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brenthutch

We have to do something!

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According to the police, and the news no one has the story straight. The have so far messed up reporting
Mom was there
Mom wasn't there
Dad was dead
His brother did it
4 hand guns were used
No wait 2 hand guns and a rifle
No wait rifle was used and was in the car
Shotgun in car.

I just stated the latest from a poster above, that a federal official said the rifle was never used(which I have also seen on other sites). We might one day get facts from them. As for now why enact right infringing laws based off false info. His mom failed us all by not securing her weapons from a known mentally ill and violent person.

As for the guy in NY the laws worked, he was a felon and couldn't buy a gun so he went around and had someone who could legally buy them, obtain them in an illegal manner. There is no law that could have stopped her, she LIED. How do you prevent that lie detector test at every gun purchase?

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Well, at least those 4 firefighters in Rochester weren't shot with a Bushmaster.

I heard they were shot with a home-made potato gun, made from a roll of Christmas wrapping paper. Of course the potatoes were especially lethal, as they had been dipped in melted Chinese lead-based Barbie dolls.

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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His mom failed us all by not securing her weapons from a known mentally ill and violent person.

Would you please post links to credible sources that prove, to the standard you want to apply to the information given out by the police (not the media in the first few hours of the incident), that Adam Lanza was known to be violent and mentally ill? I have not seen any such sources. In fact all I have seen is reports that Lanza was extremely socially withdrawn, but very intelligent. And, anecdotal reports that he liked video games.

Are you arguing that poor social skills = mental illness? Should people have to prove they have a certain number of friends before they can "bear arms"? What in your professional opinion would be the minimum number of friends one should have? Do facebook friends count?

Or perhaps you are arguing that people who like video games, especially those that involve shooting people, should be disqualified from bearing arms? I suspect that would disqualify a very large fraction of the gun-owning population. I'm pretty sure that will earn you some push back from the gun enthusiasts, though it might get you a blow job from Senator Feinstein.

Also, I am curious about how many gun owners make a practice of ensuring that their guns are inaccessible to their 20-year-old children who have no felony convictions or history of violent behavior? Are you prepared to argue that every parent who takes their kids (under the age of 21, that is) hunting or to the shooting range should be prosecuted for committing a crime?

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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Although not a complete loon with a criminal record he did have Asperger syndrome, for a fact, and here are symptoms of it in adults.

• Lack of managing appropriate social conduct

• High intelligence

• Anger management problems

• Controlling feelings such as depression, fear or anxiety

• Lack of empathy

• Inability to listen to others

• Inflexible thinking

• Repetitive routines provides feelings of security

• Stress when their routine suddenly changes

• Inability to think in abstract ways

• Specialised fields of interest

• Visual thinking

He was also pulled from school by his mother because "she did not agree with the plan for her son".

Quote

Despite all her efforts, she had just confided to another close friend recently that she feared she was "losing her son" as his mental health deteriorated.

Less than a week before the rampage, she shared her concerns that with at another regular at her favourite Newtown restaurant. "She said it was getting worse," the friend told the New York Daily News. "She was having trouble reaching him."

Echoing comments by former schoolmates of Adam, the friend also said that Adam seemed to have no sensation of pain. "Nancy told me he was burning himself with a lighter. In the ankles or arms or something," he said. "It was like he was trying to feel something."

Staff at Newtown High School had appointed a psychiatrist for him when he was aged about 15. "At that point in his life, he posed no threat to anyone else," said Richard Novia, former director of security for the local education district. "We were worried about him being the victim or that he could hurt himself."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9751240/Connecticut-school-shooting-Adam-Lanzas-mother-thought-guns-would-teach-him-responsibility.html

It does not have to be a previous criminal record, or a documented evaluation. His mother KNEW something was up, and failed by not securing those weapons, and getting help for her son.

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Your list reads like 97% of the people who post in speaker's corner. Also a high percentage of the people on the real drop zone, considering the abundance of type A personalities in skydiving.

There is no correlation between Asperger's and violent criminal activity, except perhaps that people with Asperger's are considerably less likely to be associated with violent crime. Also, Asperger's is a development disorder, not a mental illness. People with Asperger's syndrome don't hear voices telling them to do things, or have other symptoms of mental illness such as paranoia. If you disqualify someone from their 2nd amendment rights because of Aspberger's, logically you should also disqualify anyone who has ever been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, dyslexia, or left-handedness. Same thing for people who have ever intentionally cut/burned themselves (a common behavior in teenagers), or who have an eating disorder (anorexia or obesity) indicative of "mental illness".

It's curious that you find unattributed comments from an anonymous "friend" of Nancy Lanza to be credible, but you suspect the Newtown police of lying about the gun that was found in the car.

No doubt you think I'm picking on you, but really I'm just taking issue with all the speculation and post-hoc "reasoning" that is going on all over about this incident. I suppose it's natural enough, as people want to "make sense" of what happened and are impatient to wait for "the facts". Indeed we will probably never know exactly why Adam Lanza chose to do what he did, which will certainly be unsatisfying.

It's always easy, but rarely accurate and fair, to "connect the dots" in hindsight and claim that the event should have been easily foreseen. Then people go on to propose laws to "fix the problem", often before they actually know the real facts. Some claim it is obvious that access to guns is the problem, and want to ban that. Others claim that Adam Lanza was an obvious loon that anybody can see should never have been allowed in the same household as guns. One path leads to restricting 2nd amendment right for everybody. The other leads to removing such rights from millions of people who have done nothing wrong, but are only socially awkward, or have common non-violent problems such as depression. Is that path any better?

In a way, this is all much like the discussion in the Incidents forum before the actual facts of an accident come out. Some want to ban swooping, some to put size limits on canopies, without knowing if those things will solve the problem, or make new and worse problems.

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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According to the police, and the news no one has the story straight. The have so far messed up reporting
Mom was there
Mom wasn't there
Dad was dead
His brother did it
4 hand guns were used
No wait 2 hand guns and a rifle
No wait rifle was used and was in the car
Shotgun in car.

I just stated the latest from a poster above, that a federal official said the rifle was never used(which I have also seen on other sites). We might one day get facts from them. As for now why enact right infringing laws based off false info.



It's not exactly an isolated incident now, is it? We have plenty of info from other mass shootings perpetrated by crazy people who had way too easy access to guns.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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According to the police, and the news no one has the story straight. The have so far messed up reporting
Mom was there
Mom wasn't there
Dad was dead
His brother did it
4 hand guns were used
No wait 2 hand guns and a rifle
No wait rifle was used and was in the car
Shotgun in car.

I just stated the latest from a poster above, that a federal official said the rifle was never used(which I have also seen on other sites). We might one day get facts from them. As for now why enact right infringing laws based off false info.



It's not exactly an isolated incident now, is it? We have plenty of info from other mass shootings perpetrated by crazy people who had way too easy access to guns.



How many of those could have been averted by passing more laws?

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According to the police, and the news no one has the story straight. The have so far messed up reporting
Mom was there
Mom wasn't there
Dad was dead
His brother did it
4 hand guns were used
No wait 2 hand guns and a rifle
No wait rifle was used and was in the car
Shotgun in car.

I just stated the latest from a poster above, that a federal official said the rifle was never used(which I have also seen on other sites). We might one day get facts from them. As for now why enact right infringing laws based off false info.



It's not exactly an isolated incident now, is it? We have plenty of info from other mass shootings perpetrated by crazy people who had way too easy access to guns.



How many of those could have been averted by passing more laws?



Who said the answer was more laws? Fewer, better and more consistent laws are what we need.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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But hey, at least we did something: in the 21st Century, the average Joe Bumfuck can spray-up a schoolyard in a matter of seconds. Whoopie! Yay for us!



The worst school massacre ever, in 1927 before assault weapons had even been invented, didn't even use guns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster


Not plural, but according to your link he did use a gun.;)

Now, how easy would it be today for a private person to simply purchase the quantities of explosives that this guy did?
Do you want to have an ideagasm?

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According to the police, and the news no one has the story straight. The have so far messed up reporting
Mom was there
Mom wasn't there
Dad was dead
His brother did it
4 hand guns were used
No wait 2 hand guns and a rifle
No wait rifle was used and was in the car
Shotgun in car.

I just stated the latest from a poster above, that a federal official said the rifle was never used(which I have also seen on other sites). We might one day get facts from them. As for now why enact right infringing laws based off false info.



It's not exactly an isolated incident now, is it? We have plenty of info from other mass shootings perpetrated by crazy people who had way too easy access to guns.



How many of those could have been averted by passing more laws?



Who said the answer was more laws? Fewer, better and more consistent laws are what we need.



What needs to be changed?

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All the information does not support a direct link, im not saying AS caused this directly, but look at the side effects, these can lead someone to a dark place.

I am just providing supporting information you requested about me saying he was mentally ill and violent. He had AS, and his school expressed concern in the past about him, and his mother recently said he was harming himself, and was concerned about his mental status.

You dont have to hear voices to do violent things, being withdrawn, picked on as a child, abused, etc along with a mild illness such as AS can all add up to someone lashing out.

I never said the police, or anyone else was lying about a gun. Everyone is trying to ban a certain gun, which might have never been used, no official report has been issued.

I have no reason to doubt the "friend" what local towns person would make up such a story about the kid in such detail

Facts are he had a mental condition, councilors, and school security were previously worried about him, the mom even expressed enough concern she quit her job to stay at home and care for him.

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OK, let's try a different tact here.

What specific things about Adam Lanza, which existed before the school shooting, would you see as appropriate reason to take away 2nd amendment rights in any and all people who showed such behavior. Should all socially withdraw people be barred from access to guns? All people who were ever home schooled? (Remember Adam Lanza was 20 and had completed college level courses, so he wasn't currently being home schooled). What symptoms did Lanza display that would justify the police coming into your house and taking your guns if you had those symptoms?

Again hindsight is 20-20, but here we are talking about foresight. What did Adam Lanza do that was such a strong predictor of what he was going to do in that school that you would feel comfortable taking a constitution right from anyone with similar behavior?

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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Bushmaster is a brand, I wish everyone would stop using that term for the rifle, the company's name is being drug though the mud. It's would be like saying a person committed vehicular homicide by running them over with a ford.



Utterly missing the point.

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But hey, at least we did something: in the 21st Century, the average Joe Bumfuck can spray-up a schoolyard in a matter of seconds. Whoopie! Yay for us!



The worst school massacre ever, in 1927 before assault weapons had even been invented, didn't even use guns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster



Utterly, utterly missing the point.

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Its a combination of things that led me to believe his mom should have had her weapons secure.

1.Outbursts and "fleeing" in school(as told by school security in 2008) although it was recorded not a threatening act, it was a clue that somethings not right

2. Extremely withdrawn, introverted, etc. Im not labeling these type of people as "killers", but you have to add this to the stack of clues

3. His mother removed him from school due to her not agreeing with "their plan for her son". Who knows if this was now educational, or more behavioral reasons, but it adds to the notion that Adam had issues.

4. It is reported in many places(now after looking because of this thread) that Adams mom had discussed her issues with her sons mental health with many people, but "never complained"

5. She confided in a friend at a local restaurant that Adam had no empathy, and was self mutilating, and felt no "pain"(I dont think this was made up by the "friend")

6. She quit her job recently to stay at home with her troubled kid.

You cant pick and choose one of these alone and say ooh hes a shooter, and everyone's alarm levels are different, you might be ok with all of these. In my opinon if he was my child I would have secured the weapons.

Adam tried to buy a long gun but did not want to wait the 14 days we know this. He may have exhausted the ways he knew of or had the interest in obtaining guns and, stopped there if his moms weapons were secure. He might have gotten one by individual sale, we will never know because in the home of a troubled man was multiple unsecured firearms.

Here are things I agree with.

-Background checks on all purchases however made.
-Felons banned from firearms.
-Children prevented from unsupervised access to firearms
-Gun safety and awareness
-More awareness and action by family and doctors to those with violent and mental illness.

My father in law has been battling failing kidneys for as long as I have known him. He also has depression, and has expressed to his wife the interest in it all "being over" in a suicide context. While at dialysis under the wishes of his wife and family I secured the only known weapon in the house and relocated it off premises.

Like I said you cant take away someones gun rights just for showing one of the above signs, gather the whole picture, and in this case to me it means take action.

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I was not replying to any point you were trying to make with him, I am not even focusing on the side discussion you are having with him.

I am taking issue on the media, liberals, and gun ignorant people using Bushmaster as another way to vilify ar style rifles, and making a fool of themselves in the process. If they want to have a real discussion with gun advocates start using the correct terms.

I wonder if that guy in New York that shot the firefighters used the evil Rock River Arms, or that terrible DPMS, heaven forbid he have used the Charles Daly, who knows!

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Utterly, utterly missing the point.



Is there an echo in here?

Just because someone doesn't address your particular point, doesn't mean that they didn't understand it. They are under no obligation to address your point. And maybe they just wish to make their own, different point. Furthermore, if you find that so many people seem to have missed your point, then maybe it's your own fault for not expressing it well enough.

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But hey, at least we did something: in the 21st Century, the average Joe Bumfuck can spray-up a schoolyard in a matter of seconds. Whoopie! Yay for us!



The worst school massacre ever, in 1927 before assault weapons had even been invented, didn't even use guns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster


Not plural, but according to your link he did use a gun.;)

Now, how easy would it be today for a private person to simply purchase the quantities of explosives that this guy did?


Very easy,
http://history1900s.about.com/cs/crimedisaster/p/okcitybombing.htm

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Very easy,
http://history1900s.about.com/.../p/okcitybombing.htm

Not so easy. One must have a license to purchase dynamite or other explosives, and one must have gone through training and certification to get that license. Purchases of large quantities of ammonium nitrate are tracked and reported to homeland security.

In the Bath School bombing the perp (who certainly seems to have been a complete psycho) worked as an electrical contractor at the school, which allowed him free access to the building for months, during which time he planted the explosives throughout the basement. While it is certainly true that he used a weapon other than a gun to kill a lot of kids, that was facilitated by his unique ability to access the school basement repeatedly for a long time without oversight. It's hard (for me at least) to imagine Adam Lanza storming the school while carrying a thousand pounds of dynamite, wiring it all up, and setting it off in the span of 6 or 7 minutes.

Another thing I wonder about but have not seen discussed relates to the motivation of these mass shooters and their choice of method. Terrorists and mass shooters both want to kill a lot of people, but their reasons differ and so does the choice of method, it seems to me. Terrorists don't necessarily want to see their victims die, but mass shooters do. A bomb (a la the Oklahoma City bombing) can bring down a building and kill lots of people, including kids in the daycare, but when it went off McVeigh was far away, endeavoring to escape. For McVeigh the killing was remote and impersonal, almost an abstract concept, as politics is an abstract concept. People who shoot up theaters, malls, or schools have to aim and squeeze the trigger, for each and every victim, so they have to make a deliberate choice for each victim and they see directly the consequence of that choice. If they just wanted to kill a bunch of people a bomb would do the job, but instead they choose a method that makes each victim personal. Almost like the perp is keeping score or something, and certainly reflecting a different type of anger than the terrorist does with their bomb.

So maybe (and this is obviously speculation) the argument that if school shooters couldn't get guns they would just use bombs or poison or something else is missing a big part of what motivates these people. Maybe the point is not simply to kill a lot of people, but to kill them in a way that allows the killer to see and "enjoy" each and every kill. If that is true, then guns fill the need nicely and other methods of mass killing do not, so maybe they would not simply turn to other methods.

Just a thought.

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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Very easy and legal, no license required.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxlx8TYWoKM

That's pretty cool.

Still hard to see anyone hauling a washing machine full of tannerite into a classroom and setting it off while the class just sits there. "Just here to do my laundry, kids." Plus, how would you go from room to room blowing them up that way?

Any thoughts on my speculations re terrorists vs school shooters?

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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