Events like the mass murder in Colorado last week (which happen with regularity) usually erupt into an argument about gun control in this country. Not so this time. Gun control advocates have been limp and mostly ignored this week. Nanny Bloomberg had some fighting words, after which he no doubt snatched a Super Mega Gulp out of some poor sot’s clutches and offered to have the city of New York administer a public spanking at no cost. Piers Morgan has devoted some time to the issue, trotting out Michael Moore because…well.. Moore has some free time.
Bloomberg, no doubt aware that his 3rd mayoral term is the end of the road, has increasingly become a grotesque of Mary Poppins. Let’s call him Maury Poppins. The medicine will go down. There will not be a spoonful of sugar however. Morgan is a Brit and therefore no one will listen to him about gun control. Michael Moore is the closest to an old school liberal out there right now on the issue - which is evidence that gun control advocates are in full retreat.
I was once an advocate of strong gun control. Now I am ambivalent at best. The shift in my thinking is simple. When the Columbine shooting occurred I was more afraid of lunatics with easy access to guns than I was of my government. This is – awfully – no longer true.
We are now more than a decade into the Bush/Bama national security state. (Remember when warrantless wire taps were the big concern? It wasn’t that long ago. Now we have drones overhead and extra judicial murder.) I don’t own a gun and don’t like guns, but I now understand the Ice-T line of thought. It will eventually be apparent to all that most of the federal government is run by sociopaths not that far afield from the average criminal. I don’t like the “gun nuts” but I now get the argument. It’s not about hunting. It’s never been about hunting. It’s about people in power with control fetishes being held in check. This, too, is largely a fantasy I know. If they ever really came for us whatever guns one had stockpiled probably wouldn’t matter. But if I have to pick who is scarier in 2012, Ice-T or Mayor Bloomberg and his type, it’s a no brainer.
One some level the state must control arms. I would like to know how an unemployed grad student was able to acquire body armor and an arsenal. Knowing won’t change anything though. That train has left the station. We are not going to have a real conversation about our society and violence any more than we’re going to seriously discuss race. Piers Morgan’s gun control spasm is quaint. A throw back to 1994, when fear mattered, but did not rule.
Meanwhile, the government (led by both parties) is determined to infect every bit of our lives….and anyone who’s known a person with control issues knows it’s only a matter of time until there is an attempt to control everything.
Related articles
- Christie’s Gun Control Hypocrisy (bluejersey.com)
- Michael Moore Asks President Obama: What If It Were Your Daughters Killed Last Week In Aurora? (mediaite.com)
It’s not that hard:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/Personal-Security-/102535/i.html?_nkw=body+armor
He afforded it with his $24,000 government grant. As for gun control, I’m all for reasonable proposals, like mandatory gun training, licensing, and even tests every decade or so. I don’t how much this will matter when our own government knowingly lets .50 caliber weapons slip easily into Mexico. Our guns will matters when those psychos come for us.
My bad. $26,000 government stipend. http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/07/24/james-holmes-received-26k-grant-from-bethesda-based-national-institutes-of-health/
A stipend is for living expenses. It is not for research-related expenses. Elsewhere people have been implying that this student misappropriated govt funds by spending grant money to buy guns. This is money that most students would have used for rent, food and clothing. It is not grant money intended to pay for lab equipment or research expenses. I have seen some commenters on conservative blogs suggest that his grad program or higher ed more generally caused his crime. I think his grad program was to blame for not providing sufficient mental health services — not for giving him a stipend. If he hadn’t paid this way he could have put it on plastic. Students are offered ample opportunities to increase their debt.
There’s no guarantee that he actually used the stipend just for living expenses. He wasn’t required to submit receipts or anything. He had access to the cash of that grant with no oversight. While there’s also no evidence yet that he used the money for his gun & ammo purchases (which I freely admit), I work in higher ed and see how people abuse their financial aid money all the time. I also was a student who abused my own financial aid money from time to time, if I had any left after I paid tuition, bought supplies, and prepaid my rent and utility bills for the entire semester.
That said, I agree that his program is not to blame for anything more than letting him fall through the cracks.
Right or wrong, gun control and abolishing the death penalty are political losers for the left. They never were very popular. There are some common sense changes that could be made with regards to both issues, but those changes will probably have to come from the right because the left is largely discredited these days.
I read that all the guns the faux Joker had, were puchased legally. Wth does private citizen need an assault weapon for ?
I’ve a feeling the answer to that question is behind door number one or door number two, soph, and Carol Merrill will reveal it after the commercial.
“Assault weapon” is a term that was essentially made up out of whole cloth for the 1994 “assault weapon ban”. It sounds a lot like an “assault rifle”, but isn’t (assault rifles have the option of fully automatic fire). He bought a weapon which would have been classed as an “assault weapon” under the 1994 ban because it had both a telescoping stock and a pistol grip. The same manufacturer makes an identical weapon without a telescoping stock. It is not an “assault weapon” and would never have been affected by the ban.
How many lives would the absence of a telescoping stock have saved? Or a pistol grip for that matter?
As for what a private citizen would use them for – out here in flyover country, AR-15s are often used by ranchers for livestock protection (particularly from coyotes). In fact, Remington (for one) markets them explicitly for that purpose. In many states, including Colorado, they’re illegal for deer hunting because they’re considered insufficiently lethal (a single shot is unlikely to kill a deer immediately) and therefore inhumane.
The high-capacity drum magazine is a different matter, although it’s hard to tell how much difference that really would have made in this case since the rife apparently jammed.
It jammed after firing 100 rounds.
People don’t care about gun control or the death penalty, and there was a time when many did, because sociopaths have become the standard bearers not only in top positions in government and business but among the ordinary population. That’s not to say there aren’t still some who aren’t sociopaths, who don’t lack a conscience about lying and cheating and feeling victorious about hurting others and destruction, but we’re no longer the norm.
Cheering greed and shrugging off murder, getting a boner for the thrill of celebrity and mayhem, and positively orgasmic over insignificant victory while ignoring significant danger, this is our militaristic violent society today. Concern about guns or state sanctioned killing is so 20th Century.
This is a tough one for me because I personally think that everyone as a constitutional right should have the right to own guns provided that they meet all licenensing and screening criteria.
I don’t think the framers of the constitution had 100 round magazines in mind when they were writing up the first 10 amendments though.
Not to put to fine a point on it, but the thing that most of the shootings in the past 5 years have in common is that the assailants had large amounts of ammo and were able to shoot a lot of bullets, whether by having several magazines (bullet holders) with them or expanded magazines.
And i think somewhere in there is a potential legislative check and balance to gun laws… Somewhere a red flag has to be going off when someone buys a large amount of ammunition or a high capacity magazine… In ny/nj I know there are limits to the size of magazine you can own, I think 5 for rifle and 9 for pistol…and I think for self defense that’s fine.
I think that if you want to own a civilian version of an assault rifle, and you’ve got the license for it that’s fine…but i would question why you want a 30 round magazine for that rifle…the fact that one can buy a 100 round drum magazine for any civilian firearm with little or no oversight is an issue.
I think that eventually what needs to happen is that the NRA/gun merchants will need to work with states for some additional gun reform probably on a national level and have a stricter criteria for what one can buy and where one can buy it. It shouldn’t be different for each state.
I was kind of curious about this myself. I think ammunition is a hazardous material and has to be declared to shippers. While he apparently bought his ammunition online from multiple dealers (presumably to avoid raising any flags with a single large order), I’ve read he had it shipped to only two addresses – his lab and his apartment. Didn’t the shippers notice that they were delivering large quantities of ammo to a couple of addresses?
the fact that one can buy a 100 round drum magazine for any civilian firearm with little or no oversight is an issue.
Indeed. If he was buying 50 gallon drum of rat poison, I’d think someone in the position to do so would have noticed that…but on the other hand, such sensible oversight is on the decline. Because someone has to hire people ,run Depts and spend money to do it . The goals of the overloads is the exact opposite
That’s why they want drones. No one is watching, so everyone must be watched
That is a simplistic argument that I hear a lot of people using (and thinking they’re super smart for coming up with it) but it just makes me sad that most people in this country haven’t bothered to read the Federalist Papers nor are they very familiar with the impetus for the American Revolution. While the framers didn’t possess psychic abilities to foresee specific types of guns available today that were not available in 1787, the framers most certainly *did* imagine citizens having the right to own the same guns available to the government. Despite the ridiculous parsing & debate some like to amuse themselves with over the phrase “well organized militia” the 2nd Amendment –as well as every other Amendment in the Bill of Rights — were intended by the framers to guarantee citizens a defense against tyranny. (FYI — that’s what the gist of the whole American Revolution was about). Trying to argue the 2nd Amendment only applies to specific guns available in the 1787 misses the entire purpose of the Bill of Rights.
Some people who buy guns for legitimate purposes tend to practice with them. That’s what you need ammunition for. If someone enjoys shooting as a leisure activity, such as at targets and not for hunting, you could easily use up a lot of ammunition shooting on ranges. I know that most guns are bought to put in a drawer, to provide the illusion of safety, or for hunting, but someone could use a lot of ammunition for sound reasons that would make a red flag on ammunition purchases useless (or harrassment), in my opinion.
That was me BTW posting from phone
I really like Riverdaughter’s take on this, “If buying a gun in Texas were as easy as getting an abortion.” She nails the fact that we can impose stringent, and invasive, restrictions to limit basic human rights. IMO, carrying a gun is not as basic a human right as bodily autonomy since without bodily autonomy one would have no reason to be able to defend oneself.
Given that there are about 75,000 deaths due to guns, some deliberate and some accidental, in the US every year, and the CDC estimates that there have been around 50,000,000 abortions in the US since it became legal in 1973, there seems to be a much greater loss of life in the latter than the former. While I agree that we need to be cautious about who can buy a gun and what kind they can buy, I think it’s disingenuous to say that getting an abortion is more difficult than buying a gun.
An abortion is not comparable to a shooting. The value of a grown person’s life is not the same as the continued existence of a brainless mass of dividing cells.
I don’t think it’s disingenuous comparison at all. As a matter of fact, it’s spot on.
First, since abortion is legal (for now), we need to compare the *legal* equivalent which would be “getting a gun.” (Killing someone with a gun is, more often than not, illegal which skews your comparison of an illegal activity with a legal one.) In 2011, there were 10.8 million guns purchased in America. I can’t find a source for how many legal abortions there were last year, so we’ll use Guttmacher’s 2008 figure of of 1.21 million abortions. So, yearly, almost 9 times more guns are obtained than abortions.
Advocates of reproductive choice like advocates of gun ownership base their ideology on the same principals of bodily autonomy and self determination. One either believes that stringent and intrusive requirements are necessary to limit the basic human right of bodily autonomy, or one doesn’t. As much as I find the suggestion of rectal probe requirements for gun ownership amusing, I realize it’s a non-starter. But it’s a good point because the idea of requiring gun owners to have brain scans to rule out schizophrenia makes as much sense as requiring women who are seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound. If that shoe fits, let’s put it on the other foot.
The anti-choice contingent is working hard to legislate invasive hurdles to women seeking an abortion. They haven’t managed (yet) to outlaw abortion so they are trying their best to make *obtaining* an abortion as difficult, demeaning, and discouraging as possible. Riverdaughter very astutely articulates this in her post. It’s good to see her back to her old chops.
Every time someone has an abortion someone dies. Many people shoot guns and never kill anyone. “The brainless mass of dividing cells” is just an argument to to soothe the consciences of people who advocate for abortion but need a fantasy. I personally support a woman’s right to kill her unborn child, but I make no bones about what’s she’s doing. While owning a gun and having an abortion are both “legal”, I stand behind my statement that they are not equivalent. One right is a sure death sentence if it’s exercised. The other is not.
In that case, then every time “someone” has a miscarriage, “someone” dies. How we gonna legislate that? What sort of physical restrictions can we foist upon women who *might* be pregnant? How far are the anti-choicers going to take this absurdity? It is this mentality that Riverdaughter so adeptly exposed.
I don’t think it’s disingenuous comparison at all. As a matter of fact, it’s spot on.
Indeed. Freedom somehow goes out the window when it’s a matter of your own body…but god damn anyone who gets in the way of my right to own a bazooka! lol
I reject on scientific grounds your inclusion of a fetus and an adult human under the same rubric of “someone”.
Also, please explain exactly what about my position is “fantasy”, contrasted with your ‘reality.’
I’m with elliesmom on this.
Also- trying to link gun control to abortion – wow. Politically a lose-lose for the eft.
EM..we have become jaded by the culture of death and destruction all around us. Obama rushes to comfort the ‘victims’ which is fine, but never mentions the over 450 murders that have taken place in Chicago this year, many by gunshots, and including children.And he certainly doesn’t go there to comfort anyone, just to raise money. Do gangbangers vote, or is he trying to make Rahm look good ? Does he think the rest of the country does not notice Chicago ? Ah he is a man of mystery, isn’t he?
Considering that Fast and Furious is now cloaked in executive privilege, he can hardly comment on the gun issues.
Back when people committed ‘normal’ murders like banging their spouse over the head with a frying pan, I was against the death penalty, not so sure now. Colombine and Oklahoma City were game changers, imo.
I hate guns. Unless you are a hunter I see no reason to have one. This issue hits home with me and I would vote for the candidate that banned assault weapons in a heartbeat. If you aren’t hunting deer, etc. what do you need a gun for? To hunt people?
People get guns to:
1) Hunt wild animals, for fun & or food;
2) Protect their livestock from wild animals;
3) Hypothetically defend against thieves, burglars, & assorted assailants;
4) Commit crimes;
5) Hypothetically resist against the hypothetical imposition of a tyranny;
6) Go on killing rampages.
Single-shot rifles & shotguns are most suited for 1) & 2)
Pistols for 3) & 4)
Automatic rifles, machine pistols, machine guns are best for 5) & 6).
For 5), grenades, mines, molotov cocktails, plastique, mortars, RPGs, etc. would be useful.
Tamerlane,
Most defensive firearms trainers would hold that shotguns are most useful for (3) as well, with a handgun as a backup. The FBI has found that even trained handgun users (agents and police officers) miss their target most of the time with a handgun in a real situation (as opposed to target practice). Even if hits are eventually fatal, they often don’t immediately incapacitate an assailant (the study, Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness is available in PDF form freely on the web, or you can pay Amazon for the Kindle edition). Salient quotes:
Single-shot rifles are not the most effective choice for livestock protection against fast-moving pack predators like coyotes – a semiautomatic rifle is.
Cyn-
If you live out in the country like I do where it would take the sheriff’s dept 30 minutes or more to get to you if you called— you’d want a gun to protect yourself. A few months ago, some troublemakers from a nearby group home decided it might be fun to come and harrass me after dark way out here. Once I allowed them to see the silhouette of my gun in the window, they took off fast. No shots fires were fired, but the gun sure as hell was a deterent.
Also out here in the country, if you have outdoor small animals like cats and chickens, you’d sure as hell better have a gun to ward off the coyotes.And this is western North Carolina, where coyotes were unheard of until a decade or so ago. (I have a neighbor who has lost numerous goats to coyotes.)
I used to be a hardcore gun hater too. But then I got older and moved into a rural area.
You’re most definitely right about a shotgun’s spread curing an host of aiming ills, but how many people hide one in their nightstand?
My neighbors take the semi-automatic approach to coyote & pumas, but as far as I can tell, despite a lot of commotion, they’ve yet to hit anything. (The federal tracker, who got the 120 lb. puma that had killed several of my friend’s sheep & goats, fired two shots.)
Anyway, I was just throwing out my limited knowledge to help define the parameters of the discussion. Any corrections or elaborations are appreciated.
If society accepts a gun-related activity, then we also need to accept the gun related to that activity.
Amdt II begins, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,…”
This clause has not been properly addressed, it’s intent applied to modern times.
Nor has the term “Arms” been clearly defined. We arbitrarily permit *poorly*-regulated ownership of hand guns, but completely ban other weapons. Remember, the Battles of Lexington & Concord were fought to prevent the seizure of cannon powder.
Any debate is pointless until these terms & concepts have first been defined.
TL, to conflate Dan’s comment below, I agree that today’s pro-gun advocates largely ignore the first clause. The lack of a “well-regulated” faction is that of the legal or illegal individual owners now, not the militia-industrial complex (who foresaw that in colonial times?) who lord their weapons and drones over us. Two problems, one amendment?
GX..Shouldn’t ‘bodily autonomy’ start with the use of the many near foolproof methods of birth control? Including those available to their sexual partners ? At least that sounds like real autonomy to me and real Choice.
I realize there are valid exceptions, illness, rape etc, not to mention viability and health of the fetus.
If women and girls sincerely understood the true meaning of liberation,and embraced it, abortions could be rare and legal, for many years to come.
I totally agree with you, Sophie. I personally support a woman’s right to have an abortion, but I reserve the right to pass judgment on her for it if she does it because she was too irresponsible to prevent the pregnancy in the first place. There are many valid reasons to have an abortion, but too many women have no regard for the lives they are discarding. Fifty million abortions? That’s a statistic that should make us ashamed of ourselves.
I meant to equate this subject with gun ownership, which I also wish was rare and legal.
But the people who want to pass legislation that requires ultrasounds are the same folks who want to restrict access to the *morning after* pill and other forms of birth control. Choice is choice. One woman’s choice to have an abortion is no less a choice than another woman’s choice to not have an abortion. They’re both *real* choices. A woman who chooses a path different than mine has no less bodily autonomy than I have. Just as a person who chooses to own a gun has the same basic human rights that I have.
This is the point that gets lost in all the preachifying about abortion (and gun control) and demonizing of women who have abortions (or people who own guns). In the end, the fundamental tenet is the same: humans are endowed with certain basic human rights, bodily autonomy being one of them. It’s not my place to decide whether another woman’s choice is *valid* whether that choice is to have an abortion or carry a gun for self defense.
Tamerlane, by your analysis it’s less terrible to shoot an small child before he or she has had a chance to live very long than to shoot an adult.
semantics. What term do you propose for “a post-birth, living human”?
As I wrote in a guest post here a few years back, I accept a demarcation line as either birth, or the second trimester. That is based on scientific evidence, primarily brain wave activity.
Where do you draw the demarcation, and on what grounds?
Tamerlane thanks for putting it so bluntly in your #1-6 examples of gun uses.
As a private citizen, one cannot buy assault weapons. I define an assault weapon as any “gun” designed to fire bullets at a high rate of fire at individual targets. Basically, any semiautomatic weapon capable of loading/firing more than 10 bullets in a magazine is an assault weapon, so I think (and I could be completely off base) that most gun restrictions limit weapon capacity to let’s say 5-10 bullets before you have to reload. So speaking from NY/NJ area, I know that’s the case.
I think one of the ways people are able to get around these restrictions is 1) buy a gun wherever youre located/licensed 2) buy expanded magazines in states where they are legal…. then effectively one has an assault weapon.
Those loopholes need to go away as far as Im concerned… unless one can really explain and give justifiable cause as to why they need a one hundred round drum magazine for a rifle it should not be easy to get one.
As far as 2nd Amendment:
“A well regulated militia being the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
It’s pretty straightforward and written for it’s time…The United States at that point did not have by any stretch of the imagination the standing army and police force and private security forces that we currently have, so there was a need for individuals to have a gun at hand to defend land and potentially be conscripted to military as needed for national defense.
That makes sense right?
To Tamerlane’s point, again… we aren’t living in a time where we’ve got a need for a colonial or state militia (we’ve got National Guard for that) nor are we in a time where “arms” just means a musket or black powder pistol and a sword/bayonet.
So I get it.. if one is sane, rational and obeys the laws you should be able to get the guns that are available.. but if one is sane, rational and obeys the laws why cant you get a machine gun? Since plently of people that arent sane, rational and dont obey the laws get access to them?
I think that’s become the NRA stance.. Spree-Killing has been a relatively modern phenomenon, but the more we see of incidents like what happened in Colorado and the increased frequency and more than likely increased level of violence that will continue to result will ultimately force us as a nation to either evolve the Second Amendment, or make it much harder if not impossible to obtain guns/gun parts that increase the rate of fire to assault weapon capacity.
E. M. During the course of a field of study, our class observed a second trimester abortion.
I will always remember the doctor announcing that he was using instruments inserted into the uterus to ‘dismember the pre-born fetus’, prior to evacuating the body parts into a haz mat receptacle. We were all either violently ill, or deeply disturbed, even the most Liberal among us. Since the course was taken at Fordham, I have often wondered if there was a method to their madness. Oth the requirement was to ‘observe a low risk surgery’, so it may have been the lack of luck of the draw. A walk across hot coals would have been preferable.
I’ve seen a video. It’s visually shocking, because of the recognizably human features. The one human feature missing, however, is a functioning brain. Hence, no consciousness, no pain, nothing. Just like Terri Shiavo.
Fordham is a Jesuit school.
Bloomberg, no doubt aware that his 3rd mayoral term is the end of the road,
Why do you say that? I though he was mayor for life? lol
No he’s auditioning for the role of first lady.
Abortion is a medical procedure. A gun is a tool. People kill each other with knives, axes, tire irons, automobiles, etc. If someone really wants to kill someone I am sure they could figure out how to do it with a slide rule. I am not sure how someone can equate a medical procedure, heart and brain surgery kill people too, with a tool. We can ban toothpicks because someone might poke out their eye.
I have to agree with boutis. I know, and I have argued this point with people till I am blue in the face, that people who want to kill others will still find a way to do it. Timothy McVeigh was a mass murderer too but he fired no gun.
I do not support gun control. I think it is an ineffective way of treating the actual malaise. In my opinion, the shootings are a symptom of a deeper problem. The core problem is that we live in a culture that appears to extol violence. When I watch movies, computer games, cartoons, TV even in books it is apparent that all manner of violence has been worked into the mainstream culture, and with the broken mental health system we have, it is not difficult to see how things god go terribly wrong. We are desensitized to violence, consequently, some do not know where to draw the line. After Columbine, speculations were rife about the role of computer games in the minds of Harris and Klebold. I am familiar with the games they played, and belong to the group of folks that believe the violent games they perennially played, played a major role in desensitizing them to the sanctity of human life.
The unending stream of violence coupled with the press coverage of the criminals that commit such heinous acts, is a scourge that should be addressed. I think the press could “agree” not to continue repeating the names of such perpetrators and lifting them to cult like status. These shooters usually are either common criminals, or severely mentally ill people. Either way, I think the coverage of these horrific acts is extremely sensationalized, and such coverage motivates copy cats while reducing the sheer horror that should accompany these dastardly acts of mass murder.
http://blackrepublicanandmyworldview.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/running-on-fear-the-tale-of-the-2012-elections/
@mum: Oh please, are we really going to start dragging out that dead horse?
You know what I really find interesting whenever someone tries to argue that media these days is turning all of our kids into hardened murderous criminals? The fact that, while throwing the spotlight on the one or two people who most recently did a horrible thing and using them as a mascot for an entire generation, those same people completely and willfully ignore the billions of other people who grew up with that same media and somehow managed to grow up without turning into homicidal maniacs.
The fact that, while touting all of this new media as the end of civilization as we know it because how could anyone be exposed to these things without deciding to kill everyone around them, they completely ignore the fact that this is hardly in the first time in the world’s history that people have been exposed to violent media. Really, dating all the way back to the cave drawings to ancient Greek theater to Shakespeare to Japanese kabuki theater to music to movies to cartoons to television from the dawn of every new way to tell a story — and yet humanity has managed to somehow survive all of this fictional violence.
The fact that, despite the heavy evidence to suggest that these people have serious mental and/or emotional issues, that is always ignored in favor of demonizing something completely unrelated that the majority of people can enjoy without taking it as an excuse to open fire on the nearest crowd. That instead of touting mental health reform that would have allowed these people to get the help and treatment they clearly needed but probably couldn’t afford or couldn’t get access to for plenty of other reasons.
Despite what so many people believe, teenagers aren’t actually stupid. Kids, young adults, twenty-somethings aren’t stupid. Naive, sure. Ignorant, yes. But not stupid. Some people are stupid, sure, but that isn’t a symptom of their age and turning thirty isn’t going to magically change that.
Hi Boutis! You’re new here. Your arguments are silly, on par with ‘if we let men marry other men, next thing they’ll be allowed to marry their dog!’
What Flik said.
A UK study showed that wider availability of porn correlated to a decrease in sexual violence. Has anyone considered that these violent video games relieve a not-insignificant number of people of the urge to commit actual violence?
Has anybody even done a study on the effects of violent media on violent crime, or is OK for everyone to just continue talking out of their asses?
Flk, I know that the decision to kill people is one made by the individual himself, and as I indicated earlier, the mental health system is broken. This is an added issue because a good mental health system could be a bridge of sorts to assist in identifying these individuals capable of committing these horrific acts. Research seems to show that many of these young men were depressed or had varying levels of mental health issues.
In the Columbine case that I mentioned in my original post, the perpetrators had told some students about their intent, and even the gun club representative admitted that his rejection of their membership was premised on his concern about the mental health of the perpetrators. Yet, none of these people did anything. Based on the interviews, in the press, of these people who could have made reports, I surmised their inaction was predicated on the fact that such threats and acts of violence are not that unusual. One newspaper reported a classmate with whom the Columbine shooters had shared their intent to go on a murder spree, as stating that it was no big deal because his peers discussed shooting and blowing off the heads of some other students, in general informal conversations.
I know there are many studies, statistics and disputes about the connection between violence in the media and mass murderers. However, a few interesting studies/articles, including an interesting article in the American journal of Forensic psychiatry, one well known researcher averred that it was the intense relationship with their computers that facilitated the attacks by Harris and Klebold. I agree.
I know the media influences and affects society so it is not too much of a stretch to argue that constant exposure to violence, amongst other contributory factors, could create the final catalyst for people who also have the predisposition to commit such crimes.
So yes, there are many schools of thought and different reasons are adduced as the rationale for these insane acts, however, I belong to the school of thought that believes that aggression in men (since men usually commit these massacres) is biological, but it becomes extreme when combined with other issues such as depression and other mental health issues, family background, abuse, peer pressure and other social triggers including Violence, that act as key catalysts in propelling these individuals to commit their mindless acts.
http://blackrepublicanandmyworldview.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/disenfranchisement-of-voters-separating-fact-from-fiction/
Well, after stating that we’d never have a solid conversation about gun control this thread proved me wrong. The back and forth here is impressive. The point Ice-T made is one I think that is missed regularly. The Right won’t cop to it – that in many NRA types’ hearts its about distrust of the government. They belief they need these weapons to defend AGAINST the government. Ice-T stated this belief simply. It’s kind of refreshing. The Left won’t acknowledge this belief exists either, though on other issues they have just as much distrust of the government. They tend to turn it into a statement about hunting. So neither side cops to a main point of contention.
John, Contrary to his public image, Ice T. is a veteran and is generous to veteran’s charities.
Paper Doll said ” No one is watching, so everyone must be watched.”
Oh, wow, what a magnificently accurate statement!
Chris Rock (from a while back) has an interesting take on it:
OMG thanks for linking that.. I wanted to put that as part of my post but didn’t want to make too light of it… It’s %*#@* genius… I still love “Id make bullets cost five thousand dollars” stupid but true
o/t, but something dear to mummax’ heart — per VA state senator & BOTT spokeswoman, it’s official: if you don’t support barack obama, you’re a racist:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/07/24/Obama-Campaign-Spokeswoman-Calls%20Romney-Supporters-Racist
when will these people finally get that accusations like this diminish support for Obama? I suppose they don’t care as in the end they get to be “victims” if he loses, which is the place they love being the most.
^ What John said.
You chose Burroughs to quote in this context?
Burroughs shot and killed his wife during a drunken game of William Tell. This was a few years after he got in trouble, and fled the country, for failing to report a murder committed by one of his friends of another friend. And that happened a few years after he’d been discharged from the military for mental instability. This is who you choose to quote about who should and should not be allowed guns? Either quoting this here is an argument for stricter gun control or you’re a very poor judge of character.
*yawn* OFA approved talking point right on schedule — while I’m sure you’ve never heard of him before you wiki’d him today, William S. Burroughs is one of the most influential American authors of the 20th century and I quote him all the time. The fact that you think that reflects badly on me is the highest praise I could receive because you are like the opposite meter: i.e., what you think is “bad” is actually “good” and vice versa.
The accidental shooting of his common-law wife Joan Vollmer has nothing to do with the TRUTH of Burroughs’ art other than your intellectually dishonest attempt to deflect from that truth by attacking him personally (and me by extension in a truly idiotic extrapolation). In fact, the accidental shooting of Joan was what led to his writing career — try reading the introduction to Queer sometime, instead of the daily emails from Talking Points Memo.
Furthermore, while I understand people with your limited intellectual capacity who only know how to hurl ad hominem attacks find it hard to understand but the artist & the art are two separate things — for example, Pablo Picasso was, contrary to the song, an asshole. That doesn’t make his paintings less genius. Want to talk about mental instability as a disqualification for an artist’s merit, how about Van Gogh (you know, the guy who cut off his ear). Doesn’t make his art less genius, either. And William S. Burroughs’ mental health & the accidental shooting of Vollmer doesn’t diminish his genius either.
FYI — you left out that Burroughs was also a heroin addict — so I guess we should just disregard everything he writes about drugs in his novel Junkie by your criteria. The fact that you can even attempt to disparage Burroughs, much less ME, based on his personal life proves how shallow your intellect is.
And what have I told you about responding to anything I write? You’re boring and derivative. Nothing you write contains anything of intellectual merit.
Paranoia is having all the facts — William S. Burroughs.
I made no comment about Burroughs as a writer, and in fact I made clear the specific element of his life, his choices, I was referring to by opening my comment with the stand-alone line: “You chose Burroughs to quote in this context“, by which of course I meant the topic of this thread, not his artistry as a writer or anything else. I first read Burroughs while hitching through the US and Canada in the 1970s, and since have read everything Burroughs wrote that’s published, and I’m very familiar with his life story.
You drone on about his writing as if you’re knowledgable about it, and accuse me of knowing nothing of it, and yet your assertion about what prompted his writing career betrays your brand of ignorance and dependence on superficial understanding rather than genuine in depth knowledge. You’re wrong about when Burroughs began his writing career and what led to it, Madam Wiki Intellectual. By the time he shot his wife during a drunken game he’d already written three novels. The first, written in collaboration with Jack Kerouac, was about the killing I referred to in my post, Lucien Carr killing Kammerer in Riverside Park; it was a scandalous story in its time, Carr was the one who’d brought together Burroughs and Kerouac and the other Beats, and shook up Burroughs and Kerouac to the extent they wrote a novel about it together (I’ve read that novel; have you?). Queer and Junkie were also written before he killed Vollmer.
Burroughs decided to point to his wife’s killing as the start of his writing career and what he called the Dark Spirit –no that’s not it, but something like that, Ugly Invader maybe, I don’t know, some two word name he had for that dark part of himself– entering his life. But if you read the whole of his work and learn the details of his life before and after that event, it’s clear this dark element had been a part of him for years before Vollmer’s death. Many things point to it, not least his drug addiction, which was in full swing nearly a decade before the shooting.
As a writer and observer and thinker and liver-of-life I hold Burroughs in the highest esteem; I do believe he probably was a genius. He also was mentally unstable, in part because of his demons (including but definitely not beginning with shooting Vollmer) and in part because of his choices, not least the copious amounts of drugs and alcohol he consumed. In the context of a discussion about a mentally unstable man shooting up a theater in Colorado, I stand by my assessment that quoting Burroughs on the subject of gun availability demonstrates either ignorance or poor judgment.
I have to go with Zal on this one. Guess that makes me part of OFA, too.
Maybe try an Edgar Rice Burroughs quote next time.
Zal — you can try to parse all you want, but you weren’t talking about context you attacked Burroughs instead of what he wrote. I actually do believe you really need it spelled out for you. What is untrue about Burroughs’ statement? Is there not a call to take away the guns from people who didn’t do the shooting following the shooting spree in Aurora? Is Burroughs’ point about a society where only the military and police have guns not exactly the same point as Ice T’s statement about defense against tyranny? Nothing in Burroughs personal life affects or diminishes the TRUTH he wrote about society. (These are all rhetorical questions, btw, I don’t care what you have to say).
And sorry Tam, all the Obots on Twitter were making this same attack — with the same mistake of calling Vollmer his “wife” — yesterday on Twitter. You can agree, of course, but I purposely wrote the statement because of the OFA’s idiocy in attacking the person in order to deflect from the message.
And I quote whom I want. From now on, Zal, whenever I do deign to answer you, it will only be with a William S. Burroughs quote:
“How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.” ~ William S. Burroughs
You’re so consistent, pretending something is true because you want it to be true despite evident facts, and assuming others will go along with your altered reality. One can only guess why you want so many unpleasant fantasies you have about others to be true.
I literally opened my post by making clear that my comment was about the context in which you used Burroughs’ quote, and then I followed that by explaining why the context of Burroughs’ experience made the quote very bizarre in this instance. That you couldn’t catch that is bad enough but now insisting my post wasn’t what it clearly was, after I’ve explained Burroughs’ experience in greater detail, only shows the irrational nature of your interpretive skills.
I didn’t attack Burroughs at all. It’s interesting you interpret dispassionate factual information as an attack, though. What I briefly summarized of his life experience makes his quote, in this context, ironic at best, and really an argument for the opposite of what he intended. Maybe you don’t understand what context means; that would, possibly, explain a lot.
Asking if it’s true is intellectually vacant.
It’s not one of Burroughs’ best quotes, not by a long shot. It’s way too vague to be meaningful.
No it is not true that there is a call to take guns away from every gun owner who didn’t do the shooting — so if not every gun owner, which people is Burroughs referring to? Mentally unstable people who didn’t do the killing? It’s so vague it’s meaningless. It’s the kind of thing someone says during a rambling late night conversation after too much wine. It’s all right but it’s by no means profound or even well stated. And no it’s not true that there’s been a suggestion that the only people allowed guns should be the police and the military. No, dear, it is not true.
Of course you don’t. You want to write your nonsense in an echo chamber of flattery and adoration. Not caring what smart people who challenge you have to say is a really effective way to remain stupid.
All the Obots on Twitter? LOL! I seriously doubt that. I doubt most Obots are familiar enough with Burroughs’ work or his life to make the point I made. Link to the tweets, or post the names so we can look them up. That is if you’re not lying. If it was “all the Obots on Twitter” there must be a lot; can’t wait to read them!
It’s not a mistake to call Vollmer his wife, it’s a mistake not to; she was his wife. In fact I just took my dusty copy of Queer off the shelf and re-read the introduction; Burroughs himself calls her “my wife” in the very piece you referenced a post back. Have you even read that?
Once again you, claiming to be so knowledgable about Burroughs’ work and his life, have another salient and simple fact wrong. Not only that but you use your ignorance as an attack weapon against those who have it right. What a mess.
As you should, as I encourage you and everybody to do. Nobody has suggested you shouldn’t. Get a hold of yourself.
Another fascinating peek into your mind because in truth it’s you who is dedicated to producing conformity, trying for instance to dictate to whom and what I can comment. You are a useful study in deceitful thinking, including and maybe especially self-deceit.
Angie, A few years ago, on a rather long road trip, we took turns reading “On the Road” aloud. Of course we had read it years ago, but reading it this way was very powerful. Drugs and alcohol were such a part of that scene. I continue to wonder if the Beat Generation would have even existed without them. Since artists create their art from the clay they find around them, these early beatniks did imbue their art with their addictions, imo. Otherwise they might have all become insurance salesmen or something, and we would be the poorer for it. This always raises the question, imo of Hemingway, Fitzerald,, and Faulkner, even though they preceded the Beat movement. A generation or two later, I have wondered the same thing about Hitchens. ie: I don’t think their proclivities exist separately from their work, if anything they feed it.
Not that it matters, but it’s kind of a fun exercise.