Most of the kids in Newtown, Connecticut, were born in 2006 not long after the 21st Century began. Many of them would have seen the turn of the 22nd Century.
From the Daily Beast to the Violence Policy Center, special interest groups, editorialists, and politicians lined the Sunday talk shows to politicize the murders in order to … well, you already know, don’t you?
Mr. Obama came under increased pressure this weekend from Democrats to lead the charge to ban guns.
CBS’ Bob Schieffer wonders if this is the tipping point so we finally try to ban guns.
Rep. John B. Larson (D-CT) released a statement Saturday that “to do nothing in the face of continuous assaults on our children is to be complicit in those assaults” in his effort to ban guns.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) promised immediate action on gun control.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), the author of the Brady Bill who just three days ago worried that the fiscal cliff will hike milk prices to $6 per gallon, has joined with Michael Bloomberg to make 16 ounce drink cups illegal. And to shrink the size of handgun clips.
The killer who triggered the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history got off lucky. His quick suicide was far less than he deserved. No, I will not publish his name.
But I have two teeny little niggling questions:
(1) Isn’t there a fiscal something-or-other out there that we’re supposed to worry about? and
(2) What about the other people killed this year? Don’t they count, too?
Mother Jones reported that, “Since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii.” 43 people were slain in other mass murders in 2012 alone. And the year isn’t over yet.
Since 1982, there have also been at least 90 commercial airline crashes that killed people in this country alone. I didn’t total how many thousands died. Heck, 445 people have died so far this year in commercial aircraft accidents around the world. That includes the Allied Air flight on June 2 that overran the runway and hit a bus. All four in the crew survived but 12 people on the bus died. And the Ozark Air Lines flight that struck a snow plow at Sioux Falls Regional Airport. The driver of the snow plow was the only casualty there.
Dammit, we need to ban commercial air travel is what!
There were 32,367 motor vehicle deaths last year. Cars kill more people than bathroom accidents (341 people drowned in baths and showers in 2000).
Don’t you think we need to ban cars? And probably bathrooms?
The War on Terror has taken 4,977 American lives since 2001 in Afghanistan and Iraq alone.
How about a ban on terror?
On average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in this country every day. In fact, 1,247 women and 440 men were killed by an intimate partner in 2000. 50% of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children.
We probably need to ban intimate partnerships.
The mad bomber of the Bath School “disaster” in 1927 killed 38 elementary school kids, most in the second to sixth grades, plus two teachers, four other adults, and the bomber himself. It remains the deadliest mass murder in a school in U.S. history. And a truck bomb made of fertilizer and diesel fuel killed 168 people and injured over 800 in the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. No, I will not publish those murderers’ names, either.
Maybe we stick a plug up the back end of cows to eliminate fertilizer.
Newtown was one nut with a gun.
The number of crimes involving handguns in the UK has more than doubled since the ban on the weapons that passed after the Dunblane massacre, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871 last year. The United bloody Kingdom.
It is already illegal to shoot people, even if you didn’t mean to. Connecticut and New York have about the toughest gun laws in the nation. This is the second mass killing in Connecticut in two years.
Puzzled investigators. Huh.
We don’t need more laws. We need more answers.
In fact, as the earth gets hotter, I’m surprised no one has noticed the direct correlation between mass murder and Global Warming. Or between mass murder and nutcases who dream about killing people.
See, Mr. Gore and his cohort don’t care as much about Global Weirding as they care about what steps we take to control Global Weirding. They think the solution is the Big Government answer to control people because obviously people cause Global Weirding.