[A repost of an essay from July, in the light -- the in-lit
darkness -- of the Connecticut events. Not grinding any axe here, just being
blandly analytical.]
"You think Social Security is
the third rail of politics, try guns," says one Republican strategist. A
number of Democrats have also been skittish on the issue.
-- LA Times, 15 Dec 2012
~
In one respect, legal restrictions proved effective:
Just days before the school
shooting, Adam Lanza attempted to purchase a single “long gun” rifle from a
local gun store but was turned away because he did not want to wait for the
required 14-day background check.
-- id.
Apparently he subsequently stole the murder weapons from his
mother -- who, ironically, was herself something of a gun-nut, keeping several
semi-automatic weapons around the house -- killing her with her own gun. She thus literally hoist with her
own petard. Unfortunately she took a bunch of kids with her.
[Update 16 December 2012] The print media have done their homework:
As for NPR the past 24 hours, it has mostly been just
glurge.
Likewise the Los Angeles Times:
In Connecticut, a mother coped silently with a troubled son
Nancy Lanza, who police say was the
first victim in her son's shooting rampage, had battled with the school
district over him before quitting her job to teach him at home.
This woman-as-martyred-victim narrative won’t fly:
“Nancy Lanza divorced in 2009 and was awarded the house and enough money — up
to $12,450 a month in alimony, according to local news outlets that reviewed
the divorce files — that she didn't have to work.” And her method
of ‘coping’ with her wacko son was to take him to firing ranges to “improve
his aim”.
[Update 17 XII 2012] In the post below, I identified
the latent subtext of the hardcore (assault-rifle) gun-culture as having
nothing to do with "hunting" ('Take that, terror-squirrel!'), and everything to do with [censored] and
[redacted].
And so it is in this case. The mother (truly the
central figure in this affair, and not her pitiful flaky son) was a "prepper":
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/preppers-survivalist-doomsday-obama
* * *
Disclaimer:
Lest anyone imagine
that I harbor mean and hurtful thoughts about guns per se,
check out the action
at the site of my buddy,
the two-fisted,
pistol-packing, wise-cracking pre-Consiliar private eye,
Murphy!
* * *
[Update 18 XII 2012] OK, the survivalists who arm themselves against the ZOG and the space aliens and what have you, at least we can see where they're coming from. Likewise the high-schoolers who shoot up their own high-school. But this new elementary-school fetish is straining the synapses of comprehension:
December 18, 2012
While most Americans spent the weekend in shock and
mourning following the shooting deaths of 20 first-graders and six teachers and
staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., at least a few of our
fellow citizens were thinking that killing school kids is a cool idea.
On Sunday, Los Angeles police arrested 24-year-old
Kyle Bangayan at his parents’ house in East Hollywood. Bangayan had posted a
Facebook message in which he threatened to shoot children at several elementary
schools. Police found nine guns in the home.
Also Sunday, far from the tough streets of L.A. in the
rural town of Sedro-Wooley, Wash., police arrested 19-year-old Korry Martinson.
After praising the Newtown shooter and blaming the government for incidents of
mass slaughter, Martinson wrote on his Facebook page, “If this causes our gun
laws to be taken away, to the point as to where I cannot own a gun, I will
personally get my sawed off double barreled shotgun and my AK-47 and go shoot
up every school within a 100 mile radius of my current location.”
Police in Sedro-Wooley did not find any guns in
Martinson’s possession, but on Friday, the same day as the shooting in Newtown,
police in Cedar Lake, Ind., collected 47 guns at the home of a 60-year-old man,
Von Meyer, who they say had threatened to kill his wife and shoot up the
elementary school located just 1,000 feet from his home.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-emulate-killer-20121217,0,5881004.story
Interesting factoid: "With 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has 50 percent of the guns." (Washington Post)
[Update 20 Dec 2012]
As the French see us:
Ruée sur les armureries à Newtown
Malgré les drames sanglant qui
émaillent l'actualité, il est toujours aussi facile de se procurer des armes de
guerre aux États-Unis.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2012/12/19/01003-20121219ARTFIG00591-ruee-sur-les-armureries-a-newtown-et-dans-tout-le-pays.php?m_i=IlHIeIbey3lGZsT9QSn2ockBIRcbp4JX6p3gDR354wvTS33cX
*
Si cela vous parle,
savourez la série
noire
en argot authentique
d’Amérique :
*
~ ~ [original post, VII 2012] ~~
[Yeeeeee-IPES !?!! Is the World of Dr Justice going to tackle that hot-potato? Why not just come right out and discuss the Abortion of Baby Pandas ??]
Tempers are high. A man’ll draw his gun to prove a point, quicker than he’ll draw on his logic.
That’s where I come in.
-- Marshall Dillon, “Gunsmoke”.
The recent events in Colorado -- fretted over here -- have inevitably given rise to a certain amount of hand-wringing on the topic of gun control, given that the perp acquired his weapons and ammo legally. But mostly, on the op-ed pages; both Presidential candidates are tip-toeing around this. And even the op-editors [I might have just coined that word, hm] mostly say that (shrug, sigh) nothing will ever happen. Which is probably true, but which, if that is your opening move, is certainly true.
Nor
is it our intention to pronounce one way or the other on the merits of
this or that proposed (or potentially proposed) legislative measure,
whether at the state level, or (necessarily, to be at all effective in a
case like this, where the perp bought on the internet, and planned for
months) the federal. What little we have to say is in no way
political -- nor even a matter of logic, such as we have previously brought to bear upon certain other sociopolitical questions.
No -- what we intend is to do two things:
(1) To point out a certain elephant in the room.
(2) To tell you something you don’t already know, since it describes the weapons situation in Yemen.
So.
(1)
First of all, it is quite obvious that the insistence of the gun lobby
on access to assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, and armor-piercing
bullets, has nothing to do with hunting ducks or deer. The demand
compasses two principal purposes:
(a) To overthrow the government, in the event that it should become
tyrannical (a point already reaching, according to some, whose hard core
includes ZOG-mavens and Christian Identity types);
(b) To kill blacks in the event of a race war.
I mean… this-all is as plain as the nose on your face.
Nor do I mention these taboos with a view to discrediting them or raising a scandal: I mean, what would you
do, in the event of true tyranny, or race war? I mention these merely
in the most pacific and almost indifferent spirit, simply to clear the
air. The debate as it is usually waged proceeds upon terms so detached
from reality as to be an embarrassment.
(2) Now, the thing to know about Yemen is, they have no gun control. Heck, they have no bomb
control. There have long been free-wheeling open-air weapons markets
in the ill-policed rugged North. There was a widely-read column by a
Yemeni political humorist awhile back, imagining such a place, with all
manner of smuggled goods on offer, offering bombs “big enough to blow up
a five-storey building” and (if that was out of your price-range) more
modest, middle-class, family bombs for blowing up three-storey
buildings. Suddenly the alarm is raised -- the army is staging a raid!
Frenzied activity as the merchants hastily … whisk the bras and panties
out of side; the guns are left indifferently in view.
Nor does weaponry concern just a militant fringe. Yemen
is a fine, fierce, traditional tribal society. The people are
typically gentle of temperament, but as soon as a male comes of age --
and they come of age early, in Yemen -- he dons the traditional curved
dagger, the jambiyya, worn in an elaborate decorated belt -- right at
the front, ready to be drawn in an instant.
Yet what happened during the uprising that eventually swept away the long-time dictator Ali Abdallah Saleh and his nepotistic crew, was in that regard surprising. We described the developments here:
~
I
shall continue to refrain from any commenting on the issue of gun
control, pro or con, since you all know as much or more about it than I
do; and anyway, minds are mostly pre-set. But I may ask leave to observe, en tant que logicien, the occasional elephant spewing its peanuts all over the room.
Such a case is the phony foofaraw over “Fast and Furious”. Set
aside detailed matters of fact, such as whether this "gun-walking"
tactic began under Obama (as the House Republicans claim) or under Bush
(as history claims: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fast_and_Furious); after all, you can check the facts yourselves as well as I.
Consider rather the key contradiction, which is seldom if
ever alluded to: Namely, that this
‘investigation’ is the opposite or inverse of what it pretends to be. It is an opportunistic, completely cynical move to beat the ATF with whatever cudgel
happens to lie to hand. That
the Congress has stalled for six years, leaving that Bureau headless, shows
their true colors.
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