President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, December 14, 2012. (photo: Larry Downing, Reuters)
Mr. President, Time to Lead
Gun control needs to become a voting issue for millions. Only one person can make that happen.
hen can stricter gun-control laws ever pass? We know exactly when: When 60 senators and 218 members of the House of Representatives are willing to vote for them, and not a moment before. The bleak truth is that we are a long, long, long way from that moment, or at least we were until Friday morning. If anything can change the politics of guns, surely this unspeakable event can. But Barack Obama is going to have to resolve to answer the demand that history has placed on him and spend some (maybe a lot) of his political capital on the issue.
Comments
I don't know that there is any satisfactory solution to this.
We trust teachers with the education and lives of our children, so we should also give them the means to protect them. A teacher should not be reduced to only a smile or their body to use to protect their kids. In a confrontation between an armed teacher and a mass murderer, my money is on the teacher as they proved so tragically. They were ferocious using their bodies in a futile attempt to save their kids. I just wish that they had the means to fight back and end this quicker than it was.
It's called being civilized, enlightened and free - something one is led to believe Americans value.
Look at Vermont with its super lenient concealed carry laws (or is it unlaws?). The "bluest" state in the union and the least amount of gun control. It's not Dodge City. It's a very stable and community based state that observes libertarian/lef ty values and they don't have crime like the other more heavily regulated states (gun control). It's not about the instruments of killing per se, it's about the most important instrument of control, the human mind and its environment.
http://www.bradycampaign.org/
We need to focus on economical access of the mentally ill to treatment. Right now, there are less facilities for the severely mentally ill than when Reagan was governor of Calif. and dumped them all onto the streets. Look at who the spree shooters were since the 1960s; "troubled youth" comes up a lot in the description of the shooter. Maybe it is PTSD. If a cop kills someone in the line of duty, he/she gets counseling. When a war veteran returns, most having been trained to and actually killed, what do we do? Nothing. This CAN be fixed through legislation.
you're pretty clearly not a right-winger, but you seem to have bought into the gun lobby hysteria that equates "gun control" with the elimination of all guns. Everything you proceed to cite, after declaring gun control unworkable, are in fact examples of gun control that you dismiss as "all you can do now." Although your list is not exhaustive enough, even the measures you cite (mandatory background checks, trigger locks, etc.) are examples of gun controls that need tightening because they are currently riddled with loopholes and/or unenforced for lack of public funding and priority.
What you don't include and should is to make the continued manufacture of assault weapons for civilian sale or civilian ownership of assault weapons illegal. The ban on assault weapons that was already in effect from 1994-2004 should never have been sunseted - and without the stranglehold of the NRA on Congress and the acquiescence of George Bush, it wouldn't have. (As with everything else, if we the people finally revolt for full public financing of campaigns, then of course we could end such strangleholds.)
Meanwhile, I do share your call for far greater attention and resources allocated to mental health. I have worked pro bono providing therapy to school students, and I have seen the vital role it can play. Yet another crucial domain where we all pay the price for the concerted rightwing move to suffocate all government funding.
Seriously, I have no objection to some sort of paperwork being required if one wants to buy some enormous amount of ammunition. A skeet club or the like would have no trouble demonstrating its bona fides. I presume the same would be true of a military collector who purchased a sealed tin of vintage ammunication (yes, there are people who collect vintage ammo). A lifetime of hunting and target practice for the average hunter probably would not require 600 rounds of ammunition.
Of course, if we register ammunition, what next? Any number of household cleaners/chemic als can be used to produce deadly poisons--should one have to "sign the book" when buying toilet bowl cleaner and allow the police to look under your kitchen sink as a condition of owning same? A car can be driven into a crowd or an aircraft flown into a building. What are we to do about that?
Unfortunately, the world is a dangerous place and we cannot make it safer by implementing the roots of dictatorship. Or at least, the only people who could be made to feel safe by such measures are those they would supposedly prevent from existing. After all....they would never have to fear encountering an armed law-abiding victim.
It's the lunitic neocon fringe that would deny mentl health care to the mentally ill thaqt cause these disasters,
Its past? A history of domestic slavery and genocide, of imperialism soaked in hypocrisy.
Its present? The highest murder rate among "advanced" countries, the highest rate of incarceration among "advanced" countries, the only Western nation with the death penalty, and armed forces deployed in well over 100 countries.
Its consequences? The first person I heard speak the Friday's slaughter said: "If only the principal [who I understand was the first victim inside the school] had a gun, this would never have happened." She spoke the words calmly and thoughtfully, without a hint of dripping sarcasm. There is the problem in a literal nutshell.
Strict gun control laws - like in every other liberal democracy wouldn't hurt - but the USA must also undergo an almost metaphysical shake-up before it can aspire to moral stability, never mind "leadership."
The USA is a violent country at home and abroad. It relies on perpetual war and the mythology that it is "the greatest country in the history of the world." It needs to shut up, stand down and look critically in a mirror for about a decade, then think how it can redeem itself for its own sake and the sake of other inhabitants on the planet.
eed to reevaluate how we are medicating our kids as a society. If we dont get this fixed, they will just use knives or homemade bombs to carry out their insane behavior. I feel like many of these kids that are doing these shootings are victims too and their behavior is a cry for help or at least it should send us a warning that something has broken down in their lives and patching it with medication only throws gas on the fire. Lets fix the problem - not take away even more of our rights.
We should all shed tears if the president doesn't do the right thing and take decisive action to end gun violence by confronting the NRA, its millionaire and billionaire supporters, the armament and ammunition manufacturers immediately and forcefully.
He should muster enough support among his elected cohorts and convince those across the aisle to come to the aid of all good people in his country !!!!
END GUN VIOLENCE NOW !!!
Bring the guns home. Stop the Drones, raids, and assassinations everywhere
And don't you find it odd that 22 children were just knifed in China? Is there some kind of subliminal programming or is the world just getting all the more violent?
They have video games all over the world - the same ones we have. They're even more popular in Japan than they are here.
What do you expect would be the case?
Our potential mass murderering manchurian candidate moping at home because "I can't get a gun to annihilate a bunch of people?
Gun control is not about banning guns, our Constitution wouldn't even allow it, it's about common sense regulations that could make a difference.
I don't believe this should be used as an excuse for Democrats to continue to act spineless as they do on so many issues but it's a fact. In most districts, a Democrat cannot win an election unless they ignore the gun control debate, some even side with the NRA to stay in office.
Some of the most reasonable conservatives I've talked to believe that liberals would ban all weapons if given the chance so they refuse to support the most basic gun control laws that have been proposed. Closing the gun show loophole. Allowing federal investigators to actually use a computer to track gun sales. As it is, they have to sort through the paper records of licensed gun dealers. Two out of five guns change owners with no background check and not even a paper record. Most gun owners aren't even aware of how the NRA has forced so many limits on law enforcement to help keep us safe.
If we push for too much without first countering the massive propaganda that uninformed voters have bought into, gun control will continue to be used successfully by the GOP to gain votes. They're a mess right now but after 8 years with Obama in the White House, they will be back in full force in 2016.
WHAT IF THE SAME NUMBER OF CHILDREN BETWEEN 5 AND 10 WERE KILLED LIKE THIS EACH WEEK?
Would the views of anti-gun control people change?
If not, I'd ask what would you do about it. I'd also ask what it would take for you to take gun control seriously.
If it would change your views, I'd ask how we suddenly passed a threshold at that point. Isn't it enough that some sort of mass murder is already happening every few weeks in this country?
I find it kind of remarkable that the overwhelming majority of Americans favor stricter gun control, yet on this supposedly "liberal/progre ssive" site (gun control is a liberal/progres sive issue) the threads are dominated by "liberal/progres sives" who hate the idea.
TIME TO LEAD.
START BY FIRING ERIC HOLDER AND GET AN A.G. WHO WILL PROSECUTE THE HSBC CRIMINALS.
GUN CONTROL WILL EVOLVE TO A BETTER REGULATION. THE HSBC GANGSTERS GET OFF WITH FAR WORSE KILLINGS OF AMERICAN TROOPS AND ARE NOT CHARGED.
Where are all the millions of people who cheered for Pres. O. after the election, and why are they not demanding action from the chief?