http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/12/16/connecticut-school-shooting-more-questions-than-answers Comments On: Connecticut school shooting: More questions than answers 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) Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:01 -0500 Tue, 21 May 2013 02:15:00 -0500 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
Using the Freakonomics stat as prof? The stat for declining crime and legalized abortion is still very much in debate. What wasn't in debate was the plummet of crime, especially rape, muggings and assault in Florida after it passed it's CCW bill.
Posted by Steven E]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:40:38 -0600 Arkansas Times
You can keep your unicorn and fairyland dreams garnered by a life free of sudden terror. I don't need any pills, but you are in desperate need of experience outside the bubble.
Posted by Steven E]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:36:47 -0600 Arkansas Times
Dear Mr. Huckabee,

If kicking God out of our public school system is what lead to this atrocity, as you claim, then why did a similar atrocity happen in an Amish school in 2006? The Amish can't exactly be accused of pushing God out of their lives, yet God still let this tragedy happen in their community. How do you explain this?

I really do wish the world was the way that you believe it is. I wish the world was predictable and systematic, and that we could be assured that if we just did the right things that horrible and tragic things wouldn't happen to us. I would love to have that kind of control. I would love to live in a world where my children's safety could be guaranteed if I just acknowledged God enough.

But the world is not this way, and to keep insisting that it is does a great deal of harm. Think about it. You are telling the world that there is a God who is apparently so insecure and irritable that if his name isn't mentioned in public schools he decides to teach us a lesson by allowing children to be slaughtered.

Mr. Huckabee, from what I have seen of you, you strike me as a good-hearted and very likable person. But you seem much more benevolent than the God you claim to believe in.

I understand that you are now claiming that you were misunderstood, and that what you really meant by your comments was that:

"... we have as a culture decided that we don't want to have values, that we don't want to say that some things are always right, some things are always wrong. When we divorce ourselves from a basic sense of what we would call, I would say, collective morality where we agree on certain principles to be true always, then we create a culture -- not that it specifically creates this crime. It doesn't. But it creates an atmosphere in which evil and violence are removed from our sense of responsibility."

This makes no sense either. We may not all agree on how to define marriage in our society, for example, but we all agree that murdering children is absolutely wrong. People do not commit atrocities like this because they have been influenced by a pluralistic culture that doesn't take strong enough moral positions. People do things like this because of some combination of evil, sickness, and perversity that is simply not rationally explainable.

Your explanations sound very similar to that of Job's friends, who simply couldn't understand a world where the righteous tragically suffer. As a Baptist preacher, I am sure you have read this book, and you'll recall that when God shows up, Job's friends are silenced and told that they are wrong. I really wish God would speak to you from a whirlwind so you would stop saying this stupid stuff and giving Christians a bad name. You're trying to help, I know, but it isn't working.

Sometimes really horrible things happen- things that should never happen- even to the very best of people. To pretend otherwise is not only to ignore empirical reality, it is to deny the heart of the Christian faith you claim to represent. Jesus didn't systematically push God out of his life. Jesus fully and completely welcomed the presence of God in his life, more so than any other human being ever, and he was tortured and murdered.

Evil doesn't just happen in God's apparent absence, as you seem to believe. The Jesus story shows us that horrible evil even happens to God's presence.

According to our faith, God raised Jesus from the dead. When children are murdered, our message that we have to offer the world (when it comes time to speak) is that God will refuse to let tragedy have the last word in their lives. We believe in a God of Easter who can ultimately wipe away all tears. The Jesus who welcomed children into his arms in this world will do so in a world without end.

Our faith doesn't allow us to explain tragedy; it allows us, through groans and tears, to hope in the midst of it.

So, Mr. Huckabee, please stop using tragedies like this as a platform for espousing your particular political vision of church-state relations. The problem isn't that our public culture isn't Christian enough; the problem is that your theology isn't Christian enough.

http://thesundaydrivehome.blogspot.com/201…
Posted by avatar]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:32:42 -0600 Arkansas Times
Giving nuts the freedom to be nuts isn't worth the life of one 1st grader. Removing assault weapons & super ammo & clips from every civilian is a damn good start in curing our Lone Killer fad. Putting blame on gun dealers who sell to the insane is another good start, requiring liability insurance on every gun is another good start and banning high powered weapons and ammo should happen today! Your freedom shouldn't cost little kids their safety or lives. I'd rather make a mistake on the side of life!

Think more about sex! Get a new hobby!
Posted by DeathbyInches]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:47:24 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Steven E]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:01:15 -0600 Arkansas Times
Being told I may not be honest, or my 58 year old fiance may not be honest because we are armed is ridiculous and nettlesome and shows a shocking lack of any understanding that there is a need for an armed citizenry.
Posted by Steven E]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:00:09 -0600 Arkansas Times
What if you could stop one of these incidents from happening? Just one. Suppose you hindered these nut cases from, as you say, acquiring firearms through legitimate markets. What are the chances somebody's going to give them an AR-15 as a gift? Manufacture them? Come on. Ok, thwarted from a legal purchase, now you might try the black markets or theft. That could take time, time in which their rage might subside, time for them to attract attention to themselves. Say 9 out of 10 would succeed although I doubt that the success rate would be that high. Suppose that the one who didn't was Adam Lanza. There are 26 families in Connecticut right now that would have loved those odds.

But, I know, neither you nor I are part of those 26 families so it's more important to be able to trot down to the Wal-Mart and buy our weaponry of choice without any inconvenience whatsoever because this is America, the land of the free.

Jim Brady used to espouse those sentiments but he changed his mind about it. Funny how that happens when you or yours is on the wrong end of that gun.

To see how Jim feels about the issue now, try this: http://www.bradycampaign.org/
Posted by Olphart]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 22:51:45 -0600 Arkansas Times
There likely isn't. Mental illness isn't that easily detectible, and at any given time, there are probably only a few dozen mentally ill people that would fall into the mass shooting category. That's out of a population in the tens of millions. Even if you could find them, then you could only prevent them from acquiring firearms through legitimate markets. They could still acquire them through black markets, theft, gifts, or manufacturing them.
Posted by Gylippus]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 20:48:14 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Ron Rizzardi]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:42:44 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Eureka Springs]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:13:53 -0600 Arkansas Times Next.
Posted by Ron Rizzardi]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:08:39 -0600 Arkansas Times
In the earliest states that adopted right-to-carry laws, rates of rape and domestic violence were the highest in the country and remain so decades later.

The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world. According to your "logic," this country should have a zero crime rate.

Yes, the crime rate has been decreasing (except for a 22% spike in reported assaults last year), but research shows that it is not because of gun ownership:
Five main reasons for the decline:
*Increased incarceration, including longer sentences, that keeps more criminals off the streets.
*Legalized abortion.
*Improved law enforcement strategies, including advances in computer analysis and innovative technology.
*The waning of the crack cocaine epidemic that soared from 1984 to 1990, which made cocaine cheaply available in cities across the US.
*The graying of America characterized by the fastest-growing segment of the US population – baby boomers – passing the age of 50.

We still have the highest incarceration rate in the world.
The US homicide rate is still among the highest in the industrialized world.

Stevie, you've made it clear to all of us that facts are not your friend; blustering out of your butt is your thought mode.
Posted by YossarianMinderbinder]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 18:31:20 -0600 Arkansas Times
And it's irrelevant whether or not you "need it".
Posted by Sound Policy]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:26:32 -0600 Arkansas Times
I hate that I was (sorta) right. Who knows, Christmas is 9 days away, so there's plenty of time for my prediction to come true.

I have no problem with responsible people owning guns, but there HAS to be a way to keep them out of the hands of the mentally ill. Look at the guy arrested this morning who had 47 guns and was threatening to shoot up a school a thousand feet away. You gotta know he's in desperate need of some serious psychopharmacological help.
Posted by MarcKyle1964]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:09:35 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by plainjim]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:03:14 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Verla Sweere]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:01:05 -0600 Arkansas Times
"I chose not to use that disgraced person's name."

So now she's a disgraced person as well as a fucking stupid witch?

All the regulars here know exactly who asked the question, Steven. And they know exactly who you were talking about.

And YOU are the most disgraceful person on this blog, bar none.
Posted by the outlier]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:33:33 -0600 Arkansas Times
ES doesn't need your pity, either. He is pretty right on in the assessment. Keep your pity, you have are short enough on the supply.
Posted by Steven E]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:27:51 -0600 Arkansas Times
DBI, it is a cruel world we live in, balanced by much beauty, too. You cannot have one without the other. Glad you had lived a sheltered life, except for your little foray. Fact of the matter is that I have had to use a gun to protect myself and other on four different occasions. In none of those situations did I have to fire the weapon, though is I had not had the gun someone would have been hurt, and in one case, two men wold have been beaten to death. If you had been armed, and aware, then you would not have gotten bonked, and you would most likely not have had to shoot the mugger. As Kleck showed, and his stats still stand after many attempts by other to skew.

Sitting in your security, false security, you can say my experiences are from some small part of my brain. Your ignorance shines, DBI. It wasn't MY small world that suffered a violent rape, it was the world of my first wife. She determined that it would never happen again. It didn't. For her, the only advise she got from police was to get a man. Now, you can decide that your life is the equal of some troglodyte that bonks you, but she made the decision that anyone who attacked her again had earned ANY response.

My world hadn't been as safe and sheltered as yours, DBI. I have had loved ones attacked, I had been attacked, my kids had been assaulted. I know what it is like to get that phone call, "Steve, your kids are okay, come down to the shop. The cops are here, but your kids are FINE." I won't make your kind of imbecilic assumptions, I am asking, how many calls like that have YOU gotten? Turned out someone had grabbed my two girls. They were preteens. My daughter did what dad taught her, which was to stab with whatever you had, at the femoral artery. She tried to kill him, and she still recalls that episode with relief. She saved herself and her sister. At the time, though, my horror was fresh, getting a call to not worry. Hell yeah, I worried. You always worry when you hear your kid has been attacked. Have you ever felt that cold fear, the kind of fear that makes you want to vomit and scream and cry?

That was a very real world, DBI. And that was in a better neighborhood than the one I was raised in. Like you said, life is a crap shoot. Better to take your own safety seriously enough to take care of your self, instead of relying on the charity of others, like the cops or your attacker. For many, life is very beautiful, and free of the horrors. For others, it isn't so nice. I wouldn't want you to have my experiences, that would be cruel of me to wish that on you. I wouldn't trade them away. They helped me appreciate the delicate nature of life. Helps me keep a healthy perspective. I know there are good people out there. I also know when shit happens, it happens quickly and for no reason, and it is better to be prepared, than helpless.
Posted by Steven E]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:25:06 -0600 Arkansas Times
William Bennett:

Author of "The Book of Virtues"

Well-known high roller in the gambling dens (8 million in losses for one year alone)

Reagan's education secretary (because he learned so fast after losing the first Mil)

Papa Bush's Director of National Drug Control Policy (great place for a gambling addict)

Hater of affirmative action

Lover of religion in schools and vouchers

Fucking moron!

Bennett joined lunatic Louie Gohmert of Texas in calling for arming school employees.

I have listened to bits and pieces of the AM gasbags. All of them speak in hushed tones about the tragedy that ruined 27 families lives yesterday.
Posted by the outlier]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:47:04 -0600 Arkansas Times
If I had been carrying a gun that morning as scared as I was by this senseless attack, I'd still be standing on Garrison clicking the trigger. Perhaps if I had pulled out a gun the idiot would have filled me full of holes? In the end...no one died. In the end I didn't have to face a lifetime of knowing I had taken another human life.

Turns out the idiot just wanted to show me he was the bigger man because he had a gun. I've never been Clint Eastwood, I know I'm manly because I have fathered and raised 2 outstanding children, that's the most manly a person can be and even more can be said for any woman who has done the hard work of birthing and raising children.......Mothers are the real men in our society!

Life is a crap shoot. We can all name a dozen people we knew who should have had the opportunity to live long long lives, but didn't. Most people don't die in a shootout, aren't killed by a gun or knife. Your cold cruel world is mostly in your pea-brain, Steven E. I live in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Fort Baptist, I don't lock my front door until 2 am. I don't go to bed worried someone is going to break in because in the 44 years my family has owned this old house, only once has someone broken in and that was in the middle of the day and judging by the items that were stolen, it was teenagers who used a priceless antique full length raccoon coat from the 20s to wrap around 3 ancient, worthless old guns...single shot guns which wherever they are today won't hold a 32 bullet clip.

The full blown freedom to buy guns in America just opened up 20 tiny graves in and around Connecticut. A gun happy mother just enjoyed her last taste of one of her own guns. YOU can be arrested for leaving your keys in the ignition of your car, but go untouched should you leave your high powered handguns and assault rifle laying around the house. How stupid is that?

The people who manufacture, distribute and sell guns & ammo bear no responsibility when their guns & ammo are used to slaughter nearly 2 dozen innocent 6 & 7 year olds. They'll open up shop tomorrow with smiles on their faces hoping to shove checks and cash in their bank bag by the end of the day. The funeral business in Newtown is booming. Small casket sales are up up up! What's not to like?

I don't like that no one is responsible when mass murderers murder in droves. He's dead, his gun worshiping Mom is dead, there's no one to blame or punish plus there's Christmas shopping to do! At the rate we're going there's only 2 or 3 more shopping days until the next maniac opens fire on innocent people. PS...the NRA doesn't give a damn about your freedom or safety, they work to increase the sale of guns & ammo. PPS....you can't win a war with our government!

What if we set new laws requiring all guns carry liability insurance like my old Ford? My car can kill therefore I'm required by law to buy at least liability insurance. So why not guns? The several hundred dollars collected for insurance each year per gun at least could help bury the 30 thousand plus who will die by gun this year. Hell, if the killer's Mom had been required to have a vaginal probe before she bought a gun, she'd be enjoying some wine by her fireplace as I type.

88 out of 100 Americans owns at least 1 gun. We're in a sea of guns, anyone can get their hands on a gun. We can't just talk about it, we need ACTION that will make our families safer. God obviously ain't blessing America. And NOW can we start removing the asshole Huckabee name from many Arkansas buildings and parks? Let's all live in the 21st century!
Posted by DeathbyInches]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:05:31 -0600 Arkansas Times
Contact your legislators. Get your friends and family to do the same. Hell, get the kids to tell Congress they don't want to die in their classrooms.
Posted by Vanessa]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:56:35 -0600 Arkansas Times
Heartfelt sympathy to David Lewis of Fayetteville whose young grandson, Jesse, was one of 20 children shot dead at Sandy Hook.
Posted by Durango]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:43:21 -0600 Arkansas Times
http://newsok.com/oklahoma-3-year-old-dies…
Posted by the outlier]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:02:51 -0600 Arkansas Times
http://newsok.com/oklahoma-3-year-old-dies-in-accidental-shooting-authorities-say/article/3738015?custom_click=masthead_topten


Posted by the outlier]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:01:46 -0600 Arkansas Times