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.
