which served many students from the poorer neighborhoods, I remember our PE teacher, a former coach at one of the larger high schools in the more affluent areas in the district, was shocked to see how many of those night school boys had bullet scars.

Those suburbs are part of a different America, one we try to hide, ignore, and deny. We have this "white flight" thing. Columbine HS was in one of those areas. Have you seen the photo collage circulating on Facebook of the Sandy Hook victims?

Last night there was a shooting at a San Antonio theater. It wasn't reported as a big news event here - I caught it from a major network article reported on my igoogle news page.

f you are thinking Aurora, Colorado, forget it. A customer at a restaurant adjacent to the theater got upset and fired off a shot or two, then fled onto the street and took refuge in a restroom at the theater, only he was outed and wounded by an off-duty policewoman who was working at a second job as security guard for the theater. She was hailed as a hero, probably more because she had to follow the perp into the Men's Room than anything else.

In the neighborhood where this occurred, it was a routine evening.

Actually, the freakiest part, and maybe why the network picked it up, had to do with the name of the theater: The Mayan Palace. Now, that's scary, happening less than a week from the date, December 21, 2012, if you are scared by such things.

Occurrences like these do not often get our attention when they happen, but they get included in the statistics when "nice people" are invaded - kind of like E.A. Poe's "Masque of the Red Death."

The fact that we are shocked is a big part of the problem.

Thank you, all for exercising you rights to speak!

I wish the children had been allowed to exercise their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Somehow we must ensure this.

This is from the article linked by Shelagh in her above post:

Quote :

Other countries offer a road map. In Australia in 1996, a mass killing of 35 people galvanized the nation’s conservative prime minister to ban certain rapid-fire long guns. The “national firearms agreement,” as it was known, led to the buyback of 650,000 guns and to tighter rules for licensing and safe storage of those remaining in public hands.

The law did not end gun ownership in Australia. It reduced the number of firearms in private hands by one-fifth, and they were the kinds most likely to be used in mass shootings.

In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings — but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. The murder rate with firearms has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to data compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and the suicide rate with firearms has dropped by more than half.

Four years earlier, an Australian filmmaker named Geoffery Wright maed an extremely controversial movie called Romper Stomper, which explored the problem of racism in the country, especially in the lower class suburbs of the major cities. The film was set in Melbourne, but addressed a nation-wide problem: the treatment of Asian-Australians.

The lead role of Hando, a neo-Nazi skinhead who hated and terrorized these Asian-Australians was played by a rising young film star, who addressed the film and its importance in this interview:



The actor's perfomance won hm an Australian Film Industry Best Actor award, and the attention of Hollywood producers.

A year later, he discussed that same role in another interview which you can view at this location (you only need to watch between :22 and :47. I am working on learning how to edit and upload videos, but haven't quite figured it out yet, or I would show you just that bit.

http://thoroughlyrussellcrowe.com/video/vintage/sunglasses1993.html

Here is my point. We are all expressing our opinions on a serious topic, which is strongly related, I think, and discussed in an earlier post, to this film and its message. Don't attempt to see the film itself, though, unless you have a strong stomach. It is too graphic for my tastes.

We are writers. As writers, we have the ability to influence the way people think, just as filmmakers and actors do.

We can write blogs and articles, create stories that illustrate the situation...
artists in the past have influenced social change - look, for instance, at Victor Hugo, and see the monumental power of his Les Miserables (and, in case you didn't know, nobody read the book until after he died, so we do not know the strength of our creations. Just because we are not on that NYT list doesn't mean that we on't have the power to create social change.

We wonder what we can do? We can write about how we feel and make our feelings public.

Don, I think you know that I respect you and your opinions. We’ve had discussions about guns before and tend to disagree in part. If everyone were as competent with guns as you are, there would be no issue. Unfortunately, without gun control, any jerk can buy a gun even over the internet. Secondly, as pointed out by Ann, there is no general rule. Gun laws differ State by State. When I wrote my book, “They Plotted Revenge”, I did some research on the gun laws that applied to the areas where my characters resided. They wanted to obtain guns and had to find ways to do so without attention. As you pointed out, plugging up the loopholes would be one positive step as well as applying the rules nation-wide, and that’s where the Federal Government is needed. Illegal guns are the issue as you pointed out. It has been many years since I went hunting, however at that time, the use of automatic guns were prohibited. Don’t know if that still applies. Besides, how many hunt today for food –vs. - sport? When my Dad and I hunted, we hunted to supplement our food. A hand gun was not a hunting weapon and still isn’t.

I think most everyone would fight in any way possible to protect their family. If one has a weapon, they should know how to use it. At the same time, they should understand the need for safety. Assault weapons should not be available to the public. In many instances, it is about money. The manufactures and retailers want sales and that takes precedence over who is making the purchase. Our nation is a leader in the sale of weapons to customers world-wide. It’s about money.

We train young men and women to kill in the armed forces. How much training do we give to young men and women not to kill? Self-defense is accepted both from an individual standpoint as well as a nation. When our nation is the aggressor, as with Iraq, where self-defense was not the issue, a crime was committed and that crime by the perpetrators have gone unpunished. When existing laws are enforced, there is no need for new laws. When money can purchase freedom from prosecution, our justice system is no longer just.

If one feels secure, he/she is secure. I refuse to live in fear. Whatever action I need to take to remove that fear is my choice.

As usual, just my personal opinion.