Newtown Shooter Headed for the Memory Hole?

Stacy McCain thinks that just because Newtown Massacre shooter was a sexually confused, as well as autistic, he will disappear from history.

Mass Murderer Also Gay Pedophile?

This might give gay pedophiles a bad reputation:

The state’s attorney report on the horrific murders at the Sandy Hook Elementary School by shooter Adam Lanza found no “conclusive motive” for his actions but did document unsettling facts about the 20-year-old killer, including computer files he kept on the rights of pedophiles, a movie about man/boy love, instant messages concerning “homosexual fantasies,” numerous mass murder documents, and a computer game entitled “School Shooting.”

Jammie Wearing Fools: “Well, this will probably be the last you ever hear about Adam Lanza from the mainstream media.” Indeed.

Nope, no such luck.  The fact that he got guns legally and used them illegally will be the point of any reference to him by the media for the foreseeable future. The fact that he was a homosexual pedophile will not be mentioned, as it will not fit the agenda.  Witness serial killer John Wayne Gacy, for whom the homosexual aspect of his motivations is thoroughly documented, but rarely emphasized, and certainly not used as a reason for suspicion of homosexuals.

In any event, crazy is it's own excuse; there's rarely an overt cause for it, and the symptoms occur in clusters, with several dysfunctions commonly occurring in the same victim  It's more important to detect, treat, and if necessary, control the insane than it is to similarly control the vast majority of sane.

Newton Residents Vote with their Pocketbooks

Gun Permits Surge After Shooting 

NEWTOWN, Conn.—The number of people seeking permits to buy guns has surged in this town following the December massacre of schoolchildren by a local man, even as the parents of some victims had urged stricter weapons laws nationwide.

Through July 24, more than 200 people in Newtown have received new local pistol permits, according to a review of local records, surpassing the 171 new permits issued for all of last year. Such permits are prerequisites for Connecticut permits that allow people to purchase and carry pistols as well as rifles or shotguns.

There's nothing quite like a real, honest threat to take something away from someone to make them appreciate the value of having it.  As Joni Mitchell said:

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Til its gone

Student Uses AR-15 to Save Self, Roomie

While Democrats attempt to ban "military-style assault weapons" like the AR-15, a Rochester Institute of Technology student used that very gun to thwart home invaders and save his roommate’s life. Article from Breitbart:

Christopher Boise heard noises in the basement of his apartment; when he went to investigate, he found two intruders. One of the men trained a gun on him. Boise screamed, which woke his roommate, Raymond, who grabbed his gun bag and took out his AR-15.

One invader opened Raymond’s door only to see the barrel of the gun.

"By the time I had it out and ready, one of the men came at my door, slowly opened it, saw that there was a barrel on the other side and from there backed out," Raymond said.

The men fled the apartment without taking anything. No shots were fired in the confrontation.

"I'm happy he saved my life. I was very thankful he had his (gun)," said Boise.

A few weeks ago, a 15-year old boy used his father’s AR-15 to stop two home invaders when he and his sister were home alone.

While it's useful to have stories like this out there, to counter act the "you don't need a military style assault rifle", "they're only to kill people", "a gun is more likely to kill it's owner than to save a life" etc, etc, etc, there is a larger point to be made.

While mass murders and massacres like Newton may cost 10s or 20s of lives at one time, guns can save lives, quietly, one or two at a time, and not make a major splash in the media.  A crime stopped is a crime that's not likely to be on NBC at 5 PM, or touted by Piers Morgan.

Would the student and his roommate have been killed by the intruders had he not had the AR-15? It's probably unknowable.  But guns in private hands are used to stop hundreds of thousands if not millions of crimes annually, some fraction of those were statistically certain to become murders.  Probably many more than are killed by long guns in the average year.


Is an AR-15 (or similar scary black gun) essential to this function?  Again, in individual cases, it might not be clear (would this intruder have backed off against a snub nose .38 revolver? Maybe, maybe not), but certainly, an AR-15 would be an intimidating weapon to face on the other side of the door. 




And, in general, they are poor weapons for the average criminal, since they are not particularly concealable and likely to draw attention in public; the last thing a criminal wants.

And if you only read one (other) pro-gun article, read this one by David Mamet, playwright and ex-liberal.

And no, the chicks with gun pics aren't totally gratuitous.  Home self defense is for everyone, not just boys.

The DaleyGator picked this up in their post "DaleyBabe Megan Ratzlaff and other Rule 5 greatness." Also picked up by the Classical Liberal in his Rule 5 post "Pistol Grip Pump." It's Tuesday and Wombat-Socho has his grand weekly Rule 5  post up at "The Other McCain."

Ted Finally Shamed Me Into It

I joined the NRA.  Through years of owning and using, and then owning and not using guns, I have avoided joining, because I thought they were doing OK without me.  I accepted the benefit without sharing the cost.  How American is that?

I'd been thinking I should for a few days now.  It's been clear since Newtown that the left is coming for guns, to take away as much as they can before the fervor dies down again, and people realize how little difference gun control will make, and to repeat it with even more fervor the next time the inevitable tragedy happens, claiming that they just need to take a few more rights away this time, and everything will be all right.

Of course it won't.  People will remain people, and horrible stuff will continue to happen despite all efforts to deny them the tools to do so.

Is the NRA the perfect vehicle?  Of course not, but it the strongest one we have now.

If you want to join, you can do it here.

When Will Dick Gregory Go to Jail?

Dick Gregory violates Washington D.C. Gun Law on Camera

NBC’s David Gregory on Sunday held up a high-capacity magazine for ammunition on national television, a possible violation of Washington, D.C. gun law.

Gregory was asking National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre whether the NRA was willing to cede any ground on new gun legislation following the Dec. 14 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

“Here is a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets,” Gregory said on “Meet the Press,” holding it up. “Now isn’t it possible that if we got rid of these, if we replaced them and said, ‘Well, you could only have a magazine that carries five bullets or ten bullets,’ isn’t it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like Newtown?”

Strictly a rhetorical question, of course. Liberal jourolisters are allowed to violate the laws in the interest of the agenda.

In other news, despite castigating Wayne LaPierre for proposing armed guards at schools, David Gregory's own children go to the private school, Sidwell Friends, which has armed guards, in addition to the armed Secret Service agents there to protect the President's kids. Having their kids protected by armed guards is clearly intended to be perk for our betters.

If You Only Read One Post About Guns in Schools...

Read this one.  A little slow at first; it wouldn't hurt to skip the first three paragraphs or so.

Mass Shootings Require Curtailing Civil Rights

Turning the Tables on the Press

The time for action is now. The recent spate of mass shootings must finally spur us to do what must be done. We need press control. That's right, the media is out of control and they are enabling and certainly promoting the sick bastards who are slaughtering innocents. The Founders could not have envisioned a 24/7 news cycle with blaring soundtracks, garish headlines, and a relentless, almost pornographic sensationalism. There is no doubt the sad souls who plot these horrors can picture their faces beaming from screens around the world. They gain a notoriety they could never achieve otherwise and the ghouls who give them a stage must bear their responsibility.

Back in the day, you had to take quill to parchment, or if you were doing mass media you could run off a couple of hundred pamphlets. The high capacity, assault weapons of cable news and the internet were as unimagined in colonal times as nuclear weapons. The Bill of Rights is not suicide pact and an unabridged press does not mean very channel should be as well-armed as the New York Times. Semi-automatic handguns have been around since the 1890s but school shootings are a much more recent development. What has changed since then? Instant fame, or more properly infamy, that's what and it is time to put some common sense controls on the folks who give these losers a chance to live forever.

Read the rest. Spotted at the ONT.

The Newtown Massacre

I suppose I can't get away without talking about this.

We all know the facts, such as they are known at the moment.  A young man took guns that his mother had purchased, killed his mother, and went to the school where she worked.  When he was not "buzzed in", he shot out the window, entered the school and went on a killing rampage, killing 20 children and 6 adults, including the school's principal, before committing suicide when the authorities arrived.  I won't use any names, because, really, they don't matter, we're talking about bigger issues.

The shooter, some 24 years old, reported to be possibly autistic with "Aspergers syndrome" (the fancy diagnosis for intelligent but strange), was the product of a broken home, estranged from his father and bother and reputedly a big "gamer."

What can can be done? Honestly, I don't know.

Aside from the constitutional objections, gun control won't eliminate the possibility of such occurrences.  Literally tens or hundreds of millions of guns are already in circulation. They last essentially forever if maintained correctly, and even a total gun ban was put in place, and confiscation ordered, it would be result only in the removing guns from the hand of the lawful.  As they say, if guns were outlawed, only outlaws would have guns.  Anyone determined to kill multiple innocent children, and commit suicide would likely find a way to get a gun.

Tighter screening for gun owners?  Pretty tight screening already exists when new guns are sold.  The fact is crazy people conceal the depths of their disease all the time, and such screening will be only partially effective at best.  As with all such programs, the cost and invasiveness  of the program will increase exponentially, while the effectiveness will achieve diminishing returns. The point at which the costs are worth the benefit will always be a matter of debate, and a bone of contention.  In this case for instance, the purchaser of the guns passed the screening, and should have, unless one of our new criteria for rejection would be motherhood with a weird child.

Armed guards at all schools?  There are approximately 98,000 public schools in the US. Let's round that to 100,000.   Assume that each school would require only 1 armed guard, no allowance for sickness and vacations, etc, and that each guard costs $50,000 a year (remember, salaries are much less than total cost in the average governmental institution). That's approximately $5 billion per year to save maybe 50 lives a year, tops or $100,000,000 per life saved.  I'm not sure what the accepted price for a human life is these days, but I know it's a lot less than that, by a least one order of magnitude.

At some level you simply have to assume that life is not perfect, and that you cannot hope to eliminate the possibility of tragedies, and do the best you can to design a society that allows freedom, and minimizes the possibility of such tragedy, and maximizes the chance of stopping it should it occur, within a reasonable use of resources, while maintaining optimal amounts of personal freedom.