Thread: Summer gun wars: Jesse Jackson leads the way

Originally Posted by hblueeyes

This weekend from friday thru sunday there were 28 people shot, 4 of which died. Idiots have guns already so why not honest, law abiding citizens.

Me

Here is the YouTube video of far left Bob Costas rant on how taking away American's constitutional right to bear arms would somehow have prevented the tragic murder suicide of Kansas City Chiefs player Jevon Belcher.

Why don't you all go to the NBC Facebook site and let them know how you feel about one of the sportscasters using a football game to preach his far left agenda.

Click on NBC Sports Facebook link below and let them know what you think about Costas trying to trample on our 2nd Amendment rights.

http://www.facebook.com/NBCSports?fref=ts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOi7If0zW9s

With Another Death in the NFL, Will Costas Now Blame Autos?
Posted on December 10, 2012 by Greg Campbell

Recently, tragedy struck the Dallas Cowboys as a promising linebacker on their practice squad was killed in a drunk driving accident Saturday. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8B70DG20121208 Of course, the sports world solemnly offered their prayers and sympathies to the family of Jerry Brown, the young man killed when his teammate, Josh Brent crashed the car. Certainly, this is a tragedy that is frustrating not only because it could have been avoided, but because it put a stop to a life and career that was only getting started.

That being said, however, I should note that this is not the only recent tragedy in the NFL. On December 1st, Jovan Belcher killed himself after killing his girlfriend. And while that, too, was tragic, sports commentator Bob Costas had no problem interjecting his liberal talking points into a football game to question the “gun culture” and rant against guns as an agent of destruction for young promise in life.

So, I suppose my question is: Where’s Costas’ corresponding, absurd rant against the dangers of automobiles?

As many already know, in the wake of Belcher’s murder-suicide, Costas hijacked a halftime report to vent his disdain of firearms. He stated,

“Please, those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective. You want some actual perspective on this? Well, a bit of it comes from the Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock with whom I do not always agree, but who today said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article.

‘Our current gun culture,’ Whitlock wrote, ‘ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.’

‘Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows?’

‘”But here,’ wrote Jason Whitlock, ‘is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.’”

Now, bear in mind that Costas sided on the issue of gun culture with a man who likened the NRA to the KKK. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012...er-way-around/ Jason Whitlock said,

“I believe the NRA is the new KKK. And that the arming of so many black youths, uh, and loading up our community with drugs, and then just having an open shooting gallery, is the work of people who obviously don’t have our best interests [at heart].”

The problem here is not that Costas has an opinion. The problem with his rant is that A) it was the wrong time and place. And B) rather than blame the illegal action by Belcher, he and Jason Whitlock promoted the flawed logic of “more guns equal more violence.” http://dustinstockton.com/2012/12/th...n-free-campus/

So, if Costas is willing to blame the firearm, the instrument used to cause death, should he not equally condemn vehicles? In his diatribe, he noted that our culture’s tolerance of firearms leads to unnecessary escalation of domestic abuse situations. If gun culture exacerbates these volatile situations, shouldn’t Costas similarly claim that with less societal tolerance for vehicles on the road, drunk driving accidents are less likely to claim lives?

Of course, we will not stop driving cars. You know why? Because it’s asinine to blame the tool used to commit illegal or immoral acts.

The gauntlet has been thrown down. Mr. Costas must either admit that his logic is flawed or he must double-down and call into question why we must have vehicles so readily accessible.

http://dustinstockton.com/2012/12/wi...w-blame-autos/

Virtually Unreported: CCW Holder Likely Prevented Larger Clackamas Mall Death Toll
By Tom Blumer | December 16, 2012

If certain aspects of stories relating to an incident of gun violence don't fit the template, they usually doesn't get reported at all. But if such things somehow get some local exposure, they rarely escape into the broader national news environment. What follows is an example of the latter.

On Saturday, Dan Zimmerman at the Truth About Guns blog http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/201...by-ccw-holder/ (HT Instapundit) asked a quite logical question about the horrible murders at Oregon's Clackamas Mall on December 11, and referred readers to a report from local Portland TV station KGW (video at link) which provides the probable answer: http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-ma...183593571.html

Have you wondered why, in such a target rich environment as a suburban shopping mall two weeks before Christmas, the shooter at the Clackamas Town Center only managed to kill two people before dousing his own lights? Part of the reason was a dodgy gun. But as is being reported by kgw.com, part was also due to the fact that, gun-free zone or not, Jacob Roberts was confronted by Nick Meli who was armed and has a concealed carry permit.

KGW's text report, which mostly tracks the on the scene reporter's verbiage, follows. I'll address the video's studio introduction after that : http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-ma...183593571.html

Nick Meli is emotionally drained. The 22-year-old was at Clackamas Town Center with a friend and her baby when a masked man opened fire.

"I heard three shots and turned and looked at Casey and said, 'are you serious?,'" he said.

The friend and baby hit the floor. Meli, who has a concealed carry permit, positioned himself behind a pillar. "He was working on his rifle," said Meli. "He kept pulling the charging handle and hitting the side."

The break in gunfire allowed Meli to pull out his own gun, but he never took his eyes off the shooter. "As I was going down to pull, I saw someone in the back of the Charlotte move, and I knew if I fired and missed, I could hit them," he said.

Meli took cover inside a nearby store. He never pulled the trigger. He stands by that decision. "I'm not beating myself up cause I didn't shoot him," said Meli. "I know after he saw me, I think the last shot he fired was the one he used on himself."

Note that apparently no other shots were fired after the shooter allegedly became aware of Meli. If that's the case, Meli's armed presence arguably saved an untold number of lives.

That makes the studio introduction of the segment extremely odd, or worse:

Now to an untold story on the shooting at Clackamas Town Center. We now know there was another armed man in the mall that day: a shopper, who had the shooter in his gunsight but never pulled the trigger. The Night Team's Mike Benner is live outside the mall, and Mike, the big question for many tonight would be "Why didn't he shoot?"

That's a strange introduction for a situation where you know that the answer is that Meli didn't want to hurt an innocent person, and that no one else was killed or injured (except the shooter, who killed himself) as a result of Meli's decision not to fire.

I would also not discount the notion that the shooter decided to end his life when he realized that the alternative might be getting shot himself and surviving to spend the rest of his life behind bars or mental institutions.

Saturday afternoon, Eugene Volokh cited four examples of "shootings in which a civilian armed with a gun intervened and brought down the shooter." http://www.volokh.com/2012/12/14/do-...mass-shooters/ Those situations end up forcing the press to report the facts.

The story above clearly didn't. A Google News search on Nick Meli's full name in quotes at 11:00 a.m. ET returned no other story.

Earlier this week, a group of Democratic Party politicians in Oregon co-sponsored "a bill that would ban semi-automatic rifles classified as assault weapons." It appears that the legislation would, if enacted, have banned Meli from carrying his Glock (disclosed in the video coverage, but not the text). Mall shoppers who survived that day, their families, and the public should be asking the dimwitted dozen how much worse the death toll might have been on December 11 if Meli had instead been unarmed -- if they only knew the story the press won't tell.


Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blu...#ixzz2FJRxRcl1

comments

If not for the assistant principal at Pearl High School responding with his own .45 automatic, legally stored in his truck just off campus, Luke Woodham would have killed many more students at that school shooting back in 1997. He was in his car, reloading his rifle, when the assistant principal put the .45 pistol to Woodham's head and told him to stop

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They believe "something must be done", and this doesn't take much thinking. What needs to be done is to get a handle on the mental health fiasco in America and arm people with knowledge about the sorry state of the MH system. It's not the psy and psyc that are the problem: It's the politicians who think they are smarter than the rest of us.

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How is a Glock handgun classified as an "assault rifle"?

Because those with political power and a socialist agenda say it is.

..


Why is it that these incidents have always occurred in places where they have very strict gun laws? Answer is: Where the possibility exist that anyone could be armed then the shooter knows he could be shot at any moment and won't get his satisfaction. The real law breakers here are the governments that pass these laws because they aren't capable of or just refuse to see they are turning us over to the criminals. It is obvious that liberalism is a mental condition the results in the loss of common sense, the ability for one to think for themselves and uncontrollable self aggrandizement that they should make all the decisions for poor commoners who aren't part of their intellectual circle. How can you tell if it was a politician or a snake that was run over on a highway? If it was a snake then you will have skid marks!

...four examples of "shootings in which a civilian armed with a gun intervened and brought down the shooter"...

Armed customer thwarts robbery attempt in FL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7egbkWvG6hY&sns=fb

Wal-Green's Pharmacist shoots it out with drug seeking thugs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIeEA1YGAtU&sns=fb

Night Auditor w/ CCW permit possibly saves lives of co-worker, guest and small child from armed robber : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lol-WLKAI0M&sns=fb

Lives likely Saved by CCW : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kabgxkK6GlI&sns=fb

Quotes of the day
posted at 8:01 pm on December 16, 2012 by Allahpundit

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Sunday she would introduce a bill re-instating the federal ban on assault weapons on the first day of the new Congress in January…

President Obama “is going to have a bill to lead on,” Feinstein said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The measure, she said, would aim to take “weapons of war off the streets of our cities.” “It can be done,” she added.

“It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession, not retroactively, prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets,” Feinstein said of her proposal. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...-next-congress


***


“I think we could be at a tipping point for two reasons, a tipping point where we might actually get something done,” Schumer said on CBS’s “Face the Nation”. “First this was not a single incident, it followed a series of others.”

Schumer noted mass shootings earlier this year in Colorado, where a masked gunman killed 12 in a movie theater, Oregon, where a 22-year-old man killed two with an assault rifle, and Wisconsin, where the estranged husband of a spa employee, killed three people. http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/2...-tipping-point

“Second, of course, it involved children,” Schumer said of the Newtown killings…

“Reinstate the assault weapons ban, limit the size of clips to maybe no more than 10 bullets per clip, and the third would be to make it harder for mentally unstable people to get guns,” he said.


***


They all say something must be done – the same thing they say after each horrific mass murder. But nothing is ever done. The truth is that Capitol Hill has been paralyzed on gun issues for most of this generation, having last approved major gun laws, including the “Brady bill” and the now-expired assault weapons ban, in 1994. Since then, the needle has moved toward fewer restrictions on guns and ammunition…

But there’s little reason for congressional gun-control advocates to believe that this tragedy will spark a rush to legislate. When Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House from January 2009 to January 2011, they didn’t reauthorize the assault weapons ban or put any other gun laws on the books. Party leaders have been afraid of a potential political backlash against culturally conservative Democrats from swing states, some of whom want to keep the National Rifle Association in their camp – or at least on the sidelines…

[Rep. Carolyn] McCarthy has said she’s willing to embarrass Obama publicly if he doesn’t take up the issue – and that’s what she conveyed to the White House before Friday’s killings. “I agree this is not the time to talk about [gun control],” she told POLITICO’s Reid Epstein. “It should have been talked about years ago when we started having these mass shootings. It should have been done when Gabby Giffords was shot.” http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.c...A-F1EF285E29DB


***


Hollywood has responded to the rampage at a Connecticut elementary school by pulling back on its offerings, and one star says the entertainment industry should take some responsibility for such violence.

Jamie Foxx, one of the industry’s biggest stars, said Saturday as he promoted Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming ultra-violent spaghetti Western-style film about slavery, “Django Unchained,” that actors can’t ignore the fact that movie violence can influence people. “We cannot turn our back and say that violence in films or anything that we do doesn’t have a sort of influence,” Foxx said in an interview on Saturday. “It does.” http://bigstory.ap.org/article/famil...-after-rampage


***


In a discussion about America’s mental health system, Crowley and asked Hickenlooper whether the “culture of guns” creates a situation in which gun crimes are inevitable. “There is very little you can do to stop a determined person, do you feel that way,” Crowley asked.

Hickenlooper agreed wholeheartedly, and said we need to have “more people paying attention and trying to detect folks that are unstable” or “on the verge of real trouble.”

He went on to say our violent culture, including the “depiction of assault weapons again and again” in video games and the media contributes to gun crimes. The governor also suggested that the criminals might, in their minds, “become part of the video games” when they carry out these tragic crimes.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/colorado-...ass-shootings/

***


I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me…

I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am Jason Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness…

I don’t believe my son belongs in jail. The chaotic environment exacerbates Michael’s sensitivity to sensory stimuli and doesn’t deal with the underlying pathology. But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise—in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population.

No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”


http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.c...kable.html?m=1

***


Brooks said that, while he greatly admires Mayor Bloomberg, he is unsure that a big city mayor is the most effective spokesperson for the cause of gun control.

“One of the problems with this debate; it’s become a values war. It’s perceived as urban versus rural. And, frankly, it’s perceived as an attack on the lifestyle of rural people by urban people. And, I admire Mayor Bloomberg enormously – there’s probably no politician I agree with more – but it’s counterproductive to have him as the spokesperson for the gun law movement. There has to be more respect and more people, frankly, from rural and red America who are participants in this.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/david-bro...al-gun-debate/

***


“I’m not sure so — and I’m sure I’ll get nailed for this — I wouldn’t want one person in a school armed, ready for this kind of thing,” Bennett said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“It has to be someone who is trained, it has to be someone who is responsible,” he said. “But my God, if you can prevent this kind of thing.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politi...es-152099.html

***


“I wish to God (the principal) had had an M4 in her office, locked up, so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out … and takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids,” the Republican from Texas said on “Fox News Sunday.”… http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...-self-defense/

“Every mass killing of more than three people in recent history has been in a place where guns were prohibited, except for one,” he said, arguing for looser gun laws so more people can be armed for self-protection. “They know no one will be armed.”

Via Gateway Pundit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Omqo...layer_embedded


*******


“It’s time for the president, I think, to stand up and lead and tell this country what we should do.” http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...ber-one-agenda


http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/1...-the-day-1231/

December 16, 2012 4:00 P.M.
The Facts about Mass Shootings
It’s time to address mental health and gun-free zones.
By John Fund

A few things you won’t hear about from the saturation coverage of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre:

Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.

In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.

Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.

Almost all of the public-policy discussion about Newtown has focused on a debate over the need for more gun control. In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness and the growing body of evidence that “gun-free” zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don’t work.


First, the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.” New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened. “Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement?” asks Professor Jacobson. “I doubt it.”

Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting. Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.

Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.

I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.

“Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks,” Lott told me. “A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.”

Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

There is no evidence that private holders of concealed-carry permits (which are either easy to obtain or not even required in more than 40 states) are any more irresponsible with firearms than the police. According to a 2005 to 2007 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Bowling Green State University, police nationwide were convicted of firearms violations at least at a 0.002 percent annual rate. That’s about the same rate as holders of carry permits in the states with “shall issue” laws.

Despite all of this evidence, the magical thinking behind gun-free zones is unlikely to be questioned in the wake of the Newtown killings. Having such zones gives people a false sense of security, and woe to the politician or business owner who now suggests that a “gun-free zone” revert back to what critics would characterize as “a wild, wild West” status. Indeed, shortly after the Cinemark attack in Colorado, the manager of the nearby Northfield Theaters changed its policy and began banning concealed handguns.

In all of the fevered commentary over the Newtown killings, you will hear little discussion of the fact that we may be making our families and neighbors less safe by expanding the places where guns aren’t allowed. But that is precisely what we may be doing. Both criminals and the criminally insane have shown time and time again that those laws are the least of the problems they face as they carry out their evil deeds.

— John Fund is a national-affairs columnist for NRO.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ngs-john-fund#

“It’s time for the president, I think, to stand up and lead and tell this country what we should do.” http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...ber-one-agenda

I don't agree with his opinions nor is he my adviser.....nor my messiah.

The Already-Stringent Gun Control Laws Did Nothing to Prevent Violence in Connecticut

With the recent tragedy in Connecticut, it seems time to revisit the issue of gun control once again. However, while the leftist mainstream media has assumed some sort of moral high-ground, claiming, “It’s time something’s done about guns,” none have begun to address the realistic application of gun control laws. The fact is that nothing realistic can be done to curb access to guns. http://dustinstockton.com/2012/07/di...orge-costanza/

To liberals, it’s easier to blame guns than to address the societal malaise that produces psychos.

According to the anti-gun zealots of the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, Connecticut is already the 5th toughest state in terms of gun control. They are in the 90th-percentile of strict gun control states and yet, this tragedy happened. What can this tell us? To me, it shouts what gun rights activists have known for years- gun control laws don’t work.

Awr Hawkins of Breitbart.com noted, http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...p-A-Lawbreaker

“[I]n Connecticut you have to have a permit to purchase a handgun, a permit to own, and you have to register your ‘assault weapons’ with the state. Additionally, ‘no person shall possess an assault weapon unless that person possessed that firearm before October 1, 1993, and received a certificate of possession from the Connecticut State Police prior to July 1994.’”

A ban that took effect almost twenty years ago still was not enough to prevent this shooting. No registration laws prevented it either. While we’re at it, we should make mass-murder of children with a firearm super-duper illegal. It will have about the same deterrent effect as increased gun control laws.

“Even legally owned assault weapons can only be possessed in one’s home ‘or other property owned by that person,’ or while ‘on the premises of a target range’ or similar facility. The weapon can be possessed while on the ‘premises of a shooting club,’ or while attending ‘an exhibition, display or educational project about firearms.’ Or while transporting the firearm to any of these places or to a licensed dealer. Yet even in lawful transport, the weapon must be locked in a trunk or container in such a way as to be ‘inaccessible’ to the driver or passengers of the vehicle.

These are stringent laws, yet neither criminals nor evil people worry about adhering to the law when they embark on the commission of crime. Thus 20-year-old Adam Lanza used guns that weren’t in his name (they were in his mother’s) to commit heinous crimes. He took them, when they weren’t his to take; he used them, where they weren’t supposed to be used and in ways they weren’t supposed to be used; and he took innocent lives in the process. It’s hard to ascertain just how many laws he broke to commit his crime.

Yet as Bob Crook, executive director of the Coalition of Connecticut Sporstmen put it, ‘The laws here are pretty strict, and they’re working. But I don’t know any law that would prevent someone from committing…these offenses which are clearly psychologically based.’”

Until such a time that America can invent a way to prevent malice, we must regard gun control laws as schemes that only disarm the stable in order to advance the cause of the unstable. We cannot dis-invent them. They’re out there, and yes, sometimes in dangerous hands. But how can less blood be shed by taking away my means of defense and leaving the lawbreakers armed?

Gun control arguments are not rooted in logic or as a means to effect good policy. They are arguments that pander to the rabble to provide an illusion of enhanced safety while simultaneously doing the exact opposite.



http://dustinstockton.com/2012/12/th...n-connecticut/

China Calls for ‘No Delay’ on Gun Controls in U.S.
By MARK MCDONALD ~ December 15, 2012, 11:31 PM

HONG KONG — The state news agency in China, the official voice of the government, has called for the United States to quickly adopt stricter gun controls in the aftermath of the shooting rampage in Connecticut that left 28 people dead, including 20 schoolchildren.

According to the state medical examiner who was overseeing autopsies of the children, all of them had been hit multiple times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/ny...ad-in-all.html
All of the children were in the first grade.

“Their blood and tears demand no delay for U.S. gun control,” said the news agency, Xinhua, which listed a series of shootings this year in the United States. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/in..._132042820.htm “However, this time, the public feels somewhat tired and helpless,” the commentary said. “The past six months have seen enough shooting rampages in the United States.”

China suffered its own school tragedy on Friday — a man stabbed 22 children at a village elementary school in Henan Province. An 85-year-old woman also was stabbed. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/wo...-in-china.html

There were no fatalities, although Xinhua reported that some of the children had had their fingers and ears cut off. The attacker, a 36-year-old man, was reportedly in custody. There was no immediate explanation for his possible motives. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/ph..._132042958.htm

On Sunday, the Web site China Smack compiled a range of comments on Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like service in China. One said: “They should issue a bulletproof vest to every American elementary school student as their school uniform.” http://www.chinasmack.com/2012/stori...reactions.html

Another comment related to President Obama fighting back tears while addressing the nation on Friday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP1blMoveZY

In the face of Henan children suffering harm, did our country’s leaders shed a tear!? Why is it that when this kind of incident happens, they always pretend to be deaf and mute!? I’m not saying that our leaders have to be like Obama shedding tears, but can we at least be like others in facing the incident? Instead of the mainstream media not even covering it, hiding it, attempting to avoid it every time the country has a “special incident.”

China experienced a spate of attacks on schoolchildren in 2010, with almost 20 deaths and more than 50 injuries. In the fourth of the assaults, a crazed man beat five toddlers with a hammer, then set himself on fire while holding two youngsters.

In another of those attacks in 2010, Zheng Minsheng, 42, stabbed and killed eight primary school students in Fujian Province. Five weeks later, after a quick trial, he was executed.

My colleague Michael Wines reported at the time: “Some news reports stated that Mr. Zheng had mental problems, but most state media said no such evidence existed. Mental illness remains a closeted topic in modern China, and neither medication nor modern psychiatric treatment is widely used.”

“Most of the attackers have been mentally disturbed men involved in personal disputes or unable to adjust to the rapid pace of social change in China,” The Associated Press reported Saturday, adding that the rampages pointed to “grave weaknesses in the antiquated Chinese medical system’s ability to diagnose and treat psychiatric illness.”

Private ownership of guns — whether pistols, rifles or shotguns — is almost unheard of in China. Handgun permits are sometimes (but rarely) given to people living in remote areas for protection against wild animals.

The Chinese school assaults were carried out with knives, kitchen cleavers or hammers, the usual weapons of choice in mass attacks in China. As a precaution before the recent Communist Party Congress in Beijing, the sale of knives was banned in the central area of the capital.

Dr. Ding Xueliang, a sociologist at the University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong, speaking about the Chinese tragedy on Friday, told CNN that “the huge difference between this case and the U.S. is not the suspect, nor the situation, but the simple fact he did not have an effective weapon.

“In terms of the U.S., there’s much easier availability of killing instruments — rifles, machine guns, explosives — than in nearly every other developed country.”

In a blog on the Web site of The New Yorker, the magazine’s China correspondent, Evan Osnos, wrote:

It takes a lot to make China’s government — beset, as it is, by corruption and opacity and the paralyzing effects of special interests — look good, by comparison, in the eyes of its people these days. But we’ve done it.

When Chinese viewers looked at the two attacks side by side, more than a few of them concluded, as one did that, “from the look of it, there’s no difference between a ‘developed’ country and a ‘developing’ country. And there’s no such thing as human rights. People are the most violent creatures on earth, and China, with its ban on guns, is doing pretty well!”

Japan, too, has a near-total ban on private gun ownership, and the infrequent mass attacks there — which included a tragic rampage at a primary school in 2001— typically have involved knives.

“Almost no one in Japan owns a gun,” said Max Fisher, writing in The Atlantic in July. “Most kinds are illegal, with onerous restrictions on buying and maintaining the few that are allowed. Even the country’s infamous, mafia-like Yakuza tend to forgo guns; the few exceptions tend to become big national news stories.”

In 2006, Japan had two gun-related homicides. “And when that number jumped to 22 in 2007,” Mr. Fisher said, “it became a national scandal.”

“East Asia, despite its universally restrictive domestic gun policies, hosts some of the world’s largest firearm exporters and emerging industry giants: China, South Korea and Japan,” according to GunPolicy.org, a comprehensive global database maintained by the Sydney School of Public Health at the University of Sydney.

In recent weeks, Chinese police officials in Jiangsu Province seized more than 6,000 illegal guns from two underground workshops and warehouses; a retired prison guard in Hong Kong was jailed for 18 months for keeping an arsenal of guns, silencers, grenades and thousands of rounds of ammunition in his public-housing apartment; and 17 suspected gun smugglers went on trial in Shanghai as part of a joint investigation with U.S. law enforcement officials.

In the Shanghai case, more than 100 semiautomatic handguns, rifles, shotguns and gun parts were express-mailed to China from the United States. One of the masterminds on the American end was Staff Sgt. Joseph Debose, 30, a soldier with a Special Forces National Guard unit in North Carolina. He pleaded guilty to federal charges in September.

“The defendant traded the honor of his position in the National Guard for the money he received for smuggling arms to China,” said Loretta E. Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “In blatant disregard for everything he was sworn to uphold, the defendant placed numerous firearms into a black market pipeline from the United States to China.”

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/...ntrols-in-u-s/

"You cannot invade the mainland United States.
There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."

~ Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II.