The Onion hits it square on the head

[claydoh]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/sad...8857/?ref=auto

satire is not always for laughs.

[woodsmoke]

Unfortunately sad but accurate.

I just hope that none of the wonderful family here at Kubuntu were involved directly or indirectly.

woodhopefulsmoke

[whatthefunk]

Thats just a couple miles from where I grew up. Weird that something like that can happen so close to home.

[SteveRiley]

Yeah, a bit freaky... I lived in Aurora during 1998-2001. I recall Aurora Mall, now known as Town Center at Aurora. Not sure whether the cinema existed then. I certainly do remember the Columbine school shooting near Littleton. That left all of Denver in something of a daze for a while.

[whatthefunk]

Aurora Mall has always been kind of a rough place...lots of gangs hang out in that area. This shooting doesnt seem at all gang related though... I read today that this is the worst mass shooting in US history. Im sure Colorado will be in shock for a while to come. Sad that such a nice state has been home to some of the worst incidents in recent years.

[wh0rd]

Why didn't anyone in the audience shoot him back? Isn't Aurora in a state where gun control is very lenient? Or is it that no one really carries gun even with the leniency and right to do so?

[claydoh]

It was a movie theater, so my guess was that even hardcore gun carriers would have left them behind. Extremely few have concealed-carry permits, and who would allow people to bring a visible firearm into their place of business in the first place?

This seems to be a situation where either side of the gun control debate had zero influence.

[woodsmoke]

yeah but the gun control advocates are already out in full cry. Not that I'm advocating one way or the other, but one of them, a congress person, even went so far as to say something to the effect of "Both ( Obama and Romney) need to quit with the mealy mouth pronouncements and get on with a gun "conversation" so we can get rid of them.

I think that was a little ahead of the timeline in terms of when it would appear.

Everybody has to get their "talking head" time in front of the camera befor the camera moves on to graze in other pastures.

woodsmoke

[whatthefunk]

Gun nuts say that people kill people, not guns. They are correct. However, they fail to realize that there will always be crazy people. Why give ubiquitous crazies guns?

[GreyGeek]

From his picture the shooter looked to be in the same mental category as Jarad Laughner, but worse. He had no public track record of craziness, except that his mom said she was not surprised. However, she never told anyone. IOW, Homes is the classic "lone wolf".

Regardless, that the anti-2nd Amendment crowd will use this situation for all it is worth to push gun control is a given.

My views are this: A gun causes the death of people in exactly the same way a pencil causes spelling mistakes. I own a Black Hawk Ruger .22 handgun. I have not shot it in 35 or 40 years. It has remained in a shoe box on a high shelf in my office all that time. About 10 years ago, while re-arranging books, I opened the shoe box and noticed that all of the Copper cartridges had a green platina on them which welded them to the leather loops in the holster belt. I cleaned them and the gun and put the cartridges back into the loops, and put them back in the box and the box on the shelf. I am glad to report that at no time during the last 40 or so years has that weapon jumped off the shelf of its own volition and shot someone. Guns do not kill people, people kill people.

The phrase "a well regulated militia" confuses a lot of people. The key term, "regulated", does not refer to laws controlling the access and use of weapons by professional or citizen soldiers. In today's language syntax the phrase would better be represented by "a well drilled militia", because "well regulated" meant well drilled or practiced in the arts of marching, formations, attacks, etc...

ESR has a nice test of the strength of resolve of gun control proponents. Place this sign on your front lawn:

THIS HOUSE IS A GUN-FREE ZONE

Dr Susan Gratia, who lost her parents in the cafeteria shooting in Texas a few years ago reminded the Congressmen that the 2nd Amendment isn't about duck hunting. It is about the citizens protecting themselves from governmental power gone mad:

What is often forgotten in gun control debates is the how our country was created in the face of the most powerful military and navy on the face of the earth at the time. The Declaration of Independence states:

...
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security
...

A people cannot throw off a repressive government if they are not as well armed as the oppressive government's forces are. That's a simple fact. "A people who turn their swords into plowshares will plow for those who do not" is easily understood on an international level, but it applies equally well to the national or local level.


An aside:
It used to be illegal for the US Military to operate within the borders of the USA. Apparently it no longer is. Last fall Los Angeles was host to over 100 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Blackhawk helicopters. They practiced riot control and crowd suppression in the middle of the city! Blackhawks lowering troops onto buildings, BFVs blocking intersections, troops rounding up citizens and putting them in buildings with only one exit, which was guarded by armed soldiers. One has to ask why? Who is the enemy? What do they believe will happen that will require such drastic measures? I suspect that they are preparing for an economic collapse. If that happens Presidential Executive Orders already and LONG in place will gut the Bill of Rights and the Constitution an establish martial law. Being in possession of a firearm will be illegal. All registered guns will be confiscated. Surveillance cameras will be put everywhere. The phrase "show your papers" will be shouted regularly, and backed up by force of arms. By then it will be too late to understand the meaning and purpose behind the 2nd Amendment.

[woodsmoke]

Wonderful post GG and I'll kind of randomly comment.

a) "Show your papers" FIRST started under Bush II after 9-11, there is video of it on YouTube.

Bush II did a "first run through" about having "border police"...BETWEEN STATES...

hmmmm THAT is what one had in USSR....one had to have PAPERS to travel from town to town.


b) "registered" guns..... that is precisely why the gun shoppes are doing what can only be called a "land office" business.

But contrary to the lib elites shouting.... 99 percent of the purchases since 9-11 are by people who knew ahead of time that

"the black helicopters" about which the liberal elites SCOFFED !!!!

would appear somehow, and they did....

under OBAMA....we now have drones..IN THE U.S

There is a song entitled: "A country boy will survive".

c) "well regulated" falls under the same mis-conception as the U.S. being a "democracy".

The lib elites DESPERATELY want a "democracy" so that they can try to get control of the "sheeple"...


and hopefully get so much control in a short period of time that "the conservatives" won't be able to mount enough people to restore it to the original state....


d) One of Bill Ayer's tenets in Rules for Radicals, Obama's neighbor and who did Obama's "coming out ceremony"

.... said....

a) create enough chaos so that the government can, in the interests of "public safety" institute martial law ....

b) the precursor to that was SEIZING ANY...ANY opportunity to create "economic" chaos..

Why is it, that when even Obama himself has said that what is needed is "small business" startups, that he keeps pushing SHORT TERM....government jobs...which turn into long term government jobs which produce...

nothing....

Witness Hitler and the lead up to WWII.

Hitler called in Liebensraum.... path to the sea.... so that the German people could SELL their wares.


e) One of the Sherlock Holmes stories was about the Prince who "feared clocks". The Prince didn't fear "clocks"....he feared "clockwork mechanisms"...that would set off a bomb.,

the Feds confidently point to people like the guy in Colorado that...

THE TRUE TERRORISTS....are U.S. citizens!!!

.......and the lib elite apologists say....How can a "muslim" get "over here?

So lets go after all those Bible people who have...GUNS!!

f) "Anarchists" SAY that they want "anarchy" but they really do not.

They want to use "anarchy" to COME OUT ON THE TOP....the Anarchist would then be IN CONTROL...

of all those people who cling to their Bibles and guns...


g) Why is it, that Communism is ALWAYS... "atheistic" and has taken away the few guns that are available to the local populace?

Lots a ways to go with that post GG....

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

...

d) One of Bill Ayer's tenets in Rules for Radicals,...

The book, "Rules For Radicals" is in my library. It was written by Saul D. Alinsky, who was the teacher of the man who taught Obama. Alinksy was influenced by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist. Relying on gradualism, infiltration and the, “dialectic process” rather than bloody revolution, Gramsci’s transformational Marxism was so subtle that few even noticed the deliberate changes. Saul Alinsky's son, David, praised Obama's training as an organizer during the Democrat Convention in Baltimore.

Alinsky's dedication is interesting:

Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgement of the very first radical; from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins -- or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer
-- Saul Alinsky

There are thirteen rules in his book, which some sources claim was originally titled "Rules For Revolutionaries". The most powerful one, and the one used most often by the Left, and is now being borrowed by the Right, is the 5th rule: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon". Why it is used most often is because of the 6th rule: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy", and enjoy they do. Catie Curic interviewed Sarah Palin and asked about her military and political experience. As part of her answer she said "there are places in Alaska from which you can see Russia", which is true. Then SNL made a parody falsely quoted her as saying "I can see Russia from my house", and ridiculed her as if she had made such a ludicrous statement. Then the "rinse and repeat" cycle took over, with help from the media, their ridicule was quoted as fact by others, especially clueless repeaters making insulting blog comments. Most people, Right and Left, are too naive and/or stupid to check such things and assume them to be true because it fits their pre-determined ideology.

His major tactic was pitting the "Haves" against the "Have-nots". Another tactic is attacking the leadership of organizations but rarely the organization itself. This was illustrated by ACORN in Chicago in the 1970s when they attacked the management of various banks and not the banks as an institution. They made threatening phone calls to their family residences, camped outside their homes, damaged their personal property ... all part of a fear and intimidation campaign. It worked. It was the beginning of the housing bubble.

Rules for Radicals is an excellent read. Salinsky said he was an atheist from the age of 12 but always professed to be a Jew when asked publicly. He never joined the Communist Party and he was also quoted in the wikipedia as saying "The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide."

Alinksy was always evasive about his relationship to Marxism, which itself was an effective use of Gramsci's subtle, transformational Marxism, and I have no doubt that he was Marxist to the core, as are many who are taught "community organizing" using his book.

[Fintan]

people kill people, not guns

Yes. That is true.

It is also true that it is easier for people to kill people with guns.

I am not a mathematician but I will give you this formula:

x = y² * z³

x is the total number of people killed

y is the availability of guns (especially assault rifles) and z is the social readiness do kill or put differently, the lack of social respect towards another's life.

I live in a country where every able man must and every able woman can due duty in the army. By extension almost every man and many women have an assault rifle and some a anther gun or two. After columbine (almost everything is imported from US at some stage, including the lust for violence made sexy by music, movies and the media) a law was enacted so that the weapons used during military duty (usually 2-3 months / year) must stay within the military base after their round of duty has finished.

Their was no political outcry by the populace. It was always extremely difficult to obtain a gun from a store, and only specialized stores with very rigid permit demands were allowed to sell weapons, so they really didn't notice a great difference.

Also and most importantly, their is a high social respect for anothers life.

Yes, we did have one crazy that went into a regional political meeting and tries to shoot a few of his fellow representatives (maybe we should export that ).

We also have violence on the streets here, but in no comparison with what is going on in the US.
The police bear arms, but are very disciplined and trained in their use.

Of course every one should be capable of defending themselves, but there is a line between defending ones home/family/life and arbitrarily dishing out violence just because a person has a very egotistical and deranged sense of right and wrong.

The US constitution was written in the context of the revolution, the life realities of that time (The new Americans lived in a hostile environment, which they had to defend themselves against to survive), by highly intelligent men who foresaw that the constitution should be adapted to changing social realities.

Now we are killing people because petty differences (religion, politics, economical status), loaves of bread or 10 dollars, or just for the kick.

The NRA doesn’t care about peoples rights, they care about the political power and the bottom line, and they use the 2.nd amendment as a good excuse. Lets face it, for a lot of people, especially kids, guns are sexy. It seems almost Freudian in its phallic symbolism.

Cars don't kill people, people kill people.
Yet we have driving licenses, speed limits, and so many other laws governing driving. Nobody really complains, or wants to abolish those laws.

BTHW I am an American citizen. Time will tell how long that will last.

[SteveRiley]

James Fallows on the certainty of more shootings.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...otings/260133/

Mass shootings in America since 2005 (62-page PDF):
http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/...-shootings.pdf

[GreyGeek]

Interesting reads, Steve.

The Brady list of shootings contains a total of about 360 shootings that took place between 2005 and today and was probably cherry picked. Several involved the deaths of up to 3 or 4 people. I noticed that it included one shooting in which the shooter was holding a concealed carry permit. I doubt that that list is a complete list of the uses of guns during that period. In 1993 a National Crime Victimization Survey concluded that guns are used DEFENSIVELY at least 108,000 times a year. Dr. Gary Kleck, a Florida State University Criminologist, found in 1993 that there are approximately two million defensive gun uses (DGU's) per year by law abiding citizens.

Dr Kleck himself, by his own words is:

... a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, Independent Action, Democrats 2000, and Common Cause, among other politically liberal organizations He is a lifelong registered Democrat, as well as a contributor to liberal Democratic candidates. He is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of, or contributor to, the National Rifle Association, Handgun Control, Inc. nor any other advocacy organization, nor has he received funding for research from any such organization.

Subsequent to Kleck's study, the Department of Justice sponsored a survey in 1994 titled, Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms (PDF). Using a smaller sample size than Kleck's, this survey estimated 1.5 million DGU's annually.

So, depending on your political persuasion, there are between 100,000 and 2,000,000 uses of guns for self defense in America. Some of those uses end up in fatalities, for either or both the criminal and the victim, and thus end up on the list of violent gun uses by anti-2nd Amendment proponents.

Dr Kleck explains how he became a skeptic of gun control:

Up until about 1976 or so, there was little reliable scholarly information on the link between violence and weaponry. Consequently, everyone, scholars included, was free to believe whatever they liked about guns and gun control. There was no scientific evidence to interfere with the free play of personal bias. It was easy to be a "true believer" in the advisability of gun control and the uniformly detrimental effects of gun availability (or the opposite positions) because there was so little relevant information to shake one's faith. When I began my research on guns in 1976, like most academics, I was a believer in the "anti-gun" thesis, i.e. the idea that gun availability has a net positive effect on the frequency and/or seriousness of violent acts. It seemed then like self-evident common sense which hardly needed to be empirically tested. However, as a modest body of reliable evidence (and an enormous body of not-so-reliable evidence) accumulated, many of the most able specialists in this area shifted from the "anti-gun" position to a more skeptical stance, in which it was negatively argued that the best available evidence does not convincingly or consistently support the anti-gun position. This is not the same as saying we know the anti-gun position to be wrong, but rather that there is no strong case for it being correct. The most prominent representatives of the skeptic position would be James Wright and Peter Rossi, authors of the best scholarly review of the literature.

Kleck explains why the NCVS estimates were low:

"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively. Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions, the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee."

So, taking a middle view, about 1,000,000 times per year a citizen uses a gun to defend themselves from an attack. There is also another reason why you don't hear about the many uses of firearms by ordinary citizens to prevent or halt crimes: the event is of only local interest, unless several people are killed, and the major news outlets are advocates of gun-control and would rarely publish a positive story on the use of a gun.


Consider another fact. There are about 310 million people living in America. About 110 million are adults. So, roughly 1% all Americans have used a gun to defend themselves. Or, a lesser percentage has used a gun repeatedly to defend themselves, Folks like owners of small businesses that have been repeatedly robbed.

I'm all for removing guns if those who want to do that can assure me that they can also remove from those people who tend to commit crimes the desire to do so. That they can detect the "Holmes" among us. Don't tell me that I should rely on the police to protect me. That assumption has been disproved in the Federal District Courts and at the Supreme Court.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_...ct_of_Columbia

Decision

By a 4-3 decision the court decided that Warren was not entitled to remedy at the bar despite the demonstrable abuse and ineptitude on the part of the police because no special relationship existed. The court stated that official police personnel and the government employing them owe no duty to victims of criminal acts and thus are not liable for a failure to provide adequate police protection unless a special relationship exists.

As is often said, when seconds count the police are only minutes away, but they don't have an obligation to protect you or your family from any threat.

This says nothing about the main reason an increasingly larger segment of the population has or will buy guns. They believe that the country is heading to disaster and they want to be able to defend themselves in a society that will become chaotic. There are those who chose to be victims and those who chose to be survivors. As I pointed out previously, if you choose to believe that the police are here to "serve and protect" then you have chosen to be a victim. The only remaining question is when you will become one.

And, one final comment. The Colt revolver was given two names, "The Peacemaker" and "The Equalizer". If you, a 180 lb average person, are forced to battle someone who is a 240 lb weight lifter and your weapons are anything but guns, the overwhelming odds are that YOU will become the victim. Even if you both posses guns the fight will be equal if YOU know how to use your weapon. At least you will have a chance. If someone with a concealed handgun and the training to use it were at that theater there is a strong chance that the injury and death toll could have been less than what it was. There are many cases on record where people carrying concealed weapons have stopped armed criminals in their tracks saving many lives. But, you'll rarely see that on the news.