Posted on 11/06/2017 8:06:38 AM PST by PROCON
In a sane and decent world there would be a respectful period of time before individuals began using the bodies of those slain in mass-shooting as pawns or political bargaining chips in the ongoing debate about guns.
Unfortunately we no longer live in a society where the rules of simple decency apply.
Within minutes of news of the church shooting in Texas, progressives were metaphorically scrambling atop of the bodies to take the moral high ground and demand action on guns.
Conservative like myself are then forced, however unwillingly, into the position of having to counter their narratives even as the bodies of the slain are still being identified.
Thus are the dead, deserving of the simple dignity of respectful remembrance denied even that.......as people take sides and dig into their respective ideological trenches.
I take no pleasure in this but I will not allow the left to use the dead in Texas for their own ends..............unchallenged.
I have made the arguments for the natural right of citizens to self-defence innumerable times. I have pointed out the logical inconsistencies of believing that laws to restrict guns will in any way deter criminals or those intent on evil, from acquiring them.
The moral neutrality of guns, the fact that their good or evil is determined by the use to which they are put..........has been made too many times to count.
To no avail.........
No matter how unarguable the data, no matter how persuasive the argument............progressive are incapable or unwilling to hear any truth that challenges their political agenda to destroy the 2nd Amendment. So I will not be making those arguments.
I will not be putting forth any facts, figures or statistics.
The moral arguments I will leave for another time and place.
Instead I want to tell you a story.........
A story about a different America, an America that in many ways was more innocent and yet perhaps paradoxically possessed a better understanding of the realities of life, than we hold today.
I want to tell you a story about Charles Whitman and the events that unfolded on a warm summers day at the University of Texas in the year of 1966.
Many people today do not know the name of Charles Whitman.
Many have no idea, that his actions on top of the Texas University bell-tower on the morning of July 31 1966, set the stage for the modern era of mass-shootings.
Many have no idea that a lesson was taught that day.
A lesson significantly different to those being taught in the classrooms that surrounded the Texas University bell-tower on that bright July morning.
It was a lesson, that a significant proportion of the country, would fail to understand.
And that failure of understanding would echo on in our society.................... long after the actual sounds of Whitman's rifles had died and faded away.
At 11:48 a.m. Charles Whitman opened fire from the UT bell-tower's observation deck.
His first bullet hit Claire Wilson in the stomach. Wilson was six months pregnant at the time and though her baby died she ultimately would survive though she would never be able to have children again.
His second bullet took Thomas Eckermen full in the chest as he ran to Claire Wilsons aid..........he died instantly.
For another twenty minutes Whitmore picked his targets with careful deliberation, causing bloody carnage on the campus grounds and streets surrounding the university. Then things began to change.
Faculty members and students of the university alerted to the danger rushed to get their own firearms. Students ran to their dorms to retrieve their hunting rifles from their rooms.
Professors rushed to cars in the university car park to retrieve rifles that they stored in the trunks during school hours.
Sporadically at first and then with increasing fierceness and determination, ordinary citizens, students and teachers, local business owners and employees, began to lay down suppressing fire into Whitman's position, some 300 feet above them.
So effective was the suppressing fire laid upon Whitman's position, that it forced him below the parapet, limiting his targeting ability by forcing him to shoot through the observation decks drain spouts.
Meanwhile the suppressing fire had also allowed police officers to approach the tower and force their way through the barricades Whitman had erected to block the entrance.
Those officers would make the gruesome discovery that Claire Wilson was not in fact Whitman's first victim. Whitman had killed three other people in the administration offices located in the base of the tower.
It would be twenty four hours before Whitman's murder of his wife and mother the night before.........became public knowledge.
With the sound of frenzied firing echoing through the building, local police officers Ramiro Martinez and Houston McCoy and an armed University Co-op employee named Allen Crum worked their way upward to Whitman's sniper position.
There is no doubt that the suppressing fire from the civilians below added an extra element of danger to their attempts to take Whitman down.
From that distance it was extremely hard to identify friend from foe and all three could easily have been hit by friendly fire.
But what is also without doubt is that the intensity of civilian fire from below forced Whitman to take and keep under cover to such an extent...............that all of the fatalities on that day happened in the first 28 minutes when Whitman had the freedom to pick his targets without the threat of incoming fire.
It also covered the sounds of the police officers approach allowing them to take Whitman by surprise and after a exchange of gunfire subsequently kill Whitman where he was crouching below the observation deck parapet.
America had been taught a bloody lesson but it was a lesson that two sides of the political spectrum would understand in different ways.
For the progressive left, it was a lesson on the evil of guns.
For the right, it was the lesson of how guns in the hands of ordinary people can end or limit the intentions of evil men.
That lesson has once again been given the American people.
Again..........an evil was both perpetrated and stopped by a man with a gun.
Gun laws will not end the atrocities of evil men but they may, very well stop good men from being able to prevent them.
How tragic...........that so many lack the ability to understand the lesson such acts and instances seek to teach.
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During the autopsy it was found that Whitman’s brain contained a tumor bigger than a common orange.
he had repeatedly showed up local hospitals telling them he felt sure something was medically wrong with him, that he was getting repeated, intense fantasies of visceral killing.
He was not insane, he was not angry, he felt no despondency or alienation.
He simply had an immense tumor.
I wish conservatives could learn to stop calling leftists/communists “progressive”. Or at least qualify the appellation with a definition/description of which they are “progressing” toward.
And, he was stopped by good guys with guns, which is the point of the article, something the left just doesn’t “get”.
Interesting
From Wikipedia:
Investigating officers found that Whitman had visited several University doctors in the year before the shootings; they prescribed various medications for him. Whitman had seen a minimum of five doctors between the fall and winter of 1965, before he visited a psychiatrist from whom he received no prescription. At some other time he was prescribed Valium by Dr. Jan Cochrum, who recommended he visit the campus psychiatrist.[50]
Whitman met with Dr. Maurice Dean Heatly, the staff psychiatrist at the University of Texas Health Center, on March 29, 1966.[51] Whitman referred to his visit with Heatly in his final suicide note, writing, “I talked with a Doctor once for about two hours and tried to convey to him my fears that I felt come [sic] overwhelming violent impulses. After one visit, I never saw the Doctor again, and since then have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail.”[40]
Heatly’s notes on the visit said, “This massive, muscular youth seemed to be oozing with hostility [...] that something seemed to be happening to him and that he didn’t seem to be himself.”[52] “He readily admits having overwhelming periods of hostility with a very minimum of provocation. Repeated inquiries attempting to analyze his exact experiences were not too successful with the exception of his vivid reference to ‘thinking about going up on the tower with a deer rifle and start shooting people.’”[53]
Although Whitman had been prescribed drugs, and was in possession of Dexedrine at the time of his death, no toxicology test was performed at first because Whitman had been embalmed on August 1, after the body was brought to the Cook Funeral Home in Austin. However, an autopsy had been requested in the suicide notes left by Whitman, and was then approved by his father.[54]
On August 2, an autopsy was conducted by Dr. Chenar (a neuropathologist at Austin State Hospital) at the funeral home. Urine and blood were removed to test for traces of amphetamines or other substances.[55] During the autopsy, Chenar discovered a “pecan-sized” brain tumor, which he labeled an astrocytoma and which exhibited a small amount of necrosis. Chenar concluded that the tumor had no effect on Whitman’s actions. These findings were later revised by the Connally Commission: “It is the opinion of the task force that the relationship between the brain tumor and Charles J. Whitman’s actions on the last day of his life cannot be established with clarity.”[56]
First one I remember was this guy
I’ll never forget that day. Between Whitman and the murders of the 8 nurses in Chicago it was to be a horrible summer!
Small tumor according to Wiki.
And there’s never been any connection of the tumor to his actions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman#Autopsy
The Bill of Rights is not a legislated list that is subject to anyone's whim; not legislators, not executive, not judicial.
And certainly not imbeciles.
The Bill of rights is a collection of Statements defining the historical foundation that made the Republic, and the Constitution possible.
IT IS NOT SUBJECT TO CHANGE. AND ANY ATTEMPT WILL ONLY VALIDATE THE WISDOM (AND UTTER NECESSITY) OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT WHICH WILL BE IN FULL PLAY SHOULD ANY ATTEMPT TO DESTROY THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS EVER MADE.
The hour is late and the time is long overdue for POTUS.45 TRUMP to empower/deputize/whatever veteran military/retired, etc. as a sorta “Trump Posse” out there to assist Americans being shot down across this land!
In addition to the bad guys, there are countless cases where good guys w/a gun have showed up and saved the day for some; but not enough! THAT is the answer to the problem!
Mr. Trump is the man in a very complex political arena, but he alone is responsible to organize something to put some teeth into a defense of Americans right here and now on our own streets, homes, and God only knows what the future holds!
And while he’s @t it, he should arm these veterans, etc. w/those guns “purchased” by so many non-LEO agencies—with OUR tax money I might add!
Time to REALLY “Cowboy Up” Mr Trump!
SHTF time arrived a long ways back now...Time to Get Real about that NO MORE PC crappolla!
Semper The Trump Posse To Protect Americans!
Just Plain Dick aka: Gunny G
***************
Semper POTUS.45 TRUMP...IF We Can Keep Him!
******
But this event spawned the Guncontrol Act of 1968, which was the modern era beginning of other "common sense" gun laws that haunt us today.
The black riots of the 60s were a major factor as well
I think the two major assassinations right before the votes helped more than anything
Neither figure was popular in the white south were I grew up but it roiled the media
The tendency by the ignorant, who also happen to be feeble-minded, is to attack the medical profession for failing to identify what drove the individual to madness.
This all happened long before the technical magic of "cat scans" and "MRIs" existed.
This sad historical example is no longer possible.
Sometimes I marvel at the good fortune of having lived truly during the golden years of the United States of America. Perhaps never to repeat, if the collective madness of its current so-called citizens continues to deteriorate.
When the Made-for-Tv movie about the Austin shooting was first shown on tv, in the anti-gun 1970s, I noticed a slight pro-gun angle followed by a strong anti-gun diatribe.
As the end titles played, a voiceover came on mentioning the tumor in his brain, when suddenly a louder VOICEOVER came on drowning out the other, and telling us to watch some entertainment show soon to be on TV.
My memories goes back farther.
And to think, in 1962 Thomas J Dodd and Emauell Cellar proposed the first federal law on common firearms.
1962; “We don’t want to take away your guns, we ONLY want to register handguns! Rifles and shotguns will not be affected”.
1964: “We only want to register all your guns, not ban them! Only 5 shot bolt action Army surplus rifles will be banned.”
1968: “We only want to register your guns, and ban “Saturday Night Specials” and small foreign handguns along with army surplus rifles!” (They got the ban on 5 shot army surplus rifles and handguns and small foreign pistols)
1970: “We only want to ban Saturday night specials! Large handguns and rifles will not be affected!”
1976: “We only want to ban all handguns! Long guns will not be affected!”
1981: “The NRA is a rifle organization! They should give up their handguns, and they can keep their rifles!”- Lee Grant on GMA
1984: “We must ban “assault Rifles, unsuitable or hunting!”
1989: George Bush bans import of some foreign made “assault rifles”.
1992: Assault rifle ban passed by Clinton.
2000: first calls to ban single shot .50 cal rifles...
2012 calls for MORE bans on semi auto rifles and handguns. If you can’t ban them then go after ammo limits, the magazines and styles of the stocks.
And so it continues.
interesting side note...whitman knew he was a whacko and knew he was going to die. He left a suicide note asking that somebody look at his brain for something being wrong.
I wonder if any of these current day whackadoos think there might be something wrong with themselves ?
The leftists have been controlling our language. Anytime someone tells me they are pro-choice, I say, you mean pro-abortion and they get pi$$d off.
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