Posted on 12/18/2012 11:27:06 AM PST by absalom01
Has the rate of random mass shootings in the United States increased? Over the past 30 years, the answer is definitely yes. It is also true that the total U.S. homicide rate has fallen by over half since 1980, and the gun homicide rate has fallen along with it. Today, Americans are safer from violent crime, including gun homicide, than they have been at any time since the mid-1960s.
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Real gun-free zones are a wonderful idea, but they are only real if they are created by metal detectors backed up by armed guards. Pretend gun-free zones, where law-abiding adults (who pass a fingerprint-based background check and a safety training class) are still disarmed, are magnets for evildoers who know they will be able to murder at will with little threat of being fired upon.
People who are serious about preventing the next Newtown should embrace much greater funding for mental health, strong laws for civil commitment of the violently mentally ill—and stop kidding themselves that pretend gun-free zones will stop killers.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Thanks for posting.
Boys today are fatherless and fear NOTHING. Fatherlessness and FEARLESSNESS is the problem.
Ban high-capacity gun free zones.
Letting the same organizations that brought us abortion and the normalization of homosexuality decide who is "sane" enough to possess a firearm is national suicide.
Anyone who thinks ANYTHING but the disarming of Christians/Patriots/Veterans will come of this this SEVERELY NAIVE.
I can't believe so many conservatives are falling for such a blatant attempt to divide and conquer.
Our boys didn't go soft and quit when they saw their buddies being mowed down on Normandy Beach, as horrible as it was. We too must not abandon our liberty teeth due to our recent similar horror.
We need to MAN UP, WISE UP and STAND UP. I won't disarm no matter what some commie shrink calls me !
(Calmly raises hand and says)Where's the funding going to come from? We don't have any money, and have overspent to the tune of $16 trillion already....
Can’t wait for all this talk to be over. To be repeated exactly the same after the next massacre.
It’s mental health and then some…
It’s feminized boys
It’s boys raised by women with no regular man in their lives
It’s medicating boys who are fidgety in class
It’s not letting boys be boys
It’s school that has no daily phy. ed.
It’s a culture of Everybody gets a Trophy
It’s “gender neutral” bathrooms
It’s “gender neutral” easy bake ovens
It’s self-esteem bestowed and not earned.
It’s main-streaming mentally ill people into everyday life and denying any of them should be institutionalized
It’s a mother who doesn’t lock her guns up so they can’t be accessed
It’s a mother who would rather be out drinking than caring for her son
It’s a mother who ignores the deep-seated problem illustrated by a boy who deliberately burns himself with a lighter.
It’s a mental health care system that is the most under-funded element of almost every health insurance plan. Medicare has had its mental health care elements gutted (effective 1/1/13).
It’s a mental health care system that is “outcome based.” The outcome is every person must be freed to walk the street. It’s the same system that does not hold a provider (doctor, therapist, counselor) responsible if/when he/she releases the wrong person.
It’s a mental health care system that exhausts parents of mentally ill children because even the most severely mentally ill child is almost always set home from the hospital when the latest crisis passes. Parents are made to believe it is their burden to carry no matter how impossible for them.
Or, we can just ban guns (especially the ones that look scary that we’ve politically decided to call assault weapons) so we can feel good about it.
And, then we all get a trophy for “caring.”
So glad to have grown up in the 50’s/60’s. Raised our kids in the 80’s/90’s. Now to help them navigate thru all the mess the libs have left and have my grandkids come out normal. What a challenge that it.
During the time frame you reference, this country also had a system of mental hospitals where severely psychotic individuals could be cared for, and if necessary, confined. It wasn’t perfect, but it did work.
In the 1960’s, the ACLU brought a series of suits, and promoted a legislative agenda to “deinstitutionalize” the mentally ill, and place them in “community based” facilities.
Well, needless to say, that didn’t happen. The people who would have been in a mental hospital in 1944 were simply dumped out: in some cases families could provide care, but in many they formed the masses of the “homeless” that we heard about in the 1980’s.
Now, we’re told, by the very same liberals who advocated deinstitutionalization that we have to ban “assault weapons” because...wait for it....a psychotic might get ahold of one.
During the time frame you reference, this country also had a system of mental hospitals where severely psychotic individuals could be cared for, and if necessary, confined. It wasn’t perfect, but it did work.
In the 1960’s, the ACLU brought a series of suits, and promoted a legislative agenda to “deinstitutionalize” the mentally ill, and place them in “community based” facilities.
Well, needless to say, that didn’t happen. The people who would have been in a mental hospital in 1944 were simply dumped out: in some cases families could provide care, but in many they formed the masses of the “homeless” that we heard about in the 1980’s.
Now, we’re told, by the very same liberals who advocated deinstitutionalization that we have to ban “assault weapons” because...wait for it....a psychotic might get ahold of one.
Yes, that is the meme that they are trying to sell.
Let’s not let them get away with it this time, hey?
Thanks but no thanks. In the first place the potential for abuse is profound. For example, I can see this issue being used in every custody hearing from coast to coast, after being obscenely corrupted by our esteemed legal profession.
In the second place, this kind of violence is such a rare occurrence and the circumstances so indiosyncratic, that we have no reliable way to predict something like a "mass shooting." The FBI can't do it, the Secret Service can't do it, psychiatry can't do it, juries can't do it. I seriously doubt the sheriff in Podunk County can do it. And I don't think gut reactions count when it may be my freedom at stake.
In the third place, using his own numbers, 84% of murderers confined in state prisons are not mentally ill at all, so the very best this approach could do even in a perfect world would be to stop one out of six murders. Not much return for upending the very concept of "innocent until proven guilty."
Exactly. I saw this coming years ago and began procurement then because I knew sooner or later this day would arrive.
Have you ever tried to explain this to a Liberal, or for that matter, to a voter. This factual look at what the hell actually happened causes eyes to glaze over.
In hundreds of counties, there are abandoned mental hospitals, the only present use of which is as movie sets. Thanks to the ACLU, maybe instead of shotguns, the cops ought to carry dart guns loaded with Thorazine.
It’s the “out darn spot” mentality. Because we have 26 murders, especially the fact that most of them were children, we have to come up with solutions to solve the problem even if it turns out that none of them would’ve prevented this from happening. The best way to deal with situations like these is not as much pre-emptive action as protective action when it may go down.
This reminds me of the hyperbole over hurricane Katrina. Over the years, ever since the early 1900s, hurricane fatalities have decreased with every successive storm but the way that Katrina was portrayed made it seem like it was the worst storm ever. Once we are all comfortable than outliers like this increase in exaggeration and size because the concept becomes more and more foreign to us.
Society would benefit a lot more by worrying about the mental health of people than by further limiting the right to own a gun.
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