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Saturday, December 29, 2012

Shut up, they explained.



What can be done to reduce the incidence of violence and the death toll the next time some deranged individual decides to kill as many people as he can? That’s the question that rational people ask following the killing at Sandy Hook. The media are in agreement that having an armed guard in every school is not the answer. What they can’t seem to agree on is the alternative.

Wayne LaPierre’s position, representing the NRA, is simple and easy to understand. The media’s recommendations are either ineffective (limit the size of gun magazines, ban scary looking weapons or stop the sale of guns) or so vague as to be meaningless.

David Gregory focused on the size of magazines. He held up a magazine capable of holding 30 cartridges – thereby breaking the law in the District of Columbia – and asked LaPierre if limiting the size of the magazine would reduce the carnage. The answer is no. The killer in Sandy Hook had 20 minutes before police arrived. Changing a magazine in a gun takes literally one or two seconds and the kid had many magazines with him, already loaded. The killers at Columbine had an hour before committing suicide and two hours before a SWAT team actually entered the school.

The focus on the weapons used is a distraction. The Columbine killers initially wanted to murder their fellow students using bombs. When their bombs failed to work, they used shotguns, a rifle and 13, 10 round magazines (of which David Gregory approves) and pistols. There is some confusion about the weapons that the Sandy Hook killer used. NBC reported that 4 handguns were used in the school shooting and that the rifle that was blamed was left in his car. Reuters tells us that a rifle was used. There have been so many conflicting and erroneous reports on this crime that I find it hard to determine who a credible source is and who is not. 
 
The press has now stopped reporting on the story.  Instead the dead children are now a tool, a platform from which the media barons are trying to achieve some long held goals.   

The Virginian Pilot’s editorial position is perhaps as good an indication of this as any.  After spending most of the editorial blasting the NRA, the editors admit that many schools already have armed guards. But they dismiss the possibility that these guards could actually stop a shooter, relegating them to
“work[ing] with students to learn about bullying, drugs, potential violence and more.”
And if that “more” is not to stop the next school shooting, why not disarm the police in those schools? Their contribution to the debate is to call their political opponents “irrational,” “sad,” “nonsensical.” But no. that’s not their entire contribution. Here’s their answer:

“The rational response - the one that has taken our nation far, far too long to focus on - is to build a comprehensive approach that includes heavy investments in mental health care and curbs on the sale and production of weapons capable of slaughtering school resource officers as easily as children.”

That sounds so rational that after reading that you’re not supposed to ask: what does that mean? “Heavy investment” means lots of spending. “Mental health care” is not a bad thing, but exactly how and by what mechanism would that have prevented any of the shooting that you can think of? Are we going to have the cops round up the “Goths” who shot up Columbine, or the painfully shy kid that shot up Sandy Hook, or the guy that shot up the movie theater showing Batman before he committed his crime and put them in a mental institution? Tell me, editors, exactly what you have in mind for the person who looks a little weird or acts a little weird but hasn’t committed a crime? Or perhaps they are advocating mandatory psychological indoctrination in schools. In other cultures that was once referred to as brainwashing; in the brave new world of the editors perhaps we could refer to it as mental cleansing.   USA: land of the homogeneous mentally pure, but remember to celebrate diversity! 

Of course the part about spending on mental health is the obligatory acknowledgement that American culture, almost totally dominated by Liberals, has desensitized many of our young people to all kinds of psychological and physical violence. Our culture teaches our young to objectify each other as sexual objects via print, movies and music. It produces movies that show ever-more realistic depiction of slaughter and makes heroes of the most violent. That culture produces games that teach our young to kill with skill and speed. And those that protest against that are ridiculed as blue nosed, moronic, bigots and Bible thumpers who want to impose their morality on others. The editors’ answer to that is not less cultural pollution but “mental health care.”

But when it comes to guns, it’s ban, baby, ban.

The Left has a simple goal, disarm the civilian populace.
 
They don’t really have a problem with guns. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and media mogul Rupert Murdoch – both extreme advocates of disarming the populace - are literally surrounded by armed guards. Barack Obama’s guards have the firepower to take over a medium sized third world country. Police forces have become militarized to an astounding extent employing heavy automatic weapons and armored vehicles. An amazing array of weaponry is used by the military including the widespread use of drones to kill from the sky.
 
It’s the people they don’t trust with guns. In fact the Left has the same attitude toward the people they refer to as “the masses” as medieval lords had toward the peasantry; peasants with weapons could storm the castle. It’s what many social programs reflect. Too old to work? Social security to keep you alive in poverty. Food stamps to feed you. Public housing to store you. ObamaCare to keep you healthy and send you off when you start costing too much.

The editors end the way these “conversations” usually do:

“If LaPierre and the NRA truly want to make meaningful contributions, they should have the grace, decency and good sense to get out of the way. They've dominated the debate over gun violence for decades. And they've failed.”

Translation: “shut up.”  We know what’s best for you.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have "journalists" like that up here in DC. They claim posting guards at schools is a stupid idea.. right after dropping their own kiddies off at Sidwell with its 5 off-duty cops serving as security.

Funny how not a single newspaper in America has the spine to publish a list of Sidwell parents, as they did when they printed the addresses of legal gun owners.

Steve Skubinna said...

I agree that we are exposing children and young adults to tremendous amounts of make believe violence, and that it is not a good thing. On the other hand, violent crime rates, including gun crimes, have been decreasing the past several years so that is a chimera.

If pointing a finger at violent movies and video games could distract the media and leftists intelligentsia from firearms then it's a valid tactic. However, at this point nothing will do that. As we all knew it would be, the "national conversation about guns" is a long winded sanctimonious spittle flecked harangue, including vile wishful fantasies of dead NRA members, from the statists and their toadies.

We should stay on target (excuse the violent eliminationist and doubtless racist rhetoric):

One, the 2A is not about hunting or sporting use.

Two, yes it is about military weapons (hence the purpose clause referring to the well regulated militia).

Three, nobody's determination of what firearms any citizen "needs" is any more valid than a diktat concerning what car, clothes, or food anybody "needs."

Moneyrunner said...

Steve, I believe you don't realize that the Left is talking amongst itself about what food you need. It already has determines what kind of car you drive. And ObamaCare determines what medical care you're going to get. Words on paper don’t mean much to them. A copy of the Constitution is little defense against a Liberal with his hired guns.

Moneyrunner said...

Anon, someone found out that David Gregory sends his kids to Sidwell Friends. There should be a way for other “citizen journalists” to get the names of other parents who send their kids there. A good start would be the members of Congress and the Obama Administration who have school age children.

Ann Witherington said...

heavy investments in mental health care

Great idea. Let's hand DHS bureaucrats who can't tell whether there's an Uzi on the outside of a 6 year old without sexually assaulting her, the power to decide what's inside the minds of 300 million million people who have not, and never will, commit a mass shooting.

I feel safer already.

Anonymous said...

Are these same people ever offended by terrorism? Do they ever say weapons in the hands of insane jihadists must be stopped? Nope. Just offense that an ordinary American can have one.

Trashhauler said...

As a Air Force pilot, I carried a concealed weapon for years without affecting how I did my primary job. I either had it on me or in a locked gun box. The same thing could be done with school administrators and two or three trusted teachers. Pay them a bit of proficiency pay for training and practice, place some gun boxes nearby, and you have emergency security for less money than it would take to hire a guard.

Moneyrunner said...

Trashhauler, yours is a logical solution. But keeping children safe is not the real objective. The dead kids are a prop used to push their agenda of disarming people like you; the "little people." The ruling class and their children will have all the armed protection they need. You and your kids, not so much.

Anonymous said...

I keep thinking it's not possible for me to despise the leftists more than I do. Then I find I'm wrong.

Trying to disarm the American populace WILL start the Second American Civil War. Take that to the bank.

Jum said...

So President Big Brother you say you want a "national conversation". And and in this "conversation" you say, "I'm "going to be putting my full weight behind it".


Hmmm. "Conversation". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Anonymous said...

I believe that the current usage of "national conversation" means that the "ruling class" will be using the occasion to dictate to the "masses" how things are going to be.

Hence a state run media and > 900 executive orders and many more on the way.

Fat Man said...

“Mental health care” is not a bad thing

Two words for you:

Soviet Psychiatry