“They still were able to buy the guns used in the attack legally. Is that a problem or not”
The news report that I saw, said the guns were purchased legally-but not by them. They are still trying to ascertain how they acquired them.
Why the needless hyperbole? It didn’t take TWO DAYS to “perceive” there was something beyond going postal. Investigators found the cache of weapons within hours. And they began investigating the terrorism angle immediately…they are not now “finally” investigating this as a terrorist incident.
Does it really matter that much that they take the extra 24 hours to gather additional evidence before making the “terrorism” finding public? Is it really necessary to start screaming terrorism the minute it’s known the perpetrator has a Muslim-sounding name.
Get a grip.
Sax, what the other side has that we don’t isn’t grassroots support; that’s all on our side. What they have is the NRA, both a financial behemoth and a bare -knuckles street fighter. They can say to a pol “Vote our way or we’ll take you out in the next primary” and make it stick. That’s what we have to have. Currently there’s no political price to be paid for going along with the gun lobby, and we need to create one. That’s going to take a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of organization. No one lives in fear of the Brady Campaign, unfortunately.
Spot on. There are lots of small grass roots groups lobbying for sensible gun control. They need to unite and form one organization that can amass some meaningful level of money and support. The NRA is a powerful bully without any real opposition.
@fireandrain - I did not mean impulsive as in that very moment. I meant they had a larger plan brewing for an attack and did this one as an “add-on” item after the workplace argument boiled over. They obviously had been planning for month if not years to do something and in the scheme of that a decision a day or two before on this particular target in addition to some other target can be termed “impulsive”.
“But, I would be the first in line to vote (if they would ever let the nation vote on this important issue) to ban the manufacture and sale of automatic weapons and ammunition for these types of weapons.”
“I believe each one of us has to ask ourselves “What am I going to do?””
Let’s start voting for elected officials that have the huevos to push through more strident gun control laws. Make this issue a priority when deciding who to vote for at a local, state, and national level.
http://world.time.com/2012/12/20/the-swiss-difference-a-gun-culture-that-works/
An interesting article on guns and the culture in Switzerland. Switzerland is the only place I’ve ever seen guns carried out in the open in public. Yet they have a low rate of gun violence.
The District of Columbia has very strict gun control laws but has the nation’s highest gun murder rate. The Virgin Islands (where a person can’t just drive in with lots of guns) has strict gun control measures but a very high murder rate per capita.
Look, I’m all for gun control measures. Try them. But be prepared. They are not going to work. It’s the mind set of the people, not the guns.
Switzerland has mandatory military service. Their population is basically a militia. Very well trained. What you won’t see is stockpiled ammo and guns.
These weapons should not be available for sale to the public…if anybody can buy them they are going to end up in the hands of mass murderers. Lanza. Holmes. Farook and Malik. What more does it take?
They should be illegal. Those who own them now should get an amnesty to turn them in, maybe a buy back program. After that, owning one should be a felony.
“Is San Bernardino going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back or are we going to forget about this in a week?”
No. If the wholesale slaughter of 5 and 6 year olds cowering and dying in their teachers’ arms didn’t move this society to gun control NOTHING will. Absolutely NOTHING.
On this issue we as a society are simply mentally ill.
Or held hostage by corrupt politicians bought by the NRA and its propaganda-manipulated masses.
Or frighteningly passive. Or something.
Words fail.
There are several dimensions to a disaster such as the people who do it and the organizations who support them and the tools needed to do it. Some are far harder than others to address but it is foolish to ignore something that can be handled right away just because there are other parts that are more difficult - you already have loads of firearms and laws and culture that have been part of this society for generations. This takes far longer and more discussion to address.
The second is what Europe is discovering - hundreds of mosques with imams whose goal is to turn youth into radicals and behave the same way they do in the middle east, Pakistan, etc. We have a slight edge in that we haven’t been infiltrated to the extent Europe has. The immediate action we can take is to put a complete halt on any more immigrants from these societies. We don’t need any more Boston bombers, Ft Hood doctors, or San Bernardino “normal everyday people” till the day they decide to show their true colors. No amount of screening would have determined how they ended up behaving - they’d all have showed up as normal.
Many times we don’t have clear good and bad solutions; sometimes we have to pick between the better of two bad options. In WWII the Japanese were segregated and put in a spotlight. Yes, it was bad for them, but it prevented any of them who may have been tempted to act up, and over the subsequent generations, they haven’t become “radicalized” because of their treatment, and the Japanese of today isn’t marginalized in our society. Shutting down immigration from societies where violence is the norm is a far milder action than what we did with the Japanese.
People who have a tendency to get radicalized aren’t doing it just because we have immigration laws against their kind - they’re going to stay radicalized until they’re running this place under Sharia. So it’s far better having one guy who’s already here and is likely to get p*sed of at us, than him and the half dozen new guys who we let in.
As the French are discovering, the hard problem they have just begun is to identify and close mosques and deport imams. We are far better served with prevention rather than cure.
Take the steps we can while we still can - yes work on the problem with guns and arms - that’s one dimension, but clamp down on the people we let in right away.
From the Time article on Switzerland and guns:
One of the reasons the crime rate in Switzerland is low despite the prevalence of weapons — and also why the Swiss mentality can’t be transposed to the current American reality — is the culture of responsibility and safety that is anchored in society and passed from generation to generation. Kids as young as 12 belong to gun groups in their local communities, where they learn sharpshooting. The Swiss Shooting Sports Association runs about 3,000 clubs and has 150,000 members, including a youth section. Many members keep their guns and ammunition at home, while others choose to leave them at the club. And yet, despite such easy access to pistols and rifles, “no members have ever used their guns for criminal purposes,” says Max Flueckiger, the association’s spokesperson.
“Social conditions are fundamental in deterring crime,” says Peter Squires, professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Brighton in Great Britain, who has studied gun violence in different countries and concluded that a “culture of support” rather than focus on individualism, can deter mass killings.
“If people have a responsible, disciplined and organized introduction into an activity like shooting, there will be less risk of gun violence,” he tells TIME.
That sense of social and civic responsibility is one of the reasons the Swiss have never allowed their guns to come under fire.
The article also states that no one with a history of mental illness is permitted to buy a gun in Switzerland. It doesn’t say how that mental illness is determined or how the government tracks who is mentally ill.
We can’t give up and cave in to the NRA. Yes, Sandy Hook should have changed the gun conversation and legislation. It did not. And that is on us - all of us collectively. Let’s rally now! Let’s fight for reasonable gun control. I know it will not solve everything. It will not prevent every mass shooting. But if the options are between trying something and doing nothing, my choice is clear.
“We have a slight edge in that we haven’t been infiltrated to the extent Europe has. The immediate action we can take is to put a complete halt on any more immigrants from these societies.”
Your discrimination is showing, Dad of 3. Sounds like you’re in favor of the Fascist States of America.
Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but why in the world would the landlord (and the police/FBI) let all those hordes of media and other random people into the crime scene??! There is no way the FBI could comb through all that junk in only one day. They could have just allowed someone to traipse in and remove incriminating evidence against accomplices–who knows? Law enforcement/FBI incompetence here is really frightening.
@jazzymom That’s what Australia did, a massive buyback. Surprise surprise : they haven’t had a mass shooting in almost 20 years. But the US seems uniquely unable to learn from example.
“Your discrimination is showing, Dad of 3. Sounds like you’re in favor of the Fascist States of America”.
I also discriminate. We are the Harvard of the world, the U.S. is still the most desirable place to immigrate to. We should be able to choose who we think adds value to our country.
I discrimate towards people from countries that value freedom, life, democracy, and the equality of women. Living in the US is a precious gift, when you compare other countries to us. If it’s Fascist to want to accept people who share our values, then I must be a Fascist too.
I never thought I would see, on CC, a defense of Japanese internment in WWII. But if there’s anyone else here who defends Japanese internment, I ask you to explain, if it was so good, why it wasn’t necessary in Hawaii.
I would be willing to contribute money to a group that would buy back guns. I know this has been done before, but it needs to be done again, everywhere, all at once, and be done in conjunction with a change in laws.
We could also use a massive public art project, like the AIDS quilt, to come to DC while congress is in session. How about body bags with the names of victims of gun violence arranged in a circle around the Capitol building? Let them cross that moat before they go in to work.
I think it was @Cardinal Fang who first posted a link that shows very little - if any - radicalization happens in Mosques.
Some people deserve to be actually interned. Ask the Jews if internment camps made them like the Nazis.
Spoken like a true ignorant, paranoid man who does not understand what Sharia is. Nobody is forcing you to do anything. When was the last time a Muslim tried to force you to convert? Get. A. Grip.
And I discriminate against idiots who paint a wide brush over countries that aren’t theirs. For that matter, I discriminate against countries with continous mass shootings. @Doschicos beat me to it. The prejudiced are coming out of their hiding holes. Soon you’ll hear about how these Muslims aren’t really Americans, and want to control all ‘the normal’ Americans. Nazi Europe 1930’s, anyone?