What President Obama Should Say About The Latest School Shooting

There was yet another mass shooting today in Newtown, Connecticut. At a school. An elementary school. Maybe as many as 26 dead including 18 children. And what we are bound to hear is that today is not the day to talk about gun control. Today is not the day to be so callous as to politicize this tragedy.

But this isn't about politicization for political gain. This is about bringing to the forefront something that is brushed aside all too often under the misguided pretense that the time for mourning is now and the time for solutions is later. But later never comes. And then we go on our merry way completely or conveniently disregarding the tragedy as the act of a crazy person. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Yeah... people WITH GUNS kill people. People with automatic weapons kill people a lot faster.

This is the type of moment that Obama should seize to talk about the lax gun laws in this country, but he won't. No politician will say what needs to be said. Something like this:

Let's take a moment to think about the victims of this horrific tragedy, and those whose lives have been permanently affected by this senseless violent act.  

Now, what are we going to do about this? I know I've been vilified by the NRA and the right wing. Their fear-mongering ways have led many to believe that I'm going to take away your guns. If you look at the actual record, it couldn't be further from the truth. But now enough is enough. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to have the ability to attain semi automatic weapons or large capacity pistol clips. Show me a hunter that says he uses automatic weapons to hunt and I'll show you a liar.  

This is not about taking away your Second Amendment rights. This is about making sure that people who would do someone else harm doesn't have easy access to purchase a weapon. And if they do fall through the cracks, hopefully the lack of available automatic weapons will curtail the amount of damage done the next time something like this happens.  

If now is not the time to address the growing concern of the easy access to guns, when is the right time? Someone can walk into a gun shop and walk out with a gun, even if he or she doesn't know how to use it. It's harder to obtain a driver's license in this country. You have to take a written exam and then you have to take a driver's test with an instructor to make sure you're ready to operate a vehicle. None of this applies to owning a gun. How does that make any sense? 

I am calling upon Congress to immediately take up assault weapons ban legislation similar to what was already in place during the Clinton years which was stupidly allowed to sunset under the previous administration. I am also asking for sensible federal gun legislation that will put in place a list of rules and guidelines, applications and mandatory background checks for anyone wanting to legally purchase a firearm. And I don't want to hear any excuses. None. 

If you cannot find it in your heart to do what you know is right, you will be held to account by everyone who has been touched by gun violence, not just today, not just in Portland, Oregon a few days ago, not just in Aurora, Colorado, but everyone who has had a loved one die needlessly - something that possibly could have been prevented. You'll have to look them in the eye and explain why you think their loss is less valuable than campaign contributions from the NRA and their gun lobbyists. 

If you don't have the guts to do what is right, if you cannot step up and pass legislation that will surely save lives in your district or state, that can possibly save the lives of some of your constituents in the future, I will make it my life's mission to see that you are not re-elected to such a vital and important position as a place in Congress. Lets get to work.

Wouldn't it be great if he said something like that?

Aurora Shooting: I Wish I Were Surprised

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
~George Santayana

I awoke yesterday morning to an AP alert on my phone about the shooting in Aurora, Colorado. By the time I read the two sentence alert to my wife, I was over the shock. I shrugged my shoulders, shook my head and we went about our morning. I mean, really, how can we continue to be surprised at the constant repetition of tragedies like this, when the collective "we" don't or won't do a goddamn thing about it?

Later on I channel surfed a bit knowing all news would stop this day, as it had for the previous mass shooting. And the one before that. And the one before that. And the one before that.... The President made his requisite comments. The candidate followed with much the same. They would suspend their campaigns and pull all ads from Colorado; word of that news was immediately followed by an RNC anti-Obama ad in New York. On MSNBC of all places. (Who are the RNC trying to convince?)

My cynical side started asking questions. What pundit would be the first idiot to politicize this event? How soon before someone blamed Hollywood violence? What right winger would be the first to either blame Obama or spew some backwards conspiracy that it's another attempt to take away your guns? What politician would make a complete ass of him/herself? (The answer to that last question is Rep. Louis Gohmert, by the way, who has vaulted into first place in the Dumbest Congressional Fuckwad Race. Michelle Bachmann has some competition.)

Here's a list of mass shootings since, and including, Columbine (via Newsmax):

April 1999 - two teenage schoolboys shot and killed 12 schoolmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves. 

July 1999 - a stock exchange trader in Atlanta, Georgia, killed 12 people including his wife and two children before taking his own life. 

September 1999 - a gunman opened fire at a prayer service in Fort Worth, Texas, killing six people before committing suicide. 

October 2002 - a series of sniper-style shootings occurred in Washington DC, leaving 10 dead. 

August 2003 - in Chicago, a laid-off worker shot and killed six of his former workmates. 

November 2004 - in Birchwood, Wisconsin, a hunter killed six other hunters and wounded two others after an argument with them. 

March 2005 - a man opened fire at a church service in Brookfield, Wisconsin, killing seven people. 

October 2006 - a truck driver killed five schoolgirls and seriously wounded six others in a school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania before taking his own life. 

April 2007 - student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and wounded 15 others at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, before shooting himself, making it the deadliest mass shooting in the United States after 2000. 

August 2007 - Three Delaware State University students were shot and killed in “execution style” by a 28-year-old and two 15-year-old boys. A fourth student was shot and stabbed. 

December 2007 - a 20-year-old man killed nine people and injured five others in a shopping center in Omaha, Nebraska. 

December 2007 - a woman and her boyfriend shot dead six members of her family on Christmas Eve in Carnation, Washington. 

February 2008 - a shooter who is still at large tied up and shot six women at a suburban clothing store in Chicago, leaving five of them dead and the remaining one injured. 

February 2008 - a man opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, killing five students and wounding 16 others before laying down his weapon and surrendering. 

September 2008 - a mentally ill man who was released from jail one month earlier shot eight people in Alger, Washington, leaving six of them dead and the rest two wounded. 

December 2008 - a man dressed in a Santa Claus suit opened fire at a family Christmas party in Covina, California, then set fire on the house and killed himself. Police later found nine people dead in the debris of the house. 

March 2009 - a 28-year-old laid-off worker opened fire while driving a car through several towns in Alabama, killing 10 people. 

March 2009 - a heavily armed gunman shot dead eight people, many of them elderly and sick people, in a private-owned nursing home in North Carolina. 

March 2009 - six people were shot dead in a high-grade apartment building in Santa Clara, California. 

April 2009 - a man shot dead 13 people at a civic center in Binghamton, New York. 

July 2009 - Six people, including one student, were shot in a drive-by shooting at a community rally on the campus of Texas Southern University, Houston. 

November 2009 - U.S. army psychologist Major Nidal Hasan opened fire at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas, leaving 13 dead and 42 others wounded. 

February 2010 – A professor opened fire 50 minutes into at a Biological Sciences Department faculty meeting at the University of Alabama, killing three colleagues and wounding three others. 

January 2011 - a gunman opened fire at a public gathering outside a grocery in Tucson, Arizona, killing six people including a 9-year-old girl and wounding at least 12 others. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was severely injured with a gunshot to the head.

Slaughter after slaughter and yet, what is the response? We can't possibly be callous enough to talk about something political like gun control laws so soon after the tragedy. We really shouldn't legislate something in a desperate attempt to prevent another heinous act while she should still be in mourning.  Besides, deer hunters really need access to semi-automatic rifles. And armor-piercing bullets. And pistols with 30 round clips.

So we wait just long enough until the event seeps out of the public consciousness, which these days is about 12 seconds - who's on Dancing with the Stars this season? - and the N.R. Fucking A. has enough time to circle the wagons and threaten some bullshit scoring on a bill which has nothing to do with actual gun legislation. And we forget about the shooting du jour until the next time when the whole cycle starts all over again.

Until we stop sucking NRA cock, nothing will happen. And I won't be surprised the next time either.

(Cross-posted at ABLC)

No, It's Not a Manufactured Outrage

POSTED BY JHW22

This is what I was saying before and after Gabby Giffords was shot: there's a line we shouldn't cross. This is not comparable to jokes that one can say are offensive. This is actually suggesting that killing a President is a necessary action. Nugent, at an NRA event, tells a bunch of scared men to be afraid of becoming something America will NEVER become and says it's because Obama is something he will never be. He wasn't "joking" or being "creative." He honestly believes that patriots need to stand up to the government led by Obama. And he knows that referencing America's past, and the words "patriot," and "guns" and "self-sacrifice," all are loud and clear messages that people need to take up arms against enemies domestic. And he's making it very clear that he thinks we should see and treat Obama as an enemy.

This isn't about rhetoric from a rock star. This is about a group of Americans getting louder AGAIN, as the election looms, who INSIST on making you think the only desperate act is to remove Obama from office ANY WAY NECESSARY.

Do YOU think that's how Americans have to handle their struggles? Do you think things are SO BAD that we need someone to assassinate the President? Do YOU think this kind of behavior is inconsequential? Well, it's not. And if you think this doesn't matter, then you're willfully ignorant of what's happening out there and how many people don't just disparage the President but who actually threaten harm by stirring people up to think they have to.

The Tea Partiers around here say, "Wake Up, America." Yes, wake up. Wake up and see that this kind of discourse is BAD for America. And just ignoring it and saying, "Oh, it's JUST Ted Nugent" doesn't make it stop.

I have admitted when liberals have crossed a decency line or when liberals have gone too far. I don't like when liberals suggest Nugent should suck on his own machine gun because that's unproductive and stupid. But even that suggestion is FAR from as HARMFUL to the nation as someone actually implying our President is so dangerous that he should be stopped with force.

Forget the fact that Nugent has OBVIOUSLY missed the 8 years of illegal activity. Forget the 8 years where we did suffer at the hands of a dumb President led by a vicious Vice President and aided by an bumbling, egotistical administration. Forget all that.

IF a fellow liberal went to a convention of people with the firm belief that guns are a God-given right to protect ourselves from the government just as much as a wild boar out in the uncharted lands of the west, and these men would die before giving their guns up to some phantom government gun collector, and these men truly fear their rights are being violated every second of the day, and IF the fellow liberal stirred those fellas up and suggested something should be done about the evil, criminal who is a threat to AMERICA'S SURVIVAL, then I would tell that liberal to shut the fuck up!

But I don't hear a liberal doing that. I don't hear a liberal inciting a bunch of gun-clingers to protect America. I don't hear a liberal saying that to fight for our country we actually have to fight to the death.

When liberals worry about America, we threaten challenging elections and recalls and boycotts and facts!

This isn't about the ugly name calling from any side. This is about ONE PARTY consistently coddling people who actually speak as if our President is the enemy from within and that the only way to take him out is by death.

See, a while back some liberals were mad that Obama signed some bill that clarified and tightened language about protesting at events held by elected officials. I actually supported Obama on that. Why? Because I remember the guy who showed up at an Obama event with a gun strapped to his hip and nothing could be done about it. And I knew we were entering the general election cycle and I remembered that at the last election someone yelled out "kill him." So, you know what? I'm fucking scared.

This Ted Nugent thing isn't manufactured and it's NOWHERE NEAR the level of Hilary Rosen v. Ann Romney.

We're at Gabby Giffords level here. And to mock or ignore it is fucking dangerous. These freaks actually are desperate enough to think Obama is evil. What on earth makes you think one of these freaks won't act on it?

Will it be manufactured outrage if something actually happens to Obama? NO. So stop pretending the threat is fake.

In the Shadow of Columbine

POSTED BY JHW22

On April 20, 1999 two boys entered their high school loaded up and ready to shoot in a town called Columbine.

On May 1, 1999 the National Rifle Association held it's annual meeting in Denver, CO approximately 20 miles from Columbine.

Victims were still in the hospital. Parents were still looking into bedrooms that were just as their children left them 11 days earlier, never to return. The grief was raw. Time had not yet had a chance to pass for families suffering the shock and despair of violent deaths of their loved ones. Colorado did not want the NRA meeting in the shadows of their grief.

The N.R.A., which is fiercely opposed to sensible gun laws, has urged its members to attend as a show of unity, if only for a day. On a purely emotional level, this is an insult to grieving families and to a city still shaken by tragedy. Mayor Wellington Webb bluntly told the group last week, ''We don't want you here.''

The NRA derided the desire that the meeting not be held so close, so soon:

Heston waved to the crowd from the dais with gritty determination and what appeared to be a dead raccoon stapled to his head. He began his opening remarks by addressing Mayor Webb's request that the NRA not "come here. We don't want you here."

The crowd booed at the mention of Webb's name, and one attendee shouted out, "Get out of our country, Wellington Webb!" much to the amusement of the crowd.

Today, almost nine years after the horror of September 11, famous members of the NRA say it's too soon, too close, for Park51/Cordoba House, a community center, to be New York City blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood.

But if 11 days was soon enough for guns, shouldn't nine years be soon enough for community?

Charlton Heston Dead at 84

NY TIMES: Charlton Heston, who appeared in some 100 films in his 60-year acting career but who is remembered chiefly for his monumental, jut-jawed portrayals of Moses, Ben-Hur and Michelangelo, died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 84, according to his family.

It's a shame that Heston's amazing career is overshadowed in my eyes by his NRA presidency in his later life.

Rumors of his death being the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound while cleaning his rifle are greatly exaggerated. As my friend Armadillo Joe said, "I guess we can take his gun now."

On a lighter note, here's my favorite Heston quote:



What's yours?

Giuliani Theatre

Walt Handelsman has a great new animation video worth watching.