Connecticut

[Prospero]

Good points, well made.

We've discussed this before. People do awful things and certainly someone driving to a school and blowing away little children had to have a mind filled with malice. But he also had to have the means to do it. When guns are not within reach it takes more than malice to commit a crime.

Someone who is out of control with anger or who hates the world cannot go to their local school and start mowing people down unless they can get their hands on equipment designed to take life. Now we may find that not all of these attacks could be prevented with better gun control but it stands to reason that some of them could. Some people would not kill if they could not easily come by the means to do it.

Hopefully we have this conversation more often in this country and on intelligent terms. Either that or we listen to those like Beandip who have no sense of decency, no understanding of cause and effect (see his unthoughtful and vague comments about psychiatric meds) and are basically political deviants who don't mourn for dead children but fear they may be used as an excuse to take away their beloved armaments.

[fred41]

Just read in the papers that the mother owned these guns (photo taken from NY Daily News). Some things differ slightly depending upon what paper you read, but they all seem to agree that Adam Lanza either had Asperger or some other type of Autism. He was - "Socially awkward..extremely shy...etc.etc."...many people that knew him and were not surprised it was him...

My question would be "Why on earth would you keep weapons like this around a boy like that"???!!!

[Silcc69]

After the tragic shooting and subsequent deaths of 27 people, 20 of whom were children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., many are examining the debate between groups who are for stronger gun control and those that support the right to carry firearms.

Key players in the debate include several politically active groups that have spent years exerting influence in Washington.

The National Rifle Association accounts for about 60 percent of what gun rights interest groups spent on lobbying in 2011 and the first three quarters of 2012. The other gun rights advocates include the Gun Owners of America; the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms; The National Shooting Sports Foundation; Safari Club International; Boone & Crockett Club, a group that aims to preserve a "hunting heritage"; and The Ohio Gun Collectors Association.



The NRA alone has spent more than ten times as much as gun control interest groups on lobbying in 2011 and the first three quarters of 2012.

Since 2006, 15 different organizations have mentioned the words "gun control" in their lobbying reports. Smith and Wesson, one of the nation's largest firearms manufacturers, has done so most frequently, mentioning the term 115 times. The National Rifle Association has the second-most mentions at 68.

For gun rights groups, 2012 was the most active election cycle since 2000. They contributed a total of $3 million to candidates, 96 percent of them Republicans, through mid-October. That also makes 2012 its most Republican election cycle, with 2000 and 2002 close behind with 93 percent of contributions going to Republicans.

By contrast, gun control groups contributed less in this election cycle than in any cycle as far back as OpenSecrets has data (1990) -- again, through mid-October. After campaign spending peaked in 2000 with $581,000, politicians only saw $4,000 from gun control groups this year. All of those recipients were Democrats: Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), losing candidate Lori Saldana (D-Calif.), and Sen.-elect Tim Kaine (D-Va.) The interest group is made up of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and the Violence Policy Center. None of those groups are active enough to warrant their own pages on OpenSecrets.org.

Top recipients of money from gun rights interest groups included presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio), Sen.-elect Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Senate candidate Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.). Tea party Republicans like Michele Bachmann and Allen West were high on the list, as well.

The NRA by itself had made more than $1 million worth of campaign contributions in the 2012 election cycle as of mid-October, almost all of which came from the group's political action committee. It gave about $720,000 to federal candidates and $342,000 to PACs, political parties and outside spending groups.

According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, donors associated with the NRA have heavily favored Republicans in contributions since the 1990 election cycle with an average of 83 percent of their money leaning right in the last two decades. In the 2012 cycle, 89 percent of the NRA's contributions went to Republicans.

Top recipients from 2012 are Reps. Steve Fincher (R-Tenn.) and Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) who received $9,900 each. Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel (R) got $9,450, and Reps. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) and Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and North Dakota Senate candidate Rick Berg (R) also received $7,450 each. Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Id.) and Wisconsin Senate candidate Tommy Thompson (R) each took in about $7,000 from the NRA.

The NRA also gave GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney just shy of $6,000. The Center for Responsive Politics has no record of President Barack Obama receiving any NRA-associated donations greater than $200 this cycle.

Some of the Democrats who received contributions from the NRA include Utah Rep. Jim Matheson ($6,950), Michigan Rep. John Dingell ($5,000), Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross ($5,000) and Georgia Rep. John Barrow ($4,950).

Smith and Wesson gave about 96 percent of its $22,750 in contributions to federal candidates as opposed to PACs or other groups. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) got $7,000, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) received $2,000 and California Rep. Buck Mckeon got $1,000.

On top of the NRA's contributions, the group also made about $17 million in independent expenditures in the 2012 election cycle. About $11.4 million was spent opposing Democrats and $5.9 million was spent favoring Republicans. The group spent most of its millions on two candidates: $8.9 million against Obama and $3 million supporting Romney.

In congressional races, the NRA dropped about $588,000 in favor of Indiana GOP Senate hopeful Richard Mourdock and $344,000 on Senator-elect Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) After Obama, the group spent the next most opposing Democratic Sen.-elect Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) with about $753,000. It spent $511,000 against Virginia Sen.-elect Tim Kaine, also a Democrat.


A Sig Sauer was one of the guns found near the body of the alleged Newtown shooter. Image via flickr user Burns!.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012...n-control.html

[irvin66]

I do not know how the gun laws are in the U.S., but to ban firearms is perhaps a bit easy solution, stricter gun laws is perhaps the way to go.
Then you have more control over legal weapons. but the problem is all the illegal guns, how can we control them?

[Prospero]

Statistics....

[iagodelgado]

Michael Moore pointed out that Canada has more guns per capita. So, what's going on? Is it the culture? Inequality? Lack of public health care?)

The stats presented earlier say 30.8 guns per 100 Canadians, 88.8 guns per 100 in US.

[maxpower]

Well, hey...here's what idiot extraordinaire Mike Huckabee had to say about this tragedy. Apparently we all just need to be praying more. Always nice to hear from the Arkansas brain trust.


Huckabee Says Connecticut School Massacre Occurred Because We ‘Removed God From Our Schools’ THINK PROGRESS By Igor Volsky
Former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee attributed today’s deadly massacre in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut to the lack of God and religion in public schools.


http://thinkprogress.org/politics/20...ols/?mobile=nc

[beandip]

For the mentally challenged and intellectually lazy here....

I offer this: (note, Statist shit bags and lib-tards don't even bother reading this..._) EABODADIAF!

You have to live in a hole not to know that a deranged young man shot up a school yesterday morning.
In the aftermath there are the predictable calls for bans on all guns, bans on most guns, and bans on, well, anyone other than you and your hired goons (aka Mayor Bloomberg) having a gun.
Hysteria does not produce good results. Indeed, evil men often wait for conveniently-timed hysteria to do unspeakably ugly and evil things under cover of public demand that they conveniently exploit. There are hundreds if not thousands of banksters freely roaming the land today who are free under precisely this rubric; men and women (but mostly men) who would under any rational legal system be rotting in prison right now but for Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke locking Congress in a room in the dark evenings of 2008 and threatening that the end of the world would ensue if he was not given plenary power to do whatever he thought necessary. He even came with a convenient three-page document that would grant him that power. Ultimately Congress only gave him part of what he asked for, but as is almost always the case when someone claims he is going to do something under mass-hysteria conditions he is lying, and intends to do something else.
Such was the case with Hank Paulson, who we now know had "changed his intent" to buy toxic assets (his original claim) before Congress voted on the proposal and yet didn't tell Congress of his changed intentions, misleading the body intentionally by omission.
You're still paying for the result today in the form of ridiculous unemployment, food stamp recipients going off the scale, gasoline and other necessities nearly doubling in price and the inexorable health care cost ramp continuing. All of this is happening because instead of addressing the causes of the crisis and jailing the malefactors responsible the executive used the hysteria generated by Lehman's failure to shove a law down Congressional throats.
Now let's look at what we know about the Connecticut shootings -- and unlike many commentators I will clearly delineate that which we now can state confidently are facts, that which is a reasonable conclusion from those facts, and that which is speculative in character at this time as sufficient information is not available to refute or support such a position.
We'll start with the guns. They are reported to have been legally owned by the shooter's mother and included a Glock pistol, a Sig pistol and a .223 caliber rifle. The rifle has been reported to be a sporting variety commonly used for target practice or hunting varmints; if the make and model reported are correct it is indeed a hunting variant (it has a fixed stock as hunting rifles typically do, no flash-hider on the front or other "scary looking" but immaterial cosmetics, etc.) Sig makes extremely high-quality (and commensurately expensive) pistols; Glock of course makes highly-reliable and well-respected weapons as well. A little-known fact about Glocks is that for many people they "point" funny due to a different grip angle than most other pistols; some people find them very difficult to shoot accurately for this reason. That may be why the mother owned both (she may have bought one and not liked it, then bought the other.) The rifle was found inside the car the shooter drove and since he never came out of the school building once going in it must be presumed that he did not use that gun in the school assault. There is nothing particularly-remarkable about the weapons used in this assault; they are common guns used lawfully by millions of Americans for hunting, target practice and defensive purposes.
Of note is that the shooter could not have legally acquired the pistols, as he is not 21. Federal law requires one to be 21 years of age before purchasing a pistol at retail. In this particular case, however, it doesn't matter whether he was 21 or not as he didn't buy any of the weapons involved; they were lawfully purchased by his mother who the assailant murdered prior to assaulting the school.
In other words the shooter effectively stole the weapons used in the assault. We do not know at this point (and may never know) the exact order of events in terms of his acquisition of the weapons but what we do know factually is that he murdered their owner, ending her ability to report the theft or to resist what he intended to do with them next.
That is, there was no "gun control" violation involved in this assault. The bad guy did not obtain the weapons through lawful means and he also did not (legally or not) circumvent the background check system by, for example, buying them privately from someone (the much-maligned "gun show loophole" that people talk about but is almost-never actually implicated in an assault.) Rather, the assailant removed the weapons from their lawful owner through, either directly or indirectly, the crime of murder.
As a retired school teacher with no reported criminal history, there was utterly no reason to prevent the mother from owning these firearms for perfectly reasonable and lawful purposes, such as paper-punching or self-defense. Being divorced -- as a single woman -- she had every right and reason to be armed for defensive purposes, particularly in her own home.
So now let's turn to the assailant and his choice of targets. The first murder, that of his mother, was the predicate act he undertook which allowed him the access to the firearms he then transported beyond the boundary of lawful possession and use. The decision to commit murder, once taken, was the predicate act that laid waste all laws that would otherwise bear on the subject matter.
You cannot stop bullets with paper (laws); by definition laws only impact the actions (or inactions) of law-abiding individuals. Once someone decides to commit a capital felony (irrespective of whether life imprisonment or death is the potential sentence) all considerations of legal sanction have been discarded and become inoperative.
Put another way there is no punishment that enhances a life sentence, nor one that enhances a sentence of death. Once the remainder of one's life is to be spent behind bars or they are to suffer the death penalty all additional offenses they choose to commit are free of sanction, as society has exhausted the available remedies they can apply for that person's behavior.
This is the overriding reason that "gun laws" or any other sort of proscriptive legal sanction are utterly worthless once a person has committed their first homicide.
Next, we'll look at the school itself. The shooter didn't walk in, he broke through a window to enter the building. The school appears to have been appropriately secured on a physical level, although obviously the glass broken through was not armored. What was missing was someone -- anyone -- in the building with the means and willingness to present effective resistence to an armed criminal intent on murder. From all reports the staff did what they could, having no defensive weapons and no locks on the classroom doors, to mitigate the assault -- they turned on the PA system so everyone knew there was an attack in progress and the teachers barricaded themselves as best they were able. At least one teacher was shot and wounded through her door while (successfully) preventing the gunman from entering her classroom.
There are many who argue that we can prevent these assaults via strict gun laws, starting with the effective if not complete voiding of the 2nd Amendment.
But the historical record on this point is clear; governments murder far more people, ignoring wartime, than do thugs. The predicate act of every government that undertakes such an activity is to disarm the population. This was known back in 1776 and is the reason for the Second Amendment. Those who believe the founders were wrong need only look at the next 200+ years of history to see that they were absolutely right -- over 200 million people have been shoved in the hole by government outside of acts of war and every single time they disarmed the population first.
Further, those who argue for gun laws need only to look at drug prohibition for a nearly 100-year unbroken record of failure. You can get drugs in prison, which is proof positive that any law that man passes can be (and will be) corrupted and circumvented. Fast and Furious anyone? How many Mexicans have we shoved in the hole by our own law enforcement officials circumventing the very laws they are sworn to uphold?
To restate for much-needed emphasis there is simply no means to prevent someone from committing a second or subsequent capital offense with a piece of paper -- a law. Laws do not stop bullets and the threat of sanction is meaningless once you reach the maximum available sanction; any further threat of criminal sanction is immaterial since you can only give someone one capital or life sentence in fact, no matter how many you impose on paper.
There is thus one, and only one, means to deter those who would commit a second or subsequent murder -- a visible, obvious and known risk that they will be unable to complete their second or subsequent offense because they are stopped by the immediate application of deadly force to their person.
Consider this: Why is it that we never hear of these sorts of murderous rampages taking place in a police station? After all, if you're a murderous thug the cops are the ones who will arrest you and deliver you over to the courts where you will be tried, sentenced and then eventually imprisoned (or given the needle.) Logic dictates that you would thus assault those who would arrest and try you for your crimes, in an attempt to neuter their ability to do so.
The reason these thugs do not, as a rule, assault a police station is that they know full well that everyone in the place is armed and will resist -- that while they may through the element of surprise manage to shoot one or two people the odds are nearly 100% that doing so will lead to the immediate termination of their assault via return fire.
Before you argue otherwise let's look at the recent events, shall we? The movie theater in Colorado posted a "gun free" sign. Ditto for the mall. And, of course, under federal law schools are "gun free" zones -- the government, along with gun-banners, assert that paper (laws) "protect" against bullets.
But the law only applies to and is followed by law-abiding citizens, and as I have irrefutably shown above, once someone commits their first murder there is no law that can add to their punishment since they have already elected to suffer the maximum available penalty.
Therefore, the logical place for such a person to commit a mass assault, where the odds are highest that they will be able to murder the maximum number of people, is to select a location to target where the odds of lawful defensive use of force are minimized -- or non-existent.
This is why the assailants choose movie theaters or malls that are posted "gun-free" zones -- and schools.
Occasionally, however, their plans go awry. For instance, in Oregon.

"He was working on his rifle," said Meli. "He kept pulling the charging handle and hitting the side."
The break in gunfire allowed Meli to pull out his own gun, but he never took his eyes off the shooter.
...
"I'm not beating myself up cause I didn't shoot him," said Meli. "I know after he saw me I think the last shot he fired was the one he used on himself."

Indeed the shooter did shoot himself next, despite having multiple additional unarmed people available near him to continue his rampage, along with additional cartridges, once he unjammed the gun.
Why?
He saw the man who, despite a sign claiming that there were no guns in the mall, was in fact armed and able to return fire. The assailant's illusion of a free-fire zone where all the people he wanted to shoot were free from the risk of returning fire had been dispelled; had he elected to shoot another unarmed and helpless individual the odds are good that he would have exposed himself to being shot as he would have had to move in a fashion that would have given the CCW holder a clear shot at him.
As such he elected to take his own life since he knew, at that point, that he no longer had the ability to continue to murder people without reprisal.
Nick Meli saved lives with a gun. He did so without discharging the weapon as occurs more than one million times a year in the United States; his mere display of the weapon broke the illusion of a risk-free target zone for the shooter. Without that citizen firing a shot by the mere display of his gun the shooter's calculation of risk and reward changed, and he elected to kill himself rather than continue his rampage.
You won't hear this reported in the media, of course. Nor will the screaming left, who prey on emotion rather than facts, take an analytical look at these events. Indeed, I was puzzled when it was first reported that the Oregon shooter elected to shoot himself after his weapon jammed. That act made no sense standing alone; he obviously un-jammed his weapon or he couldn't have shot himself with it, so why shoot himself rather than continue his rampage in a mall full of unarmed people? He was not at imminent risk of capture by law enforcement at that moment in time, and it did not appear from original reports that he had come into the mall targeting a specific person or persons -- that is, all reports were that he was randomly shooting people rather than trying to assassinate someone with whom he had a grudge.
It therefore made absolutely no sense that he would shoot two people then choose to kill himself absent the risk of his own imminent demise.
We now know that it was precisely the risk of his imminent demise that led him to change his course of action and self-terminate his assault, and that it was the mere display of a weapon by a citizen who was willing and able to defend innocent life that made the difference.
In short, guns are not the problem. Deranged people are a serious problem, but even the seriously-deranged are capable of some level of logic. They choose the targets of their assaults predicated on the likelihood that there will be meaningful resistance offered, and when that calculation turns out to be incorrect they are either stopped or take their own life as they realize their mistake.
There are still serious questions surrounding this assault that I do not yet have sufficient facts to opine upon. For instance, was the shooter on psychotropic medication? If so, why do we continue to allow the peddlers of such drugs to sell them in the United States despite black box warnings -- self-admitted warnings -- that they can and do cause suicidal and homicidal rage? Why do we refuse to deal with serious mental illness and the warnings that those people exhibit (such as the shooter at the movie theater) in a forthright and honest fashion?
There are things we can do about this problem, but they have nothing to do with gun laws. It is already illegal for a person to buy a firearm if they are mentally incompetent, but if we refuse to bring someone before a judge and have them declared incompetent the problem isn't the law -- it's us and our refusal to face facts. In the specific case in question, however, the shooter did not buy his firearms, he took them and murdered their owner. In the recent mall shooting in Oregon the firearm was also stolen.
No law is effective once a person decides to commit murder; all lesser laws, such as those against theft, are immediately rendered immaterial. At that instant in time the only option that will materially change your odds of being a victim are to increase the odds that the nutcase hellbent on murder will meet with someone willing and able to stop him or her in lawful defense.
And most of the time that defender of your life, whether it is you or someone else, will need a firearm to do so.
More "gun free" zones -- and more gun laws -- will only serve to increase the number and effectiveness of murderous rampages.
With guns or without.
You can only falsify this assertion when we see police departments become the successful targets of such assaults.
Hell will freeze first.


http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=214954

[beandip]

Yes Fred, the legal drug pushers should have given Adam more (legal) drugs.

[beandip]

You dummies targeting the NRA are a riot. They've been ineffectual for over 15 years.
If you don't know what I mean....then you're hopelessly clueless and HolyShit the joke is on you.