http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/12/15/morning-report-tragedy-and-the-local-news Comments On: Morning comments: School shooting and the UA by Max Brantley en-us Copyright 2013 Arkansas Times. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, Arkansas Times readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact Arkansas Times. robert@arktimes.com (Arkansas Times Webmaster) Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:01 -0500 Sat, 18 May 2013 21:15:00 -0500 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Posted by Atlas999]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 05:24:46 -0600 Arkansas Times Sure the existance of a gun the hands of level headed person and the ramifications is not in question. But let one fall into the hands of someone having not benefited from needed mental care and I'll wish they had a bag of rocks to throw instead.
Posted by Ron Rizzardi]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 16:45:18 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by eLwood]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 15:33:02 -0600 Arkansas Times For whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.---John Donne

Pierce was very good yesterday and he landed a well-deserved punch on Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association and Huckabee's fellow traveler on this issue).

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/conn…

"Resist, then, the forces who tell you that the creation and maintenance of that commonwealth is too expensive or too complicated, or that it is an appeal to a time now lost to technology and modernity and the glories of free trade. Resist the frauds and mountebanks who seek to prosper from fragmentation and isolation, and who tell you that your "freedom" exists in a place outside of that creative process of self-government, and that, in fact, the institutions produced by that process are the enemies of that "freedom." Resist, as strongly as you can, the people who seek to profit by isolating you in your homes, and in your anger, and in your wounded sense of aggrieved entitlement, and with all your guns."
Posted by the outlier]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 13:22:25 -0600 Arkansas Times
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/07/onc…

From wiki:

"According to a 1999 Fortune survey, lawmakers and congressional staffers considered NRA the most influential lobbying group.[2] Its political activity is based on the principle that gun ownership is a civil liberty protected by the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and is the oldest continuously operating civil rights organization in the United States. According to its website, the NRA has 4.3 million members.[3]"

My questions to all of you: "Why does an organization that represents just slightly more than 1% of our population have such a hold on the minds of our Congress critters? Why does that organization get to control the conversation?"
Posted by the outlier]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 13:10:34 -0600 Arkansas Times
It starts off with and emotive tug at the heartstrings of "people of reason."

Several folks blaming violent TV and video games despite a decades long negative correlation between violent media and violent crime.

One person blaming the Republicans.

One person just wants someone, anyone to pay.

Reasoned debate is impossible. This is how you get stuff like the Patriot Act, TSA and TARP.
Posted by Gylippus]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 11:57:32 -0600 Arkansas Times
I was disgusted and horrified at what I saw on the 3 major networks, not cable channels, not HBO, but NBC, ABC & CBS. Hour after hour of murder, robbery, rape, torture, incest, child molestation, the newly killed, decomposed bodies dug back up......I couldn't believe my eyes and poor old Ma, who knew she watched such trash, but remember her stroke had left her with brain damage.

mag & I dumped TV for the Internet back in 1994, TV suddenly lost it's charm when we had the whole world at our fingertips. I honestly can't remember what we watched on TV before computers took over our lives, I only remember lots of Perry Mason reruns on TBS in the morning, we got hooked on CNN the first few years it was on......I have to doubt that she and I watched crime & punishment stuff....I just can't remember.

I believe that sane people are little changed by watching TV violence yet hours and hours of it must at least color our outlook on things. Americans are certainly more rude these days, I'm not sure we're more prone to violence, but we're sure eat up with JUSTICE and enjoy seeing the bad guys getting a heavy dose of justice before the end of the show. COPS was instantly popular because in just 30 minutes we could thrill at the number of blacks and white trash taken down before our eyes. mag made me quit watching it because she said it was mostly a show about poking drunks and the ignorant with a sharp stick for our enjoyment......mag was right, I should have never watched the first episode.......our TVs are ruining us!

Enough of that......I woke up this morning asking myself what crime is never punished in the US? It's only a slight exaggeration to say that mass murderers are never punished. Most wound up dead, the rest are found to be insane and are locked away in a rubber room for the rest of their lives. I personally don't believe in punishment for the mentally ill, as much as I'd like to personally strangle the lunatic who shot Gabby Giffords, he's clearly insane and in the right place today.

But someone should be punished when a deranged loner kills dozens of people, there should be justice! We can't punished a dead guy, we can't punish insane people.....so we should punish those who enabled these massacres. Law Enforcement should round up the people who put guns in the hands of the insane. The people who sold yesterday's shooter guns IN HIS MOTHER'S NAME should be in jail today. The people in his area or on the Internet who sold him ammunition should be in interrogation rooms today.

Gee...that sounds harsh! It's a hell of a lot less harsh than what innocent kids got yesterday at the Sandy Hook School. Do you want to fix the problem or do you want to watch Dancing With The Stars until the next mass murder happens and it will happen, it WILL HAPPEN. Talk is getting us nowhere. Prayers have yet to prevent mas murders, prayers won't really help the grieving parents in Connecticut today. We must have ACTION! Unless you're OK if the next crazed loner takes out members of your family....we must have ACTION!

No one will be harmed if there is a 6 month waiting time to purchase a gun. Isn't that worth just one of those little kid's lives? No ammunition should be sold unless it's a face to face transaction and there should be limits on how many rounds of ammo are sold to one person and we need a permanent ban on semi-automatic weapons, clips that hold 30 or more bullets and armor piercing bullets and the like. YOU DON'T NEED THOSE THINGS!

If you harbor some idea that you can arm yourself well enough to take on the Federal Government in a future war......idiots...you haven't been watching the firepower the US has used in our many wars for oil going on the last 11 years. Do you own stealth fighters? Do you own some drones? Do you have a trove of missiles, got any nukes or a standing army? The War For Secession wouldn't last one day. You're assault weapons mere toys against the government, but they're mighty killing machines in the hands of insane loners going up against a room full of people watching a movie or a classroom full of little kids.

Round up the people who sold the Sandy Hook killer his weapons and ammo and I bet in time we'll see a great reduction in these weekly blood baths. Scare the living shit out of weapons dealers, smack them with some responsibility for the mass murders they helped create. When no one is punished, nothing changes. Punish the enablers!

PS My brother in law just texted me to say another mass shooting has occurred in the US. Jesus H. Christ!
Posted by DeathbyInches]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 11:42:28 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Archaeopteryx]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 10:55:56 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by LawHog]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 10:45:24 -0600 Arkansas Times
http://www.ianwelsh.net/default-to-kindnes…

A couple of months back I ordered satellite television service. The company gave me a few free months of movie channels to try to entice me into doubling my monthly bill. Within two evenings of surfing the movie channels I began to have horrific nightmares…. I never have nightmares. They stopped a couple nights later when I turned off that crap for good.

Now I am no la la granola pacifist, though I think it’s an excellent (Jesus / Gandhi, King etc.) goal. I own guns, I hunt. I am more secure in my rural home because of said ownership.

The day faux progressives, I mean neoliberals get serious about taking guns away from citizens before demanding disarmament of our police and military industrial complex is the day I ardently support/ contribute money and time to the likes of the NRA.

I read about violence and view extremely violent video daily. Syria is experiencing an atrocity which makes the CT school shooting like a normal day in scores if not hundreds of neighborhoods, because of US and our allies doing the neo double tap or training kids to behead in the streets. I think a great deal about our crime wars waged upon others all around the world on a near daily basis.

Just as i think daily about the fact we violently kill at least 50 thousand of our brethren by denying them health care at far higher prices for those who live.

While these things disturb me… it doesn’t take over my brain and body while sleeping at night – like violent TV did in a few hours. I can’t imagine what violent modern video games are doing to peoples minds.
Posted by Eureka Springs]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 10:13:54 -0600 Arkansas Times
Until we can take the glory out of killing, we will have more. It is true, on one level, that guns are not the problem. It is true that a sick society is the engine that is driving the obsession with killing. But how do you treat that sickness and still allow XBox to prosper?

Maybe we could start by eliminating the day to day scenes of violence out of people's lives. Outlaw violent video games, cut down on the murder mysteries on tv. Take the oil subsidies and give them to the video game industry instead. Quit allowing a guy in Nevada to blow unknown people away with a drone.
Posted by Sellercreek]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 09:38:54 -0600 Arkansas Times
We've become a nation where the 10 second sound bite is the only thing that matters.

People with guns loaded with bullets kill and maim other people.

The least we could do as a nation is tighten up laws governing the sale of guns at gun shows. That probably wouldn't have prevented the tragedy which happened yesterday, but may prevent some innocent people being shot in the future.
Posted by RYD]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 09:37:35 -0600 Arkansas Times
That's the big tradeoff that always comes up in these things: Are we willing to trade "personal freedoms" for safety?

The pendulum is swinging that way at the moment. Sadly, looking around us it's hard to say many of us much deserve the kind of personal freedoms our American forebears fought for.

Go too far the other way, though, and you get Hitler.

I dunno.
Posted by Carrick Patterson]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 09:13:03 -0600 Arkansas Times
I haven't been to Australia, but my kids have and they report that freedom is alive and well there. My son did get a speeding ticket through the mail two weeks after a business trip. They caught him with a camera and traced the plates on his rental car. He paid it, not wanting a warrant floating around on return trips.

I can imagine the howls from freedom lovers here if states started going after speeders that way. There have been plenty of howls from red-light runners after cameras have been installed at intersections.

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current…
Posted by the outlier]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 09:07:46 -0600 Arkansas Times
I have been thinking about this a lot since yesterday. There is another western country that has very high rates of gun ownership---Switzerland. That ownership is highly regulated. Their crime rate is very low. Gun violence is very low. Yes it is a small country compared to ours---around 8 million people.

I think it is worth looking at the Swiss psyche compared to ours and the things they believe about their social compact.

A dear friend spent the last several years of his life in Switzerland. He married an American woman who had been married to a Swiss citizen and owned property there.

One of the things that stood out to him was how regimented the society is. He said you practically had to get a government permit to hang a picture on your living room wall. That was an exaggeration, of course, but used to illustrate the degree of regulation.

He also was impressed with how honest the Swiss people are.

He had a medical procedure (prostate related) while he lived there and couldn't say enough about the quality of his care---at about one-third the cost of state side treatment. He said the hospitals were very institutional, not fancy, no carpeting in the halls, etc. All the money went to actual care. I doubt if people in need of mental health services go without them.

What we have here is an American zeitgeist in conflict with responsible gun ownership. We are a young, immature country. Until we "grow up", we can expect more days like yesterday.

(He also complained about the cost of liquor and wine due to taxes. Beer was cheaper than coffee. He said they were reduced to drinking two-franc cooking wine due to the costs.)

I wish I was more optimistic about our short run prospects of dealing with the gun issue and the mental health issue. Somehow, we will muddle through.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_…
Posted by the outlier]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 08:33:27 -0600 Arkansas Times
We in the U.S. need to get real, not only about guns but about the sick, sick society we all at some level know we have today, owning largely to the dysfunctional nature of today's politics. Instead of statesmanship, we now have made-for-TV entertainment/one-ups-manship. Instead of the Gettysburg Address we have photo opps and choreographed political news conferences with expensive background sets created to help put across whatever political message it is in a TV bite.

I could go on, but I have to go vomit now.
Posted by Carrick Patterson]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 07:44:37 -0600 Arkansas Times