Yet another school shooting

[Lord Jim]

tax bullets to pay for better mental health care.

I don't have a problem with a reasonable tax, (on bullets or guns) but if the tax is so excessive as to make it financially prohibitive for law-abiding working class and poor people to own a firearm for self defense, (and bear in mind, these are the very folks who are most likely to victimized by crime, and who live in areas where police response time is likely to be the slowest) then it's a non-starter.

[rubato]

Funny, how when a tax is proposed the party who wants to eliminate minimum wages, Unions, Social Security and Medicaid and increases the percent of people in poverty suddenly cares about poor people.

The purpose of such a tax is to transfer the costs to those who are responsible for those costs and whose behavior can reduce them. The only questions are "are the taxes high enough to have an effect" and "are the taxes enough to recover all or a significant portion of the costs".

Maybe, some Republican can propose a 'guns for poor folks' program. They could get the NRA to fund it as a private charity. Or some church.

yrs,
rubato

[Miles]

I'd like to hear a workable solution. Not just an idea that someone thinks might work if only everyone would agree with it.

Nobody's been paying attention, (because so many here would rather focus on fantasies like repealing The 2nd Amendment) but I've been trying to do that Joe.

It is completely realistic to think that we can get a ban on these outrageously large ammo magazines. There has been widespread public support for this for some time.

This is really where the focus ought to be, because it's doable, and it will save lives.

Anti-Second Amendment posturing is not only pointless; it's worse than pointless, it's counter productive....

All that sort of thing does is raise the hackles of the other side, and galvanize opposition. (And it plays right into the hands of the NRA leadership, because if the issue is defined that way, nothing will happen, which suits them just fine.)

People who want to make law abiding, responsible citizens who own firearms the issue, will only succeed in gaining the opposition of law abiding responsible citizens who own firearms...This will accomplish absolutely NOTHING...

Earth to the "fuck the Second Amendment" crowd:

Take a look at the amendment process...Take a look at the polls supporting The Second Amendment....

Repealing The Second Amendment ain't gonna happen, no way, no how, never....it's not on....

So rather than huffing and puffing about things that are never going to happen, wouldn't it be much better to focus on doing things that can be done, will help save lives, and would enjoy broad support across the political spectrum, among both Second Amendment opponents and Second Amendment supporters?

Something like banning these outrageous magazines. It's not "sexy" it's not dramatic, but it has the virtue of being something that can actually be accomplished, that will indisputably save lives.

I agree completely, now if you can just get people to first listen and second agree where it counts.

[Lord Jim]

Funny, how when a tax is proposed the party who wants to eliminate minimum wages, Unions, Social Security and Medicaid and increases the percent of people in poverty suddenly cares about poor people.

The purpose of such a tax is to transfer the costs to those who are responsible for those costs and whose behavior can reduce them. The only questions are "are the taxes high enough to have an effect" and "are the taxes enough to recover all or a significant portion of the costs".

Maybe, some Republican can propose a 'guns for poor folks' program. They could get the NRA to fund it as a private charity. Or some church.

yrs,
rubato

Un-fuckin' believable....

Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised....(this is the guy who used both a Thanksgiving thread and a thread about another poster's deceased pet to grind his endless partisan axe...he simply knows no limits)

[Lord Jim]

I agree completely, now if you can just get people to first listen and second agree where it counts.

Miles, your agreement should show folks that what I've been saying about this is true...

Reasonable people can come together on some commonsense ideas that will meaningfully address this problem in a realistic way.

I'm hoping that when Obama comes forth with his "meaningful action" that this is the approach he takes....

And I hope that if he does so, that public pressure will be such on the Congress, (in both parties; there are both Republicans and Democrats who have folded like cheap lawn furniture to the leadership of the NRA) that we can get some legislation passed that will have a real positive impact, without impinging on the legitimate right of law abiding citizens to own firearms for legitimate purposes.

[Daisy]

Funny, how when a tax is proposed the party who wants to eliminate minimum wages, Unions, Social Security and Medicaid and increases the percent of people in poverty suddenly cares about poor people.

The purpose of such a tax is to transfer the costs to those who are responsible for those costs and whose behavior can reduce them. The only questions are "are the taxes high enough to have an effect" and "are the taxes enough to recover all or a significant portion of the costs".

Maybe, some Republican can propose a 'guns for poor folks' program. They could get the NRA to fund it as a private charity. Or some church.

yrs,
rubato

Un-fuckin' believable....

Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised....(this is the guy who used both a Thanksgiving thread and a thread about another poster's deceased pet to grind his endless partisan axe...he simply knows no limits)

Sorry Jim, I agree with him on this one.

It might have been massively tongue in cheek and laden with Rubatish, but generally I agree.

[Scooter]

To the question "can the Westboro Baptist morons possibly sink any lower?", we now have an answer:

On Saturday, Shirley Phelps-Roper – a member of the extremely controversial Westboro Baptist Church - messaged with a tweet on the social media platform of Twitter:

Westboro will picket Sandy Hook Elementary School to sing praise to God for the glory of his work in executing his judgment.

The message on Twitter was sent the day after 20 children and six adults were killed by Adam Lanza in the horrific massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The members of the Westboro Baptist Church, most notably known for picketing funerals of military personnel throughout the United States, will be protesting during President Barack Obama’s visit to the town on Sunday as well as after the president’s visit.

[Guinevere]

I'm pretty sure those disgusting creatures won't be picketing anywhere *near* the school. It's set back off the main road a bit, and I've read several accounts that say the school and grounds, and roads leading to the school remain closed indefinitely. The kids and teachers will be using a mothballed school in a neighboring community, once they decide to start classes back up.

[Lord Jim]

To the question "can the Westboro Baptist morons possibly sink any lower?", we now have an answer:

Yeah, I knew it wouldn't be long before those whack jobs chimed in....

In fact I checked out their website, and they posted about this the day it happened...(It was so disgusting I decided not to re-post it here.)

the good news about them is that they've lost two thirds of their already tiny membership over the past few years, and that it probably won't be long before they shrivel up and disappear completely....

Sorry Jim, I agree with him on this one.

It might have been massively tongue in cheek and laden with Rubatish, but generally I agree.

Daze, I thought about whether or not to respond to your comment, (because I really don't want to get into a back and forth with that prick in this thread) but the clear intent of his post, was to mock my sincerity on this subject, and I found that highly offensive.

[Guinevere]

Did no one read the Nick Kristof article I linked? Some of his suggestions:

So what can we do? A starting point would be to limit gun purchases to one a month, to curb gun traffickers. Likewise, we should restrict the sale of high-capacity magazines so that a shooter can’t kill as many people without reloading.

We should impose a universal background check for gun buyers, even with private sales. Let’s make serial numbers more difficult to erase, and back California in its effort to require that new handguns imprint a microstamp on each shell so that it can be traced back to a particular gun.

He also references successes in Australia and Canada with more restrictions on rapid-fire weapons, longer waiting periods to purchase a gun -- because lets face it, who needs one "immediately" and maybe if we made people wait, and require a reference or two, we'd have a chance at noticing/diagnosing if they in fact had a mental break.

Other countries offer a road map. In Australia in 1996, a mass killing of 35 people galvanized the nation’s conservative prime minister to ban certain rapid-fire long guns. The “national firearms agreement,” as it was known, led to the buyback of 650,000 guns and to tighter rules for licensing and safe storage of those remaining in public hands.

The law did not end gun ownership in Australia. It reduced the number of firearms in private hands by one-fifth, and they were the kinds most likely to be used in mass shootings.

In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings — but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. The murder rate with firearms has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to data compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and the suicide rate with firearms has dropped by more than half.

Or we can look north to Canada. It now requires a 28-day waiting period to buy a handgun, and it imposes a clever safeguard: gun buyers should have the support of two people vouching for them.

[Econoline]

The Onion says what much of the nation world is thinking.

(Closing line of the story: "At press time…screw it, there’s nothing else to say.")

[Lord Jim]

Guin, for the most part those seem like reasonable ideas to me...

I'm fine with the idea of restricting folks to buying no more than one gun a month, and extending mandatory background checks to gun shows and private sales...I think most people, including gun owners (of which I am one) would have no problem with those things either...

We can do those things, and should, but I don't think any of those sorts of regulations will have anywhere near the effect on reducing deaths that restriction on magazine size (with robust enforcement and stiff penalties) will have.

[Guinevere]

He also included restricting magazine size and restricting generally the availability of rapid-fire guns. I can see these together with longer waiting times, background checks, and some sort of reference, in a total legislative package, and will be writing to my Congressmen and the President, plus doing other lobbying supporting these types of controls and restrictions.

[Miles]

Please don't take this as an attempt to highjack this thread or make light of a very serious situation. Perhaps they should pattern gun registration after the application process for the granting of Social Security Disability Benefits. That could slow down the process.

[Gob]

I'm fine with the idea of restricting folks to buying no more than one gun a month, and extending mandatory background checks to gun shows and private sales...I think most people, including gun owners (of which I am one) would have no problem with those things either...

I find it heartbreaking that people I consider sensible and intelligent, (yes even you Jim,) would be even contemplating that as anything other than a no-brainer. WTF would some one need to buy 12 guns in a year for?

Please all of you I consider friends, move to Australia or France or New Zealand, (even the fucking UK,) be safe.

[Miles]

Strop, baby steps. First you crawl then you walk and then you can run. Time is the key we all realize the price that is possible to pay in the long run but it takes time to change. None of us want a repeat of this incident and even one life is one too many. Monumental tasks take enormous effort and time is the key factor. You will have to understand that in the U.S. gun ownership is a very fundamental right that will take time to modify. Even a small modification is a major victory that will be hard fought to win.

[Gob]

Thanks Miles, I agree with you, but my astonishment that this situation even exists in a country at the forefront of the first world remains undiminished.

Interesting article from the BBC.

The Connecticut school shootings have horrified America. But what impact, if any, will they have on the nation's gun laws?

Even in a nation with a roll call of gun massacres so long and familiar - Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Jonesboro and many others - the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary have a singular capacity to shock.

Twenty children and six adults lie dead. A gunman who forced his way into the school took their lives and his own.

The tragedy has re-opened the debate over the nation's gun laws as long-term supporters of reform have issued calls for tighter controls.

After the shootings, an emotional President Barack Obama promised "meaningful action", adding: "As a country, we have been through this too many times."

According to a July 2012 study by the magazine Mother Jones of 62 mass murders carried out in the US since 1982, three quarters of the 139 firearms used by the killers were held legally. Of these, more than 60 were semi-automatic handguns and over 30 were assault weapons.

But in a country with an estimated 300m guns, where the right to bear arms is mentioned in the constitution, gun control advocates are wary of claiming that change is at hand.

Public support for stricter gun legislation has been on a downward trend in recent years, along with overall levels of violent crime.

This, after all, is a nation where the pro-gun National Rifle Association (NRA) has more than 4m members. According to the Small Arms Survey, there were 88.8 firearms for every 100 Americans in 2007.

Likewise, US legal and political trends have been moving away from supporters of greater controls, says James Jacobs, director of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice at New York University.

"All of the policy momentum in the last 20 years has been in the direction of gun owners' rights," he says.

The Supreme Court decided in 2008 that the US constitution's second amendment gives Americans the right to own guns for personal use, rather than just protecting the collective right of states to maintain militias.

The House of Representatives is currently controlled by the Republican party, which has ties to the NRA. Republican President George W Bush allowed a federal ban on assault weapons to expire in 2004.

Meanwhile, the backlash against Democratic politicians who passed gun control bills in 1993 and 1994 frightened centre-left candidates into steering clear of the issue, says Kristin Goss of Duke University.

"The Democrats have a belief that it's not a winning issue for them," she adds.

As a result, gun rights were barely an issue during the 2012 election, apart from when President Obama reaffirmed his support for an assault weapon ban in response to a question during one of the presidential debates.

Other countries have responded by tightening their gun laws following public outcries in the wake of mass shootings.

Access to firearms were restricted in the UK following the 1987 Hungerford massacre and handguns were effectively banned in the aftermath of the 1996 school shooting in Dunblane.

Australia introduced sweeping new gun laws after 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania, were shot dead in 1996. Finland - which has some of Europe's most relaxed firearms legislation and highest rates of gun ownership - placed extra restrictions on handgun permits in the wake of a 2008 college shooting which killed 11.

But not all such atrocities have provoked this response. Norway, where firearms restrictions were already robust, did not tighten its gun laws after Anders Behring Breivik's 2011 attacks.

Certainly, in the US, earlier mass shootings - there have been 13 such attacks in 2012, according to the Washington Post - have failed to provoke change.

The scale and nature of the Connecticut massacre, however, has put gun control back on the agenda in a way that other tragedies have not. Likewise, liberals hope the president's fresh mandate following his re-election will give him greater confidence to speak out on the subject.

While not impossible, fresh firearms legislation remains a long shot, says Robert Spitzer, a professor at the State University of New York and author of The Politics of Gun Control.

"People are genuinely shocked by this," he adds. "Obama is in a position to exert some leadership on this issue. But it's very difficult for me to imagine the new Congress enacting new gun laws."

Even if the president were to take the initiative, he says, institutional barriers would stand in his way.

The US system means that most gun legislation is set by states rather than the federal government. Connecticut has relatively tight firearms restrictions by US standards.

A whole range of legal loopholes would have to be unpicked, too. The Brady Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, requires federal background checks on firearm purchases by flagging up buyers with a criminal record or a history of mental health problems.

But 40% of gun sales are not affected by the legislation because they take place between private individuals - including at gun show stands or through the internet.

Even where checks are performed, they are not foolproof.

Jared Loughner, who wounded US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others during a 2011 shooting in Arizona, was sold a Glock 19 handgun despite having had several run-ins with the police hand having been thrown out of his college for erratic behaviour. But he had never been convicted of a crime nor assessed by mental health professionals.

In response, supporters of gun rights argue that clinical outreach, not new regulations, is the answer.

"I think this is more of a mental health problem than a gun control problem," says Mr Jacobs.

Advocates of greater regulation point to the fact that the US has 3.2 firearms homicides per 100,000 population compared with 1.6 for Canada, 1.0 for Australia and 0.1 for England and Wales, according to a 2012 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

But even the staunchest gun control supporters concede it may be impossible to ever envisage UK-style gun laws in a nation where there is currently nearly one firearm for every citizen.

Ultimately, says Ms Goss, any political pressure for change will have to come from the bottom up rather than the top down.

"I don't think leaders are going to lead on this," she says. "I think they are going to follow."

[Rick]

I am very very sorry for those that lost anyone or knew anyone that lost someone in this tragedy.

Lanza was not a gun owner, in CT one must be 21 to own a gun, he was 20...

[Lord Jim]

Why the killer's mother felt the need, in an upper middle class suburban community, to have this level of firepower on hand, is certainly a legitimate question, and something I'm sure we'll learn more about in the coming days.

[Gob]

Why the killer's mother felt the need, in an upper middle class suburban community, to have this level of firepower on hand, and knowing she had a son who was as nutty as batshit, is certainly a legitimate question, and something I'm sure we'll learn more about in the coming days.

Fixed.