Adam Lanza's Attack Took Less Than 5 Minutes

[jon_berzerk]

So wouldn't the first step be to insist on records being kept of all gun purchases?

nope

how does registering a firearm prevent a newton incident

Well, aren't gun proponents and 'gun-grabbers' alike saying that they should be kept out of the hands of nutters?
How do you know they're a nutter...or how do the cops know that a nutter has a gun?
If you aren't a nutter, why would you object?

registering firearms does not prevent that

 

[idb]

nope

how does registering a firearm prevent a newton incident

Well, aren't gun proponents and 'gun-grabbers' alike saying that they should be kept out of the hands of nutters?
How do you know they're a nutter...or how do the cops know that a nutter has a gun?
If you aren't a nutter, why would you object?

registering firearms does not prevent that

It won't prevent every incident, no...nothing can.
Even a 'good guy with a gun' can't prevent every gun crime.

 

[Brain357]

You people continue to gloss over and ignore the central issue on things like Newton and the other mass shootings these shooters got the guns legally they had no criminal record or had been committed to a mental hospital. There were warning and danger signs from all of them but now way to get them committed without there consent until after they committed there crimes they will always be able to get hold the the weapon and magazine or clip they want either legally or illegally you want to stop or at least cut down on these type of crimes focus on getting laws that allow them to be committed and get the help they need before they do these horrible things.

This is why we should limit magazine capacity. At least slow the crazy people down.

If we make it really easy to commit people, how many of these pro gun people do you think will be thrown in the asylum? I hear a lot of crazy gun talk. Now getting thrown in an asylum is a real loss of your freedom. We have a lot of work to do with mental health, but we better be very careful. Unfortunately with our loopholes now you can't even keep them from getting a dangerous weapon.

 

[blackhawk]

You people continue to gloss over and ignore the central issue on things like Newton and the other mass shootings these shooters got the guns legally they had no criminal record or had been committed to a mental hospital. There were warning and danger signs from all of them but now way to get them committed without there consent until after they committed there crimes they will always be able to get hold the the weapon and magazine or clip they want either legally or illegally you want to stop or at least cut down on these type of crimes focus on getting laws that allow them to be committed and get the help they need before they do these horrible things.

This is why we should limit magazine capacity. At least slow the crazy people down.

If we make it really easy to commit people, how many of these pro gun people do you think will be thrown in the asylum? I hear a lot of crazy gun talk. Now getting thrown in an asylum is a real loss of your freedom. We have a lot of work to do with mental health, but we better be very careful. Unfortunately with our loopholes now you can't even keep them from getting a dangerous weapon.

Ok you limit the magazine capacity 10 rounds is the number I hear a lot you can do just as much damage by using three guns with 10 round magazines or even one gun with the three ten round magazines since with a little practice you switch magazines out very quickly as you can one gun with a thirty round magazine. We need to focus less on the type of gun and magazine these people use and more on what is driving them to do these type of attacks in my view.

 

[jon_berzerk]

You people continue to gloss over and ignore the central issue on things like Newton and the other mass shootings these shooters got the guns legally they had no criminal record or had been committed to a mental hospital. There were warning and danger signs from all of them but now way to get them committed without there consent until after they committed there crimes they will always be able to get hold the the weapon and magazine or clip they want either legally or illegally you want to stop or at least cut down on these type of crimes focus on getting laws that allow them to be committed and get the help they need before they do these horrible things.

This is why we should limit magazine capacity. At least slow the crazy people down.

If we make it really easy to commit people, how many of these pro gun people do you think will be thrown in the asylum? I hear a lot of crazy gun talk. Now getting thrown in an asylum is a real loss of your freedom. We have a lot of work to do with mental health, but we better be very careful. Unfortunately with our loopholes now you can't even keep them from getting a dangerous weapon.

Ok you limit the magazine capacity 10 rounds is the number I hear a lot you can do just as much damage by using three guns with 10 round magazines or even one gun with the three ten round magazines since with a little practice you switch magazines out very quickly as you can one gun with a thirty round magazine. We need to focus less on the type of gun and magazine these people use and more on what is driving them to do these type of attacks in my view.

you see the 30 round standard magazine is only the start

gun grabbers always want to take away more

lanza did not exhaust all rounds from his magazines

so yeah a smaller magazine has no bearing on the number

of killings or victims a shooter has

time is the factor

how much time before the shooter stops his killing spree

is the determinate in the number of victims

so how long does one want to allow a killer to continue

one minute five minutes ten

 

[M14 Shooter]

Well, aren't gun proponents and 'gun-grabbers' alike saying that they should be kept out of the hands of nutters?
How do you know they're a nutter...or how do the cops know that a nutter has a gun?
If you aren't a nutter, why would you object?

registering firearms does not prevent that

It won't prevent every incident, no...nothing can.

Conceptually, gun registration cannot prevent a gun crime.
At best, it MIGHT deter someone form comitting one - but it absolutely, positively cannot prevent one.

 

[M14 Shooter]

You people continue to gloss over and ignore the central issue on things like Newton and the other mass shootings these shooters got the guns legally they had no criminal record or had been committed to a mental hospital. There were warning and danger signs from all of them but now way to get them committed without there consent until after they committed there crimes they will always be able to get hold the the weapon and magazine or clip they want either legally or illegally you want to stop or at least cut down on these type of crimes focus on getting laws that allow them to be committed and get the help they need before they do these horrible things.

This is why we should limit magazine capacity. At least slow the crazy people down.

Pure inanity.

 

[WUN]

with fewer rounds per load fewer kids would have died.

If his nutter gun snuggler mother had not bought him weapons it would not have happened at all

Lanza reloaded 6 times and he had an average of 4 unused rounds in each magazine he used.

The Virginia Tech shooter reloaded two guns at least 4 times each. He had two guns one that shot 10 rounds per magazine and the other that shot 15 rounds.

The Virginia Tech shooter had two guns to reload with 25 total rounds per the two magazines. Lanza had 1 gun to reload with 30 rounds per magazine.

The Virginia Tech shooter killed more people than Lanza.

It's not just a matter of the gun and number of rounds. It's how fast can they reload, how accurate they are and how many potential victims are nearby.

it is also on the length of time it takes for a lawful person to intervene

or when the shooter decides to stop


so a "high capacity " mag really didnt play a roll

lanza had all the time in the world to reload

as many times as he wanted

Yes, those are factors too. These madmen usually pick locations where there are no police nearby and plenty of unarmed victims all in one place.

 

[FA_Q2]

My "vehement denials" refers to posts in this message board at the time and the tone thereof. Those posts would otherwise not have been memorable. I remember being impressed at the time not by the content (which gun Lanza used) but by the sheer passion being used to deliver it. One got the impression that the future of humanity depended on whether or not Lanza used this device or that one, as if resolving that would bring twenty children back. Obviously that's absurd, which is why the tone stood out.

As far as what effect it has on legislation, I can't see that as relevant since such legislation is (would have been) nothing more than a facile PR posturing by politicians who want to be seen as "doing something", and would have (had) no effect on hunters, CC holders, or the Second Amendment. So knowing none of that is affected and assuming none of the protesting posters are doing so because it is their wish to use a Bushmaster to mow down twenty more kids, I can find no other reasoning than the NUT case.

(NUT case - I kill me )

In other words I don't see an AW ban or a magazine limit as having any real import, positive or negative. My biggest concern is that taking that route takes our eye off the ball.

I have to disagree very strongly here on that entire idea. I can’t stand the argument that ‘it won’t affect you.’ I don’t care if the weapons in question are not owned by many people because it is not the point. I can attest though that is outright false. The bans talked about would affect a great many people. I know 4 that work in my shop alone that own weapons that easily fall under the ‘bans’ that were discussed. You (and I for that matter) do not get to decide how others exercise their rights as long as they do not infringe on our rights. Just because you might not see any reason that a gun enthusiast, hobbyist, hunter or shooter would need an AR15 or other firearm has no real barring on whether or not they should be able to purchase and operate one.

That is all beside the point. No matter what the ‘tone’ is or what the relevant effect on legislation is or even the matter being discussed is marriage rights or the right to own a firearm, I will vehemently oppose ANY action by the government that results in the limitation or destruction of our rights when not warranted. An AW ban has HUGE import in that the legislators are taking more unwarranted steps in the seizure of our rights as individuals. If you don’t fight that here, then where are you going to draw the line? At rights that affect you? At rights that you agree with?

That is my overall problem with statements like your last where you say things like:
“I don't see an AW ban or a magazine limit as having any real import, positive or negative.”
And:
“and would have (had) no effect on hunters, CC holders, or the Second Amendment. So knowing none of that is affected and assuming none of the protesting posters are doing so because it is their wish to use a Bushmaster to mow down twenty more kids, I can find no other reasoning than the NUT case.”
Many, such as myself, are against this legislation because I hold ALL of our rights dear, not just the ones that I choose to exercise myself. I will fight tooth and nail to stop the gun control advocates just like I will fight tooth and nail for the gay’s to have the right to marry. It has nothing to do with politics, whether or not I exercise those rights, if they even affect me or any other reason than they are rights and they MUST be protected. If I allow those rights to slip away, mine might be next.

You have to include me in those vehement denials and so called NUT cases but your assigning the reasons that you outlined as the motivations of those people, you are way off base and I hope I have showed you why. Now, I am not saying that there are people that are as you describe BUT not everyone in that camp is arguing from that stance.

Of course rights are important, but again considering the scope of what was being proposed versus the Second Amendment, I couldn't see the scale of that passion as commensurate. Now, you're absolutely correct that constructive debate on the issue is hard to come by. And paranoia about NUT is a large part of it.

I got into this debate on the heels of Bob Costas' commentary in early December where he talked about "gun culture". For weeks on end I watched and read countless wags describe Costas' 90-second commentary as a "gun control rant"-- even though he never mentioned gun control, legislation, or the Second Amendment. That continues even now, with Fox News painting Jim Carrey's comedy video as a "gun control" video. It was, and still is, as if some people want to insist on derailing debate into a personal martyrdom crusade, even if it takes a complete misrepresentation of what the debate actually is. I've been harping on my own 'culture' crusade as long as I've been on this board, and only now is anyone seeming to hear what I'm saying instead of plugging in their own lyrics. So let's have a complete picture of the factors that are, indeed, obliterating constructive debate.

I can agree with this for the most part (aside from the underlined portion that I addressed in the above statement). If it seemed that I was claiming that one side was responsible for misdirecting the debate, I did not mean to put it that way. This is not a one side problem and the right is doing as much as the left to derail a useful direction in this debate.

My intent was to simply state that the left or gun control advocates moved in first and the right responded to that. After that, the right has done its share as well including LaPierre’s horrid speech that tried to blame other venues (namely free speech) for the problem. The right had a wonderful chance to turn this debate in the correct direction BUT instead they pushed it FURTHER down the wrong road. Everyone is pushing the same way and it happens to be the incorrect way.

It's a chicken-egg question but no I don't see that progression. Now I don't live in California so my knowledge of Feinstein is limited, but I do know she was the one who walked in the room to find George Moscone a moment after he was gunned down in City Hall and that she tried to chase the assailant and then found Harvey Milk also slaughtered, so that experience could carry a personal meaning. But then she is one Senator of a hundred, and in a representative government all voices count. It's also why we have a loyal opposition and time built in to get grounded in rationality. You'll notice that three and a half months after Newtown, this AW ban, for what it's worth, is dead.

But no, this "they were just waiting for a pretext" CT is all too common and all too facile. My hackles go up when I see some ideological group playing the martyr game. Without real evidence or indication, I'm not buying.

Then don’t buy but the evidence is there including the fact that the vast majority of these measures are not new ideas. They are the same ideas that have been pitched a thousand times. They just mobilized right after the incident because the chances of them passing increased a thousand fold at that moment. It still was not enough, thankfully, but it was the best chance they had in a decade.

If you need some proof that they do this, look back at legislation proposed after EVERY mass shooting like this. The national narrative is almost scripted and you can predict with frightening accuracy what happens in the weeks after incidents. It’s because it does not change. Every time that this event occurs, the same legislation is attempted.

BTW, the only reason that legislation died was because of the vehement opposition that you pointed out was not needed because the legislation was not important. Had people been quiet, we would have ended up with bans. That opposition was needed.

No question, human perversions are fascinating to those who don't share those perversions. But I don't think it's at all a waste of time to understand how they got to that point, definitely not. If that understanding, should we reach it, flags down a potential situation before it happens, then we have a filtering tool. Simply shrugging "oh well he was crazy" may be true, but it gives us nothing constructive to work with and ensures that the next time we'll be reactive rather than proactive.

To that question, somebody in this forum came up with a nice article that I keep trying to make time to get into for discussion but I'll post it again here for anyone else. If it's the kind of thing you're not interested in I'll be sorry to hear that, because it may (may) be a lead to what's happening to us. At the very least it asks the right question.

But to back up a bit and not to lose this point because I think it's vitally important, and should be obvious if we will acknowledge it -- that an Adam Lanza or a James Holmes or the guy in the Oregon mall or Klebold and Harris (etc etc etc) are not out for murder, clearly, because they could accomplish that with, say, a bomb or poison gas, which doesn't require one's presence in the moment, and which gives at least a chance of being somewhere else when the shit goes down and possibly not being caught (think Tim McVeigh or Eric Rudolph or the anthrax mailer). Not only does a mass shooting inevitably result in either the self-inflicted death and/or incarceration of the shooter (not true of the terrorist bomber), but an actual terrorist attack takes meticulous planning, whereas random shooting, once the shooter takes his position, is random, targeting whatever comes into view. So these are not the same thing going on.

We call these guys 'mass murderers' but I believe that's a misnomer.What these mass shooters are after is personal carnage, and by that I mean the real, physical, visual experience of being able to watch helpless people, even kids, scream, run for cover and bleed from their wounds. They're not out for murder but for a perverse kind of power trip (and I think it's got everything to do with power). You can't get that kind of sensory feedback by poisoning the water or leaving a bomb for later while you get out of harm's way. I have no doubt the moment when they're strafing innocent people absolutely IS the payoff. As I remember Klebold and Harris were whooping with exhilarated delight as they inflicted their carnage.

This is why their weapon of choice is guns -- nothing can give the kind of sensory payoff --blood splattering, organ demolishing, long-distance range-- that a gun will. And it only ends when they know it must end, when they're outgunned and use their last shot on themselves; the goal of the "game" being to run up the score as much as possible before the clock runs out.

Crudely put but I do believe that's what's going on in those heads in that moment-- and is the real goal of what they're doing.
And that's why I keep getting back to the culture. Something in our culture is giving these perverts the idea that mowing people down would be a really cool thing to administer. And that, I believe, is the root of the tree that bears this poison fruit.

I understand what you are saying now. Good points, particularly the bolded/underlined part. I can understand what you are saying that there is something in the culture that gives them this idea BUT I don’t think such an underlying issue can be totally removed even if our culture was completely devoid of violence. Some people are simply crazy and want to do this type of thing. Then, exposure to our glorification of violence makes the event more likely.

Besides taking a good look at our culture I think that we need to refine our ability to discover and treat those that are truly insane. This is a really sticky situation because you can’t deprive people of due process but you also cannot let people that are intelligent and insane (as this person and most other mass murderers whether or not they are as you described or McVeighs) go untreated. They are going to exist no matter what we do.

Changing our culture though would go a long way as you suggest though. I have to admit that it makes me wonder sometimes. Our heroes are usually people like McClain. While we espouse a society of rights and freedoms, we idolize the type of person that would stomp all over those rights and watch movies where they actively do so all while causing the max amount of destruction and loss of innocent life to get the ‘bad guy.’ The sad reality though is that I enjoy this stuff myself. What to do, what to do…

 

[FA_Q2]

You people continue to gloss over and ignore the central issue on things like Newton and the other mass shootings these shooters got the guns legally they had no criminal record or had been committed to a mental hospital. There were warning and danger signs from all of them but now way to get them committed without there consent until after they committed there crimes they will always be able to get hold the the weapon and magazine or clip they want either legally or illegally you want to stop or at least cut down on these type of crimes focus on getting laws that allow them to be committed and get the help they need before they do these horrible things.

So wouldn't the first step be to insist on records being kept of all gun purchases?

It won't prevent every incident, no...nothing can.
Even a 'good guy with a gun' can't prevent every gun crime.

No. It would not prevent any incident whatsoever. As a matter of fact, that entire effort would be utterly meaningless. HOW does a registry stop ANYTHING? What possible function can a registry accomplish?

In every case, if the gun that was used was legally purchased, the registry would do nothing other than identify that person had a gun. No change in the use of that weapon in a crime. If the gun was purchased or acquired illegally, it would not be in the registry under that person anyway. Again, no change in the use of it in a crime.

Essentially, registries do NOTHING whatsoever for combating shootings. The ONLY thing that a registry can be used for is attempting to find the person that committed the crime yet it is woefully poor in that field and would utterly fail. Registries add nothing to the process.

 

[Pogo]

Obviously the posts are getting long so with your permission I'll split these into parts...

Part the First

My "vehement denials" refers to posts in this message board at the time and the tone thereof. Those posts would otherwise not have been memorable. I remember being impressed at the time not by the content (which gun Lanza used) but by the sheer passion being used to deliver it. One got the impression that the future of humanity depended on whether or not Lanza used this device or that one, as if resolving that would bring twenty children back. Obviously that's absurd, which is why the tone stood out.

As far as what effect it has on legislation, I can't see that as relevant since such legislation is (would have been) nothing more than a facile PR posturing by politicians who want to be seen as "doing something", and would have (had) no effect on hunters, CC holders, or the Second Amendment. So knowing none of that is affected and assuming none of the protesting posters are doing so because it is their wish to use a Bushmaster to mow down twenty more kids, I can find no other reasoning than the NUT case.

(NUT case - I kill me )

In other words I don't see an AW ban or a magazine limit as having any real import, positive or negative. My biggest concern is that taking that route takes our eye off the ball.

I have to disagree very strongly here on that entire idea. I can’t stand the argument that ‘it won’t affect you.’ I don’t care if the weapons in question are not owned by many people because it is not the point. I can attest though that is outright false. The bans talked about would affect a great many people. I know 4 that work in my shop alone that own weapons that easily fall under the ‘bans’ that were discussed. You (and I for that matter) do not get to decide how others exercise their rights as long as they do not infringe on our rights. Just because you might not see any reason that a gun enthusiast, hobbyist, hunter or shooter would need an AR15 or other firearm has no real barring on whether or not they should be able to purchase and operate one.

That is all beside the point. No matter what the ‘tone’ is or what the relevant effect on legislation is or even the matter being discussed is marriage rights or the right to own a firearm, I will vehemently oppose ANY action by the government that results in the limitation or destruction of our rights when not warranted. An AW ban has HUGE import in that the legislators are taking more unwarranted steps in the seizure of our rights as individuals. If you don’t fight that here, then where are you going to draw the line? At rights that affect you? At rights that you agree with?

That is my overall problem with statements like your last where you say things like:
“I don't see an AW ban or a magazine limit as having any real import, positive or negative.”
And:
“and would have (had) no effect on hunters, CC holders, or the Second Amendment. So knowing none of that is affected and assuming none of the protesting posters are doing so because it is their wish to use a Bushmaster to mow down twenty more kids, I can find no other reasoning than the NUT case.”
Many, such as myself, are against this legislation because I hold ALL of our rights dear, not just the ones that I choose to exercise myself. I will fight tooth and nail to stop the gun control advocates just like I will fight tooth and nail for the gay’s to have the right to marry. It has nothing to do with politics, whether or not I exercise those rights, if they even affect me or any other reason than they are rights and they MUST be protected. If I allow those rights to slip away, mine might be next.

You have to include me in those vehement denials and so called NUT cases but your assigning the reasons that you outlined as the motivations of those people, you are way off base and I hope I have showed you why. Now, I am not saying that there are people that are as you describe BUT not everyone in that camp is arguing from that stance.

Let's just say I have a hard time believing that the interest behind all this thrust was philosophical and Constitutional. I have a hard time believing that because of all the dishonesty and hypocrisy employed in the argument... hypocrisy specifically as I kept noting at the time, as the blogosphere kept calling for Bob Costas to be "fired", for David Gregory to be "arrested", for Piers Morgan to be "deported", et cetera, all of which, in expressing a spirited defense of the Second Amendment, belies a cavalier disregard of the First, which makes the whole thing ring very hollow. Dishonesty in the dogged insistence on defining Costas' commentary as a "gun control rant" (and again with the Carrey video as framed by Fox Noise, same thing). So given those inherent flaws it's pretty difficult to take all this interest in the Second Amendment as anything more than feigned outrage.

Not to paint with a broad brush, that's not you personally, that's Fox Noise and the NRA propagandists deliberately misrepresenting and poisoning the dialogue in order to deflect inconvenient points they would rather not deal with. Sadly you may have very valid concerns that get deflected along with them. That's the cost of dishonest debate that the spinners bring about. All of which is to explain why these arguments might not have been heard as more than the ravings of "gun nuts". IMHO Bob Costas nailed the root of the issue four months ago, and it was immediately --immediately-- distorted into something it was not, that we might babble on and on about irrelevant shit having nothing to do with the question of culture. These spinners are what hold us back. And that sucks.

In the end, it was much ado about nothing, as we'll address more in the next post.

 

[Rinata]

Trying to reason with gun nuts is an exercise in futility. Every suggestion is met with scorn yet they offer no solutions whatsoever. None of you have expressed any empathy or compassion to those who were shot dead at someone else's whim. Shame on all of you.

I hope laws are passed to stop the violence and there will be nothing you can do about it.

 

[M14 Shooter]

Trying to reason with gun nuts is an exercise in futility.

As your posts are devoid of reason, it is impossible for you to know this.

Case in point:

I hope laws are passed to stop the violence

Laws cannot stop violence.

 

[Pogo]

Part the Second

Of course rights are important, but again considering the scope of what was being proposed versus the Second Amendment, I couldn't see the scale of that passion as commensurate. Now, you're absolutely correct that constructive debate on the issue is hard to come by. And paranoia about NUT is a large part of it.

I got into this debate on the heels of Bob Costas' commentary in early December where he talked about "gun culture". For weeks on end I watched and read countless wags describe Costas' 90-second commentary as a "gun control rant"-- even though he never mentioned gun control, legislation, or the Second Amendment. That continues even now, with Fox News painting Jim Carrey's comedy video as a "gun control" video. It was, and still is, as if some people want to insist on derailing debate into a personal martyrdom crusade, even if it takes a complete misrepresentation of what the debate actually is. I've been harping on my own 'culture' crusade as long as I've been on this board, and only now is anyone seeming to hear what I'm saying instead of plugging in their own lyrics. So let's have a complete picture of the factors that are, indeed, obliterating constructive debate.

I can agree with this for the most part (aside from the underlined portion that I addressed in the above statement). If it seemed that I was claiming that one side was responsible for misdirecting the debate, I did not mean to put it that way. This is not a one side problem and the right is doing as much as the left to derail a useful direction in this debate.

My intent was to simply state that the left or gun control advocates moved in first and the right responded to that. After that, the right has done its share as well including LaPierre’s horrid speech that tried to blame other venues (namely free speech) for the problem. The right had a wonderful chance to turn this debate in the cor rect direction BUT instead they pushed it FURTHER down the wrong road. Everyone is pushing the same way and it happens to be the incorrect way.

For the first bolded part, I disagree completely on "who started it" (addressed in the Bob Costas bit above). Once "culture" was perverted into something having to do with "legislation" --and keep in mind this was two weeks before Newtown and didn't even refer to a mass shooting-- that's where we went onto the wrong foot. The side of the gun-concerned were immediately put on the defensive for positions they hadn't even voiced. I can't emphasize this enough; it was a crucial starting point for phony debate points. And once Newtown happened it was like Disingenuous Debate Spring Traning had given way to the regular season.

On the second bolded part, all I can say is . It's about damn time we got over the bullshit and into the issues.

It's a chicken-egg question but no I don't see that progression. Now I don't live in California so my knowledge of Feinstein is limited, but I do know she was the one who walked in the room to find George Moscone a moment after he was gunned down in City Hall and that she tried to chase the assailant and then found Harvey Milk also slaughtered, so that experience could carry a personal meaning. But then she is one Senator of a hundred, and in a representative government all voices count. It's also why we have a loyal opposition and time built in to get grounded in rationality. You'll notice that three and a half months after Newtown, this AW ban, for what it's worth, is dead.

But no, this "they were just waiting for a pretext" CT is all too common and all too facile. My hackles go up when I see some ideological group playing the martyr game. Without real evidence or indication, I'm not buying.

Then don’t buy but the evidence is there including the fact that the vast majority of these measures are not new ideas. They are the same ideas that have been pitched a thousand times. They just mobilized right after the incident because the chances of them passing increased a thousand fold at that moment. It still was not enough, thankfully, but it was the best chance they had in a decade.

If you need some proof that they do this, look back at legislation proposed after EVERY mass shooting like this. The national narrative is almost scripted and you can predict with frightening accuracy what happens in the weeks after incidents. It’s because it does not change. Every time that this event occurs, the same legislation is attempted.

BTW, the only reason that legislation died was because of the vehement opposition that you pointed out was not needed because the legislation was not important. Had people been quiet, we would have ended up with bans. That opposition was needed.

Certainly it's not a new idea to throw legislation at the problem, and it's not a new idea that the NRA will immediately lobby to water it or douse it before it starts, and it's not new that Congressional debate and resistance will ensue so that time passes and the emotion of the moment gives way to more meticulous rationality. That's why I'm really not concerned about the whole legislative charade; it's not like we have no checks and balances. Ultimately I think we might agree that the legislative angle is irrelevant to the cultural issue.

I am concerned that that whole legislative charade, which is pushed by both traditonal "sides", and initiated as outlined above by the pro-gun lobby, serves to take our eye off the ball, which is the cultural background. Indeed I have no doubt whatsoever that that was the whole purpose of misrepresenting the issue in the first place--- to get the issue off the battleground of culture, and onto that of the legislative charade, where they had a much better chance. I was on another message board last year where I brought this angle up (gun culture, as opposed to gun legislation) and was attacked so vehemently for that suggestion that the pro-gunners lobbied to get me kicked off the board to shut me up. So this dynamic of censorship and deflection cannot be more obvious to this writer. It's an obvious nerve.

Ultimately this deflection into irrelevant legal areas balances itself like a pitcher of water; Dianne Feinstein may have one particular interest, but she's also one Senator with 99 colleagues to balance her. That will all take care of itself. It's theater. As theater is superficial, I just don't see much meaning in it, hence my ambivalence on that.

But meanwhile we've told ourselves that, depending on our position, we've either (a) passed legislation so we have no more mass shooting problem, or (b) defeated dangerous legislation that would have infringed on Constitutional rights. And neither one of those does a damn bit of good to address the next mass shooting, because we've allowed ourselves to be shunted off into addressing the symptoms, so that we don't have to be bothered with addressing the disease.

 

[FA_Q2]

Let's just say I have a hard time believing that the interest behind all this thrust was philosophical and Constitutional. I have a hard time believing that because of all the dishonesty and hypocrisy employed in the argument... hypocrisy specifically as I kept noting at the time, as the blogosphere kept calling for Bob Costas to be "fired", for David Gregory to be "arrested", for Piers Morgan to be "deported", et cetera, all of which, in expressing a spirited defense of the Second Amendment, belies a cavalier disregard of the First, which makes the whole thing ring very hollow. Dishonesty in the dogged insistence on defining Costas' commentary as a "gun control rant" (and again with the Carrey video as framed by Fox Noise, same thing). So given those inherent flaws it's pretty difficult to take all this interest in the Second Amendment as anything more than feigned outrage.

Not to paint with a broad brush, that's not you personally, that's Fox Noise and the NRA propagandists deliberately misrepresenting and poisoning the dialogue in order to deflect inconvenient points they would rather not deal with. Sadly you may have very valid concerns that get deflected along with them. That's the cost of dishonest debate that the spinners bring about. All of which is to explain why these arguments might not have been heard as more than the ravings of "gun nuts". IMHO Bob Costas nailed the root of the issue four months ago, and it was immediately --immediately-- distorted into something it was not, that we might babble on and on about irrelevant shit having nothing to do with the question of culture. These spinners are what hold us back. And that sucks.

In the end, it was much ado about nothing, as we'll address more in the next post.

Oh, you’re not going to get any argument from me here. I agree completely. As I said earlier, those are the sentiments that need to be ignored no matter what the source. Certainly all the push is not coming from people that just want to protect rights or have actual valid arguments but that should not dominate the conversation though it often does.

I think this actually speaks to a larger problem and is dividing our nation badly right now. All you hear is those reactionary and asinine arguments about anything. Think how the media and the national discourse is often dominated by things like Obama’s citizenship, everyone wants to grab your guns, the government selling weapons to drug cartels to push gun control, Mitt’s gardener’s status, Mitt’s tax returns hiding illegal activity and the like. Most of these allegations are real events or facts that have become muddled by completely false claims and accusations. The reality here is that each side sets up a straw man of the other – a crazy lunatic left that wants us all in chains and a communist dictator ruling over them or a religious zealot right that thinks the church should be the government and all science eliminated. Those straw men are convenient to attack because it is so easy and the ‘ideas’ can be summed up in 15 seconds or one paragraph. Those instances dominate the media not because it is reflective on the majority or because they have real bearing on the discourse of the nation but because they are easy to report and people no longer want to think or defend their positions. It is easier to sit in ignorance and utter belief that you are right and the other people are idiots.

Sure, those people that are on display exist but they are far from the majority. They are the loud minority that is easy to report on, attack and the simplest to justify your beliefs to. They are not the ones that we should be listening to though. This is one of the reasons that I rarely watch any news anymore, it is pointless. Almost everything reported (damn near 100%) is a lie by omission. Sure, it is not an outright lie BUT lies through omission are not any different to me.

 

[Pogo]

Part three of three

No question, human perversions are fascinating to those who don't share those perversions. But I don't think it's at all a waste of time to understand how they got to that point, definitely not. If that understanding, should we reach it, flags down a potential situation before it happens, then we have a filtering tool. Simply shrugging "oh well he was crazy" may be true, but it gives us nothing constructive to work with and ensures that the next time we'll be reactive rather than proactive.

To that question, somebody in this forum came up with a nice article that I keep trying to make time to get into for discussion but I'll post it again here for anyone else. If it's the kind of thing you're not interested in I'll be sorry to hear that, because it may (may) be a lead to what's happening to us. At the very least it asks the right question.

But to back up a bit and not to lose this point because I think it's vitally important, and should be obvious if we will acknowledge it -- that an Adam Lanza or a James Holmes or the guy in the Oregon mall or Klebold and Harris (etc etc etc) are not out for murder, clearly, because they could accomplish that with, say, a bomb or poison gas, which doesn't require one's presence in the moment, and which gives at least a chance of being somewhere else when the shit goes down and possibly not being caught (think Tim McVeigh or Eric Rudolph or the anthrax mailer). Not only does a mass shooting inevitably result in either the self-inflicted death and/or incarceration of the shooter (not true of the terrorist bomber), but an actual terrorist attack takes meticulous planning, whereas random shooting, once the shooter takes his position, is random, targeting whatever comes into view. So these are not the same thing going on.

We call these guys 'mass murderers' but I believe that's a misnomer.What these mass shooters are after is personal carnage, and by that I mean the real, physical, visual experience of being able to watch helpless people, even kids, scream, run for cover and bleed from their wounds. They're not out for murder but for a perverse kind of power trip (and I think it's got everything to do with power). You can't get that kind of sensory feedback by poisoning the water or leaving a bomb for later while you get out of harm's way. I have no doubt the moment when they're strafing innocent people absolutely IS the payoff. As I remember Klebold and Harris were whooping with exhilarated delight as they inflicted their carnage.

This is why their weapon of choice is guns -- nothing can give the kind of sensory payoff --blood splattering, organ demolishing, long-distance range-- that a gun will. And it only ends when they know it must end, when they're outgunned and use their last shot on themselves; the goal of the "game" being to run up the score as much as possible before the clock runs out.

Crudely put but I do believe that's what's going on in those heads in that moment-- and is the real goal of what they're doing.
And that's why I keep getting back to the culture. Something in our culture is giving these perverts the idea that mowing people down would be a really cool thing to administer. And that, I believe, is the root of the tree that bears this poison fruit.

I understand what you are saying now. Good points, particularly the bolded/underlined part. I can understand what you are saying that there is something in the culture that gives them this idea BUT I don’t think such an underlying issue can be totally removed even if our culture was completely devoid of violence. Some people are simply crazy and want to do this type of thing. Then, exposure to our glorification of violence makes the event more likely.

Besides taking a good look at our culture I think that we need to refine our ability to discover and treat those that are truly insane. This is a really sticky situation because you can’t deprive people of due process but you also cannot let people that are intelligent and insane (as this person and most other mass murderers whether or not they are as you described or McVeighs) go untreated. They are going to exist no matter what we do.

Changing our culture though would go a long way as you suggest though. I have to admit that it makes me wonder sometimes. Our heroes are usually people like McClain. While we espouse a society of rights and freedoms, we idolize the type of person that would stomp all over those rights and watch movies where they actively do so all while causing the max amount of destruction and loss of innocent life to get the ‘bad guy.’ The sad reality though is that I enjoy this stuff myself. What to do, what to do…

Well this (bolded in appropriate red part) is what I mean by understanding what's going on in these heads. Only when we know what the problem is may we begin to assess where it comes from.

Agreed, you can't deprive due process and you can't legislate free speech either, as suggestions leaning on violent video games or movies might do -- if that's even a causal factor. I don't know who McClain is but I assume Rambo might be a cognate. It's true, we have a culture that gets its jollies from visions of destruction and carnage and death and a never-ending morality play on "good versus evil"; I can't explain that, but I strongly suspect it has the effect of both desensitizing us and warping (or expressing a warp already there) our collective psychology into an area where the sanctity of life has no meaning. I believe your term "idolize" in the bolded part hits the nail right on the head.

War is another example of the same thing; Jesse Ventura likes to point out that there has been no point in his lifetime when this country was not at war somewhere, and he was born in 1951. That should be more unacceptable than it is, but we make it into a football game where the enemy is possessed of no humanity whatsoever. And now with drone attacks we can detach ourselves completely. Bill Maher got fired from ABC for pointing this out, so we love to detach ourselves from the responsibility of respect for life, but we sure as hell hate to admit it.

I think it's got a lot to do with our propensity to see the world in a black-white good/evil dichotomy that fatally oversimplifies realities. That's my starting point.

Cultural issues are far deeper than throwing legislation around, no question, but as we agreed at an earlier point, every worthwhile solution starts with "me". I try to see the big picture; not the tree but the forest.

That article on masculine hegemony I actually got from a thread here-- it's right on the mark of where the examination needs to go, and yet it got so little attention that I can't even find it now. We'd rather flame each other about "you gun nuts" and "you libtards" and legislative theater. It's a path of less resistance. I'm guilty of this too as I should have developed my own participation in that thread and kept it alive, but there just wasn't the time. But if we believe in our culture we need to make the time.

Thanks for reading and hearing.

 

[eflatminor]

Trying to reason with gun nuts is an exercise in futility. Every suggestion is met with scorn yet they offer no solutions whatsoever.

Not true. I and others have previously offered solutions. Namely, to increase sentences for convicted violent criminals and to put more cops on the streets. Solutions that have proven to work to reduce the rate of violent crime.

None of you have expressed any empathy or compassion to those who were shot dead at someone else's whim. Shame on all of you.

Now you're just lying. Shame on YOU.

We all have compassion for any innocent life lost. We have have empathy for the grieving families. We will not, however, allow those emotions to be leveraged into bad laws and regulations that only serve to put good citizens at a disadvantage when facing armed criminals that couldn't give two shits about your rules.

I hope laws are passed to stop the violence

There is a law that can stop violence? Hmm...I call bullshit.

and there will be nothing you can do about it.

Wanna bet?

 

[eflatminor]

Hahaha... Yeah I'd like to see you shoot like that.

You're welcome to attend one of the bi weekly matches I attend. Bring your sidearm and you can show us your skills too.

 

[Pogo]

Let's just say I have a hard time believing that the interest behind all this thrust was philosophical and Constitutional. I have a hard time believing that because of all the dishonesty and hypocrisy employed in the argument... hypocrisy specifically as I kept noting at the time, as the blogosphere kept calling for Bob Costas to be "fired", for David Gregory to be "arrested", for Piers Morgan to be "deported", et cetera, all of which, in expressing a spirited defense of the Second Amendment, belies a cavalier disregard of the First, which makes the whole thing ring very hollow. Dishonesty in the dogged insistence on defining Costas' commentary as a "gun control rant" (and again with the Carrey video as framed by Fox Noise, same thing). So given those inherent flaws it's pretty difficult to take all this interest in the Second Amendment as anything more than feigned outrage.

Not to paint with a broad brush, that's not you personally, that's Fox Noise and the NRA propagandists deliberately misrepresenting and poisoning the dialogue in order to deflect inconvenient points they would rather not deal with. Sadly you may have very valid concerns that get deflected along with them. That's the cost of dishonest debate that the spinners bring about. All of which is to explain why these arguments might not have been heard as more than the ravings of "gun nuts". IMHO Bob Costas nailed the root of the issue four months ago, and it was immediately --immediately-- distorted into something it was not, that we might babble on and on about irrelevant shit having nothing to do with the question of culture. These spinners are what hold us back. And that sucks.

In the end, it was much ado about nothing, as we'll address more in the next post.

Oh, you’re not going to get any argument from me here. I agree completely. As I said earlier, those are the sentiments that need to be ignored no matter what the source. Certainly all the push is not coming from people that just want to protect rights or have actual valid arguments but that should not dominate the conversation though it often does.

I think this actually speaks to a larger problem and is dividing our nation badly right now. All you hear is those reactionary and asinine arguments about anything. Think how the media and the national discourse is often dominated by things like Obama’s citizenship, everyone wants to grab your guns, the government selling weapons to drug cartels to push gun control, Mitt’s gardener’s status, Mitt’s tax returns hiding illegal activity and the like. Most of these allegations are real events or facts that have become muddled by completely false claims and accusations. The reality here is that each side sets up a straw man of the other – a crazy lunatic left that wants us all in chains and a communist dictator ruling over them or a religious zealot right that thinks the church should be the government and all science eliminated. Those straw men are convenient to attack because it is so easy and the ‘ideas’ can be summed up in 15 seconds or one paragraph. Those instances dominate the media not because it is reflective on the majority or because they have real bearing on the discourse of the nation but because they are easy to report and people no longer want to think or defend their positions. It is easier to sit in ignorance and utter belief that you are right and the other people are idiots.

Sure, those people that are on display exist but they are far from the majority. They are the loud minority that is easy to report on, attack and the simplest to justify your beliefs to. They are not the ones that we should be listening to though. This is one of the reasons that I rarely watch any news anymore, it is pointless. Almost everything reported (damn near 100%) is a lie by omission. Sure, it is not an outright lie BUT lies through omission are not any different to me.

Hear hear, well spake. I would thank this post a dozen times if I could.
Got to go do things, thanks for the brain cell exercise. It was definitely worthwhile.

 

[FA_Q2]

For the first bolded part, I disagree completely on "who started it" (addressed in the Bob Costas bit above). Once "culture" was perverted into something having to do with "legislation" --and keep in mind this was two weeks before Newtown and didn't even refer to a mass shooting-- that's where we went onto the wrong foot. The side of the gun-concerned were immediately put on the defensive for positions they hadn't even voiced. I can't emphasize this enough; it was a crucial starting point for phony debate points. And once Newtown happened it was like Disingenuous Debate Spring Traning had given way to the regular season.

On the second bolded part, all I can say is . It's about damn time we got over the bullshit and into the issues.

I would have to look at the timeline to get the ‘who started it’ sequence down but I am not going to. I will simply concede the point because I don’t care who started it (and I imagine that you really don’t either tbh but I could be wrong on that) because no matter who started the conversation on the wrong track, it is still on the wrong track. Both sides are equally responsible for this and whoever was the reactionary is really meaningless as long as we all keep reacting instead of looking for real solutions.

To put this in simpler terms: when children start deflecting, adults don’t follow, they correct and steer the conversation to where it belongs. Other children follow and exacerbate.

Certainly it's not a new idea to throw legislation at the problem, and it's not a new idea that the NRA will immediately lobby to water it or douse it before it starts, and it's not new that Congressional debate and resistance will ensue so that time passes and the emotion of the moment gives way to more meticulous rationality. That's why I'm really not concerned about the whole legislative charade; it's not like we have no checks and balances. Ultimately I think we might agree that the legislative angle is irrelevant to the cultural issue.

I am concerned that that whole legislative charade, which is pushed by both traditonal "sides", and initiated as outlined above by the pro-gun lobby, serves to take our eye off the ball, which is the cultural background. Indeed I have no doubt whatsoever that that was the whole purpose of misrepresenting the issue in the first place--- to get the issue off the battleground of culture, and onto that of the legislative charade, where they had a much better chance. I was on another message board last year where I brought this angle up (gun culture, as opposed to gun legislation) and was attacked so vehemently for that suggestion that the pro-gunners lobbied to get me kicked off the board to shut me up. So this dynamic of censorship and deflection cannot be more obvious to this writer. It's an obvious nerve.

Ultimately this deflection into irrelevant legal areas balances itself like a pitcher of water; Dianne Feinstein may have one particular interest, but she's also one Senator with 99 colleagues to balance her. That will all take care of itself. It's theater. As theater is superficial, I just don't see much meaning in it, hence my ambivalence on that.

But meanwhile we've told ourselves that, depending on our position, we've either (a) passed legislation so we have no more mass shooting problem, or (b) defeated dangerous legislation that would have infringed on Constitutional rights. And neither one of those does a damn bit of good to address the next mass shooting, because we've allowed ourselves to be shunted off into addressing the symptoms, so that we don't have to be bothered with addressing the disease.

I.. cant…

You’re a poo poo head!

Damn, sorry. I was regressing because I can’t really argue with anything in that you posted here

I don’t think that my earlier statements and yours here are entirely at odds with each other though, just emphasizing a different part, that which is important to each of us. Where you don’t see the charade as important as the conversation on real solutions, I do mostly because I am not confident in the system checking itself. I have seen far too much legislation slip through because of an event (patriot act anyone?) that eroded proper heads and opposition. It is these times when people are willing to cede rights in failed ideas of protection that our freedoms disappear and never return. Each one is small and in the end not a whole lot of change in themselves but put together and they can equal a complete loos of rights. As Franklin stated:

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

I believe there is fundamental truth in that statement.