I don`t normally step away from the subject of this blog, but this tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut more than warrants it. As President Obama mentioned, this has happened too many times in America. Something is seriously wrong with a society that suffers terrible incidents like this, and yet refuses to take any concrete action to deal with it.
Obviously, there are many factors involved in the creation of a homicidal psychopath, and it is impossible to avoid individuals like this sicko entirely, but as much as NRA enthusiasts decry that it is people who kill people, not guns, the simple fact remains that if this homicidal maniac had not been able to get his hands on the firearms he had, he would not have been able to carry out the wanton murder of 26 people - not to mention the mutilation of all the lives of their families and friends.
It`s time for Americans to assess whether his right to bear arms outweighs the rights of all those children to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - rights they were denied.
I expect I may receive some angry reactions to a post like this, and that`s ok - that`s what free speech is all about - but I don`t want to to turn what is supposed to be a fun, kinky corner of the web into a socio-political forum.
I`ve done my soapboxing, and we will resume our regular programming presently.
As the title implies, this blog is all about butt-bruising, tush-tanning, seat-smacking, heiny-heating SPANKING! (strictly of the Female Dominant kind; here we treat a lady with respect - except, of course, when we want to get her mad enough to, well, you know...)
Thank you, 6 and 7 year old children struck down before their life began.....something is wrong here.
ReplyDeleteJust sad.
Thank you
You are a very sensitive fellow... Thank you for your post. I could never be angry at you.
DeleteYou only speak common sense.
ReplyDeleteLet's see how the NRA fans and industrial lobbies cover this new tragedy... until next one.
The NRA feels it has the right to force its own set of values on the country, despite the latest poll showing that 58% of Americans support stricter gun control legislation.
ReplyDeleteAnd because they have much of Congress in their pocket, I expect very little will change.
Your analysis is incorrect. We don't have stricter gun control not because the NRA is some sinister force, but because they represent many millions of voters who can and will turn politicians out of office who attempt to deprive them of their right to bear arms - a right guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment, and not subject to infringement by a temporary majority, even if one actually exists.
DeleteNote also that gun control laws already failed in this instance, the shooter having no legal right to possess the arms he did under Connecticut law. You might also consider that Anders Brevik killed over three times as many people only two years ago in Norway, where gun control is strict indeed.
If you want to minimize the chances of another incident like this, here are three common-sense suggestions:
1. Adopt concealed-carry laws. Statistics show they work. People who have an irrational fear of guns won't like it, but many mass shootings have been prevented by citizens carrying guns.
2. Lunatic control - makes a lot more sense than gun control. For about the past fifty years, we've been more and more turning dangerous people out on the streets instead of putting them in mental hospitals where they can get treatment.
3. Beef up school security. This could be as simple as locking the doors during the day, or it could involve having armed guards on the premises.
One further point: it's hard to resist the temptation to write about political issues on a spanking site, but it's probably good to do so. 50% of your readers are going to disagree with whatever you say, even if you're right. Many, many times I've wanted to pen editorials about how Obama is wrecking the country, but I save it for the political sites. You might want to do the same.
Actually, it is web-ed's analysis which is flawed, on several points. The fact that the shooter had no legal right to possess his weapons is more of an argument in favor of stricter gun control regulations and enforcement that would have a better chance of keeping such weapons out of the hands of illegal possessors.
DeleteTo cite the Norway incident as a failure of gun laws is to neglect the larger picture. While mass shootings can and do occur elsewhere, an examination of the global statistics is telling. A listing of mass and school shootings worldwide - (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html
tabulates such incidents from 1996 to the present. Of the 80 such occurrences, 65 occurred in the U.S. To assume this has no correlation to the ready availability and RELATIVE ease of purchasing firearms in America is naieve, at best, and willfully blind at worst. It MAY suggest that more regulation in other countries is what has prevented more mass shootings - though I grant that that conclusion is an assumption as well.
Adopting concealed-carry laws is a very gray area. Web-ed is correct when he points out that gun-related crimes have dropped in many states that have adopted concealed-carry legislation. However, analysts are not in agreement that such a drop can be solely attributed to those policies. Nevertheless, there MIGHT be an argument behind the idea that concealed-carry laws have interfered in other types of crimes (robberies, muggings, that sort of thing), but mass shootings? A quick perusal of the multiple concealed-carry locations in the aforementioned list argues otherwise.
The other two points are valid and I would wholeheartedly agree. Armed law enforcement having a greater presence in our schools makes sense. Maybe we could divert some of the manpower wasted on monitoring speeding violations to protecting our children.
Web-ed is also correct when he points out that if the Constitution is what we look to as the guideline to our society, then it cannot be subject to the shifting political winds. There is still much debate on the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, but if we are to accept the latest Supreme Court ruling that declared the right to bear arms extends to individual protection, then the challenge that faces America is how do we achieve that and yet keep those arms out of the hands of criminals and mentally unbalanced individuals as much as is humanly possible?
I have received a large number of submitted comments on this post, and to avoid an ongoing firestorm, I have not posted them all. I decided to choose what I thought were the most thoughtful opinions on both sides of the issue, and now, having done so, I AM SHUTTING DOWN THIS THREAD, so that I can get back to blogging about what my visitors come here for.
DeleteI will grant that web-ed was right in pointing out I probably should never have opened this door. So I am closing it. Topics like this are better served elsewhere on the web.
Therefore - Please do not submit any further comments on this post. They will go unpublished and unread.
I understand and sympathize with your desire to support gun control in that it would make you feel like you were doing something to prevent such a tragedy from repeating. The problem is, the guns are not the cause of tragedies like this, and even if we could remove every gun from the face of the earth with a snap of our fingers it would not defeat this epidemic.
ReplyDeleteThe knee jerk reaction is to begin to shout about controlling the weapon used, but lets be honest for a moment. This man killed children in a grade school. He could have gone into that school armed with a carving knife and a paperweight in a sock, and still reaped a massive toll in life. Of course if he only had a knife or some such weapon, then he could have been overpowered more easily with makeshift weapons such as chairs and lamps, that were quick to hand. But again, had he wanted to, he could have ended the life of at least a dozen children before any adult in the room would have overcome shock enough to react.
Gun control is an issue, separate, in and of its self, and I am not going to weigh in on that here, instead lets focus on the reality of this terrible tragedy instead of allowing others to use something of such horror to stir our emotions so that they can promote whatever agenda they are pushing. Lets step beyond the knee jerk reaction and look at what we could really do to prevent this sort of thing.
If you really want to prevent the next mass shooting.. stop watching it on the news, stop reading articles about it, stop talking about it at lunch, if you feel up to it, write you local news outlet and let them know you will not be watching their program for a week or 2 until you feel that they will have moved on.
Psychiatrist after psychiatrist have gone on the record stating that the media blitz which we converge on every successive shooting is fuel on the fire for the type of person who would do this. They have made public statements to the effect that the media attention is the REASON that these things occur. The attention serves as both the lure, promising fame to a mentally disturbed individual, and the catalyst and trigger which will propel the next shooter to action.
Say want you like about gun control, believe what you like about guns. The fact is fewer households have guns today then did 50 years ago. When I was a child, the thing stopping school shootings was DEFIANTLY NOT the availability of guns, as I knew more children whose parents had guns then those who did not. The thing stopping these sorts of random shoots was... the lack of incentive. But thanks to our global/national news conglomerates, now, you walk into a school pull a trigger half a dozen times, and your name goes down in history.
If we really want to stop this, forget the names. Let the shooters and the tragedy fade into the mists of obscurity. Let the tragedy live on only in the memory of survivors and those close to survivors and victims.
Have the respect for those truly effected to stop pretending that this really effects us all. Afford them the privacy that we would hope for if we were to have to go through something so horrifying.
And let those monsters and fools who commit such senseless acts of violence be so utterly forgotten that they cease to exist. Let them be forgotten out of history. Only then will the impetus to commit such savagery also fade from out culture.
Thanks for your lengthy and thoughtful reply. I agree with you, for the most part. The media shares the bulk of the blame for providing a source of fame for psychotics, and we should remember only the names of the victims.
DeleteAnd I agree that guns are not the source of the problem. However, their availability facilitates a psychotic's urges to kill large numbers of people. If he had been armed only with a knife or any non-projectile weapon, he would not have to able to kill at a distance, his victims would have been able to flee and he would have been overwhelmed quickly. As you say, he might still have killed a few, but if regulating firearms might have made the difference of even one child's life, then I think it would be worthwhile. Yes, mass murderers will not go away if we remove all the guns, but they would not have the capacity for the kind of impact they are capable of now.
I have received a large number of submitted comments on this post, and to avoid an ongoing firestorm, I have not posted them all. I decided to choose what I thought were the most thoughtful opinions on both sides of the issue, and now, having done so, I AM SHUTTING DOWN THIS THREAD, so that I can get back to blogging about what my visitors come here for.
ReplyDeleteI will grant that web-ed was right in pointing out I probably should never have opened this door. So I am closing it. Topics like this are better served elsewhere on the web.
Therefore - Please do not submit any further comments on this post. They will go unpublished and unread.