Another shooting, another 10 youth killed, and where is the Republican reaction?

[TX-Beau]

We have always had guns in the USA. We have always had young men, sometime the times have been good...other times, not so good.
Some young men have always felt lonely, isolated, angry and powerless.

What the young men who do the shootings today have is a catalyst. That catalyst is the story of the last mass shooter. Seeing his face,
hearing his name, seeing people running in fear, watching his victims being buried.

Right now some isolated angry young man is watching the events of this last shooting and thinking "I can do that".
"I can make the President of the United States angry".

We have to stop giving them this free press and power.

We used to have much better regulation also. Nor did we have "gun culture" as promoted by that whore LaPierre.

 

[Telstra]

Has Americans seen this stats ?
US terrorism deaths in 2014 = 18 dead
US gun deaths in 2015 so far = 9940 dead

 

[peeonme]

What are you proposing that will bring an end to this senseless violence....?

I have seen in other nations, one I believe was Japan, where partition type portable drapes were used to keep the press from filming gory details.
Keeping people from viewing others running in fear and seeing the dead on stretchers might serve to keep future shooters from being so inspired to try to get their 15 minutes of fame.
Keeping funerals private might help as well, much could be done on a voluntary basis by the press so we don't have these copy cats.
Even the President might do well to not address the nation, but rather to just call the families.

We have seen anger in all of these young men, towards blacks or schools, perhaps the military or other groups, the targets are different, the motive is the same... to go out making a statement that no one ever would listen to in life. Downplay this reward and I think that their motive is not so rewarding.

 

[peeonme]

We used to have much better regulation also. Nor did we have "gun culture" as promoted by that whore LaPierre.

I am all for more control, making access to hand guns and assault weapons more difficult.

 

[jockofstrap]

Nothing ventured nothing gained since the days of Sandy Hook.

 

[Benvolio]

I think many Republicans would now accept reasonable gun control. But what? Taking guns out of circulation legally will take guns from law abiding citizens, leaving them in the hands of the bad guys. And, since we cannot or will not limit the illegal entry of people and drugs over the border, we will not stop the guns either.

 

[palemale]

What total nonsense. Republicans appear to pay most of the taxes. White tend to have higher incomes and tend to vote Republican. Blacks and hispanics tend to have lower incomes, and vote democrat. Republicans resist tax increases, democrats get elected by promising to raise taxes on others and to indeed raise taxes whenever they get the chance. While Republican states get welfare, democrats like to forget that those states have large minority populations, which receive more welfare and which tend to vote democrat.
It is democrats who want more welfare, while Republicans resist: medicaid, food stamps, earned income "credit", unemployment insurance and extensions, affirmative action (another form of welfare) etc.

A majority of well educated whites in the Northeast and West Coast, who pay the most taxes, voted for Obama.

 

[Benvolio]

The Oregon killer is yet another reason we should stop the damn immigration.

 

[Kabluey]

What total nonsense. Republicans appear to pay most of the taxes. White tend to have higher incomes and tend to vote Republican. Blacks and hispanics tend to have lower incomes, and vote democrat. Republicans resist tax increases, democrats get elected by promising to raise taxes on others and to indeed raise taxes whenever they get the chance. While Republican states get welfare, democrats like to forget that those states have large minority populations, which receive more welfare and which tend to vote democrat.
It is democrats who want more welfare, while Republicans resist: medicaid, food stamps, earned income "credit", unemployment insurance and extensions, affirmative action (another form of welfare) etc.

That's because Republican voters are overwhelmingly white middle aged men, who are also the highest earning demographic.

If you pushed policies that target everyone except white middle aged men, you'd expect to capture their vote.

Anything less would indicate failure to connect with your demographic.

 

[Kabluey]

The Oregon killer is yet another reason we should stop the damn immigration.

Sorry, who exactly was the immigrant here, or is this just another senseless rant about race?

 

[evanrick]

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2013, 33,804 people died from motor vehicle traffic accidents — and 33, 636 died from firearms.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm

Should we also ban cars?

30,000+ more died from suicide, roughly 100 people a day, but the news doesnt report that either. our culture is so out of touch with itself because it BENEFITS THE GOVERNMENT AND SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS when people die or become imprisoned. its easier to control people when they are desperate and have no hope, so they either kill themselves or others. John Boehner was not afraid to use government against the people time and time again, governing by crisis became the only way they knew how to govern. John Boehner suddenly has a soul when confronted with someone like the pope, who the GOP wants to absolve of their crimes against humanity.

we know the issues, nothing will change until people stop voting for the murderers that are republicans. its time to start demonizing the GOP for what it stands for and watch how fast America bails on them! give ben a and watch him go.

Republican are baby murderers, job killers, and will throw your life away to save themselves.

 

[Kulindahr]

We have always had guns in the USA. We have always had young men, sometime the times have been good...other times, not so good.
Some young men have always felt lonely, isolated, angry and powerless.

What the young men who do the shootings today have is a catalyst. That catalyst is the story of the last mass shooter. Seeing his face,
hearing his name, seeing people running in fear, watching his victims being buried.

Right now some isolated angry young man is watching the events of this last shooting and thinking "I can do that".
"I can make the President of the United States angry".

We have to stop giving them this free press and power.

Yes. We need an agreement among the media, imposed or otherwise, that all pictures of these shooters will be of their body, face down, after being shot by whichever good guys with guns got them, their blood cold on the floor, and instead of a name, just the caption "Another dead animal".

This animal wrote that he wanted the fame. If he'd known that all that anyone would see was his back and his blood, that they wou;dn't even hear his name, would he have acted? I doubt it.

Would that stop all shootings? No, but my guess is it would cut them by half to three-fifths.

 

[Kulindahr]

I am all for more control, making access to hand guns and assault weapons more difficult.

That means you're interested in penalizing the law-abiding and not doing a thing to stop criminals.

See, this is why background checks are worthless: first, criminals won't go through them, and second, they can't be required to do so by law. Courts from SCOTUS right on down have ruled repeatedly that criminals cannot be required to participate in actions which would incriminate them, and that has been specifically applied to firearms.

It also means you believe in defining objects by how scary they look -- because that's the only definition there is for "assault weapon". It's a political term, nothing more.

 

[evanrick]

court makes sense but it doesnt apply to law abiding citizens like you say, effectively saying to people if you can get away with a crime you should, which explains the behavior of wall street and corporate America.

i agree, gun control is nothing more than a buzz word just like assault weapon. Americans are not serious about stopping gun violence because it would require more of us to admit we are complacent, and we wont take responsibility for that either.

 

[Kulindahr]

What are you proposing that will bring an end to this senseless violence....?

The Republicans will never vote to fund it, because it would actually help people outside the womb, but I'd start with something I saw in action that ended up shut down by a liberal attorney with sharp intelligence and no sense:

A group got a drop-in center for the mentally ill going. It was like three giant living rooms with TVs, table games, books, and magazines, plus a room with pool tables, ping-pong, and foosball. There was a mental health professional present always, a couple others on call, and a number of volunteers who just helped things run smoothly. Coffee was available almost always, tea always, cocoa on cold mornings; snacks showed up when local stores or bakeries decided to donate.

It cut problems on the street with mentally ill people drastically; it also provided a place for the police to take mentally ill people besides jail.

Then they got a grant and leased the old hotel the center had already run in for like three years. They made cheap housing available to the mentally ill, rent pegged to means, ending the local mentally ill homeless problem. Again, problems with mentally ill people on the streets plunged, especially after-dark altercations.

One reason that incidents dropped so much was that everyone was made to feel important. They weren't inclined to have to go act out in order to get attention. That should have an impact on people ending up like most of these animals, isolated and unappreciated and angry. But it would also be worth doing for its own sake; if we Americans are people, we should be taking care of our own -- the ones Jesus called "the least of these". If we cannot, as the apostles admonished, take care of those in need among us, then we will never find any solutions to greater problems because we will just keep generating them.

So my starting point is a program that would establish such centers; both drop-in and housing with mental health professionals (plus volunteers) on-site. Connect them to/with county mental health programs. Train police to deal properly with the mentally ill and take them to the centers rather than jail. Pull the isolated and neglected into community so they don't get the urge to be noticed by being violent.

 

[Kulindahr]

court makes sense but it doesnt apply to law abiding citizens like you say, effectively saying to people if you can get away with a crime you should, which explains the behavior of wall street and corporate America.

i agree, gun control is nothing more than a buzz word just like assault weapon. Americans are not serious about stopping gun violence because it would require more of us to admit we are complacent, and we wont take responsibility for that either.

The parallel between the ultra-wealthy section of our society and the ultra-isolated is a good one: the example of the one toward the law and their fellow Americans infects the other. When the wealthy were clearly fellow-citizens interested in the well-being of the nation, we didn't have so many mass shootings.

As for complacent, that's true but it doesn't go far enough: our current responses to these animals rests in fantasy. The biggest reason I am angry over this is that there were people on that campus trained and willing to deal with the situation promptly, but they were required to do nothing and allow the animal to continue his predation for numerous minutes while law enforcement was attempting to get there (BTW, I'm surprised at the fairly quick response time; I'm familiar with the campus and it is not a place I would have expected police or sheriff to arrive faster than twelve or fifteen minutes). One hero reduced the carnage by acting; if the veterans who wanted to go stop the animal had been allowed to do so, the casualty count would have been much lower.

After all, it took good guys with guns to stop the animal with a gun. Veterans who are armed are also good guys with guns. By engaging in the fantasy of "Everyone hide!" as though that would make everyone safe, the staff of the college guaranteed more deaths than necessary. And it is not the place of anyone to tell those willing to act that they may not do so; that is a decision solely for the person who is willing to put his or her life between the danger and his or her fellow citizens.

 

[evanrick]

of course people are 'not allowed to help themselves', they might help other people and might recognize who is standing in the way between safer communities and that is republicans. if people developed a social conscience they didn't have before they may actually have a reason to stop supporting their neo-con war agenda driven republican politicians.

what is upsetting me about these tragedies is the media narrative that government will solve this problem with more draconian laws that only encourages bigger government with no REAL action but more RE-ACTION. if there is anything worse than big republican government its big democrat government, yes theyre both bad but bad democrats choices tend to have much bigger impacts on our society in positive and negative ways.

just today MSNBC is desperately trying to use this issue to Hillary's benefit, saying Sanders is weak on guns but, hello, are they forgetting the issue is with republicans and not progressives? why is MSNBC setting themselves up to look the fool? Sanders can easily turn this around to be about the 'establishment' and Obama has a small part in this in the news today. I hope he isnt bailing on progressives again.

Sanders supporters are too smart to know that MSNBC cant trick us by saying that Sanders supporters 'dont know' Bernie's position on guns, which is not 'less liberal' than Hillarys. Its more liberal than Hillarys because Bernie knows the difference between political grandstanding on a tragedy and actually reading gun control laws before you automatically want every gun control method enacted. that is nanny state cradle to grave spoon feeding and its just as big an attack on progressive principles as the NSA is on civil liberties.

The pres is right it does need to be a 'single issue' but its an issue for liberals to lead on, not to use it to bring down political opponents who will lead this fight.

 

[Kabluey]

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2013, 33,804 people died from motor vehicle traffic accidents — and 33, 636 died from firearms.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm

Should we also ban cars?

At least cars have some utility other than killing.
Can't even successfully use a good rifle as a bottle opener.

 

[rareboy]

To quote Jeb! Bush:

"Stuff Happens"

 

[peeonme]

That means you're interested in penalizing the law-abiding and not doing a thing to stop criminals.

See, this is why background checks are worthless: first, criminals won't go through them, and second, they can't be required to do so by law. Courts from SCOTUS right on down have ruled repeatedly that criminals cannot be required to participate in actions which would incriminate them, and that has been specifically applied to firearms.

It also means you believe in defining objects by how scary they look -- because that's the only definition there is for "assault weapon". It's a political term, nothing more.

No, I don't want to penalize anyone who does not pose a threat. Background checks are not a penalty, I understand that there are ways around them, such as gun shows. http://civilliberty.about.com/od/guncontrol/a/Gun-Shows.htm

Perhaps requiring a hand gun owner to certify once a year that he is still in possession of his gun and didn't sell it to a criminal or minor might avert "straw man" sales.

I used the term "assault weapon" because the style of these weapons is appealing to the sort of person that would hunt people.