Moral Hazard pt 2: Open Letter to Wayne La Pierre
After the Newtown Massacre of Innocents, I have followed your statements with interests Mr LaPierre.
Never before have I heard the argument that the only way to put out a fire is to throw more wood on top of it.
Color me AMAZED.
Amazing too is your assertion that the ONLY thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Maybe you've been seeing spree shootings in some parallel dimension.
Here in this universe it is usually a jammed chamber followed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, if the shooter isn't tackled by would be victims when he's reloading that stops a bad guys.
Obviously, being forced to reload more often would give victims more chances to disarm their attacker, though you deny that point.
Maybe logic works differently in that other universe you and other gun rights activists see so clearly.
Everyone else has to live and be killed in this world.
It was interesting how absolutely agnostic you were regarding the gun show loop-hole. Clearly those don't exist where you hail from either.
Instead the solutions you offer are: more guns; the expansion of the police state with further stigmatization of ex-felons and the mentally ill.
The last is really cute since public help for the mentally ill has been verboten since the Reagan Administration. Speaking of which...sure worked out great for him and John Hinkley Jr. didn't it?
Gee. Rather than relying on expensive and time consuming background checks which might not violate every one's constitutionally protected privacy rights enough to reveal both criminal record AND mental health status (Wayne, I hear your nanny-state and your Big Brother calling,) wouldn't it be more efficient to simply tattoo that information on every one's face and hands?
Plus it doesn't do a goddamn thing for the first time a heretofore law abiding citizen decides to jump the rails and start killing an ass-load of people.
The system you defend enables precisely those kinds of mass murders.
And so far as bringing armed guards and teachers to school goes, just how many guns per school are we talking about? As many guns as fire extinguishers? More? How many more?
Maybe you are right.
Maybe more cops, armed guards and gun toting teachers would keep kids safe.
Never mind the fact that even guns kept in a safe become low hanging fruit for skilled lock pickers and safe crackers in any schoolhouse after hours. ASIDE from that...
The fact remains that, despite school shootings, schools are still statistically some of the safest places to be.
More to the point, armed guards at schools would not have saved Adam Lanza's mother; Gabby Giffords and the people shot at the meet and greet, the Aurora theater victims; the Sikh temple victims; Neo-Nazi darling J.T. Ready's family http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/jt_ready_email_rant_massacre.php ; nor at least three families that I know of personally; nor the families I see in local news every few months where husband or wife kills spouse, the kiddies, then drive across town to mop up the grandparents.
Arming teachers would prevent none of those deaths. Armed guards in schools do not GO NEARLY FAR ENOUGH!
If you want to stop MOST mass murders and most of the killing of CHILDREN, you have to go where the guns are. An armed police presence must be established in the HOME of every gun owner. Either that or there needs to be fewer guns.
You won't co-sign that, so police state beyond anything in Stalinist Russia or Red China it is.
What would have happened if there had been no guns in the homes of all the people I've talked about?
Mommy and daddy would have still fought and broken up or divorced, the kids would have been scarred for life. But they would have still been alive, which is more than can be said now and for countless more in the future.
But given your position, you would doubtless argue that the 2nd Amendment defends the right of every gun owning American to blow the brains out spouse and kiddies and then to eat a bullet himself or herself and join them in Hell.
Infringe on that and the Commies will have won.
Yay, America.
Ass hole.
You want to talk about how movies and video games have made our nation more violent? How many people who are aficionados of violent movies and games have blown the brains out of people who have never touched a gun?
You know what's sick?
Buying a weapon to commemorate a massacre of innocents, like the spike in assault rifle sales after the Aurora theater and Newtown school shooting. Sitting around stroking that gun and thinking to oneself "Gosh, I wish I had thought of that. Just like a carnival shooting gallery, but with kids. I wonder where the nearest pre-school day care is."
How much do you want to bet some of the fine folks you speak for are doing that this very instant? Some of which have no criminal records, could pass any mental evaluation.
I bet the idea makes you all warm and fuzzy and let's you sleep the rest of the just, doesn't it?
Maybe you are right. The politicians need to stay out of the gun rights debate. Let the survivors and the families of the victims of gun violence decide gun law and let the voices of the silent dead speak a resounding NO! to you and all of your fellow travellers.
About as many Americans killed by guns as Mexicans in their Drug War in 2010. If that doesn't spell a sound gun policy, I don't know what does. Who would want to change a thing?
Never before have I heard the argument that the only way to put out a fire is to throw more wood on top of it.
Color me AMAZED.
Amazing too is your assertion that the ONLY thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Maybe you've been seeing spree shootings in some parallel dimension.
Here in this universe it is usually a jammed chamber followed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, if the shooter isn't tackled by would be victims when he's reloading that stops a bad guys.
Obviously, being forced to reload more often would give victims more chances to disarm their attacker, though you deny that point.
Maybe logic works differently in that other universe you and other gun rights activists see so clearly.
Everyone else has to live and be killed in this world.
It was interesting how absolutely agnostic you were regarding the gun show loop-hole. Clearly those don't exist where you hail from either.
Instead the solutions you offer are: more guns; the expansion of the police state with further stigmatization of ex-felons and the mentally ill.
The last is really cute since public help for the mentally ill has been verboten since the Reagan Administration. Speaking of which...sure worked out great for him and John Hinkley Jr. didn't it?
Gee. Rather than relying on expensive and time consuming background checks which might not violate every one's constitutionally protected privacy rights enough to reveal both criminal record AND mental health status (Wayne, I hear your nanny-state and your Big Brother calling,) wouldn't it be more efficient to simply tattoo that information on every one's face and hands?
Plus it doesn't do a goddamn thing for the first time a heretofore law abiding citizen decides to jump the rails and start killing an ass-load of people.
The system you defend enables precisely those kinds of mass murders.
And so far as bringing armed guards and teachers to school goes, just how many guns per school are we talking about? As many guns as fire extinguishers? More? How many more?
Maybe you are right.
Maybe more cops, armed guards and gun toting teachers would keep kids safe.
Never mind the fact that even guns kept in a safe become low hanging fruit for skilled lock pickers and safe crackers in any schoolhouse after hours. ASIDE from that...
The fact remains that, despite school shootings, schools are still statistically some of the safest places to be.
More to the point, armed guards at schools would not have saved Adam Lanza's mother; Gabby Giffords and the people shot at the meet and greet, the Aurora theater victims; the Sikh temple victims; Neo-Nazi darling J.T. Ready's family http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/jt_ready_email_rant_massacre.php ; nor at least three families that I know of personally; nor the families I see in local news every few months where husband or wife kills spouse, the kiddies, then drive across town to mop up the grandparents.
Arming teachers would prevent none of those deaths. Armed guards in schools do not GO NEARLY FAR ENOUGH!
If you want to stop MOST mass murders and most of the killing of CHILDREN, you have to go where the guns are. An armed police presence must be established in the HOME of every gun owner. Either that or there needs to be fewer guns.
You won't co-sign that, so police state beyond anything in Stalinist Russia or Red China it is.
What would have happened if there had been no guns in the homes of all the people I've talked about?
Mommy and daddy would have still fought and broken up or divorced, the kids would have been scarred for life. But they would have still been alive, which is more than can be said now and for countless more in the future.
But given your position, you would doubtless argue that the 2nd Amendment defends the right of every gun owning American to blow the brains out spouse and kiddies and then to eat a bullet himself or herself and join them in Hell.
Infringe on that and the Commies will have won.
Yay, America.
Ass hole.
You want to talk about how movies and video games have made our nation more violent? How many people who are aficionados of violent movies and games have blown the brains out of people who have never touched a gun?
You know what's sick?
Buying a weapon to commemorate a massacre of innocents, like the spike in assault rifle sales after the Aurora theater and Newtown school shooting. Sitting around stroking that gun and thinking to oneself "Gosh, I wish I had thought of that. Just like a carnival shooting gallery, but with kids. I wonder where the nearest pre-school day care is."
How much do you want to bet some of the fine folks you speak for are doing that this very instant? Some of which have no criminal records, could pass any mental evaluation.
I bet the idea makes you all warm and fuzzy and let's you sleep the rest of the just, doesn't it?
Maybe you are right. The politicians need to stay out of the gun rights debate. Let the survivors and the families of the victims of gun violence decide gun law and let the voices of the silent dead speak a resounding NO! to you and all of your fellow travellers.
About as many Americans killed by guns as Mexicans in their Drug War in 2010. If that doesn't spell a sound gun policy, I don't know what does. Who would want to change a thing?
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