“With that drum magazine, he could have gotten off 50, 60 rounds, even if it was semiautomatic, within one minute,” Chief Oates said. [New York Times]
IN THE GAPING MAW of our leadership vacuum stands Aurora Police Chief Daniel Oates, whose resolve, vulnerability and humility inside the vortex of a man made hell revealed what nobody in Congress or either political party has shown in decades. Leadership without regard to anything but his own duty to the people, which included the cops in the eye of volcanic carnage. Over a thousand miles away, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg used his voice and the power of his office to challenge the two contenders for the presidency, Pres. Obama and Mitt Romney, to do something besides talk. Don’t hold your breath.
Despite the changes over the past 13 years, Colorado law still prohibits local governments from restricting gun rights in several significant ways. Moreover, gun rights organizations have successfully fought other efforts to restrict access to guns, including blocking a University of Colorado rule prohibiting concealed weapons on campus. People in Colorado are allowed to carry firearms in a vehicle, loaded or unloaded, as long as the gun is intended for lawful uses like personal protection or protecting property. – Colorado Gun Laws Remain Lax, Despite Some Changes
What foreshadowed the calamity on Friday, in a weird instant of synchronistic scheduling, came in the closing moments of last Sunday’s “The Newsroom” episode, when a childish adult soap opera gave way to the real live drama surrounding the shooting of Gabrille Giffords in 2011. In a split second moment where decisions become destiny, the fictional news anchor Will McAvoy listened to his team and refused to follow all of the other news organizations in pronouncing the fate of Rep. Giffords, because every one of them had followed the leader, NPR, who ended up getting it wrong.
Fast forward, inconvenient facts from the New York Times:
Mr. Holmes was detained by the police soon afterward, standing by his white Hyundai. He was identified by the authorities as a former Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado in Denver, and an honors graduate in neuroscience from the University of California, Riverside. He had in the car an AR-15 assault rifle, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, and a .40 caliber Glock handgun, said Chief Dan Oates of the Aurora police, and all three were believed to have been used inside the theater. Another Glock .40 caliber handgun was recovered inside the theater. Chief Oates said that “many, many” rounds were fired, but that there was no count so far.
In the last 60 days Mr. Holmes had purchased four guns at local gun shops, Chief Oates said. And through the Internet, he bought more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition: more than 3,000 rounds for the assault rifle, 3,000 rounds of .40 caliber ammunition for the two Glocks, and 300 rounds for the 12-gauge shotgun. The guns were all bought legally, a federal law enforcement official said.
N.R.A. groupies are gathering, as gun safety advocates feel the wind beneath them yet again. Think Progress blares this headline in an ode to the vanquished: Expired Assault Weapons Ban Would Have Covered Rifle Used In Colorado Shooting.
It might have been convincing if they’d used “could” instead of “would,” but even then it’s absolute rubbish.
Assault weapons ban doesn’t ban assault weapons. Banning massive assault clips of tens of bullets won’t really ban them. Both provide a bromide for people ignorant of the gun lobby and firearm industry’s reach and the fact that people can also make a silencer themselves. It’s why people like my husband, a gun expert and someone who has owned some of the most fierce weaponry available, including the most beautiful sniper rifle I’ve ever seen, don’t support this type of legislation. What I’ve learned from him and studying the gun industry is that component parts can always be purchased by those knowing where to get them or just following the gun shows or reading certain newspapers.
That doesn’t mean an effort to confront the N.R.A. isn’t worthy, overdue and important, with the very “banning” efforts worth the energy, if only to send the message, rally ordinary citizens who have a right to live in this country and feel safe without being told they need to be armed. I write this as a gun owner and someone who’s fired an M-16*, as well as other weaponry and who has no intention of living without a firearm in my home ever again. As long time readers know, I encouraged my husband to get a conceal carry permit for his own safety; a man who still has part of a .22 caliber bullet in his gut from when two young thugs confronted him and shot him, an assault from which he almost died, as he was walking away from turning on a customer’s gas in what used to be known as “the projects” in a depressed area of Las Vegas. Every time one of these shootings occurs my husband feels what the recovering victims are going through and we have the same conversation. He loathes the N.R.A. and believes they are way too extreme in their politics.
The N.R.A. operates with political immunity, buying our politicians and rallying the faithful, while citizens who don’t fancy firearms are made to feel sheepish, and act cowardly as a result, while not putting their fury into action by joining one of the groups who combat the N.R.A. every day. Democrats have ducked the assault weapons ban, including Rep. Giffords, for fear of getting voted out of office and not being able to do important other works. People have a choice on whether to amass to stand opposite the N.R.A., offering voter cover for politicians who acknowledge the Second Amendment, but have evolved enough philosophically and politically to understand that in our violently modern world there should be strict enforcement, met by technological advancements like micro-stamping technology, to compel the N.R.A. to be responsible in the new world reality, instead of a chief enabler of societal violence, while marginalizing a silent majority of people who don’t arm themselves out of choice. Who’s representing their rights in Congress or the White House? Why aren’t these Americans demanding representation? Until they do in large numbers nothing will change.
History has also shown that we won’t ever stop the lone gunman determined to kill.
Naming enablers and propagandists of violence matters, like the N.R.A., which continually chooses a path of irresponsibility for capitalism’s sake, with those in the political arena far guiltier than any movie or video game. Anyone saying using the Aurora shooting for “political gains” is shameful is likely in the pocket of the N.R.A. and is employing the plan these advocates always do, which is to shame opponents and make them feel un-American for believing that the Second Amendment wasn’t intended to infringe on their rights to feel safe without being armed.
Sugue to Sean Hannity, who began his radio show on Friday by lecturing everyone not to politicize the massacre in Aurora, Colorado. By the middle of the first hour he was squealing about ABC’s Brian Ross, who made an unvetted, unprofessional snap judgment for which they were forced to apologize, because he coupled the shooter in Aurora with the Tea Party. Hannity immediately attached Ross with “the left,” because in today’s America, everyone chooses their own facts. There is no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Ross is associated with “the left,” which barely exists today. The second caller on his show went on a bender, railing against Democrats, bringing the Gabrielle Giffords shooting into the mix, with Hitler brought in for dramatic affect. The next caller raised the issue of gun control in New York City.
Everyone’s reacting, while simultaneously shrugging, what can we do? Who knew? How this could ever happen in a movie theater, let alone 13 miles away from where the Columbine slaughter occurred, is just too much to contemplate. So we don’t.
Meanwhile, anyone want to bet the N.R.A. is marshaling it’s offenses, preparing to go into battle in a public campaign that will include making sure politicians know why their campaign coffers stay full and on whose side they need to be?
The Sunday, cable and radio shows ready to book their segments in timely little allotments, making sure all sides are represented, with no one today having the gravitas to actually lead the conversation with a mission of finding answers to questions and let “balance” fall where it might amid the truth. Across the board there are tortured efforts of false equivalency, as if facts and truth have sides, though today that’s the template.
A guy over at the amusingly named “Reason” site, took aim at the Brady campaign’s reaction to the shooting, then went into a defensive crouch over gun laws, which mimics a lot of reactions on the right.
Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, one of Michele Bachmann’s McCarthyite pals, whom the Washington Post called out in an op-ed yesterday, blamed the carnage on the “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs,” then wondered why no one at the midnight premiere of the movie was armed to take down the assassin. David Weigel responded. It’s why arming teachers and students remains an open campaign. Remember Virginia Tech, they say.
Now let me now get down in the gutter with Sean Hannity and his surreal interview with George Zimmerman, who’s out on $1 million bond after being charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin, through the right of a concealed carry. It’s no coincidence Hannity was the first to speak to Zimmerman, who called him after the shooting, at a time his own attorneys couldn’t reach him. In the interview, exactly as Hannity did Friday on his show, while preening about the importance of keeping politics out of the conversation, when speaking to George Zimmerman, Hannity couldn’t help but single out Al Sharpton, which not only brought politics into the discussion, but race, too, Hannity’s objective. Whether you like Sharpton or not, he’s been overtly active in racial confrontations his entire life, so anyone thinking his being on MSNBC mattered has not been paying attention. That Sean Hannity uses his show for political purposes every day, but that’s okay, reveals his unethical hypocrisy.
George Zimmerman sat emotionless as he talked, with his attorney beside him, but it was Sean Hannity who did most of the talking, leading Zimmerman in the telling of his story, which included some gobsmacking quotes. He didn’t regret anything the night of the shooting. He didn’t regret getting out of the car that fatal night. He would do nothing differently that night. He put words in Trayvon Martin’s mouth, saying the teen threatened him by saying, “You’re going to die tonight [obscenity deleted].” Alleging that Martin then went for his gun. He apologized to the Martin family, too.
Zimmerman also unloaded this obscenity.
“I feel that it was all God’s plan and for me to second guess it or judge it…” – George Zimmerman
God didn’t have a part in the planning Zimmerman’s actions or his killing of Trayvon Martin that left him alive. George Zimmerman may be found not-guilty of second-degree murder, but he’s sure as hell not innocent.
If God was the puppet George Zimmerman thinks She is, you’d have to apply this obscene correlation to the Holmes massacre in Aurora, Colorado, which is offensive on its face.
You’d have to apply it to the Gabrille Giffords shooting, Virginia Tech, Columbine and on and on.
A killer putting himself on the side of his “God,” enabled by Sean Hannity through his use of his media platforms, while he points at Al Sharpton, with the dead African American teen, the actual victim of a man with a concealed carry and a penchant for neighborhood heroism, who took his life, getting a prime time stage to say “he’s not a racist.” Oh, and he would say he was sorry if he did anything wrong, so the media should say they’re sorry to him, too. The killer turned victim by virtue of concealed carry, stand your ground, “self defense.” Not one question about why a man with a concealed carry was so irresponsible as to create the situation that had him getting out of his car to interact with Trayvon Martin in the first place.
This is what passes for “justice” in this country today, splattered across flat screens from one coast to another, while Fox News rakes in the ratings.
And people wonder why the N.R.A. is fearless?
James Holmes, the shooter identified in the Aurora slaughter, is a guy in the social media age who was called an “online ghost” by Mashable editor Lance Ulanoff. Holmes obviously plotted and planned the massacre, methodically booby-trapping his apartment so thoroughly that SWAT didn’t dare enter the door, while evacuating the surrounding neighborhood. In Aurora, bomb experts have disabled a tripwire and an incendiary device rigged to blow on entry, but they’ve got a long way to go.
God doesn’t plan these things, human beings out for blood do.
If you looked at Memeorandum on Friday, the listing of what was trending was filled with right-wing attacks on ABC News that were earned, as well as finger-pointing at “the left,” but the Tea Party is undeserving of becoming the news or the “victim.” They’re a group who has applauded the actions of open carry at political rallies, so there is photographic proof that they’re one of the enablers of threats and violence in our society, though not all Tea Partiers are to blame. There was one single, solitary article challenging leading politicians on guns. By even lauding Bloomberg’s efforts I’m sure someone will bring up his Wall Street ties and what that evilness means, even if it has nothing to do with his efforts on illegal firearms.
From Sean Hannity inserting himself and methodically manipulating the media coverage in the Trayvon Martin murder case to Michele Bachmann’s McCarthyism to ABC’s Brian Ross’s amateur mistake that wrongly tied the Tea Party to the Aurora shooter, juxtaposed against John Sununu saying he wished Pres. Obama would learn to be an American, which was followed by Mitt Romney reciting the word “foreign” multiple times in a speech in reference to the President’s policies, the picture being painted of this country should embarrass us all.
But it won’t. The same political system that has failed us immeasurably, we count all the ways day after day, will limp along throughout this election year, with partisan pom poms distracting people from the inevitable mind numbing outcome that renders results that are always the same: less representation of the people.
When people try to move outside the corrupt political system to challenge the status quo that’s killing this country, because Democratic and Republican leaders have led us to this fate, they’re vilified and arrogantly lectured that everything will be their fault if –insert your favorite candidate here– is not elected. Few stop to consider or try to understand the message these people are sending to partisan fans. They couldn’t possibly have something to say, a clue to what’s gone wrong. The partisan never stops to think that if the politicians offered actual solutions for the people they wouldn’t be losing voters. Independents, squishy as they are because they can’t see any leadership worth supporting, have been the canary in the American democracy mine for decades. Maybe gun safety advocates will start pressuring politicians to do something, so instead of guns being a third rail, as Eliot Spitzer calls it in the video at the top of this column, it will be an issue on which people hinge their vote, so that more independents are created from disaffected Ds and Rs, so something starts to really shift. Because as much as Republicans are in the bag for the N.R.A., Democrats aren’t any better, with the outcome clear.
Twelve dead in Aurora, Colorado, with at 59 wounded and that’s not counting the damaged hearts and minds.
An unarmed African American teen shot dead by a citizen with a concealed carry craving hero worship, instead of leaving the situation to the police.
A teen opens fire in Chardon, Ohio, killing and wounding students.
A shooting rampage at a California Christian university over a tuition dispute.
A teen in Texas turns a gun on a fellow student, with the police having to “take him out.”
A 9-year-old boy brings a .45-caliber handgun to his elementary school and it discharges from inside his backpack, critically wounding another kid.
Another from the Fox News list: “A 6-year-old boy accidentally fired a gun inside Ross Elementary School in Houston, Texas, injuring himself and two other children.”
A 15 year-old shoots another student Martinsville West Middle School in Martinsville, Ind.
In 2006: Eric Hainstock, 15, took a shotgun from his father’s gun cabinet and a .22-caliber revolver from his father’s bedroom to his school in rural Cazenovia, Wis., and fatally shot the principal.
March 21, 2005: With his own .22-caliber handgun, and his grandfather’s Glock handgun and 12-gauge shotgun, Jeff Weise, 16, shot and killed his grandfather, a policeman and his grandfather’s girlfriend at their home, then went to his high school, also on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, and fatally shot eight people, including himself.
April 24, 2003: James Sheets, 14, shot and killed principal Eugene Segro in the crowded cafeteria at the Red Lion Area Junior High School in south-central Pennsylvania before killing himself. Police determined that Sheets used a key to take three guns from his stepfather’s gun safe.
May 26, 2000: Nathaniel Brazill, 13, killed his English teacher at Lake Worth Community High School in Lake Worth, Fla. According to police, Brazill stole the .25-caliber semi-automatic pistol from his grandfather’s house.
Feb. 29, 2000: A 6-year-old boy from Mount Morris Township, Mich., killed classmate Kayla Rolland, also 6, at Buell Elementary School with a .32-caliber semiautomatic handgun left in an open shoebox. The boy and his mother had been staying at the home of his uncle and his uncle’s friend, Jamelle James, 19. James, who kept the gun in the shoebox, spent 2 1/2 years in prison after pleading no contest to involuntary manslaughter.
The examples above are from one Fox News link. Suck on that, Second Amendment advocates, of which I’m one, except I draw the line at enabling violence promoters, which includes the N.R.A., politicians who pledge allegiance to that group, and any media personality who does their bidding.
Americans just keep going ’round and ’round in the hamster wheel of recurring events, with our yearly tragedies multiplying and bringing moments of silence, prayers and split second moralizing how it’s not guns or politics or men, and it’s certainly nothing that could be wrong with American policies or that people can do something about this.
In God we trust, so it must be “God’s plan,” which is as good an excuse as any to keep from looking at our society, which just keeps spinning further out of control, in a country that can’t feed it’s poor, employ its people, or solve our nation’s problems.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
We’re addicted all right. Addicted to violence against each other, ourselves, our planet, our “enemies,” our friends, our environment, the very world that sustains us and there’s no evidence anywhere that enough people want to get off the merry-go-round we’ve been on for decades to change the direction in which we’re hurling.
Into this stepped Aurora Police Chief Daniel Oates. He reminded everyone of what’s possible in a leader. Watching Gov. John Hickenlooper, whom former Gov. Bill Owens called “the father of Colorado today,” while he worked mightily to frame the words from a mind muddled from lack of sleep, we were seeing a man off script, speaking from the heart and praying the people would translate his message as he barely begins to bring his state back from death’s grip.
The nation watches.
But what will people do about it?
“The gun prohibition people tried to use Gabrielle Giffords and the Trayvon Martin case to get their cause going again, and weren’t particularly successful with that,” he said. At the state level, he added, having fought pitched battles over gun rights since the 1980s, “we’re at a reasonably well settled point,” and “the legislature is not that interested in opening it up again.” Mr. Volokh said the fragmentary information available so far about Mr. Holmes and the attack did not make a strong case for reform. [The New York Times]
*Correction: The weapon referred to here was a registered full-auto M-16, not an AK-47.
Bumped from June 21, 2012.
I have determined that the NRA is not about the second amendment. They are about gun manufacturers being able to make lots of guns. If guns are restricted the manufacturers don’t make a much money. All the people that are killed are just “collateral damage” the the NRA types. They disgust me.
This comment has been deleted, because personal insults are not allowed.
There was no personal insult anywhere in my comment. You just did not like my saying that you and your husband are part of the problem. Saying someone is paranoid is not an insult, and simply a statement. In the 1970′s, while driving a taxi in NYC I too was attacked. A knife was held to my throat while my money was taken. The attackers were three young black men. Not once after that incident did I ever consider buying a gun or a knife, nor did it make me a racist; why? Because then, as now, I believed in random events and I realized that the possibility of something like that happening again was slim. Paranoid people don’t think that way, they believe it will happen again, it’s just a matter of time. This is a paranoid country and that is why there are so many guns floating around. It is sad to see that you are so thin skinned. If you don’t want your family members used as examples in comments then maybe you should stop mixing your personal and public life. This may be your blog but I do not think that gives you the right to censor peoples comments simply because you don’t like them. I will say again, there was no personal insult anywhere in my comment!
You nor anyone else, fangio, gets to personally insult someone and say she or he is “mentally disturbed” for even firing a semi-automatic weapon, which is what you wrote. (The weapon referred to in my column was a registered full-auto M-16, not an AK-47.)
Since you’re ignorant of my writer’s responsibility, partly because in this day and age people never offer their expertise or experience on the subject on which they’re opining, as someone writing about firearms on occasion, I feel compelled to transparently give the reader my experience with them, which informs my views. I expect the reader to respect that, though no one has to agree with me, but when you don’t, stating your objection needs to be done with respect and without hurling personal insults. This applies to everyone.
I’ve instructed all comments that contain personal insults to be deleted,which applies when I’m not personally moderating comments.
If you don’t like the rules you’re free not to comment here.
As for me and Mark being “part of the problem,” that’s a typical anti-gun response that I reject, but is quite different from what you wrote yesterday. Mark had guns long before he was shot and almost killed. It’s my choice as well to have a gun.
If you don’t want to have a firearm that’s your choice and I certainly won’t attack you for it or call you mentally disturbed because you may be putting yourself at risk in your home, depending on where you live. It’s simply a decision you make.
I’m not anti gun, I’m anti 19th century, anti wild west and anti creeping militarism, which is infecting this country. No civilian should have access to military style weapons for any reason. No civilian should be able to go online and visit a site like ” The Armory ” and buy any weapon they choose, no questions asked ; nor should the Pentagon be giving away surplus military equipment to local police departments. I regret using the words ” mentally unstable, ” only because it did seem to be directed at you personally. That actually was not my intent; it was a general belief that people who are content in their lives have no need to fire military style weapons for any reason. The growing level of paranoia in this country is reaching a fevered pitch and one day it will come back to haunt the pro-gun community. I will leave it at that.
Gun owners who support enforcement of gun laws and expanding them through technological breakthroughs that make identification easier have an important role to play amid the N.R.A. that fetishizes firearms.
Certain Tea Party types coming to political rallies open-carry makes parts of your point valid.
NOTE: The weapon referred to in my column was a registered full-auto M-16, not an AK-47.
I don’t think it’s just the NRA should be the only one’s blames here….Where was security for the movie theater?,,,,From one I understander the reports say the killer used a backdoor at leisure to reenter the place.
I have not been to the movie theater in a long time…and refuse to attend any in my area. I always wait for the movie to come out on DVD. I have told my friends and family that the quality of security and those attending these places have gone down.
The last time I attended a movie theater…A couple of teenage boys were caught dealing drugs, only two rows away from my aisle. I reported to the movie staff…and they simply ignored me…So, I stopped attending.
I could spend all day listing the many dangerous situations… I encountered at American cinemas. But this is a time to remember the victims…not focus on any thing else.
Why the heck do we need security for a movie theater? There ought to be some places were people can go where they don’t have to go through metal detectors and /or be patted down. I’ve been to movies where people left out of the exit to the outside and nothing happened.
Ga6thDem…Why do we need police, soldiers etc… Because their will always be some lunatic out there willing to harm others.
I understand your point, and in a ideal world that should be the case.
No offense, Marie, but by your logic, we ought to have soldiers and police officers roaming shopping malls, grocery stores, Little League games, libraries, and anywhere else people congregate in large numbers.
That’s called a Police State, and I don’t want security enough to want to live in one.
jjamele….I am not suggesting a police state. If we livid in a perfect world their would be no need for armed forces etc…Also, I AGREE WITH YOU!…But in the real world, we have crazy people that put others lives in danger. I was only stating the obvious…that the Killer was able to use at leisure one of the back doors to the theater…where was “Security” ?
I have been to theaters with NO SECURITY… where back entrance doors where used by drug dealers, thieves, rapist to come and go as they please. A high school friend of my cousins…was ganged raped by a bunch of teenage boys in a movie theater…she had never mentally recovered.
I have witness drug transaction take place in the middle of a freaking movie…I reported and all the movie staff did was shrug their shoulders…I had scream and yell for them to call the police.
I have also seen a knife pulled out on a four year old, by another movie goer child…for making to much noise.
I could go on all day about the security issues with some movie theaters…that assume people would never do such things.
However, I will say that “NO ONE SHOULD LIVE IN FEAR” or “POLICE STATE”….but we live in era…filled with lunatics that can’t easily get their hands on guns etc…
A movie theater should not turn into Fort Knox…but some level of security is needed. Just opinion
Correction: filled with lunatics that can easily get their hands on guns etc…
jjamele ….Also one more thing, I notice you listed “libraries” and “Grocery Stores”….because I did volunteer work a long time ago at a very popular Public Library. The place also had two cops on duty at all times of the day. They even had surveillance cameras everywhere.
The library was located in a very well to do suburban area, with very little crime. So, most of the staff thought the tight security was over the top. That is until…we learned through an FBI investigation…that our library was the home base for over “SIXTY CHILD PREDATORS” …long story short these monsters where using our library computer lab to lure innocent children…one of the sickos even tried to kidnap a five year old little girl from the library.
The child’s mother “ASSUMED” the library would be the safest place in the world. So, she left her daughter in the children’s section of the library alone…and went across the street to the local Kroger’s store, for an hour.
The child was smart enough to get away from the man and find a our resident cop that day…for help. The man was arrested. As for the mother…she was outraged that she could no longer leave her child alone in the library. Good Grief!
When my cousin was in high school she worked at the local Grocery Store…and was shocked to report all the attempted burglaries, kidnapping and attempted murders…that had to be stopped by “SECURITY”.
The world today we live in…is not the same like our parents.
And Marie205 what was the un-armed, minmum wage, security officer supposed to do? Sneak up on the perp and hit him with his/her flashlight?
Even if you accept the notion that a Movie Theater needs armed response security officers ( and what sad state of affairs that would be) even then they would have been badly matched against a man in armor carrying a AR-15 (with a 100 drum attached), two Semi Automatic Pistols, and shotgun.
I would suggest we either pull our collective heads outta our asses and press for REAL gun control reforms or buy Kevlar under wear, LOTS of guns and barbed wire and hunker down in our own little self sustaining bunkers.
STOP being afraid of shadows and punks and scum bags with the guns the criminal NRA domestic terrorists and blood drenched manufacturers want to keep flooding the streets of America with.
DEMAND elected officials actually do something for the COMMON GOOD and not appease these psychosexual freaks and their fantasy obsessions with who has the bigger gun!!
At one time violence and bloodshed was a very strong catalyst for change in America…now I believe we face a stronger more influential prohibitor… what I call “American Amnesia”…the willful induced outside influence of the powerful to cause us to forget and repeat the same old cycle!
Taylor, you’ve said much. As a child of the inner city, hearing gun shots everyday, and knowing that someone was killed or hurt that night, I know too well what guns can do in the wrong hands. And hearing how much ammunition James Holmes as legally able to buy is startling. As I said before, I’m a gun owner like you (although my two katanas are sexier..
). And when I look at my two guns, I deeply feel what they can do to another life. Much power is in a gun. And it shouldn’t be taken for granted and waved around like pom-poms.
Great piece.
The first person I saw killed by a gun was an elderly woman on our front lawn at 61st and Chestnut Street in Phila. Pa. in 1963. She just caught a stray round in the head from one of the many gang turf wars happening back then, drugs hadn’t gotten a strangle hole yet.
I was in the fourth grade.
The first time I shot anybody…and was shot was working for Uncle Sugar.
I KNOW what guns do to people, not some video game but what they really do.
Ms. Marsh’s Husband(the lucky Dog) also knows first hand what they can do.
These whores for the NRA don’t have the balls to do anything about guns? OK, make the carrying of a firearm during the commission of a crime a CAPITAL offense. If you were carrying it you were willing to use it.
Taylor…Brilliant analysis. Just brilliant. It just doesn’t get any better than this:
Enough said.
Watch any R-rated film “edited for television”- you will see people being stabbed, shot, decapitated, tortured in a thousand different ways. What is edited? Sex scenes. Cursing.
Violence= fine. Sex, Swearing= Obscene.
I was watching “Taken” on network TV the other day- I watched Liam Neeson’s character break necks and noses, shoot about half a dozen people, and then engage in a car chase involving wrecked buildings, more explosions, and shooting.
At the very end, something was pixilated out of the screen- know what it was? Neeson giving “the finger” to his pursuer. No kidding.
Oh, and Marie- I hope that mom you wrote about who left her kid in the library while she went shopping was arrested for engaging in Child Endangerment. All the extra security in the world will not protect children from the witless, thoughtless actions of parents like that.
Your solution seems to be to put security guards wherever there may be children who aren’t being attended to by their parents 100 percent of the time. Ever been to a public beach? You’d have to have the National Guard stationed there to watch the kiddies as their parents focus on their I-phones and cigarettes. You think that a lifeguard posted every fifty yards on a beach with thousands of kids is “security?”
My point remains- we aren’t going to make the country as secure as you would like, without fundementally changing that society. Movie theatres are not going to employ armed guards (you think you pay a lot for a ticket NOW? Just wait till the price of the security team is added on) and neither are libraries on the chance that some nut will come in with a gun or the intent to molest children. Most of our problems can be solved by being diligent (you do NOT leave your kids alone in a freaking library, and the solution to such negligence is NOT the library’s responsibility!!) The world is never going to be 100 percent secure. The vast majority of us will go to libraries, the movies, schools, etc. etc. all of our lives without the slightest problem. Tragedies like this will occur because we are flawed human beings who live in an imperfect world. Trying to make that world perfect in terms of security leads us down a road that, trust me, you do NOT want to go.
Appreciate this, ladywalker68.
It is a terrific piece. You are welcomed!
Great post Taylor. Personally, I don’t see any ending to any of this as we are regressing as a nation.
Americans firmly believe killing someone is a reasonable way to solve a problem. The net result is we enter more wars than other countries do, execute more people, and have more gun violence than other first world countries.
Our ridiculously high incarceration rate and visceral distaste for providing health care to poor people (which is what the whole Obamacare resistance is really about) is only one step removed from the belief that killing someone is a reasonable way to solve a problem. If you can’t kill the people you hate, at least f^&k with their lives, even if it costs society a ton of money in the long run.
Those who hate Obamacare basically hate poor people, which is pretty much the defining characteristic of the Tea Party. And for the most part, the same people, I think it is safe to say, are rabidly pro-gun, which they can use to shoot poor people, should the opportunity present itself.
Ramsgate-I totally agree with you on every point, especially this part:
This includes gay people and any people they disagree with or who are different in any way. Hate gays? Pass laws so they can’t marry. Don’t like what someone says or behaves, wears or looks even if it is legal? Blow them way!!! That’s the answer!!! A whole lot easier than trying to understand and communicate.
And Taylor’s observation that we are addicted to violence sums it up as well. Now, in no way do I blame the victims or the movie makers but I just have to wonder: People flock to the movie theaters to feast on and digest several hours of in-your-face killing and violence on the screen for “entertainment” and then are absolutely horrified when the same scene plays out for real.
Please, someone explain to me: how do we reconcile what appears to me to be such a horrific paradox?
Because it might be obvious, but we have no heroes or leaders or Batmen or Supermen who are going to step-up and get the bad guys. It pretty obvious that we have become a nation of where everybody is in it for number 1 and it is up to you to choose how you deal with it.
Just a clarification: I don’t want my post above to be, in any way, misconstrued as a call for censorship in movies. The movie-makers provide that which sells tickets and makes money. Movies like this, make lots of money and that is because there is a BIG AUDIENCE for it. The fact that the big audience is there disturbs me more than the movie itself.
That said, once the smoke clears, I predict the biggest cry (and biggest irony) you will hear is not one for banning or controlling assault weapons or high capacity magazines, but rather, one for censorship in movies.
And at least one GOPer is already at it, defending one’s “constitutional right” to high-capacity magazines.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/ron-johnson-high-capacity-magazines_n_1692810.html
Heya Ramsgate, you know, as I researched, drafted and edited this column it took a while to work through the regressive reality we are all watching play out. There is a lot of truth to that, Ramsgate.
I also think it’s why hyper-partisans are so dogmatically reactionary against any progressive or liberal not being willing to vote for Obama again. They can’t see a way out of the situation if Republicans get full control of Congress and the White House.
The other side of that, however, is that we’ll never shift to another reality unless “the left” regroups. I’ll say it again, the left needs a Tea Party moment, but going back to your point, the regressive nature of our politics, Democratic included, doesn’t offer much hope.
Taylor-I appreciate you sharing your own story regarding guns. I am a 62-year-old petite person, and grapple every day with my own safety. I have never owned a gun. I have fired one on occasion at a shooting range. I have never been shot or known anyone who was.
My personal experience regarding guns includes:
– Someone whose husband allegedly “accidentally” shot and killed himself while goofing off with his gun. I knew the wife, never met the husband.
– Being on a camping trip with my son (he was 11) and a bunch of people we were with brought all their guns and after consuming much beer, found a place to go shoot them off. I mean there were pistols, rifles you name it. I was terrified for myself and my kid, kicking myself for being a terrible parent exposing him to this.
–This time, many years later and many years ago, unknowingly and unexpectedly finding myself and my then grown son (he was 21-22) in the presence of a close relative who (also wasted on beer and anti-depressants) had my son look into a flower pot only to find a hand gun, that the relative said he was going to use to blow away his ex, due to perceived injustices over the last 18 years or so. He also bragged he had lots more guns on order. Well, at my son’s urging and unknown to the wasted relative, we took the gun and informed authorities and the person who was the target of the threats. No arrests were made. The relative was informed of what we had done, and although not pleased, nothing ever happened. I became the target of a lot of hate and ridicule from my family for handling it this way, but I was not going to stand by and let the threats go unreported and later turn into something worse. Could be it was all bravado and talk. Could be we averted a tragedy, but we will never know.
So from personal experience, I am 3-0 in the column of a senseless gun death and seeing a guns twice wielded in senseless stupidity, where somebody could have gotten seriously hurt or killed for nothing, versus where a law-abiding citizen carrying a concealed weapon used it o prevent bodily harm to self and others. I have also from personal experience seen where removing the gun from the possession of drunk possibly averted a tragedy. In this case, the answer was fewer guns, not more.
I have considered mace because with my arthritic hands,my experience at the shooting range is that most hand guns require a certain amount of strength and dexterity in ones hands and fingers that just are not there for me. Right now, I live in a relatively safe place, but work in an area where there is much crime, including robbery and assault. I probably should do something for protection, but for me, owning a gun is 100% not the answer.
Peace.
A list of some of these incidents.
” I’ll say it again, the left needs a Tea Party moment, but going back to your point, the regressive nature of our politics, Democratic included, doesn’t offer much hope.”
I am 1000% in agreement with you. So long as folks understand the “Tea party” are working from WITHIN the republican party. They never were, are not and will n ever be a seperate party, they are republican through and through…just a place for the most radical to get together and change the party from WITHIN.
What it means is withholding your vote for politicians who act against progressive interests; any loss, therefore, needs to be attributed to the politician for not keeping faith with those values and objectives.
Translation: “the left” needs to get some balls to prove they actually exist, let alone are a potent political player.
Anyone who thinks that the inability to learn from incidents like this is in any way partisan got an education from Gov Hickenlooper on a Sunday morning talk show- Hickenlooper bleated the usual, pathetic “this won’t change us at all” crap which is so common when “unthinkable” incidents like this happen.
Hickenlooper said that “the people here in the West, we’re resilient, we’ll bounce back”- hey, douchebag, the six year old kid who is now dead, and the other 11 dead, will not “bounce back” from this “unthinkable” tragedy. Hickenlooper added that “this guy won’t change our way of life, I sent my kids to the midnight showing last night..” wow, what a trooper, that’ll learn him! Because I’m sure the shooter’s goal was to eliminate midnight showings, and the best way to show we are still Rugged Americans is to go to midnight showings (and maybe chant USA! USA! While we are at it.)
We refuse to learn anything, because we consider learning and adjusting our behavior as a sign of weakness, a “giving in” to “those people” and “letting the terrorists win.” All we ever get out of these incidents is pathetic chest-thumping about how “we” are “strong enough to get through this” and how “they” won’t “change the way we live” (amongst a sea of guns and regular shootings, all of which are “unthinkable,” no matter how many time they happen.)
Stand by for the next “unthinkable” event, coming to a community near you, any moment now.
BTW, can anyone explain to me what so many little kids (including a four month old baby) was doing at a midnight showing for an R rated movie? ANYONE?
Let me see…Let me take a few guesses:
1. Watching incredibly violent movies at midnight has become the 2012 norm for a fun family night out???
2. In the tough economic times, people can’t afford babysitters, but they can afford at least $20 for a movie ticket and snacks to watch a bad guy kill people on the big screen and have Batman save the day…um, but it’s not so good when a real shooter shows up in the movie theater…and they realize there is no such thing as a Batman…That kind of sucks.
Both your two guesses ring true ladywalker68. Although my family and I never go see movies past 3pm, we’ve seen numerous cases where folks will be in a theater with infants. One of my close cousins have done that a few times and she’s said the same thing: can’t afford a babysitter now since her and her husband have lost jobs and taken lower paying jobs.
There’s just so many stories and sub-stories in incidents like this.
Yes, and to be fair here, times are tough economically and people will take any types of jobs at any hour. Not everybody has a 8 to 5 job. There are swing shift jobs which have you working in the afternoon and off in the evening, so it is impossible to catch movies at regular times. I can understand if you are working at such a job, getting off late and catching the midnight version, and also not having enough money for a sitter.
Let’s face it, on most days, taking your kids to the movies at any time, you don’t expect anything so horrific to happen.
In bad economic times movie theaters do quite well, even at today’s inflated prices it is a relatively cheap way to escape reality for awhile.
I’m guessing that from his total lack of response to a red meat issue that R.R. is still in the penalty box.
Probably all for the best as he would rattle far too many cages here and the discussion would degrade into a food fight. Still it might be amusing to hear about the black helicopters and how we all need to arm ourselves against the coming one-world government. Then again–maybe not.
Moderation only, so he and others have the choice of commenting, which would be approved as long as it was sans insults
Translation: “the left” needs to get some balls to prove they actually exist, let alone are a potent political player.
You are correct…that’s the only bottom line answer remaining since the left has demonstrated a remarkable inability to effect the more clever strategy of co-opting an opponent in a more powerful position.
However, observing the left’s propensity to prefer jawboning and proselytizing when neither have any effect when you are coming from an inferior position of control, I would be quite surprised to see the age of puberty being achieved.
The left is useless.
Taylor, ladywalker68 spoke for me when she said this:
“Taylor…Brilliant analysis. Just brilliant. It just doesn’t get any better than this:”
“”In God we trust, so it must be “God’s plan,” which is as good an excuse as any to keep from looking at our society, which just keeps spinning further out of control, in a country that can’t feed it’s poor, employ its people, or solve our nation’s problems.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
We’re addicted all right. Addicted to violence against each other, ourselves, our planet, our “enemies,” our friends, our environment, the very world that sustains us and there’s no evidence anywhere that enough people want to get off the merry-go-round we’ve been on for decades to change the direction in which we’re hurling.”"
This all reminded me of the Michael Moore film “Bowliing for Columbine”. There were many scenes in that doc that stood out for me but the one that speakes to gun control and our own American psyche was where Moore tries to discern the difference between Canada and the USA when it comes to gun violence. Both cultures have this in common: lots of guns; watching violent films and palying viloent video games. So what causes Canadians and Americans to react significantly different when it comes to gun violence.
Fear. Fear cripples Americans and we react in general with violence wherein Canadians in general don’t fear as much and therefore react to things with much less violence. And, then I remembered that infamous comment by FDR during the height of the depression when he said this:
We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
I think Moore, the Canadians in his film and FDR got it right about us.
http://tinyurl.com/cu2mde4
Important to bring up “Bowling for Columbine,” newdealdem1.
Fear, indeed.