In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, Congressman Raul Grijalva joins the chorus of voices calling for new restrictions on guns:
When a man kills twenty children and seven others for no reason other than his own demons, the immediate human response is the same anywhere: deep pain, grief, anger and frustration. In the United States, unfortunately, such a tragedy carries an added weight because it is not unique.Last Friday will live in our collective memory, just as Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Tucson and the numerous other mass killings we have endured will live in our memory. We have become a nation overly acquainted with shock and grief.
That grief cannot be the end of our response. With millions of other Americans, I say today that we should stop making emotional room in our hearts for each year’s new round of public shootings and killing sprees. We should resolve to end them rather than accommodate them.
At some point, which I believe we long ago passed, the time comes to stop calling for ‘a national dialogue’ when one side is clearly uninterested in talking. Absolutism in defense of gun violence is no virtue, and we have been cowed by absolutists for too long. When we accept eight or nine thousand gun murders a year as the price of what some people think of as freedom, we have gone too far.
It takes necessary courage in these moments to admit that our laws are part of the problem and that no amount of emotional healing is going to prevent the next tragedy. The scandalous availability of highly lethal weapons to even the least qualified, least competent and most dangerous among us has gone on long enough. If pro-gun activists will not negotiate in good faith, it is time for the country to move on without them. Sitting on our hands and hoping for the best is no longer an option.
There are plenty of people who believe otherwise. I wonder how they would feel if it had been them at five years old.
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2012.
More cigarettes, less lung cancer, John Lott?
At least, stop allowing guns to republicans.
The usual chorus of fools.
It appears that Dupnik created a trend.
Mass murder serves as a bully pulpit for whatever bug is up some avid donut eater’s ass:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4CT4boLPrU
Give it a rest, Grijalva. Meditate. Eat another donut.
So the Constitution is meaningless Raul?
This message from a man who would be completely happy with letting anyone and everyone cross the border into the U.S., including violent felons. No one wants to see children injured but stopping using the constitution as toilet paper.
If you don’t believe our country has evolved since the constitution was written, then let’s keep legal the same guns that were in use when the constitution was written. let’s have a good conversation, put away your bumper sticker ideas out of the conversation. by the way why has the NRA and the Senators and Congresspeople that are in the NRA pockets not speaking, not responding. the conversation is now when we can see what sick progun legislation does to people, Children the innocent.
Never let a crisis go to waste. Seems like we’ve been going from one crisis to the next over the past four years…
Mammy, at the time the second amendment was written weapons that can fire 16 rounds by a single trigger action, magazines and high powered rifles did not exist. They had muskets and shotguns that had to be reloaded manually which took time. I doubt very much that the authors indended for individuals to own weapons that could kill so many people in such a shot time.
Alan,
The Constitution is the law of the land, if you don’t like it, then change it. If you don’t change it, or have support to change it, adhere to it. Keep and bear arms means “the right to own use the means to make war.” Now I don’t see a difference between a Musket in 1776 and an M16A1 today. The idea of both is the same. To infer that an M16 is different is just unsubstantiated hogwash.
If media reports are accurate, it is interesting and perhaps ironic and tragic, that mom, the owner of multiple guns was done in using one of them.
And nary a NRA member thereabouts to save her…
Man Attempts to Open Fire on Crowd at Movie Theater, Armed Off-Duty Sheriff’s Deputy Drops Him With One Bullet
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/man-attemp…
Excuse me for butting in here, but Rip, well-trained off-duty cops aren’t the issue here.
The issue is the guy who ran in, waving a gun around, threatening to shoot people.
That man, who is willing to take a potshot at cops and threaten innocent lives because he had a bad day, is probably not someone who should own a gun. Can we agree on that?
We already have laws in place for the guy you have the issue with. The point is that there is a means to counter a mass slaughter. Would have been nice if someone was packing heat among the administrators.
The problem we have now is the chorus of people pushing to disarm the public. Authorities are moving fast with various power grabs because of the internet reformation. A more discerning public is more difficult to control. The erosion of civil liberties is moving at a rapid pace.
Tyrannical rule begins with disarming the citizens. If only the authorities have arms, the cost of tyranny is much lower.
This is an even less desirable outcome today as people eventually realize that we are ruled by criminals.
can we do away with ” packing heat?” Reality is ” Carrying a legal pistol,” that’s the 21st Century reality.This is a dangerous world with a lot of people becoming unwound. Taxes going up, Congress crappy, mideast in flames, terrorists nuts, medical mistakes 16k a year. A lot of pressure, a lot of violence. And now, unstable teenagers and killing babies….A gun is a tool. Look at the middle east. Terrorists can use bombs, rockets, then there’s Oklahoma City, a really BIG bomb. The so called assault weapons ban was tried before and a ten year statistical study showed that it produced ZERO effects on curbing violence with that gun.Check it out.
Frank, agree that we’re sure in weird times. Perhaps we need to re-think our current social organization, letting those who agree on what form that should be aggregate toward the same spot of land. In my thinking, those who love violence should have a place to go, or be sent, where violence is acceptable, (think a city/state created to serve as a prison). Ditto for those who use or sell mind alterning drugs. For the rest of us who believe social order is desirable, we can live in the rest of the country where these things are not tolerated. Social bubbles? Arcs? Who knows?