Friday Sober Thread: Tragedy in Connecticut

A buddy of mine came over for dinner last night. He works on a very main road in Newtown and a funeral procession passed by his shop on Wednesday just as he was leaving to go pick up lunch.

Every car on both sides of the road for as far as he could see was pulled to the side and every person got out and stood along the edge of the road as the cars passed them by--all with their hands on their hearts.

 

I agree, people only got to ranges to practice for mass killings.

Touche troll and/or douche

 

Re: NRA's press conference, can anyone explain how armed guards at every school = more freedom? Wouldn't that make your country look more like a third world dictatorship (on top of already sharing similar gun murder rates)?

Oh, and apparently over 80 Americans have been killed with guns since Newtown, some of them children -- neato!

 

It's great to throw the numbers around that 80 Americans have died but did you read the backgrounds of the shootings behind the stats. I'm working today so I really don't have the time to do a spreadsheet on it, but from a cursory review you notice a definite pattern emerge.

Minority individual shoots someone during a robbery, Minority individual shoots someone during a drug deal, Minority individual shot by police responding to criminal action, self defense, undocumented reason in lower income area (not familiar with most of the places listed, but judging from descriptions given), crazy white guy shoots family member after argument, accidental. One of the children was a drive by and one was accidental caused by a poorly secured weapon.

And to round everything out, out of the 80, an assault weapon was only mentioned twice... 2.5%....the national average (one was an AK47 in a drug deal gone bad).

Take what you want from this but it's right there in the underlying information. I wonder how many of these people are members of the NRA? I wonder how many of these people go to the range? I wonder how many of these people vote and pay taxes? I wonder how many of these people live in a culture where following the law is optional but gang banging is mandatory?

The problem isn't with the guns, it's with the underlying culture.

I know someone will pop up that I'm just a white guy being racist, but look for yourself.

 

But making those assault rifles, which only have warfare applications, illegal will stop this from happening. Because murder, home invasion, assault, drug dealing and domestic assault are illegal, these fine upstanding citizens were driven to this behavior by the gun in their hands.

 

I don't like guns. Never have, never will. But I don't like guns in a somewhat comparable manner to a wife who doesn't like her husband to ride motorcycles. They are inherently dangerous no matter how well trained you are, and can result in death due to the naturally violent nature of their intent (or in a motorcycle's case, the nature of traveling at high speeds while relatively unprotected). I just don't want people to die. And if innocent people die by gunfire or motorcycle accidents, I think that really sucks, because shooting guns and riding motorcycles are not something we do purely out of necessity. I acknowlege that motorcycles are not intended to kill or destroy in the way that guns are, so don't misinterpret my comparison. My point is that if you choose to participate in something dangerous that disregards consequence, it's not just you who it affects. Your hobby is a contributing factor to school shootings and widowed marriages whether you intended it or not.

HOWEVER, just because I dislike guns, does not mean that I oppose them in general. I just choose not to participate in the culture. And we all need to be honest here, that is exactly what the debate comes down to - protection of the innocent versus dismemberment of a culture. The former see only the fact that guns clearly result in death and the latter only want to protect their right participate in something they enjoy. I do understand that guns are necessary for various reasons and circumstances, mainly as it relates to personal protection and law enforcement (the "enforcement" part would be kinda trivialized if we asked officers to protect us by just sounding really mean to bad guys). As to the "I like to hunt" or "I like to sport shoot" or "I like to collect" or "I like to ____" arguments, I'm on the fence. I hate to take away anything somebody "likes", but if that something is as inherently dangerous as a gun, that comes with not only personal responsibility, but with the acknowledgement that as long as commercially available guns need to exist in order to preserve your hobby, that existence will always enable tragedy. The simple fact is that they exist....and even the anti-gun nuts or the government can't make them "unexist".

The problem I have is that one side wants an unrealistic solution to the violence and the other side is forced to retort in a way that doesn't jeopardize their rights/hobbies, which naturally leads to diversion of blame. As a primarily "against" person, I'll be the first to admit that making guns "unexist" is a ridiculous notion. Furthermore, making both guns AND bad/unstable people unexist is even less realistic. As to the "pro-gun" side, citing the 2nd amendment, or arguing that bad people will still do bad things, or that a mother shouldn't allow her autistic kid to have access to her guns, or that our mental health services environment is to blame....those are just convenient ways to say "I like my guns" without actually having to say so.

Unfortunately, I'm coming to realize that school killings were and always will be unpredictable and unpreventable. The policy and societal relationship with guns that needed be in place to avoid such tragedies needed to be in place a long time ago. The fact that we even associate guns with such terms as "culture" and "enthusiast" should tell you that we not only accept guns as part of our society, but embrace them with open arms. IMO, that does NOT relieve gun-culture supporters of their hand in these tragedies, but I do believe that forcefully imposing them with the responsibility of fixing it is not an actionable solution. The things we needed to engrain in our culture as it relates to violence and guns needed to be altered years ago. It can't be "un-engrained". That's just the reality. But just because it's engrained, doesn't mean you have a free pass to support guns and stand there with a straight face and tell me you are not further enabling the problem. Just don't be all upset when non-gun folks look you in the eye and say fuck you for being A) ignorant or B) an asshole. That's the trade off you get, and if you havn't figured that out yet, you're probably both.

Sorry for the name calling. You aren't going to have to give up your guns. You aren't going to be forced to come up with a definitive solution. You're just going to have to deal with some rightful anger. I'd say that's a prettty good deal....you should probably take it.

School killings, like I said, were always going to happen. Guns just made them more likely to happen on a mass scale. They were always going to happen for the same reason we were always going to go to the moon, or invent the computer, or decide to film 2 girls and 1 cup. They were unthinkable at one time. They now exist because eventually, somebody thinks of it and obtains the means, direction, and balls to do it. Once it's happened the first time, that sets the stage for 1-upmanship. That's why we send a rover to Mars. That's why we have the iPad. That's why we have Goatse or whatever totally sick thing trumps that last one. That's why we go from crazy mal-adjusted kids shooting high-schoolers in Columbine to an autistic, awkward mama's boy shooting a bunch of 6 year-olds. It wouldn't have mattered if gun ownership went down by 75% between Columbine and Newtown. It would have only potentially mattered if guns or gun culture didn't exist in the first place. Well, unfortunately, that's not the case, and no matter how hard we try, we can't make tomorrow's gun owners get rid of their guns yesterday. The only thing we can do is call them mean names on the internet and such.

2012 message-board post quota met. Booya.

 

I gotta be honest... I saw an article about people bringing golden retrievers down there to help the kids and families out...

And I'm going to arrange a Mastiffs Descend On Newtown, CT in the spring.

Why not now? Because those people need some time to just be. However, Goldens are cool, Labs are great, but if you seriously want to make kids feel good AND feel safe, there is nothing like a Mastiff. Giant and gentle. I am going to reach out to the powers-that-be in Newtown and see what I can arrange for March/April. I know at least 30 Mastiffs that can make their presence felt as of right this second. Give me 2 months, I bet I can get over 100.

I'm just announcing the intention now to announce it, so yeah. Mastiffs in Newtown. It's coming.

 

There you have it folks! The truth! There will always be people who think around the obstacles.
I'm speaking as a father of a child who attends to a school where some boys were shot: you can't underestimate the criminal mind.

 

Fuck it.

 

This is excellent, and the only sad part is that the people who need to read it... won't. Includes answers to questions like "what is an assault rifle" and "why can't we ban handguns".

I was uncomfortable with arming teachers before this, but the idea this guy proposes - don't push teachers into carrying, just make schools concealed-carry zones like everywhere else - makes sense.

edit: Also, this guy apparently used the dangerous tactic of "jungle-taping" his magazines together. I think we should ban duct t-- I mean, "assault tape".

 

For what it's worth, Columbine had an armed guard on duty when that particular shooting went down.

 

Do yourselves a favor and read that article.

 

Thirded, and by someone sympathetic to gun control no less.

 

Fourthed! If you don't at least read this, whether you agree or not, you're doing yourself a disservice.

 

Yea, great article.

 

It IS a good article (maybe even important), one that should be shouted from the highest rooftops, but it won't. It's just such a shame that "logic" and "facts" don't fly with news nowadays. Making victims' families cry on camera does.

It hurts that to read an article as lucid as that knowing that pretty much anybody I know oustide of here probably won't end up reading it or even hear of it. Instead, they'll take their advice from degenerates on Fox News or MSNBC and for the love of fucking Christ the entire continent could just do themselves an enormous favour and STOP LISTENING TO THESE PEOPLE.

 

I read that article and am ambivilent about it, at best. Here are my issues with it:

1. He falls back on using "the left" and "liberals" as a label for people want more gun control, as if liberals and the left were some monolithic entity. He would've been better had he just stuck to using terms like "anti-gun" and "gun-control adovcates".

2. He argues that if guns become impossible to get, criminals will just use bombs instead, but doesn't seem to realize that if everyone is armed, terrorists & psychos will still then have the incentive to use bombs.

3. He lumps everyone into two groups, "law-abiding citizens" and "criminals", and seems to characterize the former as, 'would never break a law, ever' and the latter as 'has absolutely no morality and would break any law for any reason'. It's too black and white for me.

4. I'm in the group that thinks arming teachers is not a good idea. I think there's too much risk in a teacher losing possession/control of their weapon in various circumstances to make it worthwhile, even if it could be shown that armed teachers reduces the likelihood of mass shootings.

 

I, too, was unimpressed by the article, for some serious reasons and some silly reasons. I mean, he makes sense in saying that banning "assault rifles" because they look scary is stupid, and various other things along those lines. One needn't be an enemy of gun control to know these things.

Regarding armed teachers, well, I keep on bringing this up every time the discussion of a chairborne ranger pulling a Rambo comes up: in combat, you don't rise to the occasion, you regress to the level of training. When the adrenaline gets pumping and the heartbeat rises, people do stupid shit (or nothing at all), especially without extensive training. The metaphor has been used elsewhere on the board, but not in this thread: giving a sheep a pistol doesn't turn them into a sheepdog, it turns them into a sheep with a pistol. The writer touches on this briefly, but only uses it as an argument for allowing people to have higher capacity magazines.

I want to say this only to explain a point. When I read this, I thought, "What are Gun Free Zones? I don't get it... are they... oh god, they actually have private property designated as gun free zones?" To me, walking into a mall and seeing a "no guns allowed!" sign is like walking into a bathroom and seeing a "please don't shit in the urinal" sign. But then, there's that thing about fish not knowing they're swimming in water. But for a country so supposedly dedicated to freedom, why should the owner of the mall not have the freedom to designated his private property as a gun-free zone?

So, of all the recent massacres that took place, how many of them committed several hundred felonies to get there? And for that matter, if anyone reads The Last Psychiatrist, there's some discussion there that the thought of "he wanted to be famous" is projection; it's why this guy would go on a massive rampage, so he projects that feeling onto someone else. It's not actually why the rampage occurred.

Yeah, note that he was stopped by someone with training to respond to this situation. Slate.com did an article on shootings being stopped by armed civilians: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/12/can_armed_citizens_stop_mass_shootings_examples_of_armed_interventions.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... tions.html</a> and you'll notice a lot of them were military reservists, retired military, off-duty cops, etc.

And someone at that shooting damn near shot an innocent bystander: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2011/01/friendly_firearms.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.slate.com/articles/health_an ... earms.html</a>

So, we've established that mass shootings are a poor gauge of the efficacy of gun control, right?

Or, maybe not.

This is the most important part right here. "That's not my people doing the shooting". He's forever separating himself and gun culture and gun nuts from any crime that could ever happen, and is in fact putting them in square opposition to anything unlawful. But you know what? The kid who shot up that school in Newtown was the kid of a gun nut. The author would otherwise say that his mother was doing a good, moral, noble, patriotic thing. It would give Jesus a hard-on, I'm sure, to have seen this child bonding with his mother over guns.

Until, of course, everything went wrong. And as soon as that happened, he wasn't a gun nut; he was a crazy psychopath who was on drugs and wanted to make headlines and should be ignored and stoned to death and who had absolutely nothing at all to do with gun culture or gun nuts.

I'd sincerely hoped that by now we as a society had gone beyond using "elite" as an insult by now, but apparently that's still sticking around.

Totally fair comparison. An abject failure of police and military leadership from the top down is the natural result of ordinary citizens not carrying guns around everywhere. One wonders how militaries and police forces still exist and function in societies not armed to the teeth.

What I really wish he'd discussed is the other side of the coin of teachers in school. Remember those stats about how a gun in your home is less likely to be used against an intruder than against someone you know / involved in an accident? Are those suddenly going to not happen when it's teachers carrying in school?

 

Sure, it's their freedom, but again in the article that's the whole "we have to do something" mentality where people will do random shit just to make themselves feel better or safer even if it actually doesn't.

Almost no one in the military is trained how to respond to active shooter situations to include combat arms personnel, military status is entirely irrelevant unless you're some kind of military law enforcement. For that matter, most of us are support, not combat arms, so we'll only receive any kind of actual firearms training a handful of times. Most cops don't get a whole lot of firearms training and the standards they have to meet aren't exactly stringent.

Yeah, but he didn't. It isn't like cops don't make mistakes, they actually shot 9 innocent people trying to stop one guy just a few months ago in New York.

I think the point maybe, just maybe is that if someone really wants to shoot up a school or whatever they are going to find a way.

I love it when people have no point to make, so they just try and throw around insults like "gun nut" when all of us gun nuts have been more than respectful to the other side of the argument. It's impossible to have a logical discussion with your kind, you'll never be able to hear us from atop your high horse.

Irony: Insulting the people you are arguing against in one breath and then in the next getting butthurt when they say something back.

I agree with you here, but I'm never going to put full confidence in the military or the cops to be able protect me regardless of how well they are prepared.

So in your eyes there here is no difference in carrying a weapon in an official capacity than there is having one in your house. Noted.