I’ll leave it to others better suited to comment on the horror of Friday afternoon in Newtown, Conn. I am not yet a parent and would not presume to understand the emotions involved in something like this. Posted on 12/16/2012 4:01:27 AM PST by Kaslin
I’ll leave it to others better suited to comment on the horror of Friday afternoon in Newtown, Conn. I am not yet a parent and would not presume to understand the emotions involved in something like this.
But on the media reaction and exploitation that followed the horrific news, I will comment.
Simply put, it was disgusting.
I’ve said before how progressives will exploit anyone and anything to advance their agenda, but I’d always thought there was a line, somewhere, of decency they wouldn’t cross. I was wrong.
With the blood of the victims still wet, progressives began their call for gun control. They had no idea if the guns were purchased legally (they were, and stolen from the first murder victim, the killer’s mother), what kind of guns they were (they were pistols, not “assault weapons,” though a semi-automatic rifle was found, unused, in the killer’s car), or even if the killer was in custody or dead (there were stories of a hunt for a second shooter) before they succumbed to the siren call of their agenda.
Michael Moore, noted tragedy profiteer, took to Twitter with “Only minutes away from pundits & politicians say, "This isn't the time to talk about gun control." Really? When is that moment?”
A short time later he followed up with “The NRA hates freedom. They don't want you to have the freedom to send your children to school & expect them to come home alive.”
No fiction writer could do the sickness of that man justice.
But Moore wasn’t alone, David Frum was his usual self and joined a chorus of his fellow progressives that included Piers Morgan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and nearly the entire homepage of The Huffington Post in calling for more gun control.
Actress Rashida Jones tweeted, “Gun control is our only road to freedom. Freedom from the fear of senselessly losing children. I'm so saddened. WE NEED LAWS NOW.”
The stupidity of these people is self-evident. States with the most freedom to own and carry guns have the lowest crime rates. Meanwhile, cities such as Chicago, where it’s illegal to own a gun, have the most gun violence.
But although the side of liberty has the statistics, progressives play on emotion. Facts don’t matter in a world of crying children, and progressives know it. A complicated issue is offered a simple solution that appeals to the feeling of helplessness and promises to alleviate it. It’s a tactic used by despots throughout history.
Since we have a media that functions as the ground troops for the progressive movement, that they would line up to offer their megaphone surprised no one. A manufactured protest of anti-Second Amendment progressive activists that attracted only a couple-dozen people (there were more reporrters there than protesters) received more coverage from the Democratic Media Complex than all the huge Tea Party protests. The event came together as if it were an Ikea desk sitting in the corner just waiting for the opportunity to be assembled.
All three major networks ran hour-long specials Friday night reiterating the limited information they had and featuring literal guesses as to what must’ve happened. Facts don’t matter when trying to scare people.
The most despicable part of the media coverage was the interviews. Children as young as these vultures could find had cameras in their faces seeking any sound bite they could milk for ratings. But those children wouldn’t be there were their parents not feet away giving permission and granting their own interviews about their person relief.
No one can blame a parent for an immeasurable sense of relief over finding their child unharmed, but they can be blamed for sticking themselves and their child in front of television cameras to spread that relief to a grieving community. Has the allure of “fame,” no matter how fleeting, overruled our sense of decency?
The president was reserved and presidential in his remarks, and the White House said this is not the time to press an agenda (we’ll see how long that lasts). But their allies would have none of it. Progressive activists and their fellow travellers in the media have a storied history of dancing on graves to advance their agenda, but rarely have they danced so gleefully on such tiny graves yet to be dug. Time will tell which argument wins the day, but I have my suspicions. As President Obama’s former chief of staff once famously said, “You never want a serious crisis go to waste.”
I can remember 2004, the Democrats I knew pushed this whole “What terrorism?” theme. Their reasoning was that Israel put’s up with terrorist attacks all the time. This didn’t fly for long but I remember this stupid argument coming from a family liberal. It all started with Moore.
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2004/10/the-bbc-announces-there-is-no-terrorist
Was there not a stabbing incident in China last week?
Many years ago, what we call now “mental health professionals”, they would be called Roman Catholic priests who can do the ritual known as “exocism”.
Gun control isn’t the answer. Guns have had a purpose in this country since day one: national, home and personal defense, be it military, security, or recreational (hunting, target, trap/skeet, etc.) purposes. It’s the IDIOTS who have access to the gun, who feel the only solution to their problems is through the use of a gun, and are influenced by the JUNK that sells violence via a gun, i.e. the violent movies, music, video games. And its the MEDIA that then makes legends out of the mindless fools who commit these tragic and senseless acts like this. Crimes like the horrible event on Friday, i.e. a mass assault on innocent human beings by one or two individuals under the age of 30 years, seems to have become more commonplace within the last 20 years. Take a look at what has become the mode of entertainment during this time: violence in music, violence in games, movies. Even “reality” tv has a violent edge - the shock factor, the dare to take things beyond the norm. These young people are raised on this junk, and because it’s so readily available it comes with a false “seal of approval”. Few parents discipline their kids anymore because they might be accused of abuse, or they don’t have time, or they just don’t give a crap. Or, laughably, they’re allowing their “little ones” to “express themselves”. Boundaries are vague or non-existent. It’s not gun control that’s needed - it’s us as a society that’s out of control.
You know what's coming next.
“Ambulance-chasing, commie-rat b@stards”
You’re too kind.
You might have said, lying, murdering, psychotic, adolescent, punk-rock-loving, revolutionary,
Christian-hating, subversive, Communist b@stards, not to mention disgusting, overbearing, Constitution-hating,
slippery, slimy, self-centered totalitarian punks.
But, you’re too kind.
IMHO
Regards
Your byline says Exnavy,I served in the Navy also from 68 to 72,Two Fighter Squadrons out of Miramar Naval Air Station San Diego.
I put “sane” in quotes because we have not heard if the Mother was sane or not. She certainly raised an idiot that is for sure.
So, let's focus on those guns. They are the exact same sidearms that thousands of police officers use, every single day. Should they be banned? Should we take them away from the cops? After all, police have sons and daughters too - they could be murdered as well and have their guns used in crimes.
What if the culprit used knives? I can post several links right now about crimes committed by knives. They are not pretty to describe. They are horrific in nature. What about the guy who was pushed in front of the subway train in NYC and was photographed seconds before death? Should we ban subway platforms? Maybe we should focus on cameras?
Yes, the mother had guns. And the kid was Evil. He was. You don't kill 20 little kids and get away with having a "disorder." THAT man is now in Hell. Period.
Until we focus back to God, and ask for HIS healing, we will have more of the same. This nation and this world is going further down the path of destruction with each passing day.
Only God can save us. Not gun control.
I went to a Christmas party last night and I was trying desperately to tell the people that a semi-automatic was not used and it was for naught. People believe what the stupid news tell them. I wanted to slap my friends quite frankly. These are Republicans but not conservatives.....UGH!
She did raise an idiot, but it is not her fault that this kid was mentally ill. I believe that the story will come out that they knew he was a problem and were trying to take care of it, and he snapped during that process.
No "assault" weapons were used by the murderer - just semi-automatic pistols that are exactly the same side arms the police in your town use and that millions of home owners possess.
When I look about me at the advertising on TV and radio, I realize that these painful, loud, obnoxious ads are an assault.
They assault my senses and my sensibility. I have to "HURRY!" because I have to "SAVE NOW!" The radio ads, even the ones on Talk Radio stations that seem to take up 65% of the "programming" are mind controlling garbage.
The ads on television during football games are ridiculous. Everything is one big drinking "joke" - everything a sarcastic double entendre. They are all "hyper annoying" and meant to be that way.
The "news" is the same - one big propaganda fest of half truths deep fried in outright lies and deception.
It is amazing any of us are still sane. We endure this same media assault: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
The only reason I believe I have not turned into a circa 1933 "Good German" like the rest of the sheeple is because Christ is in my life.
Without Him, I would have died inside long ago and joined the American zombies in the jump off the cliff into meaninglessness.
No wonder they are looking to Obama the false messiah. They are dead themselves.
Until the postwar period, and even now to some extent, Europe has had less of the rootless, anonymous anomie that we have in the States, with people wandering around chasing their personal rainbows.
In Europe, society was highly organized and "contextualized" (bzzz, bzzz), so that every person had some sort of sense of his "place". People didn't move 500 miles at the drop of a hat, or because their employer had a policy of handing people long-distance transfers (Exxon and Conoco used to do this deliberately, in order to make the Company the pole star of the employee's existence -- theoretically), or because a newspaper printed the headline, GOLD!!.
If you were born in Stettin, you lived your life in Stettin, you knew lots of people in Stettin and they knew you, and you were not the sort of disconnected, dysrfunctional loner that so many of these shooters are. You always had people near you who were interested in your welfare -- your rabbi or priest, your relatives, your in-laws, people at work, people where you shopped.
Outbursts like these are the downside of freedom. The "Progs" will now argue for less freedom.
That's my theory, anyway.
Yes, and the libs are using that already.
No guns = 0 dead.
2A Freedom = 25+ dead.
Ergo, ban guns = no more problems. All hail Big Brother! (Who will kill 30,000,000 or so.)
Hey, hey, hey -- walk light, bro! We'll need the "mental health professionals" to deliver the diagnoses that will let us incarcerate the Tea Party people.
>>>I got accosted on Facebook by a well meaning but I think misguided soul who asked, if banning guns doesn’t stop rampages, why are there few gun rampages in highly gun phobic Europe? My impression is that partly there are more knifing problems, and partly that there is not very much news coverage afforded to events in Europe when a loon with a gun gets looney with that gun.<<<
Different cultures have different ways to express their lunacy. Tell your friend that gun-phobic Europe used guns to kill tens of millions of their fellow citizens in organized massacres for decades, right up to the 1990s in Bosnia and Kosovo. Remind your friend that there are many different cultures even in Europe, ranging from Switzerland, where everyone has a gun, to Great Britain, where guns are for the most part illegal to possess. Guess which place has the higher rate of violent crime?
My father grew up in New York City in the 1940s. He told me that he used to carry his .22 rifle to school, give it to the gym teacher, and then use it for marksmanship practice during class. No schoolyard massacres back then, even though the technology for firearms hasn’t changed that much. You used to be able to buy semiautomatic pistols through the mail for cheap. No schoolyard massacres then, either.
In fact, there are places on Earth in which strict gun control and low rates of gun violence both occur - Japan, for instance. But we’re not Japanese, and they’ve got a whole suite of problems that we don’t have. Culture makes a difference.
Maybe it’s just good fortune, but up in Alaska, the few people who called for gun control on Facebook after the Connecticut killings were told that it was disgusting to use the event as a soapbox for political purposes.
And they’re right - it is disgusting.
One other thing: if you’re accosted on FB, maybe it’s time to unfriend.
Atomized individual mobility can be a bane all right.
In the early USA, groups of immigrants might travel far to find a destination in which to settle. But they traveled together and settled together for the most part. Ordinary human ties and the desire to keep them tended to moderate wanderlust. Then, brilliant men came up with ideas that let humans stay tied even though they wandered. There was always the post, provided for in the Constitution itself, but that could be very slow. The Pony Express speeded up the mail, for a price. Then came telegraphs and trains. Then debuted the telephone and the horseless carriage, and we now have all the modern improvements on those. All have made physical separation more endurable, but also can prove traps when a hug and kiss by wire just won’t do.
I tend to agree with your theory. Portable weapons are a boon to the safety of a mobile and widely distributed society, but can also be used for a bane by those estranged to the point of despair or lunacy by the shortcomings of the same society. There’s more than just society acting here; there is also (and in fact chiefly at the root), God. But society can “carry God” in many ways and is far from useless in God’s ministry. It can serve the devil too, with all the consequences that spring from that.
I say accosted a bit exaggeratedly. This person is someone well known to me IRL and she definitely means well. But she comes up with questions that demand more than simplistic answers. I can’t just say fie on her, not if I don’t want to push her away to the demons of misleadingly oversimplified liberalism.
And... her questions remind me of how I think. I look for the exceptions that test the rule too.
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