Newtown, Connecticut, Sandy Hook Elementary School and Our National Anniversary

These are the 20 children, the 20 beautiful, innocent children who were gunned down, slaughtered, that day, December 14, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut at Sandy Hook Elementary School. May we never forget and may we get sensible, helpful legislation and as soon as possible, to help make nightmares like these less likely, if not nearly impossible. We owe it to them, to their parents, family, friends and neighbors. We owe it to ourselves, to our nation, to the next generations.

On Guns

Then and now.

Guns In America, III

What's the difference? Exactly?

Guns and Killings in America: Have We Reached a Tipping Point?

With the shooting yesterday in yet another theater where 2 people died, along with the shooter, the following statistics are finally, finally coming out:

--In the last week, there were 5 "mass shootings" here in America. A mass shooting is defined as 4 or more people being killed.

--A mass shooting occurs, on average, approximately once per 2 week period, every month, every year in America now, according to FBI statistics.

--Since 2006, there have been more than 200 mass killings in the United States.

--The FBI counted 172 cases of mass killings between 2006 and 2011.

--30,000 Americans die every year in America to gun violence.

--People are far more likely to be killed by someone they know than by random assassins. Public massacres like Newtown, Massachussetts account for 1 in 6 mass killings. Breakups, estrangements and family arguments make up the majority of cases, though unrelated victims may be caught in the crossfire.

--The majority of mass killings are family related.

--Approximately 57% of victims knew their killier, even if they weren't the main target. 1 in 4 victims were close family members -- children, siblings, spouses, etc.

--77% of mass killings involve a gun.

--Nearly 3 out of 4 of the guns used in mass killings were handguns. 72.9% of the weapons used were handguns.

--A killer wielding a multiple-magazine assault rifle is the exception. More typically, the closest available weapon is used.

--Many mass killers do not face prosecution. About a quarter commit suicide after the crime, and others are killed by police. Still more are deemed incompetent due to mental illness. When cases do go to trial, they can often take years because of the death penalty or other complications.

--Often, a mass killing involves a failed safety net. Ineffective protective orders, gaps in the mental health system, immigration bureaucracy and other lapses have been implicated in many cases. 

So the question becomes, once again, have we finally reached our "tipping point", America? Are we finally ready to address the shootings, the killings, the huge numbers of guns and weapons that are in our society and available to and for people who may well be mentally unstable and/or who have or may have a criminal history?

How many people will we allow to be killed until we act?

Are we there? Are we there yet?

Links: The Untold Story of America's Mass Killings

Deadly July: Five mass killings in 10 days

Why is it so difficult to stop mass shootings in the U.S.?

President Obama---and Statistics---On Guns in America

Seen yesterday:

"I've had to make statements like this too many times," Obama said. "Communities like this have had to endure tragedies like this too many times. We don't have all the facts, but we do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.

"Now is the time for mourning and for healing. But let's be clear, at some point we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries."

For proof?

Gun crime is more prevalent in the US than in other rich countries

In 2012, Max Fisher compared gun homicide rates in wealthy countries, using UN data. The US was far ahead of the non-Mexico members of the OECD, with only Chile anywhere close:

A big part of this is that the US just has many more guns per capita than any other country:

(Reddit/The Guardian/Phillybdizzle)

That doesn't explain all the variation in homicide rates; lots of poor countries, particularly in Central America, have gun homicide rates many times that of the United States. But among developed countries, homicide is much, much higher in the US, even after the great crime drop of the 1990s, and even including non-gun methods, as this chart from Duke sociologist Kieran Healy illustrates:

The President is right, of course. So many statistics show and prove it, again and again, in so many ways.

It would be nice if finally, finally, this horrific incident out of Charleston, North Carolina brought us to the point where we do a few simple, intelligent things about guns. Things like requiring background checks for mental stability and criminal history for ALL weapons purchases in this nation.

Hey, we can hope.

Link to original posts for above graphs:  Obama on the Charleston shooting

Obama is right: gun violence is much worse in the US than other advanced countries

Links to more articles:

• Obama has said that his biggest frustration in office is his failure to stop gun violence
• 44 states could prosecute the Charleston shooting as a hate crime — but not South Carolina
• Shaken Charleston mayor: 'Far too many guns out there'

The Victims of the Charleston, SC, Church Massacre

On the Charleston Shooting (guest post)

This was put out quickly today on and by Esquire magazine. I thought it too important to not post.

Charleston Shooting: Speaking the Unspeakable, Thinking the Unthinkable

In which we confront the dark heart of America. Again.

by Charles P. Pierce

What happened in a church in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday night is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is "unthinkable." Somebody thought long and hard about it. Somebody thought to load the weapon. Somebody thought to pick the church. Somebody thought to sit, quietly, through some of Wednesday night bible study. Somebody thought to stand up and open fire, killing nine people, including the pastor. Somebody reportedly thought to leave one woman alive so she could tell his story to the world. Somebody thought enough to flee. What happened in that church was a lot of things, but unthinkable is not one of them.

What happened in a Charleston church on Wednesday night is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is "unspeakable." We should speak of it often. We should speak of it loudly. We should speak of it as terrorism, which is what it was. We should speak of it as racial violence, which is what it was.

We should speak of it as an attack on history, which it was. This was the church founded by Denmark Vesey, who planned a slave revolt in 1822. Vesey was convicted in a secret trial in which many of the witnesses testified after being tortured. After they hung him, a mob burned down the church he built. His sons rebuilt it. On Wednesday night, someone turned it into a slaughter pen.

We should speak of it as an assault on the idea of a political commonwealth, which is what it was. And we should speak of it as one more example of all of these, another link in a bloody chain of events that reaches all the way back to African wharves and Southern docks. It is not an isolated incident, not if you consider history as something alive that can live and breathe and bleed. We should speak of all these things. What happened in that church was a lot of things, but unspeakable is not one of them.

Not to think about these things is to betray the dead. Not to speak of these things is to dishonor them. Let Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, look out her window at the flag of treason that is flown proudly at her state capitol and think about these things, and speak of them, before she pronounces herself so puzzled at how something like this could happen in South Carolina, the home office of American sedition.

Let Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush, both of whom want to lead this troubled country, consider what it meant to absent themselves from campaign events in Charleston and think of these things and speak of them before they turn to their consultants about whether or not staying in a grieving city was what a leader should have done.

Let the elite political media that follows the two of them, roughly thrown into a maelstrom of actual news, look out onto the streets of Charleston and realize that politics exist for the purpose of governing a country, and not simply to entertain it.

Let Squint and the Meat Puppet think about these things and speak of these things before inviting Donald Trump, who is a clown and a fool, to come on national television and talk about his hair. Not to think about these things is to betray the dead. Not to speak of these things is to dishonor them.

Think about what happened. Think about why it happened. Talk about what happened. Talk about why it happened. Do these things, over and over again. The country must resist the temptation present in anesthetic innocence. It must reject the false comfort of learned disbelief and the narcotic embrace of concocted surprise. There is a ferocious underground fire running through American history. It rages unseen until it flares again from the warm earth. It has raged from the death of Denmark Vesey in 1822 to the death of the Reverend and state senator Clementa Pinckney on Wednesday night.

This was not an unspeakable act. Sylvia Johnson, one of only three survivors of the massacre, is speaking about it.

"She said that he had reloaded five different times… and he just said 'I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go.'"

There is a timidity that the country can no longer afford. This was not an unthinkable act. A man may have had a rat's nest for a mind, but it was well thought out. It was a cool, considered crime, as well planned as any bank robbery or any computer fraud. If people do not want to speak of it, or think about it, it's because they do not want to follow the story where it inevitably leads. It's because they do not want to follow this crime all the way back to the mother of all American crimes, the one that Denmark Vesey gave his life to avenge. What happened on Wednesday night was a lot of things. A massacre was only one of them.

Open Carrying Weapons in the US

For anyone, anyone, in the United States to feel they need or want to "open carry" a weapon or weapons anywhere in the nation, one of two things in their body is too small.

Man Decides World's Busiest Airport Is A Good Place To Openly Carry A Loaded AR-15

Man Walks Into a 7-Eleven Carrying an AK-47

And one of those two things that's too small is his brain.

Wear Orange Tomorrow

Kansas' Republican Ugliness is Getting a Lot of Coverage

Seems there's just no good news coming out of Kansas lately--or in the last few years, at least.

And the fact is, because of it all, the state and people are getting bad press, at least on social media--none more so than on Facebook. An example:

Kansas City, Kan., school district lays off 31 staff members and cuts pay for 850 others

Kansas' infamous tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while putting the state's tax burden on the lower-, middle- and working-classes and making it easier for the already-wealthy, just keeps having bigger and bigger and uglier ramifications, as so many of us know. Now, the latest breakthrough is that these same, again, working-, middle- and lower-class students and parents and families take a hit at and on their schools. The rich? You can bet they don't.

Then, there's this, on Kansas' wacko gun culture and how out of control and totally unnecessary it all is. It's gotten bad and it's getting worse. These "Brownback years" have been tough.

Weapons Supporters: If You Really Believe in America...

What No Background Checks on Guns Gets Us

Indeed, thanks, NRA!

What People Are Saying About Kansas Now

I saw this last evening, on Facebook. And it's very fair:

Kansas and Social Media Just Now

I just saw this on Facebook today.

Congratulations, Kansas. This is who and what you are and what people are learning about you--on top of the fact that you give tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations and have no budget for schools and a downgraded bonds because of it:

The NRA, like the US, used to make more sense

Missouri in the national news last evening

And not in a good way:

Gun-totin' property owner kills a guy trying to defend his cousin, who urinated on a gravel bar

Seems fair, right?

A "pit stop" on a float trip in Southern Missouri shouldn't be a problem, should it?

What could go wrong?

From The Daily Kos.  It was actually the urinater's cousin who was shot and killed. He was defending the urinater. True.

...Yesterday, a man who owns a piece of property along Missouri's Meramec River, was pissed off when a guy on a casual canoe trip pissed in the woods behind "his" gravel bar. He then threatened the urinater with a gun. When the urinater's cousin tried to get between him and the property owner, the property owner shot the cousin in the head and killed him.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch covered it first, like this:

Meramec float trip ends in fatal shooting after dispute over property rights along waterway

Yeehaw.

Gotta' have them guns, huh?

At least this time the shooter isn't going to walk as they do in Florida, "Stand Your Ground" laws not being in Missouri, thankfully.

So far.

Perspective

Yay, guns.

Yay, us.

Gun Appreciation Day?

Let's do this, instead:

Important questions

"How many more deaths and mass shootings will it take for Washington to begin to lead the country in a deeper conversation about sensible gun controls? What will it take for our politicians to take firm and principled positions on gun policies and stand up to the gun lobby in this country? Surely this is a moment that calls all of us to reckoning."

--Charles M. Blow, "A Tragedy of Silence", The New York Times

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/opinion/blow-a-tragedy-of-silence.html?_r=0

Suddenly Seattle sounds like Kansas City

Breaking news today:

3 killed, 2 wounded in Seattle shooting; gunman still at large

Except there, in Seattle, this is big and unusual news.

Sad.

Sad for us and now them, too.

Kansas City, Detroit, St. Louis, we all take it in stride and think it's just another day.

Let's hope this kind of ignorance and insanity doesn't catch on there, too.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/2-killed-3-wounded-seattle-shooting-gunman-still-212556859.html

On Texas and guns on their college campuses

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Thanks and a hat tip to Daniel for sending this link.  I think the students speak very well for the lack of sense it takes to add more guns to college and university campuses.

But that's me.

Have a great day, y'all.