OK, I’ve tried to avoid this, but I can’t. On The News (if you can call it that) is an endless stream of histrionics over the shooting in Newtown. Endless parade of “the usual suspects”. Ban the guns. The kid just had to be a sociopath. Now on Hannity they are going on and on about lack of empathy and being emotionally empty by ADHD kids and / or Aspergers folks.
A big pile of crap.
The notion that Aspes lack emotional connection is just daft. The idea that there’s no empathy is even more brain dead. I have trouble with too much empathy, not too little. Some bum on the street has no coat, I feel his cold and want to give him my coat, shirt, shoes, you name it. Admittedly, I’m at the ‘on the border’ range, not deep into the ‘spectrum’, but I’ve known others and there’s lots of evidence from others, such as Temple Grandin, that Aspes are very much full of empathy. (Often more to animals than to other people, but that’s mostly because other people lie and hide who they really are so much. We get mixed readings as we see through that to the person inside in addition to the ‘top story’ and that can be confusing.)
Unfortunately, one of the results of this latest event IS a labeling of the shooter as an Asperger’s kid. And folks are focusing on the syndrome and NOT on the context. Talking about requiring having the whole FAMILY psych evaluated as a term for gun ownership. (As the Mom owned the guns and banning the Aspe kid from buying would not have stopped this.)
Then there is the Loony Side Of Left constantly bleating to “Ban ASSAULT Weapons!!!!”, deliberately or stupidly (or both) confounding the actual definition of an Assault Rifle with the “ugly gun lookalike” semi-Automatic. (A REAL assault rifle has a FULL Automatic mode. There are NO “assault rifles” available to the general public without going through a special licensing program and paying $Hundreds for special fees and licenses. NO real Assault Rifle has been used in these events / shootings other than by the police.) But even folks on Fox News are adopting the broken definition of “Assault Rifle” as “Ugly Semi-Auto” that has been pushed by The Left for a generation now.
What’s missing in all this?
The Drugs
THE root cause is, IMHO, the drugs being handed out like candy to any kid who doesn’t sit placidly and “behave”. The diagnosis of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is “way up”. Why? Because ‘people in power’ don’t like independent kids. If you are not quiet and placid enough on demand, you must have an illness. Worse, if you get diagnosed, you can get special help at school and often special payments from various government programs. My spouse regularly has to deal with parents WANTING their kid to be designated as a ‘special needs’ kid for various reasons. Pushing for getting a kid drugged up is common and seen as frequently being a desirable result. The number of times I’ve heard “He didn’t take his meds and we really need to get him back on them.” or “Mom needs to understand to get the kid some meds” is “not small”…
So what ARE these drugs? Typically drugs of the family of Ritalin, Alderol, Luvox. And what is listed as “side effects” for them? Oh, little things like psychological problems, increased aggression, violence, emotional problems. Occasionally suicidal ideation. Think with a few dozen million kids on those drugs maybe 3 or 4 a year might just have some of those symptoms to excess?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluvoxamine#Adverse_effects
Adverse effects
Side effects most commonly observed with fluvoxamine include nausea, vomiting, drowsiness, insomnia, dizziness, nervousness, anxiety, dry mouth, abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, heart burn, appetite suppression, muscle weakness, “pins and needles” sensation, abnormal taste, headache, faster heart beat, sweating, weight gain, weight loss or unusual bruising. Other side effects which are observed more frequently in children include abnormal thoughts or behaviour, cough, increased menstrual pain, nose bleeds, increased restlessness, infection and sinusitis. Sexual side effects with fluvoxamine are less pronounced than with other SSRIs.
Pharmacology
Fluvoxamine is a potent and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor with approximately 100-fold affinity for the serotonin transporter over the norepinephrine transporter. It has negligible affinity for the dopamine transporter or any other receptor, with the sole exception of the σ1 receptor. It behaves as a potent agonist at this receptor and has the highest affinity of any SSRI for doing so. This may contribute to its antidepressant and anxiolytic effects. Reports indicate confusion, decreased anxiety to the point of negative affect, and aggressiveness.
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/Columbine2.htm
In an unprecedented move, a committee formed by a group of Colorado state legislators, chaired by Rep. Penn Pfiffner (R-Lakewood), has blasted psychotropic “mind-altering” drugs being inflicted upon the nation’s young people. The committee is asking the Colorado state Board of Education to ban the use of the government-mandated drug Ritalin in Colorado schools.
[…] They cited recent cases of school shootings, and noted that most of the assailants involved in the shootings were on ADD-prescribed drugs. Eric Harris’s use of Luvox was given as an example.
Don’t suppose you saw that in the news anywhere…
Ritalin and similar drugs are first cousins of Speed. Meth. You know, the drug that is known to cause dramatic aggression and violent behaviour?
Left to their own devices, Aspes are generally quiet, shy, sometimes to the extent of being called ‘withdrawn’ by those who can not stand to be alone with themselves, and prone to being so non-violent that they often do not even defend themselves when attacked. So what do we do? We try to “fix that” by medicating them with a class of drugs that causes more involvement (and for the ADHD folks more ‘focus’) but turns placid into violent and aggressive.
Now they want to blame the Aspes and ADHDs for what has been done to them.
http://www.ritalinsideeffects.net/
Ritalin Side Effects and Warnings
Updated August 21, 2012
Schedule II Substance
Brand Names: RITALIN, RITALIN LA, RITALIN SR
Generic Name: METHYLPHENIDATE HCI (HYDROCHLORIDE)
Category: CEREBRAL STIMULANTSRitalin (methylphenidate) is an amphetamine-like prescription stimulant commonly used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children and adults.
Many think Ritalin (methylphenidate) is safe, or mild, because so many children use it. However, the government classifies the psychoactive drug with cocaine and morphine because it is highly addictive.
[…]
Ritalin is very closely related to amphetamine: similar in chemical structure, metabolization and clinical effects.
[…]
Common Side Effects
Addiction
Nervousness including agitation, anxiety and irritability
Trouble sleeping (insomnia)
[…]
Less Common Side Effects
High blood pressure
Rapid pulse rate (and other heart problems)
Tolerance (constant need to raise the dose)
Feelings of suspicion and paranoia
Visual hallucinations (seeing things that are not there)
Depression
Cocaine craving
[…]
Overdose Side Effects
[…]
Restlessness
Tremor
Aggression
Hallucinations
Panic states
Hyperreflexia (overactive reflexes, which can include twitching or spasms)
Personality changes
Symptoms of depression
Seizures or abnormal EEGs
High blood pressure
Rapid heart beat
Swelling of hands/feet/ankles (for example, numbing of the fingertips)
Delusions
[…]
Chronic abuse can manifest itself as psychosis, often indistinguishable from schizophrenia
Think that maybe having a schizoid depressed panic ridden hallucinating aggressive paranoid might, just maybe, have a little bit of something to do with folks “going postal” and shooting others? Hmmmm?
No, none of those side effects is going to happen all the time. Yes, they are modestly rare. Yet, if you’ve been taking these for, oh, 15 years, you’ve likely had to escalate the dose and maybe even gotten to kind of like buzzing a bit on some O.D. from time to time. Now spread that over a few dozen Million kids… It’s pretty much a given that you will get a “1 in a Million” reaction every year.
It’s Not About The Guns
Sorry, it just isn’t. It’s about the shooter behind the gun.
Know what happens when you ban the guns?
You get more poisonings and fire bombings and explosives and ….
Think that classroom would have been any better if the guy had come in lobbing gasoline bombs at the kids in a corner? How about if he just snuck into the cafeteria (not hard as his mom was a teacher there. Likely would have gotten an escort and a ‘what would you fancy?’ on the way). Once there, it’s trivial to spike the salt shakers with a variety of interesting things. (That I won’t go into for obvious reasons). Heck, there are rather easy to make / get contact poisons where just touching the surface can do you in.
Notice what the Pros used? Arafat was killed via toxin (radiological it’s believed). Russia has done in several folks with radiologicals and ricin. Prior to the invention of The Gun, the mode of murder of choice was poisons (especially among women). Ban the gun, you get a big increase in poisonings. Ever catch the guy who sent the Anthrax through the mail?
Think a paranoid with hallucinations is NOT going to “find another way”?
Frankly, I could do-in a lot more folks with a weed sprayer than with a rifle.
Notice that poison is a “weapon of mass destruction” that our government is especially worried about? That’s for a reason. Mix household bleach with Ammonia cleaner you get the first poison gas used in W.W.I. Chlorine. ( A later more effective gas was invented by a guy from my home town. It was made, but the W.W. ended before the first batch reached deployment.) With kids in High School today making transgenic bacteria that glow in the dark, think they can’t figure out how to grow out and freeze dry some Anthrax? Or worse…
But surely we don’t need those (Oxymoronic) ‘semi-automatic assault weapons’!! Well, aside from the fact that they are no more lethal than any other “legitimate hunting rifle”, there’s that fact that they just are not an assault rifle. Then there’s the fact that the 2nd Amendment is NOT about hunting. It is about the ability of the People to tell their Government “Enough is enough”. A “stage of development” that seems to be getting closer by the day… But even if you want to toss that under the bus. JUST allow “legitimate hunting rifles”… Those are what will be called “sniper rifles” before you can blink. Anyone remember the Beltway Sniper? Oh, and it’s MUCH easier to ‘police the brass’ from them and not leave evidence behind. Swap from semi-auto handguns to revolver, you just made forensics a whole lot harder for police.
One final point: I can put more 9 mm pellets ‘down range’ faster with a pump shotgun than with a semi-auto anything. Not only that, the “magazine capacity” is functionally unlimited as they can be stuffed in the tube about as fast as you can pump it. Big pouch on the hip and you can shoot all day. (Skeet shooters do that). So think those innocent kid victims would be any better off with 00 Buckshot instead?
See, that’s the problem with a focus on “the tool” and not on “the criminal”. Criminals are going to find a different tool.
I have an interesting book I picked up along the way. “Modified and improvised firearms”. I think it was just after the Star Trek episode when Kirk made a gun / cannon out of rocks and giant bamboo ;-) The Chinese had a “machine crossbow” hundreds of years ago. At first, I thought the ‘darts’ (technically ‘bolts’) were just too tiny to do any significant damage. Turns out they were dipped in a plant poison. These can be found growing in flower gardens nationwide. (No, I won’t give the names). Seems the world has been dealing with crafty creative paranoid aggressives for quite a while…
In Conclusion
Please try to NOT have this thread turn into a “does so – does not” food fight over “gun control”. It accomplishes nothing. (Either one. The food fight OR the gun ban laws).
My purpose in posting this is just to try to get a bit more attention on what is almost certainly the real “root cause”. A large number of kids spending their development years drugged up on some serious medication that has exactly the kind of side effects that we see manifested in the behaviour of the “shooters”. They’ve just reached a breaking point, or after ‘getting out’ held enough resentment, that the target of their rage was the prison they were forced, by law, to endure.
Want to fix it? Let the kids who “are different” have a different experience. Let the free spirits have a choice of self paced, or home schooling, or Montessori or any of a dozen others. Just don’t hand out amphetamine analogs like chocolates and expect everything to be all rosy…
Musings from the Chiefio 
I think our schools are planting time bombs with all the medication. Forcing kids to take meds removes the need to cope and develop social skills to fit in. Keeping a kid all medicated removes the social skill learning and the associated coping with problems on a daily basis. Once a kid gets out of school or quits taking the meds, everything hits them at once, only now they have adult bodies and tendencies. Doping all the kids just pushes much of the problem down the road and makes it worse. If you don’t deal with things daily and then everything hits you, you get explosions from people not having learned to cope. IMHO
A post on Fox on autism spectrum disorder and Asperger’s being removed from the psychiatric bible:
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/12/17/new-concerns-over-removal-aspergers-from-psychiatric-manual-in-wake-newtown/
Looks like I am no longer abbi-normal. ;-) pg
You mentioned that mixing bleach and ammonia gets you chlorine gas. I learned recently that our water supply changed in 2010 to using chloramine instead of chlorine, to meet EPA standards. It’s more long-lasting in the water supply and is hard to remove.
I also learned that when you mix dichlorophenol with chloramine, you get chloroform. The dichlorophenol likely came from the Triclosan you washed your hands with, or from the 2, 4-D they used on the wheat in that sandwich you just ate.
Avoiding tap water has proven to be an effective way to get my digestive system to tolerate wheat. Who would have guessed?!
Ya I have left the TV off, the media are fools. And predictable.
It seems to me the frequency of crazies doing this has gone up in last 4 years, a fast and furious type coincident?
But also noted the chosen victims are always the disarmed. Never heard of mass shootings in the communities where open carry is demanded.
That Norwegian didn’t pick a police station, instead unarmed youth camp.
The media remind me of a creature rolling in the blood, bodies and sorrow of the slain and their families, gloating while pretending to care. Mind you our liberals give me same vibe, helping the poor.
The planets are well aligned for young men to feel like unwanted aliens in the culture of their birth.
School, sit still or we dose you with chemical correction, subject matter has been corrected to make it inclusive (Girl dominated) and boring.Now schools want kids to sit for 40 minutes at a time? Shop class too dangerous.
High energy boisterous behaviour is normal for healthy kids but its wrong now?
Reverse discrimination is rampant, white male children come dead last and are assumed guilty in all confrontation.
And their future is blighted, so they are told,Too many people on planet & Globull Warming is all your fault, just being born is a sin against nature. Economic ruin is coming and your future was sold by those who hold power today, but you gets to pay.
Strange that a kid might get just a little pessimistic and depressed . Which,with humans being survivors of survivors, becomes flight or fight.
And all the old outlets for young men are now regulated out of existence. Its not, boy will be boys, now its instant criminal delinquents.
A new/old denial, denying human nature. History, rise and fall of societies, cultures and mores, the one thing I see cycling on through is the monkey on a bicycle.
Maybe this is why social reformers sicken me, they are certain they know what we are and how we should be. And seldom have a clue. We humans adapt, its what we do.
This civilization is a skin, given the illusion of the continuity of food, shelter and relative comfort we play by the rules of enlightened self interest.
Problem, too many people are showing no enlightenment or even coherent self interest.
On the take away the tool mentality, always comes from the very same people who insist that criminals are not responsible for the actions they chose.
Its never time for personal responsibility.
Chicago comes to mind, not sure why.
Damn thats so dismal I got to google, Monkey, a strange Japanese animation I last saw 30 years ago, strangely appro to this time.
They’re now reporting (CBS is anyway) that his mom wasn’t a teacher there, that he had no connection to the school. So this is curiouser and curiouser.
Discrimination isn’t dependent on skin color. “Reverse” discrimination would be none. You would be more correct to say that “Discrimination against white male children is rampant”.
Allow the teachers (who voluntarily get certified) to carry weapons. As it stands now, they are not allowed even if they have a CCW permit because the schools are ‘gun free zones’.
Also this… http://www.examiner.com/article/media-blackout-oregon-mall-shooter-was-stopped-by-an-armed-citizen h/t Kate at SDA.
December 21 is the bottom of the canyon and then we start up the other side. Spring will come soon enough. The Mayan calendar continues on its’ next great procession. The Nostradamus Prophecies go on, as does life. We are in the middle of great disruption around the world. This will pass and reconstruction will begin.
“The new age begins when a net covers the world”. Hopi Indian prophecy from many years ago.
We are part of the creation of the next age. pg
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
This post cries out to be included here. EM’s usual analytic style and depth of comment adds a wealth of factual, meaningful information and opinion. How different from the sensationalist propaganda and the agenda-driven government responses. An injection of plain commonsense that is clearly appropriate.
A friend of mine who is a psychologist mainly working with kids, has been warning about the over medication of kids with ADHD etc for years. I just recently read that even for many of those kids that get really good help from Ritalin (finally being able to learn in school), that help wanes over time. Not very different from regular speed addiction, I guess.
I don’t think the meds explain everything in this case, though.
The Aspergers idea is absurd. What is a better explanation:
Canada, same gun per population: 40 random kills by gun
America: 11000.
Ergo: cultural problem
On Ritalin – there are now quite a high percentage (maybe 25% according to BBC a while back) of university students in the UK who use Ritalin as an aid to study. They say it speeds up learning, gives better grades. This is a worrying development, given the side-effects noted. Of course the drug is black-market, which adds an extra layer of problem as you don’t know the purity.
Removing the guns won’t make much difference. It’s very easy to find other ways if you want to cause a lot of damage.
One odd effect of these incidents is that every time, here in the UK (where, remember, we’re not allowed to carry guns anyhow), the BBC go into instant propaganda mode about how this is “leading to calls in the US for gun laws to be reviewed”. Get the feeling that we’re getting trained in “Look, These People Obviously Have Too Much ‘Freedom’, Better To Restrict It, Eh?”. The contrast between Canada and the US is always puzzling, though, given the similar percentage of gun ownership – it has to be an attitudinal thing in the US’ national psyche.
On drugs, dead right. It’s hard to be sure whether Big Pharma is doing more or less damage to us than Big Ag, as more and more unnatural chemicals and unnatural foods find their way into our internal environments one way or another. A natural way of dealing with, say, poor sleep would be to drink a small cup of valerian tea: it emphatically does the job, and its thoroughly evil taste is Nature’s way of preventing us getting addicted to it. (Its effect on cats is amazing, too – move over, catnip!) First, Big Pharma gave us Temazepam and the like, which were likewise as effective as a sledgehammer to the cranium, although addictive.
Now, we get prescribed weird substances like Zolpidem. This is the “sleeping drug” which can “wake up” people in persistent vegetable states, who then talk perfectly coherently with those around them until the drug wears off. It’s the one where people do strange things whilst nominally “asleep”, like getting dressed, getting into their car and piling it into a lamppost, or logging on to a strange computer in the wee small hours and sending emails saying “PPPlllleeassseee hhheelllllppp mmmee”. (Both of these are examples I’ve seen reported.) Very strange, but for now it seems to be “the new normal”. I know which normal I prefer … especially if the patients are going to be tooled up and harbouring dark secret grudges as well. I never (yet) heard of a “Valerian Murderer”.
Pingback: Daily Linkage – December 18, 2012 | The Second Estate
The left has almost got everything else, but they can never get the gun laws. Now Obama wants to be the hero and try to get it. When the government gets this its one more step to fascism as they can do whatever they like, as the person with the guns makes the rules.Thing is, all the guns are there. Guns exist, so you can’t ban them and make people “safer”. Mexico has a ban, but how many people die. It’s all cultural and this medication thing. Look at Switzerland, they have higher ownership but no massacres.
@P.G.: You are right again! It´s a change and it´s for good. What can you expect of the old ways of making war everywhere…is there not a law of cause and effect?, it´s time to Make love not war
Fly southwards bird…or climb up to your own mountain top and wait there for 40 days and 40 nights, as the Fool on the hill:
Day after day,
Alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he’s just a fool,
And he never gives an answer,
But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning ’round.
Well on the way,
Head in a cloud,
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hears him,
or the sound he appears to make,
and he never seems to notice,
But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning ’round.
And nobody seems to like him,
they can tell what he wants to do,
and he never shows his feelings,
But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning ’round.
Ooh, ooh,
Round and round and round.
And he never listens to them,
He knows that they’re the fools
They don’t like him,
The fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning ’round.
Ooh,
Round and round and round
One element left out of your analysis E.M. is desensitization to violence. It’s been reported that Lanza played video games (probably violent) several hours per day. Coupled with constant press coverage of violent events that implicitly give some kind of “permission” to the unstable to take this route as well as the violence infused into much of the entertainment industry’s products, how can we be surprised that this sort of thing happens? Additionally, the gradual suppression and derision of the moral standards of Christianity specifically and civilizing aspects of religious observance in general have left a space that gets filled by rudderless, uninhibited aggression. Take the guns and the medications away and you still have to deal with the lack of control over violent impulses. How can we think that priming those impulses can be harmless?
When I hear people yelling about “banning guns”, I ask them, “exactly how many guns was it that Timothy McVeigh used in Oklahoma”?
Given that some diagnoses of ADD/ADHD etc. are indeed more likely a result of active children that are too active for current ‘norms’ – I’m betting it’s the ‘norms’ that are wrong not the children. (cf, AGW, if you start with a bad ‘normal’ you can prove whatever you want). Growing up in the 70s in the UK, there were no where near as many ‘diagnosed’ kids (i.e. none) as there are today.
What changed? Not the kids.
To follow up on John Robertson says 18 December 2012 at 5:22 am and Steve C says: 18 December 2012 at 10:16 am
Steve, the media and the left will not want to hear about the drive by shootings or the Dunblane and Hungerford ‘massacres’ (google them) in a rigidly gun controlled country like the UK. They have been given this opportunity to try to impose rigid gun control and they will take it. Pointing out that the Swiss have more guns per household than the US as each military age Swiss man is required to be armed, does not sway them from their resolve.
There are other issues as well as drugs – which are far better explained in this post than anywhere else.
For example:
* Children never being allowed to ‘fail’ – everyone has to be a winner. So not getting ones own way leads to tantrums (which always get them their own way)
* A continual dehumanizing ‘othering’ of opponents. Children are taught to ‘hate’ all sorts of groups from global warming deniers to other political parties – to ‘bankers and capitalists’.
* The resolution to all things is shown nightly on TV in both adult and children’s programs is violence usually with guns from the A-team to The Matrix to the Equalizer all the same theme.
* A continual diet of violent computer games where killing the opponents (the others) is the intent
* A complete lack of moral compass the society is becoming materialistic and selfish
This ‘othering’ was shown by that infamous video from 350.org where children who did not agree were blown up. I wonder if they want that video repeated now? All they were doing was following the meme of othering – dehumanizing the opponents so its OK to kill them.
Reblogged this on The White Rabbit's Cafe.
Ian W says:
18 December 2012 at 3:47 pm
“This ‘othering’ was shown by that infamous video from 350.org where children who did not agree were blown up. I wonder if they want that video repeated now? All they were doing was following the meme of othering – dehumanizing the opponents so its OK to kill them.”
That wasn’t 350.org but Fanny Armstrong for a group called 10:10.
Ironically, she has afterwards not made any new films but retreated to give birth to…
…a child.
Too bad, she could have become the UK’s Quentin Tarantino of Climate Science.
Franny Armstrong, not Fanny.
“In response to questions about the message of the film, Armstrong replied, “We ‘killed’ five people to make No Pressure – a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change”.”
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franny_Armstrong )
So she prepares the ground for warmists to kill up to 300,000 skeptics a year. If they need to kill more, they can always increase their estimate of the victims of antropogenic climate change. (I know. I shouldn’t take idiots seriously.)
Here in South Africa soon after 1994 they took away the guns from whites and made it very difficult to get a license for one thereafter.
“In South Africa, owning a gun is conditional on a competency test and several other factors, including background checking of the applicant, inspection of an owner’s premises, and licensing of the weapon by the police introduced in July 2004. The process is currently undergoing review,[1] as the police are at present, not able to adequately or within reasonable time, process either competency certification, new licenses or renewal of existing licenses. Minimum waiting period frequently exceeds 2 years from date of application.[2]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_South_Africa
Being killed during a home invasion or a car hijack is the norm. Always by guns used by criminals who obviously don’t have a license. Over 66 000 whites have been killed in this fashion since 1994. Overall over 50 people here are murdered each day, most of the victims do not have defensive weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_South_Africa
If you are a white farmer here you have a really good chance of being shot to death. http://www.genocidewatch.org/southafrica.html
Guns don’t make people kill people. People are the only ones with intent.
Prior to 1994 the murder rate across all groups was only a fraction of what it is today. It is almost as if the government by intent or omission has become the enemy. We need guns to protect ourselves.
The murder of children is a horrific act but to allow those who don’t have guns to use that act to take away the guns of those who have them would be a monstrous erosion of the individual’s right to freedom and self defence and it would do nothing to prevent such a horror in the future.
There’s a long joke here in Canada, about a homeowner calling the cops over two thieves in his detached garage, basically he gets the run around from 911 and then told look, we the cops are busy we will come when we can and they hang up on him. So 2 minutes later he calls back, does the 911 operator BS and then tells the operator , Forget the cops, I shot both thieves, they’re dead, send the meat wagon around in the morning, no problem here.
4 minutes later swat team at garage,cops everywhere, catch 2 thieves at work. Detective in charge, to homeowner, ‘What the Hell. I thought you said you shot them?”
Homeowner,”What the hell, I thought you said you were busy.”
Tools are banned by fools.
In my daughter’s class of 14 students, there were 7 boys; 6 of them were on ritalin. I went to Catholic grade school in the 50’s and 60’s, and we had 55 kids in our class, and only one teacher. There was only one student who ever acted up to the point of being disruptive. We certainly weren’t all angels, but the classes were quiet and well run. ( And I never once saw anyone disciplined by having their hands smacked with rulers or anything). What has changed???
I know that I am old fashioned, but I see so many parents not disciplining their children. Sending a kid to “time out” does not teach them what they did wrong, especially when time out is so often spent in a room with all kinds of entertainment. I see parents too busy to spend time with their kids and I see kids not having any responsibilities or chores around the house. If they do have chores, they are often paid to do them. Parents are concerned with having quality time with their kids, and what the kids need is quantity of time.
I also think that there are so many copy cat incidents, because of the media. The media coverage goes on and on and on, for hours and days, over and over. We are all immersed in misery and horror, feeling things as if they had happened to us. Horrible things have happened throughout time, but it has only been recently where the news has us living the tragedies as they unfold. There is no distance of time or space, where the news is read in black and white. We see it in living color. It used to be that we could shield our kids from some of the horror. We could keep the newspapers or magazines away from their eyes. Now, the news is splashed over the TV and internet, until even my 4 year old granddaughter told me about “the bad guy that hurted some kids”. We can not protect the innocents from bullets or news anymore.
As a society, we seem to want perfect kids and perfect outcomes. We drug the kids and don’t let them fail and and don’t teach them that life is often hard and unpredictable. What we are doing now isn’t working, and I hope that we can find the answers we need, soon.
Maybe it isn’t so good right now to care about Adam Lanza, but I do. We seem to have no idea what sent him around the bend. Something did.
He apparently had been taking college level courses locally a la carte with varying success. It was also reported that he was planning to go to college on the west coast. AND that his mother planned to move out there to take care of him. Anyone remember Douglas Macarthur’s mother attending West Point with him?
I can imagine a truly socially inept kid beginning to dig his way out of his plight and having mom smother him with attention just as he was beginning to have some hope.
I apologize for these likely uninformed ramblings but people seem so quick to write off the perpetrators of these horrors.
I might add that I think it’s totally nuts to imagine that other candidates for this sort of event can be detected and thwarted. Maybe some, but not all.
Here is a listing of some of the school shootings (and similar events) known to be associated with prescribed selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors. You will be surprised by how many there are.
http://www.ssristories.com/index.php?p=school
@j fergusen; Actually we know quite a lot about young master Lanza. In depth reading of reports and not just skimming of MSM gives considerable information of people and events around him and about him. The only thing I have yet to discover is if he has been medicated for his behavioral problems. No one can or will say. His mother may have set him off as she was trying to get him committed before her leaving for the west coast, he knew it. The people he targeted were known to him including the first grade class members that his mother had spent a great deal of time with the year before.
The big MSM story is that a troubled young man took a machine gun and shot up a grade school. The real story is that a number of people that should have known better failed to help and maybe even made things worse.
I’m pretty sure the kid had bigger problems than ADD or Aspe. People who undergo psychotic breaks or are sociopaths do that – not someone on the Autism spectrum. The idiocy that needs to be stopped or at least controlled is the lame stream media. What a bunch of money grabbing morons.
The incidence of homicide by guns in the USA is 10 to 40 times higher than in most countries in Europe. It would be easy to attribute this to the high rate of gun ownership in the USA but for the fact that in Switzerland every able bodied citizen has been trained to use military weapons and has access to small arms even after completing military service.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
“The incidence of homicides committed with a firearm in the US is much greater than most other advanced countries. In the United States in 2009 United Nations statistics record 3.0 intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants; for comparison, the figure for the United Kingdom, with very restrictive firearm laws (handguns are totally prohibited, for example) was 0.07, about 40 times lower, and for Germany 0.2.[43]
For another comparison, Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world, with somewhere between 1.2 to 3 million guns in the private residences of its approximately 8 million citizens. In 2006 there were 34 recorded murders or attempted murders with a gun, representing a firearm homicide rate of 1 per 250,000.[44]“
In bygone days citizens were encouraged to become proficient with military weapons. For example, according to Wikipedia:
“The word golf was first recorded in the 15th century, appearing twice in an Act of the Scots Parliament of 6 March 1457, in the reign of James II. The Act, which ordered the holding of wappenschaws (English: musterings) four times a year for the purpose of archery practice, stated that “the fut bal ande the golf” (football and golf) were to be “vtterly criyt done” (condemned; lit. “cried down”) and “nocht vsyt” (not engaged in; lit. “not used”).[14] Offenders were to be punished by the barony courts, otherwise they were “to be tane be the kingis officiaris” (arrested by the king’s officers).”
Over five centuries ago the government was trying to ban golf and football because these passtimes were interfering with weapons training.
If our government had a grain of sense it would be subsidizing target practice instead of abortions.
The US crime problem is basically Gangs and Drugs. I follow the carnage in Chicago and find the numbers scary but self explanatory. Here is a link to the killings in Chicago for 2012.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ara-YVofdq9jdHBlal9OaGhWUDFsbkNFbkpraV9tS3c&output=html
There are over 440 killings and over 2000 shootings for Chicago. Look at Philadelphia and its pretty bad also. If you click on the right side of the spread sheet it gives the story of each killing. It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to point to the cause. If we could sift out the gang and drug crimes from the statistics I’m betting the US would be similar to the rest of the world.
Mass murders are a whole different category, but a news article today said the numbers for such killings is trending down.
The mall shooter in Portland was stopped by a citizen with a gun. The Movie shooter this week in San Antonio was stopped by a guy with a gun. These type of events are not well reported as it doesn’t fit the liberal media’s agenda. The number of crimes stopped by guns is quite large, but these statistics need to be hunted.
Gallopingcamel – Back in 1973, we were taking Mods (first year exams at college). There’s an old rule at Oxford where if a student has done archery practice before the exams, then he would be given a sconce (around 2 pints) of ale to refresh himself during the exams. A friend of mine got a bow and a (sucker-tipped) arrow and shot it in the Broad, and thus received his ale during the exams. Having a lot of people proficient with weapons, or with martial arts in general, leads to a polite society. In order for an attack to be attempted, the perpetrator would need to be reasonably certain that the victim won’t fight back.
Here in rural France, there are a lot of people with guns, yet I don’t see any problems with people being shot. I don’t have a gun myself, but I’m pretty good with a scythe, and a pitchfork is a pretty fearsome weapon if needed.
I may be wrong, but I see these mass shootings, in whatever country, as a sort of spectacular suicide. Take away easy access to guns, and it will happen some other way – maybe with less deaths if someone uses older-type weapons, but maybe with more if instead they try poisons or bombs. Imagine what would happen if some crazy person got hold of some Polonium-210 or a chemical poison, and dumped it in a town’s water reservoir at the water intake to the water-station.
It seems to me that today’s young people have a lot more pressures to conform than we did, and that the pace of life is much faster. Communications are so much quicker that any malicious rumours can spread through social media over the course of minutes and make someone’s life almost-instantly intolerable. Maybe this sort of thing happened to the guy who did this shooting – so far it seems like he was socially inept and retreated to playing shoot-em-up games on computer. In computer games you can “die” and start again – not possible in real life.
@ gallopingcamel Wiki says: ““The incidence of homicides committed with a firearm in the US is much greater than most other advanced countries.”
Wiki has that wrong, in my opinion. Just as CAGW enthusiasts somehow fail to remember any weather catastrophe older that they are, many gun control enthusiasts tend to forget or discount any murders older than a few years. When they calculate the murder rate in Europe, they forget to include the six million Jews rounded up at the point of a gun and murdered, the six millions others rounded up by the Germans at the point of a gun and murdered, the perhaps ten or twenty million Ukrainians held at the point of a gun and murdered, the ten million Congolese murdered by Belgium at gunpoint, the several hundred million Indians murdered by the British, etc., etc.
The murder rate by armed Europeans is HORRENDOUS. It is simply episodic rather than normally distributed. When discussing murder rates, compared to Europe, the US is like a day in paradise. God bless the Swiss. They are armed and mind their own business.
This made me remember of Mario Lanza:
If it’s all about the drugs then how come the number of spree killings in the US continues whilst those in other countries similar to the US has gone down after rules were tightened? Such as in the UK and Australia. We suddenly haven’t got kids off medication, it is increasing over here too. So it’s not that I am afraid. It;’s giving anyone with a grudge a lot of effectiveness.
Also, number of people shot by their dogs in the US far outweighs those shot in UK, AU, NZ, CA etc. Now I am not on medication and can accurately say that. Those dogs are not on medication that causes this one would hope.
The accident death rate caused by guns in the US per 100 000 people per year is far higher than the total number of deaths from homicide in the UK by firearms.
You just don’t hear of this drip drip drip deathrate at all though.
Grasping at medication is like grasping at straws, anything to blame but the real thing.
JC, It seems pertinent that the homicides you identify are the handiwork of governments, or would-be governments
@ J ferguson “It seems pertinent that the homicides you identify are the handiwork of governments”
Yes, very much pertinent. Additionally, it is pertinent that in each of the cases mentioned, one of the early steps involved is disarming the law abiding civilians while leaving the criminal class still armed. For some reason we have all been trained to ignore the fact that the criminal class may be the same as the governing class. Until the gun control enthusiasts come up with some way to insure that there is no overlap between the criminal class and the governing class, they should include the deaths-from-government in the murder rate.
Criminals are criminals, even if they wear funny hats and fancy uniforms. Murder is murder, even if the murderer has a badge or a shoulder patch. I say, let’s count them in the statistics.
“The Bath School disaster is the name given to three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, on May 18, 1927, which killed 38 elementary school children, two teachers, and four other adults; at least 58 people were injured. The perpetrator first killed his wife, and committed suicide with his last explosion. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–14 years of age[1]) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.
The bomber was the school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe, 55, who was angry after being defeated in the spring 1926 election for township clerk. He was thought to have planned his “murderous revenge” after that public defeat; he had a reputation for difficulty on the school board and in personal dealings. For much of the next year, a neighbor noticed Kehoe had stopped working on his farm and thought he might be planning suicide. During that period, Kehoe carried out steps in his plan to destroy the school and his farm by purchasing and hiding explosives.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
I’m curious about the gun stats for Canada, When the gun registry was abandoned, the site was bragging about having less than 2 million weapons registered.
So 2million firearms-30 million Canadians against 300million fire arms guestimate- 300 million citizens? 1:15=1:1?
Never mind how wrong the register was, as before it was introduced the estimates were 7 million owners with approx 3 weapons each, it was the gospel according to our police chiefs.
@jim 2; must have been about that time that a very strong push to outlaw the use of explosives by farmers was started. I remember reading a USDA pamphlet created in the late 1920s or early 1930s to teach farmers how to make and use explosives. By the 1940s possession and use of explosives by anyone without government license and permit was outlawed. The pamphlet was in a pile of old farming literature in our high school Ag class room in the early 1960s. Guess possession of that pamphlet by a high school kid would get him a criminal record now!. pg
pgs – The US Federal government seems to be amassing power at an exponential rate lateley. This is why I’m for legalizing drugs. On Drudge there is a link to a video of Texas state troopers doing a body cavity search on two women on the side of the road because a trooper smelled marijuana in the car. To my mind, this is way overboard.
JC,
One of my uncles was in the quartermaster corps in WW2. He spent a year in Germany at the end where he found himself in charge of a unit which seized guns in civilian hands and then destroyed them using a punch press which they found in a factory that had not been leveled.
His unit destroyed thousands of non military weapons although IIRC most were shot-guns, and some really nice ones. There were also a lot of rifles – aside from the ones some of us would recognize, a lot of converted Mausers from WW1.
Our second amendment rights seem to date to the advent of full-time “professional” armies in England during the reign of James I and the apprehension that such armies would be used to abuse the population unless the population was equipped to defend itself through the use of armed militia, same guys who had earlier fought the king’s wars. The development of fire-arms and other more sophisticated weapons at about that time suggested that a contest between militia and government professionals could be very unequal. For some reason, this didn’t turn out in the next hundred years where pitched battles were fought between militia types on both sides with the royalists perhaps having more training and better equipment.
My answer to the conundrum posed by today’s inevitable inequality in arms between what civilians might possess and what the military have is a return to the citizen soldier. I have no discomfort with the patriotism of the folks who presently serve, but would be a bit more comfortable with a return to the draft and the presence of a lot of people in the service for whom it will not be a career, but more an unpleasant interlude.
As to the government providing fire-arms training to the general population, I belonged to a rifle club in the late fifties to which the government loaned Remington target rifles (7/8″ barrels and iron sights) and gave crates of .22 longs – which proved that you can’t store ammunition and expect it to be reliable. We ultimately bought our own ammo.
They also let us shoot at the range at the Glenview Naval Air Station and some of us got pretty good.
I think with some bureaucratic monitoring, anyone who hasn’t proved himself incompetent or actually dangerous should be able to own anything he wants, but concede that this isn’t likely to fly in today’s environment.
too bad, I always wanted a Schmeisser, especially since i could spell it.
Most hiway robbers wear a badge. I call it “cops on drugs” They get their high by attacking”perps”. Adult Bullies. The “War on Drugs” has degenerated into a war on citizens, as it has become justification for any action. Judges that excuse out of line actions are as guilty as the bad cops. Good cops that turn a blind eye are guilty as well. Like lawyers, police need to be trained in ethical treatment of others, as at present they are taught how to “win” for their benefit, but not taught right from wrong in the use of their training. pg
p.g.
you make a good point. Friend who was in senior position in Chicago Police Dept (’60s, when I kept up with him) and to some degree responsible for keeping the sadists off the force found that if someone really wanted to be a cop this almost always warranted a closer look – possible control freak, sadist or some other deviant unlikely to serve urbs in horta. They seemed to do best with sons (at that time) of police families. Ex-military police were second although Army MP selection filtered out a couple of traits which were necessary on the street.
As a general rule, and speaking from some experience, you REALLY do not want to fall into police hands as what would now be called a “person of interest.”
@Jason Calley;
A much better way of making the point that the 2nd Amendment is not about hunting… but about control OF Government…
@John Robertson:
I know I’ll give mine away to folks who I’m sure will not ‘turn them in to be melted’ before I’ll let them be destroyed.
Any attempt to confiscate will just vastly increase the level of illegal guns.
@Jim2:
An interesting, if sad, example of ‘the alternative’…
@Andy:
Nothing is ever all about. Human actions are usually highly multi-factorial.
In fact, that’s why I think it ludicrous to make comparisons of the USA to the UK and Australia. The culture conflict I had, as a child of a UK Mom, with the US environment was quite high (and I was born here!). The USA is just a much more violent and emotional mix.
When I was a kid, bullying was accepted as ‘normal’ and the advised fix was to pick a fight with someone… (In todays terms, “get some street cred”). We have strong inter-ethnic violence. So much so that it is FORBIDDEN to wear “gang colors” at many schools and school events. That’s red, blue, and some other I can’t remember. Just a few months ago a kid was shot at a high school football game. Most likely because he was a white kid and didn’t know some color he was wearing was a ‘gang color’.)
So tell me, how often will a kid in the UK be beaten, stabbed or shot for wearing a red shirt or blue socks?
That, BTW, is VITALLY important. Notice that the MODE of violence has a spectrum? There are a lot of gang and ‘colors’ based beatings, stabbings, etc. AND ‘gun violence’ by gangs. Clear evidence that it’s not the gun, but the gangs.
Gangs which typically break down along ethnic lines into Hispanic and Black (with minor mention of the “White Gangs” that are pikers in comparison).
Now those folks make up the bulk of the gun violence statistics, so unless you take them out of the mix, you won’t be able to see the “drug impact” in the VERY RARE acts of school violence by folks like at Columbine.
So, you see, using bulk stats between nations to say it is ‘grasping at straws’ is really quite daft. Nowhere did I say that the majority (or even a lot) of gun violence is caused by the drugging of kids. What I did say is that school attacks like these two have a VERY high rate of such drug involvement. For that class of event the drugs simply can’t be ignored. ( Lumping them all together into a bulk average is another example of ‘over averaging’ hiding the truth.)
That says nothing about gangs and gang related shootings.
BTW, those same gangs are generally forbidden to have guns anyway. There are a dozen or so ‘uplifts’ for using guns in a crime (and just about everything these folks do is a crime and most have criminal records. Many require a felony act for membership, which makes any gun possession a further crime.) Since these gangs are typically in the drug trade, making guns illegal will just give them another line of business.
So to have any clue, you must break out “gun violence” by category and perpetrator.
What is quite clear when you do that is simply this:
The typical gun owner is not part of the problem at all. THE largest “problem” by far is the gangs and drug related and laws don’t matter to them. For the “Kid Goes Postal” sub-group, that is very rare, scratch the surface and you find psychoactive drugs prescribed. That group will also just find a different tool if guns are not available.
So, like it or not, until the UK and Australia have about 40% Hispanic and Black populations with two warring groups of gangs in conflict over drug turf, you just can’t compare them to the USA in over averaged statistics.
Also, like it or not, taking guns away from the rest of us will NOT make things better. Where it has been tried IN the USA, deaths go up (as do poisonings as do Armed Home Invasions as do…). Basically, you make it a ‘free fire zone’ for the criminals.
This isn’t a hypothetical. We’ve tried it. Repeatedly. IN the USA. Chicago is our Murder Capital. They have gun requirements so tight my son decided not to even try to take his rifle with him.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/greghengler/2012/03/30/chicago_murder_capital_since_2008not_a_peep_from_obama
This after they outright banned hand guns and forbid any gun shops.
So please, before spouting off about how some FOREIGN country stats compare, think, just a little bit, about how different the populations and cultures are. Australia does not have a multi $Billion drug cartel operation on a thousand mile long essentially open border; as just one example.
Also realize that you need to compare ALL violence if you ban guns. While shootings drop, knifings and poisonings go up. So to say the UK shootings drop is a weak statement missing half the story.
BTW a “shot by dogs” statistic has got to be one of the more loony things I’ve heard in a long time…
@Simon:
As you point out, there are often places with guns and little problem. It’s about the people involved.
For the guy who had the ‘break’ this time: Yes, I think he had rather significant mental problems and not just ADHD. But I’m left wondering how many of those came as a result of spending many years medicated? We have no clue what happens to kids (on a whole population basis) when their developmental years are done in a drug fog.
BobN:
Good points….
When I was a kid, pretty much every house had a gun, often loaded, behind a door. Farm town. LOTS of local hunting (big pheasant area). Mormon town (so expected to be prepared for bad times).
I can’t remember a single shooting in anger other than a guy committing a crime being caught by the cops. There may have been one, but I don’t remember any.
We had one guy accidentally shot when pheasant hunting ( the other guy got excited and ‘swung through’ his position…) and I think one guy leaned a loaded shotgun on a fence, it fell over, and he got some pellets. That’s about it IIRC.
At about 9? 10? A neighbor kid showed me HIS Derringer… All I had was a 22 rifle… Most kids had been shooting from age 7 or so… Yes, we had KIDS with unlocked guns in their rooms and sometimes carrying them around… No Problem. (Something about blowing a pheasant to bits ‘clarifies the mind’ about what these things do in real life… I’m not fond of hunting to this day…)
The burglary rate was pretty darned low though ;-)
“Home Invasion Robbery” simply didn’t exist. There wasn’t even a term for it.
Why? Because every one knew that they would be likely to be “stopped by someone with a gun” if they tried anything…
@GallopingCamel:
IMHO, the practice with weapons serves two other important functions.
1) It lets you know how bad you really are so you get less ‘cocky’ about things. ;-)
2) It “informs the mind” about just how serious these things are and builds in concern and care standards. Heck, just regularly following range discipline brings respect for the weapon.
Those Swiss, BTW, are typically trained to function in the Military. Don’t know if it is still true, but some time back they were issued a military rifle to keep at home with ammunition…
@Craig King:
Those experiences are more applicable to the USA than anything from Australia…
@P.G.Sharrow:
They are keeping the ‘disease’ but now lumping Aspe’s in with Autism as a “spectrum”, so you have really been made more abi-normal… (Why? So more kids can get the drugs and special treatment that the Autism diagnosis brings… )
@PowerGrab:
Interesting point on the wheat… Some relatives have gone to all filtered water due to digestive issues… Chloramine is lethal to some fish. Never liked that idea…. If I must remove it from the water so my fish don’t die, why am I drinking it?….
@John Robertson:
What I find amazing is that the same folks demanding fewer guns also demand to be kept safe by having a hoard of “men with guns” show up when something goes wrong. They seem to think that the, as Jason put it, “funny hats and uniforms” changes something. It doesn’t.
(Some US cities even went so far as to have the police disarmed when off duty. The same person who was expected to be armed on duty was forbidden off duty. Clearly the cure for crime is to force everyone to wear a funny hat and uniform…)
@Sera:
Worse than that, there are ongoing efforts to extend the ‘gun free zone’ to 1000 feet (or more) around all schools. In most suburbs that makes pretty much all areas ‘forbidden’. So you can’t even live near by and have a gun.
@Espen:
One of the ‘unknowns’ is that as that ‘benefit’ ebbs, the dose gets cranked up. (And “cranked” is the right word…). What we don’t know is do the side effects get cranked too…
Does a drug that helps at 5 years old make a violent sociopath on a speed bender at 20? And with what withdrawal problems?
@Judy F.
We regularly got praise and comments on how well behaved and “good” or kids were. Being as this is a highly “progressive liberal” area, I’d take great pleasure in answering the pretty much everpresent question of “How did you do it?” with “Well, we smacked ’em around and spanked them when they did something wrong.”
While it got us lots of “dirty looks” and at least one threat that it was Child Abuse…
The simple fact is that we DID spank when verbal didn’t work, and didn’t need to do much at all after about 3 years old. We explained what they did wrong, that we had told them several times to not do it, and that since they were not taking directions, we would have to resort to pain / spanking.
Frankly, I can only remember spanking my daughter maybe twice? (And even then not very hard… it was more an emotional thing… I think.) The son was more stubborn. Maybe 4 times?
After that it was usually 2 verbals and a threat “Do you WANT to be spanked?” was enough even for big things.
What I’ve seen from folks with the Dr. Spock method (and related) is a bunch of brats that just have broken behaviour. Often screaming and shouting and “self actualizing” everyone around them into a ‘bad spot’. Those children then end up in a school that can’t do physical discipline and / or even say much negative to them. Eventually they grow up and run smack into the harshness of reality and some of them just can’t hack it. (Some others can, but seem to manifest some sociopathic tendencies… I think they end up in politics ;-)
So to some extent I think it may well be the move to “modern” child rearing methods, then you get kids that never had to sit still and take directions being medicated instead of taught how to behave. Then again, I have a sample size of my 2 vs about a dozen others (plus the spousal report from school by proxy…) so it’s not a large enough nor controlled sample…
@John Robertson:
Like the joke! (Too bad it has so much truth in it…)
@Martin Fisher:
Today, unless you are a placid angel, someone will try to ‘diagnose’ you as something… We had some fat kids and some hyper kids when I was a kid. Now they are ‘clinically obese’ and ‘AHDH’… I think they were just fat and hyper… and normal variations…
When there is an altercation between a bully and victim, the bully should go to detention and the victim to counseling. JMO.
Now this district Administrator has the right Idea:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/18/stop-school-shootings-by-letting-teachers-fire-back-say-texas-officials/
Of course he is in Texas! pg
About a week ago our family was out doing some Christmas shopping, and I almost suggested we should go to the Clackamas mall south of here. I thought, “It’s not necessary to go that far,” and did not say anything. That very evening, a gunman entered the mall and went to the food court and opened fire, killing 2 people and wounding others. When his rifle jammed, while he was pulling the charging handle, an armed citizen took cover for a good shot. The criminal saw this man and ran, which bought time for the police to arrive minutes later.
http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html
Now recall also that there were two Aurora Co shootings. One was in the theater (a no gun free zone) and the other was at a church. The would-be gunman at the church was shot and wounded by a woman with a concealed weapon. He had a lot of rounds with him. I feel much safer with my neighbors having the hunting guns and hand guns of their choice, and concealed carry.
@jim2 says: 19 December 2012 at 6:48 pm
My experience with California is that victims get detention and bullies get to continue their business. Must be that many school administrators were bullies in school. Of the school administrators that I know of from grade school they were all bullies.
So when my son, a gentle giant, was being attacked by a bully and his friends and the school authorities refused to do anything about it. I told him that the next time it happened, turn and knock the kid down. A few days later I get this call from the school to come and get my son, he was being expelled for a week for fighting. At the school office, this principle reads me the “riot act” about their “0” tolerance for fighting. When she ran out of gas I turned to my son and asked “Did you knock him down” My son said “Yeah” I said “Fine, lets go have a hamburger” and we left that administrator with her mouth hanging open. :-) pg
@Jim2:
I’d give the victim a scholarship to the local Karate Dojo and put an ankle bracelet tracker on the bully (who would also do detention AND be forbidden from martial arts…) In about 6 months to a year the victims will be left alone… or else…
@P.G.Sharrow:
IMHO it’s gotten worse over the years. Don’t know why. When I was looking to become a cop, they were all pretty good joes. At least out where I was. Now they seem much more interested in the Union Pension and the power trip…
@J. Ferguson:
As late as 1934 you could own machine guns without a license and cannon. Back when we actually followed the constitution, Civil War era officers were expected to show up with their cannon that were privately owned and kept on their property.
As late as the ’60s you could buy a tank or jet fighter. Then some fool built an ice cream parlor off the end of a runway in Sacramento. A ‘surplus’ jet fighter had a flameout on takeoff and bellied into the place, killing a bunch of kids (someone’s party). A rush job law got slammed through and since then all aircraft are “de-milled” and functionally destroyed. (Made non-flyable).
As a consequence there will be a giant hole in the ‘flying museum’ of this era of aircraft. You can still buy Russian et. al. Just not American.
So the answer to the “escalation” was supposed to be that the private militia would escalate as well. But that, too, is now ignored and broken. So we have exactly what was forbidden by the constitution (due to the risk of Tyranny): A large standing army and a functionally disarmed populace.
The Constitutional approach worked just fine up to about W.W.I and The Progressive Era. It struggled through W.W.II (when, if folks recall, the UK was so disarmed they almost fell to the Germans and we had to rush literal boatloads of guns over… many from private hands). Since then it’s been slowly disassembled as folks have chosen to trade liberty for (false) safety. The end game of that is collapse into Tyranny. Just a matter of time once the change is done.
Speaking of which, on D.W. (German) news they reported that Obama has appointed Biden to run some kind of commission to cook up how to properly disarm folks via appropriate “gun control” to assure that no bad thing with guns ever happens again… Looks like primary goal is outlawing self-loaders and ugly guns.
Well, either that’s the tip, or we’re going to get one heck of a Republican Surge in the bi-election to congress…
I wonder if it’s time to publish my DIY ‘not a gun’ that’s quite lethal and nearly impossible to track… (Think ‘plumbers delite with spray can power and poison darts’) Also of interest will be “how to roll your own ‘paint balls’ with fillings of Anthrax and Poison Gas”… Improvised munitions technology can be so much ‘fun’… Oh, and did you know that a bag of baking flour placed on top of a ‘tuna can’ sized lozenge of explosives (that can also be made at home) in the middle of a living room sized space makes a keen “fuel / air explosive” and will bring down the house? So they better get ready to ban PVC pipe, hairspray, darts, “poky things” in general, paint ball, and flour…
I’d really really rather not have such things be publicly spread around; but if the need comes…
And that, BTW, is why focus on the ‘tool’ is exactly wrong. There are no limits on what the tool can be, or become. I can make gun propellant / explosives out of a cotton T-Shirt, battery acid, and a common fertilizer. I know it can be done as I did it at about age 12. During W.W.II, the French made explosive ‘baguettes’ out of nitro-starch made by a similar path. Nobody looks twice at a Frenchman with a baguette on the bike. Nor at a kid with a T-Shirt…. Given $20, the local hardware store, and about 5 hours, I can have a very competent and fully powered “device”. Not one of the ingredients can be reasonably banned nor seems very suspect.
For those who might wonder about my ‘interests’ (who haven’t kept up with my history here), my Dad was an Army Combat Engineer and taught me how to disarm W.W.II era German mines… just in case I’d ever run into one in California, I guess ;-) Basically, knowing my Dads expertise in blowing up bridges and building them, disarming land mines and booby traps, and setting them; it piqued my interest as a kid. I was pretty much ‘over it’ by about 18. But along the way soaked up a pretty good list of formulas, processes, and trade secrets. So I’ve made ‘nitrogen-tri-iodide’ (a contact explosive). In fact, in our high school chemistry class the teacher did it as a demonstration. Definitely got us interested! (Today he’d be arrested, no doubt). So “no worries” OK? It’s just old stuff from the dusty corners of 4 decades ago…
Oh Well… as they say… Maybe the Republicans and Rural Democrats will discover a spine and actually read the constitution and follow it… Probably too much to ask them to understand WHY the populace are supposed to be armed.
Jason Calley. Including war deaths is not relevant to peacetime. I notice that you omitted US war deaths, in both the US civil war and the second world war.
From Wikipedia.
“The American Civil War ~ remains the deadliest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 750,000 soldiers[5] and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. Historian John Huddleston estimates the death toll at ten percent of all Northern males 20–45 years old, and 30 percent of all Southern white males aged 18–40.”
Prior to the introduction of Australian gun control laws in 1996 there were 16 mass shootings in the preceding 18 years, after 1996 to today there have been zero mass shootings.
A link found in a comment on Goddard’s blog.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20765259
No doubt the US has additional factors such as drugs and gangs, but easy access to weapons is I think the primary factor. Though, removing that easy access is perhaps an almost intractable problem in the case of the US. I also get the impression that the US seems to have an almost endemic cultural glorification of violence, but that’s just my impression based on watching UK news, and I guess bad things are more often reported on the news. I never go to the USA, so have no first hand experience.
Wal Mart out of stock: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/guns-out-of-stock-at-wal-mart-as-magazine-prices-surge-on.html
E.M.
A question.
If availability is a major factor, why do the Swiss not seem to make similar news headlines with their
“rifle in every wardrobe” approach to defense?
Obamaland : What Happens When Guns Are Illegal
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/obamaland-what-happens-when-guns-are-illegal/
and
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57558351/chicago-gang-violence-shows-no-signs-of-stopping/
@J Martin; We no longer have easy access to firearms, but we still have access. As long as the Americans are armed and dangerous the rest of the world has hope that the Americans will prevent the take over of the world by the self appointed Elite. Actually in spite of the MSM frenzy the United States is very safe and getting safer. There 350 million people in this country, all you need is one flaming nut case to give the slavers an excuse to drum up the progressive drive to chain everyone that questions their vision. pg
To a large extent, the whole gun debate may be rendered useless by technology. People are now making guns with 3D printers. There is an open source effort to develop and share the databases. The first few did not hold up well with the plastic construction, but that is quickly changing as Stainless Steel, Brass are now material that can be printed. The cat will so be out of the bag. The next step, ban 3D printers!
@ J Martin “Including war deaths is not relevant to peacetime. I notice that you omitted US war deaths, in both the US civil war and the second world war.”
Yes. The discussion was about the civilian death toll, comparing the reputed high murder rate in the (armed) U.S. with the reputed low murder rate in (mostly disarmed) Europe. Counting deaths of enlisted military seemed to me to be not relevant. On the other hand, counting civilians killed by their own government seems very relevant — at least to me. Were the people of the Congo at war with their Belgium government? No. Were the Soviet citizens killed in the Holodomor at war with their government? No. Were the Armenians at war with their Turkish government? No. And so on… They were all citizens, non combatants, who had been first disarmed by their own governments and then murdered. They were not victims of enemy fire, they were not combatants, they were not killed by supposed hostile forces in declared wars. They were murdered by fellow countrymen — either directly by being shot, or while being held at gun point and then killed by other handy means.
The subject seems pretty clear to me, but perhaps I have misread your point. (I do in fact sometimes get things very wrong!) If so, please rephrase your point and I will try to understand.
While I was still in the UK, my neighbour bought an arbalet (pistol-sized crossbow) with a carbon-fibre bow. It sent a bolt through 2-inch oak. Such things do not need a license, but are maybe a bit slower to load and cock than a pistol (buy several if you want to kill more than one person). Just as deadly, though, and quiet. If you miss, you might get a second shot. In France I can get them on the market-stalls. Someone with a will to kill people will find a way, as other people have pointed out here. A Naval sabre is very quick – Olympic sabre fights last around 10 seconds and that’s when both are armed.
A while back my step-daughter went through a stage of “depression” and was put on to a drug whose name I’ve forgotten at the moment (a Prozac work-alike). She told me that she’d had a lot of thoughts of suicide whilst on the drug, and it seems that this is a known side-effect. It doesn’t take too much of a stretch to think that someone wanting to kill themselves would also want to take others with them. Given that we are all slightly different in our biochemistry, using a complex drug may give unexpected side effects on a few people, so over-use of them when there is another way of fixing the problem is maybe not a good idea.
The main thing about making a gun (by 3D printing) is to make sure that it doesn’t explode, and so the gun could be plastic with a steel barrel moulded in. Gun-making has never been beyond the skills of a hobby-engineering shop – the main problem would be making the bullets if you couldn’t buy them. Maybe not such a problem buying bullets in the States – it seems there have been a lot of deliveries.
E.M.
The Sacremento F86 crash had nothing to do with a flame-out. It was due to failure of pilot to rotate to the pitch needed to fly off the runway. One friend has Mig 21, another Mig 15 which are each very reasonable fighter jets to own given that each was designed to fly out of umimproved fields and be maintained by minimally proficient support. Problem is cost of fuel. Mig 15 burns 360 gph with jet A now at $6/gallon/ Mig 21 much more. If you’d like to see the Mig 15, give me a call next time you are in Florida. Mig 21 is in Chicago.
The real problem with civilians owning fighter jets is the astonishing cost of maintenance on US jets, A4D for example which is a nice little plane, cost of fuel, and FAA restrictions on altitudes they can be flown enroute which tend to increase fuel consumption.
@BobN:
Don’t need a 3-D printer, though they make it easier for low skill level folks. Steel pipe is easy to buy and shotgun shells easy to load. When I was hanging out with cops as a wanna be they took us on a tour of their ‘museum’ of “zip guns” taken from various folks… You would not believe what can be made to fire…
@Simon:
I just happen to have a compound bow ;-) (Indian rate of fire with lesser tools exceeded that of Cavalry with rifles)… Oh, and with a bit of practice a person can match semi-auto rates of fire with lever action and revolver. My preferred firearm, in fact, is a lever action rifle in .357 Magnum / .38 Special. Magazine is about 8 to 10 depending on round used. You can “stuff more in the gate” at any time, so functional magazine size is that hip pack… Also can shoot shot rounds that, due to rifling, spread fairly fast. These can be intermixed with hollow points, round ball, whatever.
Per bullets: Not hard to make at all. Get 9 mm bar stock in the metal of your choice. Cut chunks off… Be advised tin and copper or brass make illegal armor penetrating rounds and “that would be wrong”… I’ve cast bullets from plumbing solder. It works very very well (but avoid getting the new tin based ‘green’ plumbing solder, as it is mostly tin, so you end up with those armor piercing bullets)…. legal in California in Rifles, but not in pistols. Seems they want you to be sure to have lots of extra muzzle velocity if using armor piercing to assure it works at it’s best. (Or they are just incredibly ignorant of physics…) If you don’t have a manufactured bullet mold, a chunk of metal drilled with 9mm holes of the desired length, laid on / vice gripped to, a bottom plate can just have lead poured over it. The bullets will be crude, not suited to target practice. I’m sure that will matter … /sarcoff;>
So who’s going to ban metal sheet stock and cast iron skillets? And solder… (use lead batteries if that ever happens. Need to refine the lead. Not hard…)
If, by ‘bullets’ you meant ‘cartridges’ (that whole brass and holds the powder part too, not just the lead / copper bullet that leaves the gun in a hurry) they are harder to make but “doable” at any machine shop. While swaged brass is cheapest in bulk, you can just take bar stock and machine them. Slow, expensive. But they are reusable. Best improvised path, IMHO, is machine the base and a stock of metal above it, then swage the rest in a die with a press and trim to size. Or go “caseless” (but that gets into another tech that I don’t want to “share” … )
Just remember that the metal cartridge is a technology from about 1800. It takes 1800 era technology to make. i.e. not much. BTW, in my “archives” are a box or two of PLASTIC cased ammo. Don’t know if they are still made. So take one apart (the bullet just pulls out) and make a mold from it. Cast more. Fill and use… Going to ban plastic?…
For ‘improvised munitions’ the shotgun is best. In the Philippines during various occupations they were forbidden to have guns / ammo. The preferred gun was the short double barrel shotgun. Old shells were reloaded by hand (even the primers were reset and refilled). The “load” was whatever metal bits were to hand. Nails preferred. Thoroughly nasty, and impossible to prevent. ( I can make a primitive shotgun from parts at the hardware store in about a week. A more skilled metal worker could do it in a day.)
Oh, and just consider what can be done with a SuperSoaker full of Iso-Propanol fitted with a spark discharge igniter at the muzzle…
That’s just the START of what is possible, and easy…
And, believe it or not, I’m not even all that “into” the whole scene. Never paid much attention and even that ended about 40 years ago. The more ‘hardcore’ folks make ME blanch… (Making a high explosive out of camp stove fuel, for example, and casting cannons / mortars from scrap metal.)
(Though I do occasionally ponder ways to use new-tech to make guns. Part of the “Smith” heritage as in “Gun Smith”. In the days of swords and such the Smith WAS the arms industry. So it’s kind of a heritage thing… I’ve thought up some methods that I’ve not seen used anywhere that would be quite easy to do ‘improvised’. But again, don’t wish it widely known. The most interesting one is an assassins gun that does not show up on x-ray, and leaves no traceable bullet in the target. There is a projectile, but no, um, “distinguishing features”… I think it’s clear why that would be a ‘bad idea’ to have widely known…)
@J. Ferguson:
Ah, the perils of trying to fish out a memory of a decades old memory of a news story that was probably reported incorrectly anyway. It was on TV (as I was living where the Sacramento station was what we watched sometimes at the time.) Likely just the news reader making something up…
I’ll holler next time I’m in Florida, but it will be a while. Likely to visit Chicago first, to see the “kid”.
Yes, they are ‘rich man toys’, but there are a lot of millionaires… (I’m just not one of them). Or, like the “Confederate Air Force” a group that flies them to special events and shows and then you charge a ticket to see inside… Frankly, I mostly just am offended at the deliberate destruction. Even if the thing is just going to be on static display for 50 years. It would be very very nice if in 2060 a historian could see how the sucker really worked(!). There’s an SR-71 on display at a military museum. I was dying to see it. Got there. The engines are gone. Nice little wooden mockup inserts. Sigh. One of THE most important bits to preserve in a museum, trashed. Just wrong. (And it’s not like they have to worry about folks stealing it. This is on a military base inside several gates and fences with armed folks on duty…)
Oh Well. Looks like the best aviation history will be written by the Russians… and then the Chinese in a few years.
(Personally, were I filthy rich, I’d be trying to get a WartHog… but I like low and slow ;-) Though with the gun removed, it’s likely to be a lot faster. Might have to load a VW Bug in the space to keep the balance right ;-)
E.M, your point on the tools of destruction strikes a cord, every time I fly I spend the flight thinking of ways to defeat the half-assed airport security,I frighten myself. The handheld mag-rail gun is probably constructible from off the shelf parts today,battery capacities are good, pulse timing board most complicated part.
We humans excel at destruction. Either Henry Mencken or JB Priestly said it best,
“The ghoul within needs no encouragement”. Or words to that effect.
Liberals as I define them don’t seem to understand the logic of, never corner a frightened man.
And will argue that they could never behave like a man pushed beyond his civility, possibly why they do not think people should be allowed to defend themselves. What do you need a gun for? The Cops are only minutes away. Yah when seconds count.
This is one weird interview
[SNIP]
[Reply: Yes, too weird. Not interested in chopped, pasted, re-edited interviews designed to make someone (anyone) look bad. It’s just “attack journalism” and “insults to the person”. -E.M.Smith]
@ John Robertson, who ended his comment with- “… What do you need a gun for? The Cops are only minutes away. Yah when seconds count.
Precisely the point. Also, the return volley rhetorical question is, “Why do the cops need guns?”
@E.M. re .357 lever action: That’s my next purchase. Nice feature is that you can have a .357 handgun and rifle that shoot .357 or .38 special which increases the odds of having something available to fire.
To all: I checked out Buds Gun Store online last night to see what effect the President’s press conference at noon might have had. The site was crippled from the traffic and most of the hi-cap gun listings were marked ‘sold out.’ That online store will probably be ’empty’ by the weekend.
More on printable guns … some of the patterns are being moved to other sites.
“In the wake of one of worst shooting incidents in American history, the 3D-printing firm Makerbot has deleted a collection of blueprints for gun components from Thingiverse, its popular user-generated content website that hosts 3D-printable files. Though Thingiverse has long banned designs for weapons and their components in its terms of service, it rarely enforced the rule until the last few days, when the company’s lawyer sent notices to users that their software models for gun parts were being purged from the site.
…
One letter forwarded to me by Thingiverse user Michael Guslick, for instance, explained that a design for an AR-15 trigger guard he uploaded to the site violated its rule that users not “collect, upload, transmit, display or distribute any User Content… that…promotes illegal activities or contributes to the creation of weapons,” as the letter reads. “In exercising our policy enforcement discretion, we have decided to remove the…content as of today.””
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/12/19/3d-printing-startup-makerbot-cracks-down-on-printable-gun-designs/
Hi E.M.
FWIW, the F86 take off problem was that flying required increased pitch at rotation (time to pitch-up). IIRC the correct pitch was 8 degrees up. There was a line on the attitude indicator to indicate this pitch. 8 degrees would get the wing working. Any more would increase drag enough that it would take more runway to reach flying speed, if ever. Although all wing designs are subject to this condition, swept wings much more so.
Bluntly, the pilot had no idea what he was doing – in that plane.
One argument that might be put with regard to holding off the government with what’s in your basement gun-rack is the apparent effectiveness of the Syrian rebels. It’s true that their Ak-47s tend to be fully automatic and they also have RPGS, and now some tanks, but is doesn’t seem impossible if there was a really popular insurrection here, that similar things might happen.
For me, though, i have moderate confidence in our political processes that eventually, EVENTUALLY, some approximation of the right thing will be done.
I also think that the purpose intended by the second amendment has become obsolete due to technical progress. Given this, it seems to me that it would behoove those unhappy enough with what is going on to pursue political remedies given how unlikely it is that anything else will work.
And this doesn’t mean that i think everyone’s guns should be seized.
I’m beginning to be concerned about my inability to get the story out.
Although the best pitch angle for getting an F86 off the ground was 8 degrees, it was inferred from photographs of the “take-off” run that landed in the ice cream store that the pilot had pulled the pitch up to about 20 degrees which basically didn’t work.
@H.R.:
Make that revolver the Ruger Single Action with the interchangeable 9mm cylinder and you can use NATO goods as well…. Not that I’ve thought this through or anything ;-) So a CZ-75 / 85 on one hip, Ruger on the other. You can carefully hunt while preserving brass with one, or swap to the other if an “Aw Shit” happens. As the Rugar can be loaded with very hot .357 Mag, it is capable (just) of taking down the local wild pigs / hogs (they are not yet the Russian Wild Boar hybrids that are running around the South….) and dropping the local black bears. Were I in the places with Grizzly Bear and / or Hybrid Boar, I’d have a .44 Mag instead. IFF you can find one, Ruger made a .45 Colt / .45 ACP revolver that can use +P “Ruger Only” loadings, and that would replace the .357 / 9mm …
http://www.gunblast.com/Ruger_Bisley45.htm
I’ve got a Lee Loader in 9mm (the first one I ever got) and it works very very well. In the Ruger with each round made “just so” in the LEE, it’s about the most accurate pistol I’ve had… Other than a Thompson Contender…
Oh, and the pump shotgun lives in the vehicle during a bugout. So when birds are available, it comes out. Or if you need the added shot volume. Or a big ass slug…
You might guess from this that my “Aw Shit bugout plan” involves going to where the boar and bear hang out. Not only do they supply lunch, they sometimes think you ought to be lunch… so a “good idea” is to be able to explain to them who is what… ;-)
Oh, and thanks to a ‘no hunting giant kitty kat’ law, we’ve had mountain lions eat a couple of folks near here. One was on a ‘jogging trail’ near Palo Alto. It was a bitter / sweet / sad thing to see the hyper green locals suddenly realizing that THEY could be on the menu, and due to their own actions… Even just a short couple of miles from Stanford…
So if living in a tent in the local hills after the Great Quake / Ah Shit / Whatever… one really does need to be prepared for a visit from Kitty…
And folks wonder “Why would anyone need a gun?”… If you are wandering in the woods in California, you are now “on the menu”. It’s just a matter of who had, or didn’t have, lunch lately…
Though there were ‘pets and farm animals’ going missing near some other cities and towns too. Even in the suburbs. Some ‘missing kids’ are in those areas too. It’s not yet proven, but suspicious. It looks like “Kitty” and occasionally Mr. Bear are finding it’s easy to pick up lunch from those manicured meadows where we set out lunch for them…
So when Mr. Bear is looking at you through the patio screen door and licking his chops, I’m sure you’ll be able to wait for the cops to get around to you… if they didn’t just hand the call off to “Animal Control” to stop by tomorrow…
@Jim2:
It’s really silly to ban the plans. It just means that someone else will start a sharing site in competition with them…
@J. Ferguson:
I’d not claim obsolescence for militia arms just yet. A whole lot of folks in Afghanistan are still using bolt rifles. In fact, when ammunition supplies are limited, slowing down the rate of fire is a feature. So much so than many military removed full auto from their rifles and put on a burst of 2 or 3 setting.
In fact, were I buying a new rifle, I’d be getting a Lee Enfield SMLE in .308 NATO. “The Mad Minute” is no joke. The reason that it was kept in service so long was that it was so good and so fast. Realize that the Mad Minute was AIMED fire…
Unfortunately, I don’t have the need for more nor the money to indulge it just for fun.
But were I looking for a “Legitimate Hunting Rifle”, that’s what I’d go for… Fires aimed fire as fast as an autoloader, fast magazine changes, accurate aimed fire, NATO caliber… and it’s “just a hunting bolt action rifle”…
(In California we’ve lived with these nutty gun bans longer than most. It has to be nearly 20? 30? years now since they first started picking off particular configurations of guns to vilify…)
Oh, and I “got it” on your first description, but the added detail that he hit 20 degrees is interesting in that it says he was a bit panicked OR trying to “hot dog it” and power through. In either case, not understanding his equipment…
Classic problem, folks think pointing the nose up more makes it go up. Folks doing stall training are supposed to learn that’s not true… that there is a ‘sweet spot’ that works best…
So he likely headed down the runway, pulled back, and either thought he could just hit the throttle and power up, or pulled too far, didn’t rise, and started pulling back more making it worse, not better. “You can’t fix stupid”. (But you can have the good sense not to build ice cream parlors just off the end of the runway…)
Chiefio,
“I’d not claim obsolescence for militia arms just yet. A whole lot of folks in Afghanistan are still using bolt rifles. In fact, when ammunition supplies are limited, slowing down the rate of fire is a feature.”
While I am a fan of the Browning “300” MG with its ability to keep firing even when the barrel is glowing red, my favorite “Small Arm” is the bipod “303” Bren gun (I am very old indeed). As it only has a 28 round clip I never engage “Automatic”. Semi-automatic improves accuracy and preserves ammo.
With regard to bolt action rifles in Afghansistan, many years ago I spent some time at the Attock gorge in Pakistan which is near the conjunction of the Kabul (clear blue) and Indus (dirty brown) rivers. The wonderful Pathun tribesmen were friendly back then and showed me their rifles with great pride. The vast majority were Mark III Lee Enfields. This is a fine bolt action “303” rifle with five or ten round magazines, effective up to 800 yards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee-Enfield
After a while it dawned on me that the rifles they showed me were not British made. The main clue was the title of the rifle stamped near the chamber that was often mispelled; sometimes the letters were upside down. So I asked some questions to find out where these weapons came from and was astounded to learn that they were hand made in Afghanistan.
Kipling on the wars in Afghanistan:
“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!”
Just for the record: Red State homicide rates declining among the lowest in the world http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/red-state-homicide-rates-declining-among-the-lowest-in-the-world/
And from Ron Paul: Government Security just another kind of violence http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-24/ron-paul-government-security-just-another-kind-violence
@de Haan
So we can conclude that most red states are tranquil states, and the others contain crimeridden big cities?
That’s what it says Petrossa.
In the mean time Obama says that other peoples children deserve less protection than his: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/obama-says-that-other-peoples-children-deserve-less-protection-than-his/
@Petrossa:
Dallas is not exactly a “small” city… ( it takes a few hours to drive across the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex). The correct conclusion is that you “Don’t Mess With Texas” ’cause they have big ass guns and know how to use them, and will. So somebody wants to steal big Texas Trucks is likely to have a very very short career, one way or another, and most folks know this “up front” so don’t even try. A “home invasion” is more properly called “suicidal intent”.
In short: “An armed society is a polite society”… and a peaceful one.
There’s a reason why you are far more likely to be shot in Chicago than Dallas. Chicago has the strongest gun laws (essentially a ban on many / most kinds and at one time an actual ban on handguns of all kinds, only removed by a court finding recently – though still no gun shops so buying one becomes hard to do…)
You can look at the statistics across the nation, it’s consistent. More guns, less crime, less violent crime, less deaths and dying. Just the way it is.
Can there be cultural differences that make the USA different from the EU / UK? Certainly. Not particularly related to guns though. UK is an island, easier to prevent smuggling. It is a more uniform culture, and more fundamentally pacifist. (Mom, being from the UK, raised me to be a ‘proper gentleman’ in many ways… that mostly got my face pounded… No guns involved, but a big cultural disconnect. I was pacifist, ‘they’ were not. Took me better part of 18 years to figure that out…and how to deal with it.) And that is the fundamental reason why comparisons of the USA to EU / UK just don’t work.
The USA is a self selected subset of the world. Those folks who wanted to be “left the hell alone” enough to go to the other side of the world, and cranky enough to make it work. Folks who were a bit less ‘tolerant’ of shit in their faces and oppression. Now I don’t know if it’s a genetic selection to some extent, or just a cultural selection; but that doesn’t change that “It just is.”
So it’s just not going to work to try to turn the USA in an EU-Lite.
Sorry. No can do.
Now, back at America, How peaceful a place is does map partly to rural / red vs. blue / urban. But the ‘gun crime’ rate rises most as the ‘gun laws’ get more ‘strict’. There are anomalies, though. So, for example, take San Jose. The Western part has very very low gun crime rate. I attended a “Neighborhood Watch” meeting where we pestered the Cops about our crime rate. They had trouble figuring out just how many years ago the last murder had been (and it was not a gun crime). So the more affluent areas have the lowest “issues”. Go to “East San Jose”, and gun crime goes way up. One area had a reputation for frequent shootings. The Hispanic dominated area where drugs were dealt a lot. King & Story. (It is somewhat better now, 20? years later). And no, that’s not particularly a comment on Hispanics. More on poverty and a ‘crime culture’ of drug dealing. The same Hispanics, in the rich areas working as Engineers and V.P.s have low crime rates.
Want to cut gun related violence and deaths? Legalize drugs and make the society more prosperous for all. It’s that simple.
(Essentially, the Rich Folks in Saratoga and Palo Alto have a near zero gun homicide rate. What there is tends to be from ‘drive in crime’ where folks from the “East” drive in to the rich areas and end up running into someone mid-crime, or they are suicides. And yes, those “rich liberals” have guns… A guy who was a tech V.P. at a name company and “way left” showed me his hidden collection once. It was 1/2 a room full… BTW, this is most starkly seen in Palo Alto vs East Palo Alto. The rich elite vs where their black servants lived back in the early days of the region. At one time it was a very high risk to even drive into East Palo Alto on a Friday night… These places are about 10 miles apart down one main road… )
So, you see, “poverty and desperation” mixed with “illegal drugs” is the major determinant. (The Rich get their drugs by prescription…)
So any reasonable cross region, cross cultural, or cross border comparisons need to allow for the “poverty axis” and for the “social crimes” definitions.
There is also a ‘crowding’ axis. Cities are more prone to all forms of crime and violence just from the proximity pressures. One guy living on a ranch isn’t very likely to be bothered by the people who are not there…
Put all that together:
Folks in rural places, even red ‘conservative’ ones, who want to do some drugs are generally far enough away from anyone else that the fact of it being a ‘crime’ doesn’t put much pressure on them. So the ‘social crimes’ axis gets diminished despite the actual state of the laws. Similarly, folks who own land are fundamentally ‘richer’ than folks on the dole in a city (despite lower money income averages.)
The end game of all this is that rural is safer than urban, and “red states” are safer than “blue states” and guns violence is directly proportional to restrictive gun laws.
“Reality just is. -E.M.Smith”
Hope that helps…
@GallopingCamel:
Were I in any non-Nato and especially a former British possession country, I’d go for the .303 round. (Easier to load your own in some ways). But as they are rare in the USA, the .308 is the better choice… here…
Saw a show once on Afghanistan that bothered to show the local Smiths making guns. A smithy is a smithy is a smithy… They were doing what my ancestors did 100 years ago. Fine hand crafted metal working with tools they made themselves. Everything up from dirt. (Though they did get some raw metals without needing to refine their own). “Somewhere” I’ve got a write up of how to turn ‘found metals’ like old car bumpers and frames into useful articles using a home made forge…
Maybe that’s the fundamental reason I think banning gun sales is just stupid. I know they can be made by hand with a pile of bricks, some charcoal, a blower, and some lumps of old cars…
My car mechanic has a lathe and decent welding equipment. If you move up to that scale of tooling, you can make a machine gun in about a 1/2 day from plumbing and old car parts. (See the history of the STEN gun… designed to be made by hand by British bicycle and car shops and anyone who worked pipes…)
I think I could make a workable ‘open bolt’ gun just with what is laying around the garage. I know I could make a black powder canon (of about 2 inch bore) in about 4 hours…. and the powder in 6 more. (Need to run to the store for some standard off the shelf materials for that).
How do you ban ‘knowing’?…
It hasn’t worked in Afghanistan…
The last posting on the subject: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/why-gun-control-is-important-to-government/
@R. de Haan: Gun control is especially important when the public loses confidence in their government:
Gun control is a thinly veiled attempt by those losing the AGW debate to control the newly awakened public.
Why not resolve the issue, the AGW debate, and avoid violence by openly and rationally following scientific principles?
1. A Hungarian astronomer asked an important question in 1977 about Earth’s heat source in Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v270/n5633/abs/270159a0.html
2. A Japanese scientist suggested the answer in 1945, as noted in a one-page reply to the question in Nature:
Click to access Yes_the_Sun_is_a_pulsar.pdf
3. After Nature publishes the experimental basis for the question, the answer, and an open discussion, then
4. The AGW debate can be settled by scientists with demonstrated ability to forecast the future behavior of pulsars and other ordinary variable stars like the Sun.
Best wishes for a Peaceful New Year,
– Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Never say last posting: CIVIL WAR: SENATE TO GO FOR HANDGUNS
http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/assault-weapons
omanuel, take a read at this link and watch Penn and Teller on gun control: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/penn-and-teller-on-gun-control/
Yep, civil war it is: http://modernsurvivalblog.com/lessons-from-history/the-attempt-to-disarm-the-american/
I have lost all faith in the American Spirit and ideals, I believe they will start limiting guns and over 10 or 20 years they will be eliminated. America will gripe and whine, but in the end will do nothing. I no longer believe the spirit is there to stand up to the government over reach. IMHO
Civil war – it won’t happen!
American people, as in general human people, have a strong resilience against adversity. You do not need to recur to strange actions to prevent imaginary reactions when applying needed economic corrections. As an experienced south american, having survived similar planned “economic shocks”, as your “fiscal cliff” really is, you will survive, and if something is needed, is to harden measures, to recover as soon as possible.
The funny thing is that those who pretend not having any “care” for anybody (which is very easy if you are morally unconscious), really “care for themselves” so much, that they fear to become suddenly “hated” and worry a lot about their “precious” lives being somewhat affected; anyway the time has arrived for them to become conscious about what “Karma” means :-)
They should try “Ayahuasca”:
[Reply: On the one hand, it sounds like he’s got hold of some good drugs… On the other hand, his ‘left brain chatter’ being gone is a normal state for me. I freely and easily swap from Right Brain to Left Brain modes and sometimes run both in parallel. Only late in life did I realize most folks don’t do that… So I have some of those ‘vision quest’ things most any day of the year, and sometimes while in the middle of very left brain linear analytical tasks… Writing, especially, is a blend of both. So while I watch this and think: “He’s only done that once? And thinks it’s a big deal?” Maybe I’m odd… -E.M.Smith ]
Make love, not war,
I know you’ve heard it before.
Make love, not war,
I know you’ve heard it before.
Love is the answer,
And you know that it’s true, oh yeah, oh yeah.
Make love, not war,
I know you’ve heard it before.
Make love, not war,
I know you’ve heard it before.
Love is the answer,
And you know that it’s true, oh yeah, oh yeah.
Love is the answer,
And you know that it’s true, oh yeah, oh yeah.
Make love, not war,
I know you’ve heard it before.
I want you to make love, not war,
I know you’ve heard it before.
John Lennon.
Well I thought y’all were paranoid, but I read this http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/28/fisa-feinstein-obama-democrats-eavesdropping and have to admit, you’re probably not paranoid.
@Martin Fisher:
Yeah, good old “I can have a gun but you can’t” Dianne Feinstein….
http://www.nndb.com/people/535/000023466/
She says she has gotten rid of the gun and the permit now… (Well, honestly, as a Senator with Privilege she likely can have full time body guards with much bigger and better guns…)
Power corrupts, and the Democrats are just as seduced by it (maybe more so, they don’t feel guilty about a drive by Smugging and just love talking down to Joe Sixpack ). So they have no qualms at all about having one thing they say, then doing exactly the opposite.
So yes, here in America where an implied “Right To Privacy” was found in the U.S. Constitution such that women were guaranteed an abortion (as to prevent one would require violating that privacy between her and her doctor… yes, that IS the basis for abortion law here…); we can have any of our communications monitored, sans warrant, our email archived for years BY LAW for the convenience of the legal system, and you can be arrested for saying things someone else decides is ‘hateful’. Oh, and they only want to take away the guns from bad people, or any gun that might have a chance of killing a person… but they define ‘bad people’ as anyone who doesn’t do what they say, on demand.
Oh, and about that sacred “Privacy” between a woman and her Doctor…. how’s that going to work again, now that all medical records will be going to the government under Obamacare for scrutiny and payment?… If you don’t think dredging through folks medical records for drug use, alcoholism, sexual diseases, emotional issues, etc. etc. is going to happen for political reasons; then you were not awake during Watergate or before that, during the era of FBI Secret Files and J.Edgar Hoover blackmailing politicians. (Guess WHY he was head of the FBI so long…)
So if you EVER have ANY medical condition that can be embarrassing or used against you, your political opponent will know about it and so will the political parties. You WILL be controlled and told how to vote…
(That’s the only reason for the big push for the all computerized medical records and the Federal control of it. The system they designed just reeks of folks wanting to get their hands on all that lovely blackmail fodder… )
So no, we’re not “paranoid”, and yes, they are “out to get us”. One needs only to look at what is said, and then what is done. What is the effect of each of the laws and usurpations.
Between the mandated tax / financial reporting, the email dredging and communications archiving, and then full medical records access; the concept of ‘privacy’ is a very bad joke.