President Obama has said that he would rather be a good one-term president, than a mediocre two-term one. If he really means that then, in the wake of the massacre in Aurora, Colo. that has left at least 12 dead and 58 wounded, why doesn't President Obama issue an executive order banning assault weapons and high-capacity gun magazines?
Not long ago, due to the failure of the Congress to pass the DREAM Act, he issued an executive order to stop the deportation of undocumented immigrants. So why can't he do something similar now? Were he to direct federal authorities to stop the sale of these firearms and magazines, he could become not only a great president but also one of towering courage in the face of the gun lobby. And my guess is that he would still be reelected.
Yes, we all know that Al Gore may have lost votes to independent voters in swing states when he called for a ban on assault weapons in 2000, but Gore did not have the political gifts of Obama, who has shown that he can be a master storyteller. His ability to define Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch job outsourcer who has yet to release all of his tax returns and may be hiding something, demonstrates Obama's storytelling assets.
President Obama has also shown a very sophisticated understanding of criminality. For instance, after the Tucson massacre in January 2011, he cited the Book of Job ("When I looked for light, then came darkness") and stated that we need to "guard against simple explanations." He was not reckless with his language and did not blame the incident on mental illness. As he famously said in 2008, "language matters." He was right then, and he is right now.
Since the massacre in Colorado, many have called James Holmes, the suspected gunman in the case, a madman, crazed, deranged and mentally ill. I recognize that it is in the vernacular to do so.
Moreover, mental illness sometimes may play a role in these massacres, as appears to have been the case with Jared Loughner, the alleged Tucson killer, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Other times, as in the present case, there may be zero connection to mental illness.
Holmes was withdrawing from the University of Colorado because, according to reports, he was struggling academically in the neuroscience PhD program. My guess is that the onetime UC-Riverside honors student may have never faced the prospect of failure before, and he did not know how to handle it. For some people, like Steve Jobs, failure can be an opportunity to reassess your life and your priorities, to pursue something that you really love and to do so within a moral compass.
I dropped out of law school years ago at a time when I first started taking Prozac for my lifelong, major depression. I would later become psychotic in my early thirties, believing that I was going to be blamed for a series of murders sweeping across the nation.
But I have never been violent in my life. I got back on my medication, and I realized that I had to pursue writing, my true love, as a career.
Holmes, on the other hand, clearly lacked the character to rebound from whatever academic, personal and job failings he may have experienced.
Some, like NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, have suggested that Holmes may have been delusional in that he reportedly dyed his hair red and proclaimed to law-enforcement that he was the Joker, a villain in the Batman franchise.
That he dressed in a costume to the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises does not tell me that he was delusional or psychotic at all. Many people wear costumes to films, particularly films based on comic book, science fiction or cartoon characters. Many dress as villains. Consider all the Darth Vader impersonators on Hollywood Boulevard.
I would doubt that any of them are psychotic. They are simply engaging in their version of fun.
While I understand the desire for many to cite mental illness when a violent crime occurs, it is, as I have argued before, wishful thinking if we assume that only mentally ill human beings commit atrocities such as occurred in Colorado. Studies show, as I have stated many times before, that those with severe mental illness are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violent crime.
Still, I have been forced to accept that those in the throes of psychosis sometimes may premeditate their acts of violence. People can be in and out of psychosis at times. Perhaps, it is in those non-psychotic times that they rigorously plan their murderous rampages.
However, I want to emphasize that the vast majority of violent crimes are not committed by the mentally ill.
President Obama, sophisticated man that he is, knows that, and he also knows that if we are ever to end these massacres, he is going to have to issue an executive order banning the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity gun magazines.
Secondly, even if the sale of assault weapons was banned before this, it would not have changed a single thing as no weapon used in this shooting was an assault weapon.
Also if the liberals were actually serious about cracking down on gun violence, they would stop complaining about prison overcrowding and racism when gun enhancements are strictly used against prior offenders, gang members, parolees, ex-felons, etc. The vast majority of deaths by firearms are caused by these people.
How many more innocent, unlawfully yet legally disarmed people have to die at the hands of madmen before government at all levels gets the hell out of the way and allows us to look after our own safety? The NRA was not responsible for this massacre-liberals and marxists were!
You are not.
A disarmed society is a happy society. Confiscate firearms, re write the constitution, level the death penalty at any stragglers who refuse to join the rest of us in the 21st century.
Then you won't have to worry about getting shot at the picture show!
...that is, unless one happened to be at Srebrenica, Potocari, the Warsaw Ghetto, Wounded Knee, in Soviet Russia, Communist China, the Homolodor in Ukraine, Khmer Cambodia, Nazi Germany, present day Mexico etc etc ad infinitum to the tune of something like 100 million victims of democide in the last century alone.
Look here: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
Your assertions are horrifying. Advocate the state murder of peaceful people merely because they don't agree with you? Really? I thought we had moved beyond that in todays world. Learn, think, THEN write.
Let's just look at the actual act. If a President can issue an EO to ban "assault weapons", then a President can also issue an EO to ban abortion. You want to open that can of worms??
Next time think, THEN write.
Obama could write that EO today and it would be more worthless than the paper he wrote it on.
You seriously write for this blog? Do you have *ANY* understanding of basic civics? Do you know what an Executive Order can do and cannot? It amazes me who can be a professional blogger these days.
Dictatorship isn't bad, better than allowing johnny rambo to vote!
Obama could write that EO today and it would be more worthless than the paper he wrote it on.
https://www.change.org/petitions/the-u-s-house-of-representatives-renew-the-assault-weapons-ban-now
We need to execute gun bunnies like the Chinese do, they have no place in civilized society. Sorry, if you want to hunt go live in Iraq.
I truly can't believe people voluntarily will give up their rights because of FEAR.
Thomas Jefferson warned the Government will use Fear and this false sense of Protection to take your rights away. You can ignore this I will not.