The President has spoken. He is giving his commission until January to provide him with recommendations on additional gun control. That’s breathing room that takes emotion out of the equation. Hopefully, as the President said, “common sense will prevail.”
However, despite paying lip service to mental health issues and school safety during the beginning of his address, President Obama failed to mention them at all during the meat of the speech. Unfortunately, they are the two issues that will result in the greatest impact. It lets you know where his head is.
So now, it’s out there and he’s played to his base. So it’s time to get back to work and make something happen regarding Sequestration. By the way, a “deal” means that both sides get something. Congress and the President need to make a deal. Inaction will result in everyone losing.
Glad to hear he is at least trying to be logical about it. Regardless of how tragic the situation was, there is no reason to apply knee-jerk, emotional legislative action to it.
I certainly hope they’ll be able to see that people with mental health issues are the ones doing the killing, and not the “high cap” magazines, the “AK-15s”, or the “shoulder thing that goes up” that the media enjoys giving so much credence to.
Also, at least now I have an extra 10 PMags on the way to keep loaded. Props to the guys who didn’t gouge the prices and kept them at normal. No intent at advertisement, but high-five to Larue.
We’ll see how logical it is once he unveils his plan. It’s easy to do a feel good gun ban. It’s hard to deal with mental health issues.
You hit the nail on the head there. There are a host of complex individual mental health and social issues at play here. Too many people, and politicians, will too easily fall for the gun-banners clap-trap and take the easy, placebo remedy rather than root out and solve the real problems.
Besides that, El Presidente has already laid his cards on the table by stating even before Newtown that he wanted to see about re-introducing an AWB, and he’s appointed an anti-gunner to head the commission. So, I’m not holding my breath….
One saving grace is that Biden was there when the AWB was passed and remembers the aftermath of the AWB. The Democratic party had their asses handed to them in the 94 mid-term elections.
I mostly meant logical in the decision to wait for a while to cool down. How logical their actual decision, once the time comes, will be, is a whole other issue.
I’d of course like to think they’d do the harder thing, as something worth doing is never easy, but I can’t really see them doing that. To the media and any other ignorant person a black rifle, 30 round mag, flash hider, barrel shroud, or anything else that looks vaguely militaristic, all equal death and violence.
Like you said, it is much easier to go for a gun ban that will make the uninformed masses feel better temporarily instead of working on solving the problem to make society as a whole better.
I’ve written my state’s senators already, and included this report in it: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/jerrylee/research/aw_exec2004.pdf
It talks about the effectiveness of the previous AWB. It’d be nice to think that Congress might read it and try not to be asinine, but that is wishful thinking.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/18/us-usa-shooting-connecticut-obama-idUSBRE8BH10W20121218
Winter is coming.
To me i feel that mental health is the major issue here, look at the past few major mass shootings all of the shooters have had mental health issues. I think the problem is specifically access to mental health treatment. I have personal experience with mental health treatment and how difficult it is to get good treatment. Both my father and my sister have struggled with depression, bi-polar disorders, and addiction and both have been to in-patient treatment and out-patient treatment. Treatment is not easily accessible and is extremely expensive, my family was fortunate that we could afford the high price of treatment, but other families are not so fortunate. i don’t know what congress should do about this issue but to me this is the issue they should address, not a new assault weapons ban.
Joe you are precisely right on with the mental health issue. Ironic the D’s were pushing for public health but it seems to be a no go in the US. It probably wouldn’t have been covered anyway. I’m sure you can find a few hundred cases a day of mental health crimes across the US alone. Also the gunners NEED to practice safe storage (a safe). There is no single solution to these horrors but we can all do our part. Carry if you can, safely store what you can’t. Treatment for those who need it, oh that part is expensive. These crimes generally seem to be middle class crimes. The poor can’t afford these types of arms for the most part. The middle class can afford safe storage. If it’s not on your hip or in a safe how safe is it stored? What can you do for your community?
well said, your the first person to comment what I have been saying since friday, stricter gun control wont make a damn difference other than ruin it for everyone, lock that shit up when your not using or carrying
It’s sad that there will probably be some kind of legislation passed that restricts 2A rights in a dramatic way, and it will probably happen rather quickly. It will be passed by same people can’t perform the basic function of their offices, like passing a budget. They’ll take this opportunity to grandstand and pass meaningless legislation that actually hurts gun owners, and vilifies the Firearms indusry even more than it already is. All the while, the people they are “protecting” are hurt by the freefall our economy will take when they continue their budget silliness in DC, and use this as headline news instead of their failure to avert a fiscal crisis.
**End Rant**
Sean
Spot on
LAV
+1
I’d be curious to know what medications were being taken, if any, by the shooter for his mental illness. Who knows what side effects can occur? All the anti-depressant ads mention suicidal thoughts as a side effect. Is it a great leap to think that homicidal thoughts may also occur? I wish the regulators would look more at the pharmaceutical industry myself. A bit off topic, I know.
Every website, local gunshop, and gunshow dealer is about empty. The one industry that hasn’t suffered under the Long Legged Liar In Chief is the GUN industry!
However… if he got his way? It would be a dead industry anyway.
But getting the genie back in the bottle isn’t gonna be easy. People have used their Christmas Club Accounts to pack in the guns, magazines, and ammo like it really IS the end of the world!
I have yet to see a single example of a law that will prevent someone from murdering their own mother to steal her property and then proceed to murder 20 helpless children.
My biggest fear is a Beslan scenario here in CONUS. You can bet the people who might want to try something like this off have seen just how psychologically devastating the Newtown attack was to our nation, and just how easy it was to pull off in a “Gun Free Zone.”
If one nutjob could waltz in and do what he did, just imagine what a small team of trained and ruthless terrorists could do. Somebody explain how a renewed AWB, safe storage laws, high capacity magazine bans, mental health laws, video game rating systems, etc., etc., ad nauseum, would stop this? None of those laws would have stopped what happened last Friday either.
The ONLY thing that will give our children a fighting chance is hardening the target with layers of security that include locked perimeter doors (that don’t have glass that can be broken and used to unlock the door from the inside), lockable ballistic classroom doors, windows or doors that allow escape from classrooms, and, yes, allowing volunteer school staff and concerned parents to be armed on the premises in case everything else fails.