Bloomberg is taking on the NRA

Ninety percent of Americans and more than 80 percent of gun owners believe in universal background checks to buy a gun, says Bloomberg... yet so far, that's still not enough to persuade Republican legislators.

That's why Bloomberg is willing to spend at least $50 million to take on the NRA and change lawmakers' minds.

We will fight the NRA with common sense

By Michael Bloomberg and Shannon Watts

April 17, 2014 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/17/opinion/bloomberg-watts-gun-control-initiative/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Sandy Hook anniversary and America's gun sickness

Whenever FOX needs somebody to say why gun control is bad, they call on John Lott.

Here Lott is gloating that stricter gun control hasn't come to pass one year since the Newtown massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary where 26 people were shot and killed, including 20 children ages 6-7, most of them left beyond recognition even by their parents. Here is the website created by the 26 families in their memory.

As I've described before in meticulous detail, when it comes to gun violence, Lott bends and twists the truth. For instance this: "But gun control advocates aren’t giving up. They are patient, and they have money."

They are spending more money lately, but gun control advocates are still being outspent 13 to 1 by gun rights groups.

Sure, Lott can gloat about even more lax gun control laws passed since Sandy Hook in Red States such as Utah, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Dakota and Kansas, while only a few states such as New York and Delaware passed even more strict gun control laws. 

But he can't simply lie that a clear majority of Americans opposes gun control. Over the past 10 years, the share of Americans favoring stricter gun laws has fluctuated between 44 and 60 percent, with the most recent Gallup figure at 49 percent in favor, 37 percent for the status quo, and 13 percent for even less strict gun laws.  

So, about half of Americans have a sickness that's killing all of us, and they need an intervention. Indeed, since 9/11, about 364,000 Americans were killed by firearms. That's more Americans than died in combat in the Civil War. 

The truth is though, fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to own guns. So how are gun makers' profits at an all-time high since Sandy Hook? Easy. They use the NRA to scare fewer people into buying more and more guns to "defend" themselves against tyrannical Big Government and hordes of non-existent criminals (usually in the guise of minorities). 

It's a sickening paradox, but gun rampages like Sandy Hook are good for gun makers, because as soon as politicians make a peep about sensible measures afterwards like universal background checks, the NRA's fear machine cranks into high gear -- "They're coming to take your guns away!" -- Red States make pre-emptive attacks on existing gun laws, and sales to gun nuts go through the roof again.

1 year after Newtown, support for stricter gun control has disappeared

By John Lott

December 13, 2013 | FoxNews

URL: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/12/13/1-year-after-newtown-support-for-stricter-gun-control-has-disappeared/?intcmp=HPBucket

Perverse states' reaction to Sandy Hook

It's sickening to think that the real result of the Sandy Hook gun rampage -- a shooting spree that killed eight boys and twelve girls, between six and seven years of age -- was even more lax gun control laws in more states, including: Utah, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Dakota and Kansas.

The faces of those shot and killed in Sandy Hook. The price of liberty?

Of course, you won't hear that in the U.S. lib'rul media.  You can only see that in a British newspaper.

If you live in one of the above-mentioned states, you're living among the crazies.  Are you one of the psychos, or somebody who knows the cure?

If you're one of the gun nuts, then none of the insane statistics cited below will matter to you, because no amount of dead children can equal the price of your "freedom" to bear assault-type weapons and semi-automatic handguns with big clips and avoid a criminal background check.

Defenseless little kids shot up at school.  Just as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and the rest of our Founding Fathers imagined it.  Right.

UPDATE (09.12.2013):  In reply to this post, one of my GOP friends gave me one of the gun nuts' fallback arguments: alcohol kills more people than guns, so unless the Left is serious about banning alcohol, they don't have a right to talk about regulating firearms. 

(Nor should we spend $ billions on missions to Mars while children are starving in Africa, I suppose.)

So I sighed and reminded him that guns have no positive benefits, unlike alcohol. (Two exceptions: law enforcement and hunting; but hunters can pass background checks and they don't need banana clips to kill deer).  You can't shoot yourself or others in moderation. 

Besides, we regulate alcohol purchase and consumption myriad ways, and ban it for citizens under 21. A kid can legally own a rifle but not drink. It's a crime to buy a kid a beer but buying him a handgun is fine. You can't bring beer to a public school or library but you can take a gun. You can't drive while drinking but you can drive with a gun. We have public health campaigns against alcoholism, yet doctors and public health officials must remain silent about the dangers of guns. The state can take your kids away if you're an alcoholic, but not if you keep guns lying around the house. And we impose sin tax on alcohol ... but trying imposing a tax on ammunition!  The gun nuts would explode.

Yes, besides alcohol there are a few things that kill more people every year in America than guns: automobiles, prescription drugs.... Would the gun nuts have us outlaw pharmacies before we can have a reasonable conversation about regulating firearms?

Guns and kids: the youngest casualties of America's infatuation with firearms

By Ana Marie Cox

September 10, 2013 | Guardian

The cover of the recent Children's Defense Fund report (pdf) on gun violence in the United States carries a single statistic:

The number of children and teens killed by guns in one year would fill 134 classrooms of 20 students each.

That's just a more dramatic way of stating an already staggering figure – 2,694 in 2010. Most of the report's 73 following pages are devoted to restating it. Sometimes, this done to illustrate the chilling frequency of such deaths:

• One child or teen died every 3 hours and 15 minutes

• Seven children and teens died every day, more than 20 every three days

• Fifty-one children and teens died every week

Other times, the same set of statistics (all from the Centers for Disease Control) is used to drive home the magnitude of the tragedy, relating it to the kinds of violence we think we understand:

Nearly three times more children and teens were injured by guns in 2010 than the number of US soldiers wounded in action that year in the war in Afghanistan; 82 children under five died from guns in 2010, compared to 55 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.

And then, there's the shameful comparison to other countries:

US children and teens are 17 times more likely to die from a gun than their peers in 25 other high-income countries combined.

Put it slightly differently:

US children and teens made up 43% of all children and teens in these 26 countries but were 93% of all children and teens killed by guns.

The report is an exercise in word problem reformatting, a hideous nightmare of a standardized test in which every answer is both "all of the above" and wrong. We have failed. The numbers in the examples change, but the fact they illustrate is big and ugly and refuses cosmetic adjustment: the United States, despite a meekly gratifying downward trend, continues to kill its young people with guns at rate more in line with war-torn nations than the prosperous, peaceful countries we presume to lead. In a different, but equally upsetting report, the World Health Organization observed (pdf):

With the notable exception of the United States, most countries with youth homicide rates above 10 per 100,000 are either developing countries or countries caught up in the turmoil of social and economic change.

The repetitiveness of the statistics reflects desperation, I think. One can picture the authors' frantic oneupmanship in coming up with ways to make the truth as vivid as possible: compare it to war! Compare it to Sandy Hook! And, of course, show us the victims – not via pictures of the violence itself, thank God, but in descriptions of who they were: post-Sandy Hook stories salt the wound:

Steven Curtis, 12, dead after accidentally shooting himself in the head with his father's gun. Caroline Sparks, 2, shot in the chest and killed by her five-year-old brother. Tayloni Mazyck, 11, caught in gang crossfire and paralyzed for life. The list goes unrelentingly on. (As of July, the New York Daily News found 120 children had been killed by gunfire since Sandy Hook; they relied only on news reports, not CDC surveys. The end number will be undoubtedly, horrifyingly larger.)

The report wallops us over the head with statistics because its authors can't reach through the pages and throttle us. The frustration is as understandable as it is evident, for as gruesome as the statistics about violence are, the recounting of what legislation has and has not passed is even more dispiriting. Over and over, the public's willingness (even eagerness) to tighten gun laws has been outmatched by the cowardice of politicians in mysterious thrall to the National Rifle Association.

The whimpering death of the Toomey-Manchin bill has been examined at length; the CDF notes further that, beyond the Senate voting against regulations, a majority of Americans were for (assault weapons ban, background checks):

Several proposals to weaken existing gun violence prevention measures received more 'Yes' votes than the background checks provision. They included a concealed-carry reciprocity proposal and a provision to prevent veterans who are mentally incapacitated from losing their right to own a gun without a court hearing.

The news gets worse as we get closer to home, where state legislatures reacted to Sandy Hook primarily by widening access to firearms andweakening regulation. You read that right: more states passed pro-gun legislation in the wake of Sandy Hook than there were states that passed stricter gun control. Maryland, Connecticut and New York and New Jersey all tightened gun laws; Utah, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Kansas all somehow relaxed their gun laws – by extending the number of places one can carry a concealed weapon, by allowing guns in schools, by instituting "stand your ground" laws, or adding the right to own a firearm to the state constitution.

Colorado reigned in some gun rights after the Aurora massacre in July 2012; today, it is at the center of an NRA-sponsored recall, to be decided this week. Another state legislature, Missouri, both liberalized conceal carry and took unprecedented step of nullifying all federal gun laws – outlawing the federal government from enforcing its gun restrictions within the state. The bill was passed and then vetoed. This week, the legislature will meet in a special session to override the veto.

The Missouri proposal goes beyond the kind of passive quasi-civil disobedience of, say, medical marijuana laws, or even those rebellious legislatures that have sought to nullify Obamacare. The Missouri law would punish federal enforcement of legally enacted statutes by setting criminal penalties for federal agents, and prohibiting state officials from co-operating with federal efforts.

This is insanity.

Conservatives and liberals alike can use the tragedy of children's deaths as evidence of the need for their favored policies. After all, gun rights advocates want more guns in schools, they argue, for the greater safety of the children. They might even deny the relevance of concealed-carry laws and stand-your-ground provisions to the issue at hand. What does banning raids from the federal government's "jackbooted thugs" (in NRA president Wayne LaPierre's famous formulation) have to do with those classrooms full of dead kids?

There is only a shuddering half-step between between the general availability of firearms, their lax regulation, and the death of children. States with background checks have 16% lower gun fatality rates.  Child access prevention laws reduce accidental shootings by as much as 23%. Australia passed a strict assault weapons ban and mandatory buy-back program (the US law once on the books had no such program) in 1996 – and hasn't had a single mass shooting since.

I'm not even sure the CDF believed this report would change that many minds: to anyone disinclined to believe that strict gun laws work, the report is just a recitation of bad things happening because of bad guys (even if a lot of those "bad guys" are other children). Perhaps the point of the report was more modest: just to let people know what is happening, what violence is going on beneath surface, as politicians and lobbyists posture. Though, who knows: Missouri has the fourth most gun deaths in the nation, the sixth most deaths by firearm for children under 18 and is a favorite transit point for gun-traffickers (in a July raid that may be deemed illegal next week, federal agents seized 267 illegal weapons) and look what's happening there.

We're beyond the point of "what will it take" when it comes to sane gun laws. The tragedies that should spur protests and marches and petitions happen quietly every day.

The bullshit artists of distraction: Exhibit B(enghazi)

It just hit me, the absurdity.  Here Rush Limbaugh is complaining and alleging once again that Democrats and of course the media don't care about the four people who were killed in the attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.  

Now the GOP House is having hearings about Benghazi.  They're out to prove the Obama Admin. perpetrated a big cover up of... something.  I'm still not sure what.  (Usually the best way to trip up any conspiracy theorist is to ask him to describe to you, in less than four sentences, what the conspiracy was about.)

That's also absurd, but that's not what I meant.  I meant that Republicans all over our country are outraged -- OUTRAGED! -- that four career government employees who signed up voluntarily for a dangerous job were killed in a chaotic post-Qaddafi environment, and yet, and yet... these same Republicans don't get angry enough to do anything after 20 six- and seven-year-old kids were gunned down in one of America's "safest" public schools.  (Public schools are always safe until they're not.)  In fact, when we mention stats such as, from 2007 to 2010 America suffered 121,084 firearm fatalities, they immediately go on the defensive, clinging to their guns and religion.  

We have Republicans in the House holding hearings on Benghazi; meanwhile they call for teachers to carry guns; meanwhile, Congress doesn't allow anybody except law enforcement to carry firearms into the Capitol Building.  (Hey, Congressional Republicans may be crazy but they're not stupid.)

How absurdly absurd!  This is exactly what I meant the other day when I talked about the cable-radio media trying to distract and divide us by shouting endlessly about stupid shit.  This is Exhibit B right here, folks.  

There's stuff that matters and stuff that doesn't.  Can't we tell the difference anymore?

It's Simple: What the Left Believes Explains the Regime's Inaction on Benghazi

May 7, 2013 | The Rush Limbaugh Show

URL: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/05/07/it_s_simple_what_the_left_believes_explains_the_regime_s_inaction_on_benghazi

Michael Moore: America, don't look away

Warning: if you have young children or grandchildren these forensic descriptions could literally bring you to tears. But I encourage you to read it anyway. This is fact. This is the country we've made for ourselves over the past 30 years.

America, You Must Not Look Away

By Michael Moore

March 13, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/newtown-gun-control_b_2866126.html

Call 'assault weapons' what you want, the result's the same

Many pundits and analysts have been recently pleading, predictably, that we don't understand what "assault weapons" really are. Here are just a couple of examples:

Is it fair to call them 'assault weapons'?

http://wapo.st/10gGTnk

Some myths about assault weapons

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/01/18/179907/commentary-some-myths-about-assault.html

It reminds me of the nutty '90s, before and after President Bill Clinton's assault-weapons ban, when gun nuts like G. Gordon Liddy used to maintain, pedantically, that what the Crime Bill really banned were "assault-type weapons." As if that made any difference.

Look, whatever you call them, these high-capacity, semi-automatic firearms are not used to bake souffle, hunt deer or protect a home. They are offensive weapons designed to kill a lot of human beings very quickly.

And that's just what Adam Lanza did at Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14, 2012. 

Afterward, investigators found "multiple 30-round magazines and hundreds of bullets" where he killed 26 people, most of them 6- and 7-year-olds, in a matter of seconds, with a semi-automatic .223 rifle. Some of the victims were shot as many as 11 times at close range. One of the semi-automatic pistols on Lanza was never even used. It wasn't needed. The other 10 mm pistol found on Lanza was used only once... when Lanza shot himself in the head. 

Grieving over Newtown - without God

Here's a brave voice! To see this on CNN shows that the times they are a-changin'. It's no longer shameful to proclaim your non-belief.

But back to Krauss's argument: if God causes everything, or at least in His infinite goodness allows everything, having been forewarned, to happen, then God wanted these 20 children to be murdered. Then, in our grief, we are obliged to pray to Him lovingly, seek solace and give thanks. GWTF?

Sums up Krauss:

If instead of automatically assuming that prayers to a deity callous enough to allow this sickness, or worse, to encourage it out of divine retribution, are what families in grief need from their president and from the media, that we focused on rational grief counseling and community support, including better mental health care combined with sensible gun control, we as a society might ultimately act more effectively to stop this madness.

Why must the nation grieve with God?

By Lawrence M. Krauss

December 26, 2012 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/26/opinion/krauss-grief-faith/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7

The ONLY way to end gun slaughter

OK, so here's some sobering reality for those on the Left who think that banning some assault-type guns or large magazines will do much to prevent gun crime and shootings rampages.

Unfortunately, U.S. history has proven that firearms producers are quite adept at dealing with changes in state and federal law and they can easily adapt their firearms' designs to be legal and yet retain a lot of their killing power.

So what is the solution then?  "You do not partially treat an aggressive cancer," answers Cooper.  Read on!....

A Proven Way to End the Gun Slaughter: Will We Fight For it?

By Douglas Anthony Cooper

December 26, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/Ut5odt

Left & Right agree: NRA is calling for a police state

It's not often that lefty liberals and far-right libertarians agree -- and in opposition to the NRA, no less!  

Robert Parry sees even farther than Ron Paul: he asks if armed police are what's needed in our schools to "meet a gun with a gun," then why stop there, why not put federally funded police in shopping malls, toll booths, you name it?

NRA Suggests a Police State

By Robert Parry

December 23, 2012 |  Consortium News

URL: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/12/23/nra-suggests-a-police-state/

Ron Paul rips NRA plan for officers in every school

December 24, 2012 | FoxNews

URL: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/24/ron-paul-rips-nra-plan-for-officers-in-every-school/

Ames: Big backers of 'gun-nuttery' have ulterior aims

As usual, Mark Ames has a unique take on events, usually describing how Big Business tries to dumb us down, rile us up, or lull us to sleep at the right moments. He sees the NRA and the larger "gun cult batshittery" as another example, and it's not about guns:

[I]t’s now so deeply ingrained that owning guns is a form of radical subversive politics, the people who still engage in real politics have the pick of the litter. That first became really clear in the depths of the 2008-9 collapse, when a lot of people who thought of themselves as radicals and anarchists made a lot of feckless noise about how they were arming and preparing for the collapse and revolution. They could’ve gone out and organized something and maybe built a politics of people power or even a politics of what they call revolution, a politics that actually changed things. But instead, they locked themselves in their homes and apartments with their guns and fancied themselves political revolutionaries just waiting to be swept up. But no one came. No one bothered or cared. And really, why would any plutocrat or evil government agency bother with the suckers, all harmlessly atomized and isolated and thoroughly neutralized by the false sense of political empowerment that their guns gave them, while you do the real work of plundering budgets, bribing politicians and writing laws even more in your favor?

So while everyone was hiding out in their homes armed and ready for Hollywood finales that never came, in the real world political power was concentrating at warp-speed with zero resistance.

From the oligarchy’s perspective, the people were thoroughly neutralized by the false sense of political empowerment that guns gave them. Guns don’t work in this country — they didn’t work for the Black Panthers or the Whiskey Rebellion, and they won’t work for you or me either.

It takes years to cultivate a political mindset that voluntarily neutralizes itself by convincing itself that its contribution to world revolution comes down to purchasing a few guns at K-Mart, then blogging about it. That’s what reactionary plutocrats like the Koch brothers understood about the deeper politics of gun fanaticism, and why their outfits like the Cato Institute have been at the forefront of overturning gun regulations and promoting "Stand Your Ground" vigilantism as a substitute for political engagement: That by poisoning the political climate, it poisons the minds, which circulates back to the external environment, and back into the minds, until you lock the culture into a pattern in which you always get more and they always get fleeced, which makes them more fanatical and you more powerful...

This is what I missed or ignored about gun control: The longterm view that the Koch brothers and the Scaifes and everyone backing gun-nuttery understood about how gun laws or the absence of those laws can completely transform the surrounding political climate.

From "Opeation Wetback" To Newtown: Tracing The Hick Fascicm Of The NRA

By Mark Ames

December 17, 2012 | NSFW CORP

URL: http://nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/newtown

The REAL gun debate is spiritual

If the gun control debate were factual and reasonable, then liberals would have won it a long time ago. There simply is no debate.

Apropos, Jill Filipovic taps into something deep and disturbing about American culture, and that is the prevailing conservative belief that we live in a "fallen world" filled with evil and dominated by bad people. Conservatives think that there is nothing we can do to make this a better world; we (meaning our nuclear families) can only try to be one of the chosen few good people defending ourselves and our values against the immoral hordes storming the gates.

By contrast, liberals believe that human civilization can and should be perfected, and that most people are fundamentally good and decent, therefore near-perfection is achievable, eventually. No issue is more emblematic of that philosophical -- I would say, spiritual, divide than the gun control debate. If you believe, like I do, that most people are kind and trustworthy, then you naturally question why everybody should need so many deadly guns to protect themselves against... whom? Other kind and decent people? It doesn't make sense.  

Even in the conservative/Red State conception, the justification for possessing lots of deadly guns presents a contradiction. For they are the first ones to point out, post-Sandy Hook, how rates of violent crime in Chicago and Washington, DC are higher than in Small Town, USA; they always have been, well before recent RTC and concealed-carry laws. Yet conservatives are not quite ready to credit their small towns' relative tranquility to the abundance of their guns; nay, they truly consider themselves to be better morally. Meanwhile they see immorality and bestiality in the multicultural, multi-class structures of our growing, bustling, complicated urban areas. Pro-gun conservatives may pay lip service to "An armed society is a polite society," but indeed, the presence or absence of guns is a distant second, in their minds, in terms of what distinguishes them. 

That is why these shooting rampages at schools throw conservatives -- and all of us, really, since we all go in for this nonsense to some extent -- for such a loop, because they are usually committed in suburbs and rural areas. Moreover, shooting rampages are overwhelmingly white-on-white crime.  Yet statistically, we know that our chances of falling victim to a deranged, heavily armed mass murderer are tiny. For conservatives, the main thing is to stay focused on the real threat and stay armed in case they come for them: blacks, Muslims, Latinos, OWS hippies and anarchists, godless atheists, activist gays, poor people -- all the alleged marauders storming their Gates of Goodness.  

And so, there are articles of faith in pro-gun conservatives' minds that no amount of statistics or facts can alter. That is why our gun debate never goes anywhere, we always start at zero, and nothing much will happen this time (after Sandy Hook) either:

As we've seen in the debates on issues from climate change to gender equality to foreign policy, facts, statistics and rational arguments don't really matter if the goal of offering them up is to improve things in the here and now. It's a deeply pessimistic view of humanity that projects a strong sense of fatalism.

The point of being "good" isn't because goodness is valuable unto itself or because goodness is widely beneficial. The point of being good is to earn heaven points. Goodness, then, is defined according to a very particular set of religious and cultural values, and is highly "in-group" focused. Goodness means going to church, marrying early, submitting to a husband-in-charge family structure, having children out of obligation and upholding the social pillars that organize society to keep a particular group on top.

Goodness isn't necessarily helping other people or taking steps that are proven effective at decreasing violence or working to create a more accepting and happy world for our children. Goodness is upholding the power structures that have traditionally benefited the small group of men who think they have a monopoly on defining "goodness."

[...]  It is certainly true that "good" people don't walk into a classroom and shoot a group of six year-olds. It's also true that good people don't murder their wives and girlfriends – yet five times more women are killed by intimate partners every year than by strangers, and 95% of the women who are killed with a firearm are murdered by a man. If there's a gun involved, an incident of domestic violence is 12 times more likely to result in death. And while mass shootings understandably capture our national attention, the more than 30,000 American gun deaths every year (and their $37bn price tag) should spur us to action.

It's easy to read those figures and conclude that conservatives are right: we are a world of awful, violent people who are going to keep on being awful and violent no matter what, so gun control serves no purpose and we'll all be better off in Heaven anyway. But as is true with almost anything that makes life on Earth brutish and miserable, we have the power to change that. Gun deaths are lower in the states with the strictest gun control laws. And the majority of US gun deaths actually comprises suicides – acts committed not generally by evil, murderous people, but by individuals who are sick and hurting and need help.

The conservative philosophy of tragedy: guns don't kill people, people kill people

By Jill Filipovic

December 21, 2012 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3ckkn

Legal WMD that we love and die to keep

Focusing on mental health or our "culture" in an attempt to stop more shooting rampages is a red herring meant to distract us. (And if you want to give all America's mentally ill proper medical care -- support Obamacare or shut up about it.)  Writes WaPo's Caputo:

Since the Newtown, Conn., massacre, there has been a good deal of vague chatter suggesting that people like Purdy or Lanza or Jared Loughner can be identified before they act on their monstrous fantasies and can be prohibited from purchasing firearms. A kind of early-warning radar will detect a disturbed personality on a trajectory toward slaughter.

How would this be accomplished? Are disgruntled workers, loners or anyone who says or does bizarre things going to be examined by psychiatric boards? If it’s determined that they are potential dangers to themselves or others, would they be placed on some sort of national watch list? Compelled to undergo treatment? Locked up?

Even if such a system had been in place, it would not have stopped Lanza, who, as we all know, obtained his weapons by stealing them from the collection of his gun-enthusiast mother.

Again, it comes back to the guns themselves. And no, more guns or armed security guards in our 100,000 schools (as the NRA lamely suggests) are not the answer: recall that an armed security guard traded shots with Klebold and Harris before they shot and killed 13 people and shot and wounded 24 others at Columbine High School in 1999. The school security guard's main safety contribution that day was calling in local police. 

But what’s more wrong are the guns themselves. A 9 mm semiautomatic handgun with a 30-round clip isn’t a pistol; it’s a weapon of mass destruction. Jared Loughner proved that by killing six people and wounding 13 others in not much more time than it took you to read this sentence.

Today, tens of millions of such firearms are in circulation in the United States. If it were up to me, they would be regulated as strictly as fully automatic weapons, such as machine guns, have been for decades. All citizens, except those with federal firearms licenses, would be required to surrender them to law enforcement authorities (with fair compensation). And then I’d destroy them.

But sensible gun buy-back like what happened in Australia won't ever be attempted in the U.S. Why? It's our dirty little open secret. We all know that the backwards Red States would be in uproar, especially the South. There would be individual and organized acts of terrorism. Officially, some states might seek to secede.  And all this to defend the right of Americans to commit the equivalent of three September 11th attacks against each other every year!

Blame the killing machines: guns

By Philip Caputo

December 21, 2012 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/WCkP5r

Unionized teachers: The heroes of Sandy Hook

No further comment necessary:

There will be a lot of lip service paid to the courage of Sandy Hook's staff. But the real measure of who's not just paying lip service will come when we see which of the politicians and so-called reformers who've been waging political attacks on teachers look at how teachers responded to a deadly physical attack, check themselves, and stop trying to demonize teachers in the push for corporate education policy.

Teachers, so often vilified by politicians, are the heroes of Sandy Hook

By Laura Clawson

December 18, 2012 | Daily Kos 

URL: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/18/1170357/-Teachers-so-often-vilified-by-politicians-are-the-heroes-of-Sandy-Hook

Congressional hypocrites should let guns inside Capitol

Great point by Womack!  Indeed, I can't count the number of times I have received that conservative chain e-mail urging a federal law or Constitutional amendment stating that, "Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people," so pro-gun conservatives should be all in favor of allowing private citizens to carry guns into the Capitol. 

And if Rep. Boehner, et al feel the need to protect themselves, then they should carry firearms too at all times, including on the floor of the House -- you know, in case somebody's shooting at them from the observation gallery. Then we would have real freedom and our elected officials would all be safe!.... Right?

Even old St. Nick gets checked for packing heat in the Capitol

Another great point: kids all over the world are watching the same violent films, playing the same violent video games, and attending church even less often than American kids, with no mention of God in their schools; and the incidence of mental illness is no higher in the U.S. than in other countries; and we don't have much more crime than other developed countries when it comes to burglaries, assault, etc.... and yet these other countries don't have all the deadly shootings and mass killings that we do.  So what's the difference?  It's "blindingly obvious," as Fareed Zakaria wrote yesterday on the same topic.

This line by Womack pretty much sums up America's gun-rights idiocy: 

It's as if every time a white suburbanite picks up a gun, half the country suddenly becomes your crazy grandfather, claiming that the same violent films and video games that kids in Australia, Ireland and Britain are watching and playing are somehow compelling only Americans to go on shooting sprees.

If Gun Control Doesn't Work, Why Does Congress Need Metal Detectors?

By Larry Womack

December 19, 2012 | Huffington Post

The last major gun control effort passed by Congress was the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, a largely toothless effort it has since allowed to expire. Since that came and went, there have been more firearm massacres in the U.S. than we care to count. Through all of those, the federal government has sat silently by while states passed laws allowing people to carry guns onto playgrounds and into movie theaters, schools, bars and churches. Vermont even allows 16-year-olds to purchase and carry concealed handguns legally, without so much as a permit. So long as that 16-year-old isn't carrying it into a bar or R-rated movie, of course.

Or into the U.S. Capitol. Members of Congress, it seems, are very much in favor of controlling the flow of deadly weapons into their workplace. And by "controlling," I mean completely barring the entry of guns into the building -- unless they are worn by someone paid to protect them, of course. If you or I visit the U.S. Capitol or any congressional office building, we can expect to pass through a metal detector.

In fact, it's almost as if the U.S. Congress believes that someone without a gun would have a harder time murdering people. The city surrounding their place of work banned handguns in 1975, too (I'm going to guess that the reason was Virginia), but the courts overturned that law in 2007. Still, you can rest assured that while they're hard at work not doing anything about the flow of guns into your workplace, or your children's school, your local movie theater or even your house of worship, your legislators will be well protected from the threat of gun violence. Unless they happen to be working outside your local supermarket that day, of course.

It's easy to see why they would be so concerned for their own safety. The United States currently has, by a wide margin, the highest number of gun-related deaths of any highly developed country. In fact, our number of firearm-related deaths is nearly three times that of any other nation ranked as "very high" on the Human Development Index. (Or perhaps merely 40 percent higher -- we'll get to that soon.)

If you compare the two lists linked above, you will find that just three nations share the distinction of being ranked "very high" in human development and having unusually high rates of gun-related death: The United States, Canada and Switzerland. You might also note that since the mass shooting on Friday, Switzerland's rate of gun-related death (as listed on Wikipedia) has been updated to a number that cut its previously listed level in half.

The timing is no coincidence. The sudden interest in controlling information about gun violence in Switzerland probably has something to do with the fact that opponents of gun control actually point to Switzerland as evidence that gun proliferation prevents crime. Because of the way its militia is organized, nearly every Swiss household has a gun. Switzerland offers the second highest quality of life on planet Earth. Just 3% of its population is working poor and a mere 3.3 percent is dependent on some form of social welfare. So, opponents of gun control are asking us to believe that the easy availability of guns is what's keeping crime down... in an otherwise idyllic nation with none of the markers we associate with violent crime that still somehow manages to generate three and a half to seven times the gun-related deaths of, say, Ireland. Makes perfect sense, right? Guns for all! Frankly, it doesn't matter which number is correct. Both stink.

It turns out that guns, outside the hands of the military or law enforcement, just aren't any good at preventing crime and, in fact, their presence is associated with an increase in the likelihood of tragedy. Stepping briefly outside the statistics and into the realm of anecdote, we might be wise toremember that access to seven firearms did nothing to save Kassandra Perkins. Access to one, however, was enough to facilitate the murder of Phil Hartman in a moment of rage. That is, it seems, how guns too often equalize power between victim and perpetrator.

That's probably because guns aren't made to shield you from someone else's bullets. Nor are they made to deter, catch or frighten criminals. Guns are made to kill.

Some are designed to kill one thing at a time. In the right hands, these can be pretty useful, because some Americans live in areas in which they face genuine threats from dangerous animals. Even more live in areas where there used to be dangerous animals which have now been driven out by man. That removal of natural predators leaves some animals (like deer) to multiply unchecked and, without the relatively more humane option of allowing hunters to fill that void, can leave entire populations literally starving in the streets come winter. Some people in this country need these guns.

Some also just enjoy them, because they can be used for other things, too -- like punching holes in far away objects, relieving stress and making you feel like a big man. Most people in favor of gun control have no problem with people owning these.

Unfortunately, there are also guns and magazines designed for killing many things quickly and easily. The availability of these weapons outside of the military is something that should bother any sane person a great deal. It doesn't seem to bother our representatives on the other side of the metal detector so much, but I assure you that some of us are pretty concerned.

An AR-15 is "just a tool," they say as if it were designed for gardening, rather than killing as many people as possible, in as little time as possible, with as little effort as possible.

"Cars kill people, too," they say, as if the efficient extermination of humans is exactly what a Ford Focus was designed for, or you didn't need a license to operate and a registration to own one.

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people," they might even say. Like how high speed rail doesn't move people from central to southern China in under three hours, people move people from central to southern China in under three hours. It turns out that having a device specifically designed to do something you could not otherwise achieve kinda helps when you have an urge to do that thing.

And then there is, "criminals will just find another way to do it," which, well, is total bullshit. (There will be more on that later.)

Eventually, people resort to, "If we start banning guns, they'll ban everything! We will have no freedom!" Because responsible levels of gun control will make us just like the totalitarian state of... almost every other free, developed society on planet Earth!

What's especially painful about the slippery slope fallacy is that it's being employed by people who seem fairly oblivious to the fact that they are living in a nation that bans pretty much any object designed to perform an illegal task that does not happen to also be a gun. If the server at your favorite restaurant legally owns a device that can store your credit card information, it is an outrage.  If he has one that could kill you and your entire family in a matter of seconds, why that is freedom.

And, finally, there is the truly absurd suggestion that, "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." (Oh no! That means only outlaws havehand grenades!) The people who parrot this ask us to believe that the twenty-year-old suburbanites who tend to carry out these mass shootings have easy access to black market gun runners and that it is simply an astonishing coincidence that the wealthy, industrialized nations with thelowest levels of gun violence also happen to be the ones that most tightly control the ownership and operation of firearms.

The left is nearly as bad when it comes to swallowing the lie that limiting availability is not a staggeringly obvious solution. Michael Moore -- who I am quite certain is very much in favor of reasonable gun control -- made Canada his model of responsible gun ownership in Bowling for Columbine. Yet, you are nearly five times more likely to die of a gunshot wound in Canada than in the UK. This is what we are to aspire to? Thanks, but no thanks. (To be fair, I haven't seen this film in years and he may well have pointed out that Canada's death-by-gun numbers are pretty atrocious, too.)

If we are to believe that the correlation between strict gun control and low rates of gun violence in other industrialized nations really is some sort of incredible coincidence, events in Australia must be taken for nothing short of a miracle. In the 18 years prior to 1996 gun control reforms, that nation saw 13 mass shootings. In the 16 since, they have seen one -- which usually isn't even counted, because the shooter was only able to kill two people before he had to stop to reload (because: gun control) and was apprehended. That wouldn't even count as a mass shooting in the guide to American massacres I linked to earlier. Still, after that incident, Australia reviewed and tightened its gun laws again. Ten years later, there hasn't been another.

Before the gun fetishists start freaking out (as if they hadn't already): it didn't take some sort of total authoritarian prohibition in Australia to achieve this kind of result. It just took common sense gun laws. In fact, there are more guns in Australia now than there were before the 1996 reforms. But, magazine size is limited, weapons designed for war zones can only be owned (in a non-operational state) by collectors and people who own any gun need to be over 18, have a license and keep them stored safely. Exactly what part of that sounds so unreasonable to the average sportsman?

And if you're a gun enthusiast still clinging to the based-on-nothing belief that people will just find other ways of committing gun homicides, here'sa little something more from our friends down under:

After the introduction of gun laws, a significant downward trend was evident in total homicides, and the ratio of pre‐law to post‐law trends differed statistically from "no effect" (p = 0.01, table 33).). We conclude that the data do not support any homicide method substitution hypothesis.

In short: when gun homicides declined, all homicides declined. People did not simply commit them another way.

I actually disagree when they conclude that no method substitution occurs, however. There is some evidence to suggest that people who want to go on a violent rampage do try to find other ways when guns are not available. Of course these people do not, in fact, slyly poison 20 school children when a Glock isn't handy or mix up some kind of crazy Joker laughing gas. When guns aren't handy, they seem to use the next best thing: a knife. We've seen this over and over again in China lately. The major difference is that, even when a knife-wielding maniac is able to reach dozens of victims, often every single victim survives. These events aren't showing up as homicides perhaps because homicide wasn't achieved, because it wasn't as easily achievable. Ever hear that expression about taking a knife to a gunfight? It exists for a reason.

Still, too many Americans -- including our lawmakers -- insist on remaining astonishingly obstinate when it comes to any suggestion of responsible firearm regulations. Instead of common sense solutions, they repeat bizarre myths and offer idiotic distractions. It's as if every time a white suburbanite picks up a gun, half the country suddenly becomes your crazy grandfather, claiming that the same violent films and video games that kids in Australia, Ireland and Britain are watching and playing are somehow compelling only Americans to go on shooting sprees. It's an... unique idea, to say the least. (Let's not even talk about what they're watching in Japan, which has -- through strict gun control efforts -- virtually eliminated gun violence altogether.)

Not that it would matter if these things were somehow magically compelling only Americans to shoot up their local malls. Contrary to popular belief, sometimes the most effective solution is not, actually, attempting to remove every underlying motive or eliminate every contributing factor. Sometimes it's just using the most effective solution at your disposal.

To be clear, I am definitely not saying that our health care system doesn't need a top-to-bottom overhaul. It does. What I am saying is that by far the most effective, proven solution at our disposal is a major, common sense reform of our gun control laws, and that there is no good reason not to do it.

In the meantime, try carrying a violent video game or film into the Capitol. Go ahead, I've done it before. They let you right in.

So I have a challenge for members of Congress: if you truly believe that gun proliferation, not gun control, is the best way to combat gun violence, remove the metal detectors from the Capitol entrances and don't bring them back until you've changed your mind. If criminals will just find another way, they're nothing but a waste of taxpayer money and visitor time. If gun control gives criminals all the power, then those metal detectors are threats to the safety of everyone behind them. If reasonable, common sense security measures are violations of our civil liberties, then those metal detectors, located at the heart of our democracy, are an affront to the personal liberty of every American.

After all, it seems only right that members of Congress should be as safe as the average child they represent.

In case you missed it: More gun rampages

You may be distracted what with the nearly record-breaking school gun rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut on Friday, but time moves on, and new rampages happen every day in America....

Details, but no answers, in Oregon mall shooting

By Mariano Castillo and Holly Yan

December 13, 2012 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/12/justice/oregon-mall-shooting/index.html

Alabama Hospital Shooting: St. Vincent's Gunman Wounds 3 Before Being Killed By Police

December 15, 2012 | AP

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/15/alabama-hospital-shooting-wounded-gunman-killed_n_2307505.html

'Gun rights' winning media battle

Post this one in the "Whither the Liberal Media?" file. Yet conservatives will continue to whine pathetically that their beliefs are under constant assault by a biased mainstream media.

In fact we are all under assault -- by easily accessible, legal firearms.  RIP, gun victims at Sandy Hook Elementary.

In Public ‘Conversation’ on Guns, a Rhetorical Shift

By Nate Silver

December 14, 2012 | New York Times

URL: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/in-public-conversation-on-guns-a-rhetorical-shift/