On Sunday night, President Obama spoke at an interfaith service for the victims of the horrific elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Not surprisingly, it was a poignant and moving speech, hitting all the right notes:
Here in Newtown, I come to offer the love and prayers of a nation. I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts. I can only hope it helps for you to know that you're not alone in your grief, that our world, too, has been torn apart, that all across this land of ours, we have wept with you. We've pulled our children tight.
The sad, horrible, tragic fact is that none of what we are witnessing is surprising. Shocking, yes, but not surprising. After all, we know this cycle all too well. It's one of the defining features of modern America. We have a mass shooting. We're sickened as we see it unfold. Then we're saddened as we learn the particulars about the victims. Our politicians somberly express their condolences. Many of them will mention something about how we really have to do something about this. A few will mention the need to examine our gun laws, only to be immediately rebuked and told that this is hardly the time to get "political." The discussion is put off. Services are held. Then the nation moves on, even if the town and the families involved never can. And then we do it all again in a few months. Or weeks.
It's time to finally break this well-worn cycle. And this time we can feel that the public is determined not to follow the bloodstained script.
Our reactions to these tragedies are not a zero-sum equation. Feeling anger doesn't mean we can't also feel sadness and grief. And it's clear that millions of us are furious that 20 innocent children have been added to the lengthy roll call of victims of gun violence, and of our failure -- actually, our refusal -- to break this cycle.
You could see this anger in the reaction -- especially on Twitter and other social media -- to the Obama administration's first statement on the tragedy. "There is, I am sure -- will be, rather -- a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I do not think today is that day," White House spokesman Jay Carney said hours after the shooting, touching the usual base of implying that it somehow dishonors the victims to have the temerity to discuss the factors that contributed to their deaths. And note that not only were we not supposed to talk about policy now, but the expectation was that when we did, it would be the "usual Washington policy debate." Again, this wasn't a surprising statement. That's what's usually said. And it usually works. But this time it hasn't. This time the public wants action -- not business as usual in D.C. "I have to wonder if Jay Carney is aware of how perfectly he's parroting the NRA's talking points," said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. "That's exactly what they say after every mass shooting. 'It's not the time.' But the time never comes."
Later on Friday, perhaps reacting to the public demand for action, the White House tepidly went a little further. "As a country we have been through this too many times," the president said in a statement at the White House. "We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics."
"Meaningful action" -- a wonderfully vague phrase that, in Washington parlance, usually means the exact opposite of what it would appear to mean. The pushback on that flaccid phrase was immediate, as well. "Calling for 'meaningful action' is not enough," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership -- not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a national tragedy and it demands a national response." And the next day, on Meet the Press, Bloomberg hammered home the point again. "It's time for the president to stand up and lead," he said. "His job is not just to be well-meaning. His job is to perform and to protect the American public."
And so on Sunday night, in Newtown, the president stepped up the rhetoric:
We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change... In the coming weeks, I'll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement, to mental health professionals, to parents and educators, in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.
But, again, notice the language: "Whatever power this office holds." Well, the presidency holds many clearly delineated powers, but much of the presidency's powers lie in what the office holder chooses to make of it. Let's hope he'll approach this threat -- one that killed almost 32,000 Americans last year alone -- with the same assertiveness.
In his speech, the president asked, "Because what choice do we have? We can't accept events like this as routine."
Actually, we do have another choice -- the choice to do nothing and allow more innocent victims to be sacrificed. In fact, that's the choice the White House has made so far. As Charlie Savage reports in The New York Times, the administration shelved proposals its own Justice Department came up with to improve background checks in the wake of the shooting of then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The proposals included things like making sure agencies reported those listed as mentally incompetent to the FBI, increasing mandatory minimum prison sentences for "straw buyers" who buy guns for those who fail a background check, and requiring private gun dealers to do background checks. As Savage points out, many of the measures could have been done by executive order, but "the proposals were largely filed away without action."
Clearly, the White House did make another choice. Though it would be wrong to accuse the administration of not doing anything. As Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski notes, "during his first year in office President Obama signed into law more repeals of federal gun policies than President George W. Bush did during his eight years in office." As the president himself boasted in an op-ed two months after the Giffords shooting, "my administration has not curtailed the rights of gun owners -- it has expanded them, including allowing people to carry their guns in national parks and wildlife refuges." In the same piece, he also called for "the beginning of a new discussion on how we can keep America safe for all our people."
But an authentic version of that discussion -- not the ersatz one we have after every mass shooting -- would include an honest examination of why so many Americans feel the need to own guns. And why politicians in turn feel the need to brag about expanding access to guns. It's hard to imagine how guns could be any more accessible than they already are. America currently has nearly 300 million guns owned by civilians. And another 4 to 7 million hit the market each year. Here are some other sobering statistics:
• Nearly 100,000 Americans are wounded or killed by guns each year.
• The secondary costs associated with gun violence (judicial, medical, security) are estimated at $100 billion a year.
• Since Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were shot in 1968, more than a million Americans have been killed by guns.
• Children aged 5 to 14 are 13 times more likely to be killed by guns in American than in other industrialized nations.
• Of all children killed by guns in the 23 richest countries, 87 percent are American children.
• There have been five mass shootings since Obama took office, three of them since July.
• And as Nicholas Kristof points out, more Americans get killed by guns every six months than have died in Afghanistan, Iraq, and every terrorist attack in the last 25 years combined.
And, of course, it's just the mass shootings that make the front page. The everyday gun violence that would be national headlines in most countries is just standard local news here. In the shadow of the Newtown shooting, here's what's also happened across our country in the last few days:
• Indiana: A man who owns 47 guns threatened a school.
• Alabama: A gunman wounded three in a hospital and was killed by police.
• California: A man fired 50 shots in a crowded mall parking lot.
• Nevada: A man murdered his wife and then killed himself at a hotel.
• Illinois: One man was killed and two women wounded in separate shootings.
• North Carolina: A man killed his wife and his mother-in-law.
Just another couple of days in America. And these tragedies don't even elicit the usual political platitudes. We just accept them as part of our daily lives.
Despite the carnage, some even claim that more guns are the answer -- that if, say, if we armed the 7 million teachers in America, we'd all somehow be safer. Mother Jones actually looked at 62 -- yes, 62 -- mass shootings in the last 30 years: "In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun." And since 2004, when the assault weapons ban expired, seven of these mass killings involved assault weapons.
Studies cited by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, show that more guns lead to more violence:
"We found that across developed countries, where guns are more available, there are more homicides."
"After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of homicide, particularly firearm homicide."
"We found that states with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide."
And according to the Brady Center, those who own a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault.
Nancy Lanza, the mother of the Newtown shooter, and his first victim, is a case in point. "She prepared for the worst," Marsh Lanza said about why her former sister-in-law owned multiple guns. But, as Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, "Nancy Lanza's weapons did not prepare her to defend against the worst, they prepared her to be destroyed by the worst -- along with her neighbors and several small children."
And more lives are going to be destroyed as more and more states make owning and carrying a gun easier. Eight states now allow guns in bars. Louisiana allows them in churches. In Missouri it's legal to carry a gun while you're drunk. In Kansas, you can carry your weapon in K-12 schools. And the day before the Newtown shooting, Michigan's legislature passed a law allowing people to bring guns into schools, classes, dorms, and stadiums.
The standard-issue excuse is that there are always going to be crazy people and stricter gun laws won't prevent them from attacking. But stricter laws will prevent those attacks from being so deadly. The same day as the massacre in Newtown, a man attacked a school in China. Twenty-two children were injured, but none were killed -- because the assailant was armed with a knife, not a gun. As James Fallows writes:
That's the difference between a knife and a gun. Guns don't attack children; psychopaths and sadists do. But guns uniquely allow a psychopath to wreak death and devastation on such a large scale so quickly and easily. America is the only country in which this happens again -- and again and again.
And yet, as Nicholas Kristof points out, we regulate all sorts of things that aren't nearly as deadly as guns. "Why can't we regulate guns as seriously as we do cars?" he asks. "The fundamental reason kids are dying in massacres like this one is not that we have lunatics or criminals -- all countries have them -- but that we suffer from a political failure to regulate guns."
This week, millions of Americans will be traveling to see their loved ones for the holidays. But for 30,000 of them, this will be their last holiday season. We know with a Nate-Silver-level of certainty that 30,000 Americans will not ring in 2014 because they'll be victims of gun violence.
Another certainty: that more and more Americans are ready to reject this grisly status quo. Less certain is whether President Obama will lead the way.
All too often on this issue, he has shown a gift for eloquent rhetoric, but no follow-through with specific "meaningful actions." We all know what actions need to be taken -- starting with a ban on the sale of weapons that are only good for mass murder.
The best way to honor the victims of Newtown is to take a clear-eyed look at everything that led to their slaughter. Especially the fatalistic conventional wisdom that says we'll never be able to prevent this from happening again. And again and again and again and...
Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
Michael B. Keegan: Connecticut and the Cause of Our National Political Paralysis
But what bothers me most is the complete absence in the conversation of why people continue to arm themselves, even beyond what many reasonable people consider to be reasonable. These people, good people, good Americans, are arming themselves because they see a viable threat. Data show quite clearly that the police can not protect anyone, yet they continue to advance their armaments. Who are they arming against? The terrorists lurking in the shadows? The federal civilian forces also continue to arm themselves. How many millions of bullets did DHS purchase last year? Who are they planning on shooting? And all of this while the government very overtly denies the citizens the rights that have been afforded them by law and the Constitution for decades and even centuries. The government is presenting itself as a threat, yet no one is discussing this.
Where is the discussion of the US citizen's need to protect themselves with whatever arms they have available against the government and its forces, military and civilian?
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By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor
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In much of the West, Press TV has been shut down, censored, blocked or smeared and attacked. This was only a first step.
Now there is irrefutable proof that plans are in motion to put police agencies in control of all information published on the internet, approval will be needed for, not just “facts,” whatever they are, but opinions as well.
We are talking news, blogs, social networks, “the whole thing.”
Former Top Tel Aviv Embassy Officer Says FBI Speaking Hebrew
As many had postulated, Sandy Hook, the highly organized brutal murder of twenty small children by military trained special operations monsters is an act of pure political terror nearly identical to the “Breveik” slayings in Norway.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook terror attack, the United States is being subjected to a broad assault on its basic constitutional rights and freedoms. This is a carefully planned and orchestrated attack, not just on gun ownership but now includes broad assaults on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and is aimed, quite specifically, not just to demonize gun ownership but to also demonize anyone who uses their mental acuity to question the mythology of the controlled “pop culture media.”
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/01/27/america-after-sandy-hook-disarmed-and-silenced/
With the rarity with which these mass shootings occur, I fail to see how they're one of the "defining features of modern America." Do drunk drivers define America? Does rape define America? I don't buy it. People like Arianna expect you to accept without question that gun control laws will make these shootings go away. They won't. And even if they manage to keep a gun out of the hands of the next Adam Lanza, he'll just find another way to carry out his heinous act.
As for Nicholas Kristof, he must have been absent when his classes were learning about those documents that help form the bedrock of our nation. He laments, "We regulate all sorts of things that aren't nearly as deadly as guns. Why can't we regulate guns as seriously as we do cars?" Well, Nicholas, I suppose that's due in great measure to the fact that, while private ownership of guns is specifically addressed, there never has been a Constitutionally-insured right to bear Toyotas. He's not obligated to like it, but he's going to have to suck it up one of these days and accept it.
Having said that, however, I'm absolutely open to a conversation about limitations on firearms. What a shame that you've already determined that that wouldn't do any good. So what's next -- someone in Washington gets to issue an edict covering what's acceptable? Good luck with that.
Big Pharma, of course, does not want this question to even come up.
The thing that should be banned ( and it is a commonality of the mass shootings) is the Psych drugs that cause people to have depression, suicidal thoughts and to "know" that life is not worthwhile.
Big Pharma is so strong that they do not even allow this to be considered.
The other side has a right to speak and will speak of their concerns.
You can ban it all Arianna..Criminals do not follow "bans." Especially "gun bans." The criminal WILL find a gun. They will buy and sell them underground and use them to kill.
Your way unarms the millions and millions of good and just citizens out there who follow the laws, but own a gun, or rifle, for protection under the second ammendment. That's all you're doing,.... Unarming the innocent wo will be left with little or no protection.
The way to make a Nation surrender to Tyranny...
"First they came for the guns. Then they came for you."
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
http://jmc.kent.edu/40004/guncontrol
Barack Obama is a figurehead and not much more. It no longer matters much which party, or which candidate wins an election in the USA. Our so-called republican democracy is fast on track to becoming a corporate oligarchy. And to those who say, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." I respond, "Sure enough, stare at a gun from a distance for however long, and that weapon is unlikely to kill anyone. Still, people oftentimes *use* guns to kill people. Pick up that same gun -- make it an assault weapon --, stand steady in one place a good distance from your target, and fire till the clip is empty. Now pick up a knife, stand in that same distant place and stab the air. Which weapon allowed you to strike a bullseye more often?"
THEY NEVER WORK!
LIQUOR - 1930'S
DRUGS - PRESENT DAY?
Here is a key fact, you can look it up between the ages of 16 & 17 we lose 6 to 7000 teenage drivers
a year. How about raising the driving age to 18.
We would save thousands of lives?
Why do we not hear the crying for these thousands yearly.
Because the media's agenda is not cars its control!!!!
Wake up america your being lied too.
Ask the media about their issues and the first they bring up is Articule #1 of the Constitution!
The right of free speech!
America is tough you cannot have it both ways, we either live by our constitution or then get ride of
all laws and lets see who survives without them.
Gun bans worked in Britain post WWII and while I was there in the 1980's. London streets were incredibly safe and I went anywhere any time of day or night and the bobbies didn't carry guns either. It is true that England has had an increase in knife violence, but still has very very low rates of gun homicides.
In 2008-2009, there were 39 fatal injuries from crimes involving firearms in England and Wales, with a population about one sixth the size of America’s. In America, there were 12,000 gun-related homicides in 2008 alone. That equates to 2000 deaths in a population the size of England and Wales vs. 39. Now that is a difference we can believe in, though getting there for America would be very very difficult. I'm not suggesting we should necessarily ban all guns, but if we could that might be the result we should expect.
> while I was there in the 1980's.
>
England didn't have a high murder rate before it banned most guns.
> we should necessarily ban all guns, but if we could that
> might be the result we should expect.
>
The willingness to use deadly force to solve disagreements is culturally based, it's not due to gun availability. The US has a murder rate in the New World that isn't any higher than any countries except Canada, Argentina and Chile. The US has many times more guns per person than any other country in the entire world. If you compare various parts of the US, notice how gun availability isn't the driver. I was looking for data on the percentage of murders that can be attributed to gangs and in some cities it's 40%. I don't know but it wouldn't seem like that would include non-gang drug related murders. It would seem like deal with the gangs and you'd reduce the murder rate. But when you compare countries, you also should consider whether or not they have serious gang problems.
Americans are more in danger of dying from medical mistakes in hospitals every year than gun violence, do we now shut down hospitals and put doctors and nurses out of a job, I doubt it....
Psych drugs kill. Virtually everyone of these shooters committed suicide after the killings.