Saturday Reads: Newtown Anniversary, Normalizing Gun Violence, and Other News
Posted: December 14, 2013 Filed under: Austerity, Barack Obama, Crime, Foreign Affairs, Gun Control, Iran, morning reads, Politics as Usual, Psychopaths in charge, U.S. Politics | Tags: CIA, gun violence, media, Newtown, polygamy and privacy, Robert Levinson, school shootings, second amendment, Sister Wives, snow, weather, winter storms 44 Comments
Good Morning!!
I spent yesterday preparing for Winter Storm Electra. I stopped by the hardware store to get ice melt crystals and then headed to the grocery store to drop off a prescription and a few things I’ll need in case I can’t get my car out of the driveway for a couple of days.
I had an appointment in the afternoon, and then I made a fruitless attempt to find a parking space in the giant Whole Foods parking lot in Cambridge. Then back to my regular grocery store to pick up my prescription and a few refrigerated items. The store was even more packed this time, so I was glad I had stopped earlier. Finally, I went home, to stash my purchases and scatter ice melt on the all the icy surfaces left over from Winter Storm Dion.
So now I’m in hibernation mode until Monday. I just hope I can handle the shoveling myself. The weather folks are predicting anything from 5 to 12 inches of snow for my area. It was 11 degrees here when I woke up and its only 12 degrees right now. It’s hard to believe it can even snow when it’s so cold. But the weather people say it’s going to snow. If it starts this afternoon, I plan to shovel before it gets dark–then there won’t be so much to do tomorrow. It’s way too early for this. It won’t even be officially winter until next week. Those of you in the Midwest are probably already getting the storm–how is it going there? Is it still cold down South? We can commiserate in the comments.
Now to the news. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since Newtown, but today is the anniversary of that awful day. It still breaks my heart when I think about it. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain of the families who lost children. From CNN:
Horror struck Newtown, Connecticut, in such a disturbing way that the nation still struggles with its impact a year later.
The legacy of the second-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history is so profound that it cannot hold just one meaning. It holds several. That’s because the crime itself conveys multiple issues in its summary:
A mentally ill 20-year-old recluse obsessed with school shootings enters Sandy Hook Elementary School after the morning bell and kills six adult women, 12 girls and eight boys in 11 minutes. The children were 6 or 7 years old. The heavily armed Adam Lanza, who first killed his mother before taking her car to the school, also killed himself, in a classroom.
On the anniversary of the December 14 slaughter — under the shadow of another school shooting, this time at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado — country and community alike pause and reflect on an event known simply as “Newtown” or “Sandy Hook” and what it says about America on the matters of guns, mental health, healing, and the human spirit.
A whole year after the slaughter of 20 first-graders and 6 adults, and our do-nothing Congress has done exactly nothing to control the purchase of weapons of war for everyday use. CBS News reports:
Not a single federal law curbing gun violence has passed in the year since a young man from Newtown, Conn. who’d long exhibited signs of mental instability got a hold of his mother’s AR-15-style Bushmaster rifle and two of her handguns and gunned down 20 first-graders and six of their educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School before taking his own life.
Capping a year that saw the most mass shootings in U.S. history, Newtown seemed to mark a turning point in national conversation about gun control. Within a month of the shooting, President Obama – promising to make the issue a hallmark of his second-term agenda – had signed several executive orders to make schools safer and gun purchases more transparent. But real reform, he said, would require bipartisan backing from lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Six months after the Dec. 14, 2012 tragedy, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., insisted the push for tougher gun laws and bolstered support for mental health in America was “still on the front burner.” But foundation for that statement was flimsy.
Manchin’s own amendment to strengthen background checks for gun purchases – co-sponsored by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and seen by many in Congress to be the most realistic hope for immediate reform to gun laws – had collapsed in the Senate two months earlier. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had “hit pause” on debate over firearms altogether, pulling the legislation from the floor indefinitely.
The emotions surrounding Newtown, it seemed, were no longer driving the conversation about gun control.
Is anyone really surprised that something a huge majority of Americans support cannot get through Congress? Of course not. We can’t even get them to stop hurting the economy with their obsessive and idiotic push for unnecessary austerity. We should turn every one of them out of office–Democrats and Republicans and start from scratch.
And is anyone shocked that there was another school shooting the day before this horrible anniversary? Why should we be? Our so-called leaders don’t seem to care how many children die so they can keep getting donations from the NRA. A couple of stories on the shooting in Colorado.
Denver Post as of last night: Shooting at Arapahoe High School, 1 girl in critical condition, gunman dead.
A student carried a shotgun into Arapahoe High School, asked where to find a specific teacher and then opened fire on Friday, Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said. He shot a fellow student in the head before apparently killing himself.
A 15-year-old girl was reported in critical condition after undergoing surgery. Two other students were treated and released from a hospital for non-gunshot injuries.
The gunman, identified as 18-year-old Karl Pierson, was found dead inside a classroom from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, Robinson said. Authorities believe he acted alone.
Robinson said authorities are investigating reports that Pierson may have been motivated by revenge against the teacher following a disagreement….Fellow classmates described the gunman as a bright student and a gifted debater whose family attended Bible study meetings.
The shootings — on the eve of the anniversary of the Newtown school massacre, in which 20 students and six staffers were murdered — sent scores of terrified students and staffers at Centennial’s Arapahoe High School scurrying at about 12:30 p.m. Police and other first responders quickly mobilized to surround the 2,220-student school.
A 15-year-old girl suffered a gunshot wound and was reported in critical condition at a Littleton hospital Friday evening.One other student suffered minor gunshot-related injuries and was released from the hospital hours later, authorities said. Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said Friday night that another girl taken to a hospital was covered in blood from the other student, but wasn’t injured….
The gunman also brought two Molotov cocktails inside the school and exploded one, KUSA-TV reported. The other was found and removed by the bomb squad.
The incident unfolded when the armed student entered the west side of the school from a student parking lot. He told other students he was interested in confronting a specific teacher. “Word got around immediately,” Robinson said.
The teacher, informed of the situation, fled the building unharmed, said Robinson, who noted that the teacher’s decision to flee helped limit the potential carnage.
Our children are dying violently in this country, in places in which they should be safe–their schools and their homes. Why aren’t we doing anything to protect them? At an age when they should be concentrating on learning, developing social skills, and just having fun, our children are threatened by gun violence on a daily basis. What kind of nation allows this kind of slaughter to continue in the name of “second amendment rights” and greed? A few more links from around the ‘net:
Reuters: Obama marks Newtown school shooting anniversary with call for gun control
Star-Tribune Nation: In Newtown, a year of wrenching reminders
Mother Jones: Portraits of the Hundreds of Children Killed by Guns Since Newtown
Matthew Lysiak at The Guardian: We can no longer allow sick individuals like Adam Lanza to go on untreated
New York Daily News: Another year of the gun
Gawker: What Kind of Monster Wants to Shoot Up His School? (highly recommended)
In other news,
Here’s a surprising story from Jonthan Turley’s blog: Federal Court Strikes Down Criminalization of Polygamy In Utah
It is with a great pleasure this evening to announce that decision of United States District Court judge Clarke Waddoups striking down key portions of the Utah polygamy law as unconstitutional. The Brown family and counsel have spent years in both the criminal phase of this case and then our challenge to the law itself in federal court. Despite the public statements of professors and experts that we could not prevail in this case, the court has shown that it is the rule of law that governs in this country. As I have previously written, plural families present the same privacy and due process concerns faced by gay and lesbian community over criminalization. With this decision, families like the Browns can now be both plural and legal in the state of Utah. The Court struck down the provision as violating both the free exercise clause of the first amendment as well as the due process clause. The court specifically struck down language criminalizing cohabitation — the provision that is used to prosecute polygamists. The opinion is over 90 pages and constitutes a major constitutional ruling in protection of individual rights.
I just don’t know what to say about this, because I associate polygamy with the abuse of women and children. Am I a bigot? A couple more links:
Salt Lake Tribune: Federal judge declares Utah polygamy law unconstitutional
The Telegraph: ‘Sister Wives’ reality star wins legal fight against Utah anti-polygamy law
I haven’t been following the Robert Levinson story, but I will be from now on. Levinson has been missing in Iran for 7 years and has just been outed as a CIA operative. Links:
NYT: A Disappearing Spy, and a Scandal at the C.I.A.
ABC News: Family of Robert Levinson, American Held In Iran, Says He Was Spying for the CIA
The Register-Guard: White House declines to discuss missing American Robert Levinson’s CIA ties
Gawker: ABC, NYT Repeatedly Lied About CIA Operative Robert Levinson
Liberty Voice: Robert Levinson: Used by CIA, Forgotten by USA, Burned by Media, Left in Iran
WaPo: Sen. Bill Nelson: I told AP not to run Robert Levinson story
Those are my offerings today. What stories are you following? Let us know in the comment thread, and have a great weekend!
Open Thread: Voices Against Violence
Posted: August 23, 2013 Filed under: Gun Control 11 Comments
Tony Bennett Raises His Voice Against Gun Violence
Greetings SkyDancers. Like many of us over the past week or so, I’ve been kind of glum. I think more so than anything, my gloom has its roots in the senseless number of gun deaths occurring on a daily basis in America. A few have been shared here this week. These are a fraction of all the senseless deaths that occurred, some tragically due to negligence. My own position on gun control is total repeal of the 2nd Amendment. A rational examination of the 2nd Amendment from an historical/rhetorical perspective unequivocally insists individual gun ownership is not a natural right enshrined in the Constitution. I’ll refrain from lengthy argumentation at this time, but merely disclose my stance. Even if one takes an originalist interpretation from the opposite perspective, another primary consideration is the responsiveness of our primary governing document. I would submit the Constitution was created with the intent to conform to the generation it serves, and should be altered to meet the needs of that generation. I don’t think the Constitution meets our 21st Century needs, and the 2nd Amendment reflects one of those areas in need of modification. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the Constitutional creators believed individual gun ownership was a natural right. What matters is whether we, in the 21st century, find individual gun ownership a reasonable proposition. Obviously, my position is no. In my view, We the People needn’t sacrifice one more life to gun violence. We the People need not succumb to belligerent falsehood disguising itself as natural right.
The Brady Campaign launched a new initiative this week with the intent to empower Americans to speak out against the unconscionable level of gun violence in this country. It’s called Voices Against Violence, and it introduces an innovative new protest tool: the first voice petition. The VAV mission resonated with me:
We are the Voices Against Violence
We are the voice of the people, and we will no longer be silent as gun violence devastates our communities.
We know that an overwhelming majority of Americans support common sense gun laws that save lives. We know that millions share our dream for a safer nation. And we know that by acting responsibly – and by working together for a common purpose – we can make America the safer nation we all want.
Now is the time to raise our voices against gun violence and urge Congress to take action.
Every day we wait, another 90 Americans die from a bullet. We’ve had too many moments of silence. It’s time to make some noise.
Join the millions who want to end gun violence with the world’s first petition you sign with your voice.
Enough is Enough!
Singer Tony Bennett, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma in 1965, will perform at the “Realize the Dream” rally as part of the Voices Against Violence (VAV) campaign on Saturday, August 24th at the Lincoln Memorial. The rally is a part of the “National Action to Realize the Dream” march planned to continue the efforts begun 50 years ago when Dr. King gave his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
I applaud Tony Bennett. Here he is voicing “If I Ruled the World.” I thought it fitting:
Until the 2nd Amendment is repealed, I’m all for much tighter gun control measures, including a national gun registry. I also support systematic firearms confiscation in certain cases – when an owner loses the right or is the subject of a restraining order. The NRA and its allies screech and howl about the dangers of a gun registry, but from a law enforcement perspective, I consider it essential, if only for law enforcement to be adequately prepared prior to responding to domestic violence situations, for instance.
Wayne LaPierre, NRA hypocrite
Radicalized gun advocates like the NRA oppose the very idea of a gun registry as tyrannical, an abomination, yada yada yada. Ironically however, Buzz Feed recently revealed that a massive national gun registry has already been compiled without the consent of any on the “list.” It was compiled and is in active use by none other than the NRA:
The National Rifle Association has rallied gun owners — and raised tens of millions of dollars — campaigning against the threat of a national database of firearms or their owners.
But in fact, the sort of vast, secret database the NRA often warns of already exists, despite having been assembled largely without the knowledge or consent of gun owners. It is housed in the Virginia offices of the NRA itself. The country’s largest privately held database of current, former, and prospective gun owners is one of the powerful lobby’s secret weapons, expanding its influence well beyond its estimated 3 million members and bolstering its political supremacy.
As much as I’ve read about the NRA’s undue influence on public policy, I’ve never encountered an explanation that adequately explains their continued success. But this database is that missing piece. And it’s a frightening piece. Apparently, the efficacy of the NRA’s political machine is attributable to tactics similar to the success of Obama’s innovative presidential campaigns; tactics, incidentally, that I’ve admired. Unfortunately, that which can be applied for good can also be utilized for ill. It would seem the NRA excels in micro-targeting, the element that proved so successful for the Obama campaign:
…the NRA is using tools similar to those employed by the campaigns of its nemesis, President Barack Obama.
“There are certainly some parallels,” said Laura Quinn, CEO of Catalist, a data analysis firm used by Obama for America. “The NRA is not only able to understand people who their members are but also people who are not their members. The more data they have, the more it allows them to test different strategies and different messages on different people.”
“Part of the way they have gotten to a place where they are able to do what they do is through data,” Quinn said. “There is some irony.”
The vast size of the NRA’s database and its sophisticated methods of analyzing the public mood go a long way in explaining the organization’s enduring influence. Even in an age when opinion polls show gun control measures gaining in general popularity and when wealthy benefactors like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg are spending millions to counter the NRA’s lobbying and advertising budgets, the NRA has built-in advantages.
It would seem that the NRA’s violence-favoring-voice has many more octaves than I had ever imagined, though I should have guessed that it could target its pitch so precisely. The profit margins of the weapons manufacturing industry rely heavily upon the NRA’s vocality. Unfortunately, there is one voice against violence that will not be widely heard, in perhaps one of the perplexing ironies I’ve encountered in quite some time. I don’t have a reaction to it yet. I’m still processing:
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Heading into the 50th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Mother Jones reports the speech is effectively silenced by copyright and inaccessible in the public domain. Lauren Williams writes:
I have a dream that on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls as they watch the footage on TV of Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his famous words. I have a dream that on the red hills of Georgia, the great-grandsons of former slaves and the great-grandsons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood this week, open their MacBooks and pull up the seminal speech on the internet.
But that speech is not free, alas.
It will not be in the public domain until 2038, 70 years after King’s death. Until then, any commercial enterprises wishing to legally broadcast King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered August 28, 1963, on the National Mall, or reprint its words must pay a hefty fee. CBS and USA Today learned this the hard way in the 1990s, when both reached undisclosed settlements with King’s estate after using the speech without permission. Intellectual Properties Management, the King family business that works in conjunction with music company EMI Publishing to license King’s copyrighted image and works, did not respond to an inquiry from Mother Jones about the cost of hosting a video of the speech on our site.
Again, I’m not sure what to think of the King copyright situation. It doesn’t sit well with me. I’m conflicted. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, SkyDancers.
Dying Camellia – Herald of Corrosive Decay
Some pretty disturbing, but unsurprising news coming from Fitzwalkerstan. Religious radicals are attempting to amend the Wisconsin State Constitution. Mind you, I’m not at all opposed to amending the state constitution. As a matter of fact, I think it deserves the same level of overhaul due the U.S. Constitution. But rather than a progressive enhancement of founding ideals, Right Wing Extremists are attempting to solidify a regressive religionist state. A few implications of the amendment:
- It could be invoked to give parents and guardians permission to rely on “faith” and “prayer” rather than carry out their duty to seek medical care for gravely ill children.
- It would allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control, or allow religious employers to pay women less.
- It could allow state employees to refuse to marry couples if such a marriage would conflict with their religion — if the couple is inter-racial, for example.
- Theoretically, this bill could even allow priests to refuse to report child rape without penalty.
- It could allow children to opt out of bona fide schoolwork that conflicts with their religion (e.g., no more evolution!).
One would think this amendment might ruffle some feathers, instigate some bristling, or at the very least raise some eyebrows. From what I can glean, it has yet to receive much attention. My guess, and this is only a guess, is that Wisconsin is deeply divided at the moment. The most devastating divide isn’t between Left and Right. The Left appears to be consumed with consuming each other in true cannibalistic Tea Party fashion rather attending to the right wing political juggernaut which beards down upon them. “Divide and Conquer” has successfully divided and is effectively conquering Wisconsin.
While in all likelihood this amendment won’t get much traction immediately, I suspect it will slowly gain the kind of well-funded propagandist support that has dissolved Wisconsin’s Progressive legacy in nearly every other sphere of governance.
To conclude on a more positive note: Van Gogh magnified like a gazillion times. Very enjoyable.
And the very weird. From Open Culture: Technology transforms Van Gogh’s self-portrait into photograph.
What’s on your minds, this evening?
Church at sur-oise, Vincent Van Gogh, 1890
I Don’t Get the entire killing Bambi for fun thing …
Posted: February 2, 2013 Filed under: Gun Control | Tags: bloodlust, guns, hunting, politians posing with guns, Shooting 40 CommentsI think I was a natural born Buddhist because killing things for sport is something I have never understood and will
never understand. I do understand the need to eat. I understand that if you chose to eat meat you’ve likely had a butcher do your killing and it’s likely done quickly and humanely and with a certain knowledge of exactly what you’re doing. I just find that different than when you go out and stalk a living creature and you kill it just because it’s standing there and you’re out there having fun.
Here’s the kind’ve bloodlust I’m talking about.
Sarah Palin made sure her now-defunct “reality” show included the scene of her shooting a caribou, although hunting experts questioned some of the details and wondered why it took five shots to bring down the animal. Ms. Palin dismissed such criticisms, telling a Kansas City crowd, “I have caribou blood under my fingernails still.”
I can see Tina Fey doing that line on SNL, can’t you? That line is a little closer to psychopathy than I’m just putting dinner on the table. Still, we some how have gotten to a place where stalking and killing animals for fun is something politicians put out there for all to see. Why? Is it a way of saying “See, I’m a real man”? I also wonder how much the animal suffered given the five shots.
Once describing himself as a “lifelong hunter,” Mitt Romney had to backtrack, acknowledging that “lifelong hunter” meant shooting at “small varmints” now and then.
Rick Perry let it be known that he once went mano a mano with a coyote he said was threatening his dog, killing the beast with the handgun he carried while jogging. (Just where did he tuck that .380 Ruger on his morning run through the cactus and tumbleweeds, by the way?)
As a presidential candidate, John Kerry once borrowed a double-barreled shotgun and camo outfit to bag geese and an important photo op. (Wasn’t it enough that he’d pursued and killed an enemy soldier armed with a rocket-propelled grenade in Vietnam, where he’d been awarded a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts?)
So, the President had to prove he has shot a gun and thankfully, for me, it was on clay pigeons instead of Bambi’s mother. I find it odd, however, that you can still sympathize with hunters given you choose not to actually kill something in the process. There seems to be still something primal and insecure in some men that they believe their right of passage is bringing home a kill. Republicans didn’t believe that a commie pinko, socialist muslim peacenik tree hugger could hold a gun so the White House released this photo.
The White House has released a photo of President Obama skeet shooting at Camp David from August, 2012, attempting to quell a controversy that arose when Obama said that he sympathized with hunters because he frequently went shooting himself.
“Attn skeet birthers. Make our day – let the photoshop conspiracies begin!,” former White House advisor David Plouffe tweeted in a message containing a link to a photo of Obama brandishing a shot gun and wearing ear muffs and sun glasses.Conservative critics questioned the veracity of the Obama’s claims of skeet shooting because he had never been seen publicly shooting a gun.
“If he is a skeet shooter, why have we not heard of this,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said in a television interview after Obama’s remarks were made public.
“Why have we not seen photos,” Blackburn continued. “Why has he not referenced it at any point in time as we have had this gun debate that is ongoing?”
Yup, If you’re an Amuriken politician, you gotta put those photos out there proving your man enough to kill–at least–a small “varmint”.
Although Palin, Blackburn, and other women in politics are joining men in touting their love of firearms (and women can now be considered for combat positions in the US military), it’s mainly men – just as it is with the question of military service, especially those who might have served in Vietnam but didn’t, including Cheney and Romney. (There no doubt are darkly psychological issues here too, but we won’t go there.)
Actually, I’d like some one to explore the “darkly psychological issues” that seem to imply our politicians have to know their way around guns, if not, explicitly enjoy killing animals. The discussion around the photo–taken back in August while he was celebrating his birthday at Camp David–is itself puzzling to me.
The notion of the president taking aim at targets flung into the air captivated some in the political and social media worlds at a time when he is pushing Congress to enact sweeping restrictions on high-capacity rifles and magazines.
Conservatives scoffed, comics mocked, a congresswoman challenged him to a skeet-shooting contest, a fake picture of an armed Mr. Obama circulated on the Internet, and the White House tried to make the whole matter go away.
“It was a surprise to a lot of people in the industry when we saw that and heard that,” said Michael Hampton Jr., the executive director of the National Skeet Shooting Association, whose 35,000 members do not include the president.
Mr. Obama is hardly the first politician to draw scorn for boasting of experience with guns. In 2007, during his first presidential campaign, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts was ridiculed when he said, “I’ve always been a rodent and rabbit hunter — small varmints, if you will.” In 2004, John Kerry, then a presidential candidate and now secretary of state, was lampooned for showing up in camouflage to go hunting less than two weeks before the election.
The latest commotion has its origins in the interview Mr. Obama gave to The New Republic, now owned by Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder and former Obama campaign aide. In the interview, Franklin Foer, the magazine’s editor, referred to the fight over gun control and asked the president if he had ever fired a gun.
“Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” Mr. Obama said.
“The whole family?” Mr. Foer asked.
“Not the girls,” he said, “but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.”
Mr. Obama went on to say that the reality of guns in urban areas differs from that in rural areas. “So it’s trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months,” he said. “And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes.”
I grew up in the part of the country where hunting and shooting are considered a way of life. Neighbors brag about their latest gun attachments and the top spotting scopes they own like women brag about their new dresses or handbags. I live down here surrounded by folks that have to hunt and shoot things to put food on the table. I still can’t get used to it, which again, makes me thing I was a natural born Buddhist. However, putting food on your table out of necessity is a far cry from taking a huge gun–ala insane Ted Nugent–and then bragging about having caribou blood under your fingernails. Can some one explain this to me? Why do we want politicians with some degree of bloodlust?
It’s been a bit of a long day here …
Posted: December 17, 2012 Filed under: Domestic terrorism, Foreign Affairs, fundamentalist Christians, Gun Control, just because, open thread, religion, religious extremists, Republican politics, right wing hate grouups, Second Amendment, Syria, The Media SUCKS | Tags: Dr. Dobson, Larry Pratt, Megan McArdle, National Idiots, Richard Engle 12 Comments
It seems JJ’s having some issues with word press so I thought I’d just provide a few links to discuss since I really have a good case of blurry brain today. Something intense and wonky is beyond me this evening.
I don’t know if any of you watch Richard Engle on NBC. He’s one of the better foreign correspondents around. He’s missing in Syria right now. He hasn’t been in touch with NBC since Thursday. Syria’s a serious war zone right now with a mad dictator in charge of some fairly scary weapons so this is concerning.
NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel has gone missing in Syria, according to Turkish news reports. The reports also say that Aziz Akyavaş, a Turkish journalist working with Engel, is unaccounted for. NBC News has been successfully keeping Engel’s status subject to a news blackout—one to which Gawker agreed until now—for at least the past 24 hours.
Turkish newspaper Hurriyet is reporting that Engel and Akyavaş were last known to be in Syria and haven’t been in contact with NBC News since Thursday morning. The news has been reported widely in the Turkish press over the past 24 hours, including by Turkish news channel NTV, which presents itself as an international partner of MSNBC. It’s also been widely distributed on Twitter.
A lot of the worst nuts are keeping their mouths shut about the Sandy Hook massacre. However, there’s alway Dr. Dobson to bring on the theocratic fascism.
James Dobson dedicated his radio program this morning to discussing Friday’s tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut, which he attributed to the fact that God has “allowed judgment to fall upon us” because the nation has turned its back on him by accepting things like abortion and gay marriage:
Our country really does seem in complete disarray. I’m not talking politically, I’m not talking about the result of the November sixth election; I am saying that something has gone wrong in America and that we have turned our back on God.
I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn’t exist, or he’s irrelevant to me and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences too.
And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that’s what’s going on.
I’ve really thought a lot of the gun nuts represent an insurrectionist attitude and that many of them are still what I would chararterize as neoconfederates or confederacy hold outs. Larry Pratt proved that royally on HardBall today. Frankly, I hope the FBI keeps a really good eye or twenty on him.
Pratt believes gun ownership is necessary to scare office holders and to remind them that we can take them out. I have no idea what to say to a man that is so obsessed with stolen elections that he suggests assassination as a way to correct things.
During the interview on Hardball, Pratt argued that guns are necessary to “control the government.” When Matthews asked for an example, Pratt pointed to 1946, in Athens, Tenn., when townsmen took up arms against corrupt government officials.
David Chipman, a former special agent at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who now works with Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told Matthews that Pratt’s argument was bogus.
“Law enforcement is here as a force of good and we’re the good guys, and that’s what we saw in Newtown. When we get rhetoric like I’m hearing right now, I think this is extremely fringe, I believe most Americans believe otherwise.”
Pratt scoffed at Chipman as a tool of the government. I really think that people like Pratt–read Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Allen West, etc.–need to be outed for the insane extremists they are.
In what can only be seen as a malicious plot
by Newsweek’s editors[Update: this is a long blog post, not a magazine piece] to ensure Megan McArdle’s reputation does not outlive Newsweek, the Daily Beast has published a 4,000 word essay by its new hire on how to stop massacres like last Friday’s. McArdle begins her essay with a prescient harbinger (“There just aren’t good words to talk about Newtown.”) but recovers to churn out a fairly standard libertarian argument about why various government remedies won’t work. And it’s true, to some extent, that various regulatory solutions all have complications.The problem comes at the end when, having dismissed the standard liberal regulatory measures as unworkable, she has to propose her own solution. This is what McArdle comes up with:
I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once.
Are you kidding me? You think gun control is impractical, so your plan is to turn the entire national population, including young children, into a standby suicide squad? Through private initiative, of course. It’s way more feasible than gun control!
Yes, if only those first graders had learned to tackle a shooter with 2 semiautomatic weapons in hand and a chicken-fried brain. What a morooonnnnnn!!!!
@AngryBlackLady The larger children can throw smaller children at shooter.#MeganMcArdleDefenseTips
There is one major headline today worth mentioning. That is the death of Hawaiian former Senator and World War 2 Hero Daniel Inouye.
Democrat Daniel Inouye, the U.S. Senate’s most senior member and a Medal of Honor recipient for his bravery during World War II, has died. He was 88.
He died of respiratory complications and had been at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center since earlier this month. His office said his last word was “Aloha,” the traditional Hawaiian word for “hello” and “goodbye.”
President Obama praised Inouye, saying the nation has “lost a true American hero.”
“In Washington, he worked to strengthen our military, forge bipartisan consensus, and hold those of us in government accountable to the people we were elected to serve,” Obama said in a statement. “But it was his incredible bravery during World War II — including one heroic effort that cost him his arm but earned him the Medal of Honor — that made Danny not just a colleague and a mentor, but someone revered by all of us lucky enough to know him.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced the news of Inouye’s death on the Senate floor, sparking a round of tributes for the man Reid called “a giant of the Senate.” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., hailed Inouye’s service and his reserve as a mark of “men who lead by example and expect nothing in return.”
Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes appear to part way on gun fetishes.
While Ailes’s network said it wasn’t the right time to talk about legislation, Murdoch had no hesitation. Within hours of the attack, he took to Twitter to call for an automatic-weapons ban. “Terrible news today. When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons? As in Oz after similar tragedy,” he wrote, referring to Australia’s move to ban assault weapons in 1996 after a man used two semiautomatic rifles to kill 35 people and wound 21. That massacre came six weeks after the horrific mass school shooting in Dunblane, Scotland, in which sixteen children and one adult were murdered. (Despite Murdoch’s plea, automatic weapons are already illegal in the United States; Adam Lanza used semiautomatics.)
As a global media mogul, Murdoch’s newspapers and television networks have the power to shape public opinion. Already there are signs that parts of Murdoch’s empire are adopting the boss’s position. Today’s New York Post cover, fronting a photo of Obama, declared, “ENOUGH!” In London, where gun culture is decidedly outre, the cover of the Sun screamed, “END THE LUNACY.” Murdoch “is obviously very affected by what’s gone on,” News Corp. executive vice-president Joel Klein told me. “I think most rational people would think there’s no place for assault weapons. I don’t think it’s complicated.” He said that Murdoch will continue to advocate for gun-control policies.
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Sandy Hook Up Dates
Posted: December 16, 2012 Filed under: Gun Control | Tags: Assault rifles, gun control, NRA, Sandy Hook 49 Comments
The President will speak tonight in a memorial to the victims of the Sandy Hook Shooting. I thought I’d try to provide you a list of various articles and updates to read as we try to make sense of something senseless.
This moving article by Gary Wills in the New York Review of Books aligns the interests of the gun fetishists with the worship of Moloch a blood thirsty old testament god who was only appeased by the sacrifice of small children.
Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains—“besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily—sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector. Sometimes this is done by mass killings (eight this year), sometimes by private offerings to the god (thousands this year).
The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?
Its power to do good is matched by its incapacity to do anything wrong. It cannot kill. Thwarting the god is what kills. If it seems to kill, that is only because the god’s bottomless appetite for death has not been adequately fed. The answer to problems caused by guns is more guns, millions of guns, guns everywhere, carried openly, carried secretly, in bars, in churches, in offices, in government buildings. Only the lack of guns can be a curse, not their beneficent omnipresence.
Senator Diane Feinstein announced her intention to introduce gun control legislation on the first day of Senate Business in 2013.
Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein said Sunday that she will introduce a new ban on assault weapons when the new Congress convenes next year, and she expects President Barack Obama to support it.
Appearing on Meet The Press in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that killed 26 on Friday, Feinstein, who sponsored the first federal ban on assault weapons which expired in 2004, said she is ready to push to reinstate it.
“It’s being done with care, it will be ready on the first day, I’ll be announcing House authors, and we’ll be prepared to go — and I hope the nation will be prepared to help,” she said.
State Police in Connecticut announced what we all knew and feared. The slaughter in Sandy Hook was caused by a military style semi-automatic assault rifle capable of showering those little bodies with hundreds of bullets in a matter of minutes. The shooter had hundreds of rounds and magazines.
Adam Lanza had hundreds of rounds and used multiple high capacity magazines when he went on a rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing 20 first graders and six adults, Connecticut State Police said today.
After shooting at victims in two classrooms and a hallway with a high-powered semi-automatic rifle, he put a bullet into his own head with a handgun.
“The weapon that was utilized most of the time during this horrific crime was identified as a Bushmaster AR-15 assault weapon,” Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance said. “The trajectory of the shots and all of the ammunition used in the horrible crime will be examined.”
Vance said three weapons were found at the scene, while a fourth, a shotgun, was recovered from Lanza’s vehicle.
Amid all the discussion, the NRA remains silent. Additionally, no pro gun rights senator would appear on MTP. Many folks believe that “The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre Has Blood on His Hands”.
There should be special place in hell reserved for LaPierre. He likes to fulminate about gun owners’ rights. But so far he’s has been silent on the nation’s most recent gun massacre.
The NRA not only lobbies on behalf of “stand your ground” laws, but also offers insurance to members to pay for the legal costs of shooting people in “self-defense.” The NRA also defends the right of Americans to carry concealed weapons, including handguns.
Adam Lanza—the 20-year old man who walked into the Connecticut school shot his victims with a semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle—is no doubt deranged. He’s not alone. There are lots of crazy people around. But if we make it easy for them to obtain guns, they are more likely to translate their psychological problems into dangerous and deadly anti-social behavior.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2011 there were 15,953 murders in the United States and 11,101 (30 a day) were caused by firearms. Suicides and unintentional shootings account for another 20,000 deaths by guns each year. Of course, many more people are injured—some seriously and permanently—by gun violence.
Will we actually see the NRA’s death grip on Congress come to an end?
According to a 2011 Gallup survey, 47 percent of Americans own some kind of firearm, and the total number of nonmilitary guns in circulation exceeds 300 million. There are nearly 130,000 federally registered gun dealers across the country, three and a half times the number of grocery stores. Although the sales transacted by registered dealers are subject to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which screens out buyers with disqualifying felony convictions or histories of confinement in mental institutions, 40 percent of gun sales are unregulated transactions made by private, unlicensed vendors, many at gun shows and conventions.
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