Tag: Guns

There is a lesson to be learned here

I will get to that in a second, but first the story:

His mother, Nancy, collected them. She showed them off to her landscaper.

“Guns were her hobby,” said Dan Holmes, the landscaper of Nancy Lanza’s sprawling yard here on the edge of town. “She told me she liked the single-mindedness of shooting.”

Holmes said she even spoke of taking her son to the firing range to practice his aim.

As details of her son’s troubled life trickled out Saturday, the day after he gunned down 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School and his mother at their home, the portrait emerging is one of a detached killer who knew his way around a trigger and of a family that feared outsiders in the home.

Holmes said Nancy Lanza, who was divorced and had reportedly worked in finance, never invited him inside. She would pay him in the yard. The landscaper never laid eyes on Adam Lanza, a skinny, withdrawn, socially awkward 20-year-old who excelled in academics but apparently not in forming deep friendships.

“I would ring the bell on the front door, and she would come out the side and meet me,” he said. “It was a little weird. It’s stranger now thinking back on what happened.”

When she wanted to show Holmes an antique rifle, she proudly brought the gun — in its case — outside. How many guns Nancy had is not clear, though authorities say several were registered to her, including the ones used in the massacre.

Her former sister-in law, Marsha Lanza, told the Chicago Sun-Times outside her home in Crystal Lake, Ill., that Nancy Lanza wanted guns for protection. “She prepared for the worst,” Marsha Lanza told the newspaper. “I didn’t know that they [the guns] would be used on her.”

via Newtown school shooter’s mother collected guns, was loath to let people inside home – The Washington Post.

The lesson is this; if you have a mentally ill relative, do not have guns where that said person can get to them. Obviously this guy had issues and obviously he had access to the guns; and that was a problem. One thing I will say, someone posted a interesting piece about her son, and she was unsure if he had ADD or not.

Well, I can tell you from personal experience; that is not ADD or ADHD. I have ADHD and I take medication for it and I have never done anything like what she wrote at all. If I did, my Mother would have given me over to the state a long time ago. Honestly, it sounded like he had some sort of serious temper related illness, not mention being a bit rebellious. I am not expert in that area, but I can tell you that I never did any of that sort of nonsense.

ADHD is simply a learning disorder that affect different people different ways. With me, it is  Math. I can do English rather well, diagramming sentences rather well — well, I used to, when I was a kid anyhow! — but, math? I sucked at it. I could plus and minus with the best of them. But when it came time for the times tables and division, I just could not grasp that at all. Because of this, I had to quit school when I turned 18. I just could not go any further.

The ADHD runs in my family, I get it from my Father’s side of the family. Like I said, it affects different people different ways. My Dad, his brother and my cousin all cannot read very well at all. This is how the ADHD affected them. My cousin, who does have ADHD, but does not take medication for it, is just opposite of me. He does not read very well, but Math? He is excellent at it. He also, unlike me, talks a mile a minute. Yackity-yack-yack-yack. I love him to death, but man can he talk your ear off. He also tends to be a bit bossy. I do the same thing. I think that’s the ADHD, or just a personality trait of the family.

Again, it is a tragic thing that these kids and adults died in Newtown, CT. But the only person to blame in this situation, is the shooters Mom. She should have never had that kind of firepower in the house with a son in this sort of shape. It was negligence on her person and no one else’s. Also too, to all the liberals who are going to read this. The guns were legally purchased by the shooters Mother. She is the one to blame here, not the guns themselves. No amount of law could have stopped this from happening at all.  It is simple-minded to think otherwise.

Others: The Moderate Voice,The Atlantic Online, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Addicting Info, The Other McCain, Mashable!, Towleroad News #gay,Feministe and Booman Tribune (Via Memeorandum – Twice!)

 

 

I am seeing a pattern here

Call me paranoid, call me whatever you want to call me; But I am seeing a pattern here.

  • Upper Middle Class
  • White
  • Mentally unstable
  • Armed to the tooth

Cases in point:

Jared Loughner – Arizona- White – Upper Middle Class family – Nuttier than a snickers bar – Armed to the tooth. Shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
James Eagan Holmes – White – Colorado – Used his money from school to stockpile weapons – mental conditions galore

….and now this dude.

Adam Lanza – Connecticut – Lived with a mother who was getting $298,800 from her husband whom she divorced. – White – Armed to the tooth

The New York Daily News gives us the details:

He was dark and disturbed, a deeply troubled boy from a wealthy family who unnerved his neighbors and classmates.

Mass murderer Adam Lanza, 20, was a ticking time bomb, people who knew him told the Daily News.

“This was a deeply disturbed kid,” a family insider told the Daily News. “He certainly had major issues. He was subject to outbursts from what I recall.”

Lanza, who friends and officials said suffered from Asperger’s syndrome or a personality disorder, had a tortured mind.

He was socially awkward and at times unstable, but also extraordinarily bright.

“He was smart,” the insider said. “He was like one of these real brainiac computer kind of kids.”

A “longtime” family friend said Lanza had a condition “where he couldn’t feel pain.”

“A few years ago when he was on the baseball team, everyone had to be careful that he didn’t fall because he could get hurt and not feel it,” said the friend. “Adam had a lot of mental problems.”

[….]

 

And he lived in luxury.

Lanza was living with his devoted mother, Nancy, in the family’s four-bedroom, 3,100-square-foot estate.
Nancy Lanza divorced Adam’s father, Peter, in 2008. Peter Lanza, now a vice president of taxes for GE Energy Financial Services, agreed to annual alimony payments that started at $240,000 and would have reached $298,800 in 2015.

Here’s my point. You don’t see mass shootings like this happening in southwest Detroit. You do not see them happening in the black neighborhoods in Detroit, Chicago, or anywhere else. It is always in the upper middle class white neighborhoods. This seems to be a pattern.

The question is, why? No, I am not going all Alex Jones and start wearing the tin-foil hat; but somethings up. Why all of a sudden are these white kids, with a bit of money and a lot of guns and an elevator that does not make it past the ground floor; all of a sudden wigging out, getting guns and killing people?

As for me, yes, I am a white guy, and no, I do not own any guns. I believe in the second amendment and yes, I would like to own one for personal protection. But, this here is what this kid owned and the prices:

Now, you would not see me running around with a Bushmaster .223 for nothing. I want to protect myself, not start a war! See what them guns are going for? Not everyone can afford a gun like that. People like myself, who are either unemployed or barely making enough to get by on; would not be owning guns like this here. They would be lucky to own any guns at all. In other words, guns are not cheap.

My point is this; why are all of a sudden all of this mentally unstable rich white kids getting guns and going on a nut and shooting people? If I were Alex Jones, or some paranoid Conservative, I would say it was Barack Obama on concert with his secret Muslim brothers to try to overthrow the world for sharia law or something like that.

But, I am not. I am just wondering — why this, why all of a sudden?

Could this be what KISS was singing about?

Guns? Flames? Hmmmmm… Gene Simmons is a Conservative. Just sayin’….

Others:  The Reaction, Slate, The Lonely Conservative, ABCNEWS, CNN, Power Line, The Dana Show,Althouse, CBS New York, Gawker, Weasel Zippers and ABCNEWS

How not to respond to a gun tragedy involving kids

Doctor Obvious, calling Doctor Obvious please! (H/T to Think Progress)

27 or more people have been murdered, including 18 defenseless children, in a Connecticut elementary school.

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, responded to the tragedy saying, “Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to insure that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered. This tragedy underscores the urgency of getting rid of gun bans in school zones. The only thing accomplished by gun free zones is to insure that mass murderers can slay more before they are finally confronted by someone with a gun.”

Gun Owners of America urges state and federal lawmakers to overturn bans on guns in schools immediately.

via Special Guests: Talk Radio Guests;Radio Talk Show Guests; Radio Publicity, Promotion, PR.

Man, between this guy, and this guy, I fear dearly for the right. I really do man.

I mean, he does, like Jeff, have a point. But on the SAME DAY? Holy Crap! 😯 I also say the same thing about the people trying to take guns away. On the same day people?!?! Geez, let’s bury the kids first please! 🙄

Others: The Huffington Post

Video: Bob Costas explains himself

The only real quibble I have with this, is this: The gun culture that Bob Costas is referring to, is mostly promoted by Gangster Rap. Most of those guns that are in the inner cities are illegally bought and owned. Most legal gun owners are upstanding citizens, and not deranged nut jobs like the guy who shot up that theater or the guy who shot Gabrielle Giffords.

The painful truth is, that both of these guys bought these guns legally, and even I, as strong of a supporter of the second amendment as I am; I will concede that background checks would be a good idea, on the state level, with states sharing information. Now that would be a good idea. As for what kind of background, I believe checking for like serious health illnesses, such as mental illness and whether that person takes medication for some sort of illness is not unreasonable.

Either way, this video is very good. I think Costas defended his position well, I do not agree with it. I do not believe that the “Gun Culture” is necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that it has been exploited, by the gangsta rap culture.

(Via Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News Page)

An excellent pro-gun blog posting

Never thought in a Bazillion years that I would be linking to this blog; but when something is good, it’s good. Even if the blog owner is a complete and utter gilipollas.

Gentlemen: I see that you have chosen to use the horrific crime of the murder of Kasandra Perkins to express your belief that guns are the problem, not the men who wield them. I am utterly certain that you believe that you have the moral high ground on this matter. I am equally certain that such a belief is appallingly wrong, not to mention terribly misogynistic. Why do I say this? Because had your desires on gun control been in place, I would not be alive to be writing this now.

via An open letter to Bob Costas and Jason Whitlock « doubleplusundead.

It gets better, go read it.

Others: The Daily Caller and small dead animals (via Memeorandum)

A good example of why congress and house members, and staff should always be ARMED

See below:

Some protesters dropped trou to launch a protest at House Speaker John Boehner’s office in the Longworth House Office building in Washington.

U.S. Capitol Police public information officer Shennell Antrobus confirmed: “three females arrested for lewd and indecent acts in the Speaker’s Longworth office. Demonstrators disbursed that area.”

This is an office across the street from the Capitol Building. The speaker, who has a plush suite of offices in the Capitol Building, never works in the district office, so he wasn’t privy, as it were, to the privates.

via Naked Protesters Occupy John Boehner’s House Office – ABC News.

If these staffers had been armed with guns, this would have never happened.

Also:

It’s unclear why the naked women were arrested, but the naked man in the picture was not.

Let’s see here:

Because he was black, most likely. We do have a black President you know.

Again, armed staff would have stopped this; most liberals when they see guns, tend to flee the scene.

Why is the Wounded Warrior Project against guns?

This does not sound good at all. (H/T to Fred Propheter on facebook)

Although the controversy is just making its way to the mainstream radar, the Wounded Warrior Project has been disassociating itself with firearms and knives for the past couple of years. References on its website have changed from “firearms” to “weapons.” Corporate sponsors such as Savage Arms are now replaced with Acosta Sales and Marketing and UHAUL.

Listening to a recent interview with Wounded Warrior Project’s CEO Steve Nardizzi, well, you would have thought it was ‘ol Slick Willy dodging the question. He started off by saying the WWP supported the Second Amendment and was happy to participate in hunting adventures and shoots as fundraisers—yet it prohibits using the WWP logo at such events.

Nardizzi went on to explain that the Wounded Warrior Project would not co-brand with firearm or knife manufacturers and retailers. He explained, “The return on investment just wasn’t there.” Return on investment? How much investment is WWP putting into the pot? It has no problem taking the firearm industry’s money; it just doesn’t want to be seen in public with us. So, essentially, the Wounded Warrior Project’s stance is that it does not want to be seen kissing us after it is done poking us?

What a great message this sends to our wounded heroes: “You were trusted with assault weapons (real ones, not what politician’s term ‘assault weapons’ when seeking reelection) until you were injured in service to our country.” Then…well, you might decide to hurt yourself so—in defense of the WWP’s reputation, not your future well being—we cannot be seen as partnering with ‘those companies’ in public.”

The author was one of the lucky ones managing to return home unharmed and with a few fond memories such as enjoying a few rounds of skeet while aboard ship. Other returning veterans were not as lucky and need our support.

This was brought out in Leslie A. Coleman’s—public relations director for WWP—response to an e-mail message asking for a clarification to its stance, “Our position regarding firearms and alcohol is in response to the struggles that many injured service members face with substance abuse and suicide and the roles those items often play in those issues.” I wonder if WWP even considered the fact that the extra money could go toward additional support and treatment. Sweeping it under the carpet by playing politics sure as hell isn’t going to prevent a tragedy, but funds and support might!

If WWP does not want to play with the firearms industry, and it is all about the money, well WWP picked which side of the fence it wanted to be on, not me. And let’s go a step further in seeking the truth. It is not about the money. While being interviewed Nardizzi explained that co-branding requires significant internal coordination with lawyers, PR people and others to manage it and finished by stating that we wouldn’t understand it. Really? I certainly do.

Nardizzi was then countered with the suggestion of an offer to cover all WWP internal expenses, then co-brand (use WWP’s logo on guns and knives) as a way to contribute to WWP. Nardizzi refused to give a straight answer. So if it is all about the money and you offer to cover all costs, why wouldn’t WWP jump at the opportunity? Because it is not now, nor has it ever been about the money—it’s about the politics.

During the interview, Nardizzi took the offensive, saying, he “can’t believe donors would withhold donations from wounded vets because we don’t get anything out of it” (use of the logo). Yet, WWP would risk losing donations by playing politics instead of focusing on raising the funds to help our vets.

via Wounded Warrior Project Draws a Line in the Sand Against Guns and Knives.

Go read the rest of that…

I think it is time to raise a stink about this one and let these people know that they are either on the side of liberty or tyranny. Pick a side WWP or get the hell out of business of the Military.