If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Just hours after each of the heartbreaking shootings, Holmes and Page were on their way to becoming common household names. While locked behind bars, they become notorious Twitter superstars, dominating news feeds and television debates.
One obvious question raised by the student campaigns to carry concealed weapons is whether the death tolls in any of these massacres would have been lower if the teachers, tutors or moviegoers had been able to shoot back?
We are in a situation that demands objective scrutiny and attention. This focus can provide the impartial information that our elected officials and we need to arm ourselves and to stand our ground to defend our "inalienable rights" as citizens not just the right to bear arms.
With all of the important issues dominating the political debate, the economy, health care, International Affairs to name a few it had slipped my mind...
In times of national fear and existential questions, we need to open up our hearts and minds and really start listening to each other about the world we want to live in, and how to make that world our reality.
After such national tragedies, society should engage in a discussion about how to address and potentially prevent such tragedies from happening again. We might not all agree, but this is a Democracy, and this is how public policy is made.
Faithful Democrats are criticizing Obama because he has not used the latest massacre to push for gun control. Even after more than three years of proving the success of running the long game (see DADT, gay marriage, Iraq), Democrats insist on being both impatient and impractical.
By treating the shooter as simply an evil man -- and evil, of course, is irreducible, irrational, operates not on reason but perversions of morality -- we also reduce the actual shooting to a force of nature, beyond our capacity to understand.
You'll be happy to know lunacy hasn't been the norm on the conservative airwaves since the shooting. The response, especially among local conservative talk show hosts, has been more muted, respectful of the victims.
We are an easily frightened people and it is easy to manipulate us with fear. What are we so afraid of that we need to have 300 million guns in our homes? Who do we think is going to hurt us? Maybe we would take better care of each other.
As time goes on and we stray further and further from the language of the Second Amendment, this farce will be proven wrong time and time again.
James Holmes turned himself into a one-man army with the click of a mouse. That's the latest on the Aurora shooter, with authorities reporting that Ho...
This isn't about whether gun ownership reduces or increases crime, or whether recreational drug use is benign or harmful. I aim to keep it simpler and more to the point: Are drug and gun laws proven to be effective at preventing access?
Right out of the box following the Colorado movie massacre, Mayor Bloomberg was criticizing President Obama and Mitt Romney for their failure to advocate banning assault weapons. What a contrast to Bloomberg's silence in New York City.
While the concern and unease are understandable, I ask why this moment compels national conversations about life and death, about guns, about safety, about mental health and about tragedy, when countless other horrific moments don't elicit similar sadness and outage.
Turn off the TV. Put down the newspaper. There is only one appropriate response to this horrific gun tragedy and all of its predecessors. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, and, most importantly, tell your elected-Representatives in Washington, "Enough."
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