Gun control is only the beginning
Yes as momentous and overdue as any progress on guns and mental illness would be, even that by itself would not be enough. We must start there, in other words, but not only there, because we still don’t fully comprehend what we’re up against.
If guns alone — or even guns plus lousy mental health services — were the entire problem, why were no little red schoolhouses fired upon in the Wild West, where everyone was armed and mental illness completely untreated?
There are pieces of the whole of this problem strewn across the political spectrum, it seems to me: The left is correct that actually, guns do kill people, and that the fraidy cats in thrall to the National Rifle Association have blood on their hands.
But the right has a point, too, about the culture of death, in the language of Pope John Paul II’s Gospel of Life. If we haven’t glorified even mass shootings and their perpetrators, then why does one shooter after another show up dressed all in black, like an anti-hero ready for his big finale?









Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Even when Liberals show some common sense, they cannot let go of their dogma. She shows she understands what was not the cause by her Wild West example, but she still cannot let it go.
It is so ingrained within them they are incapable of admiting the truth when it hits them over the head.
jaydee_007 on December 16, 2012 at 1:30 PM
It’s like blaming Ford for drunk drivers.
Moesart on December 16, 2012 at 1:30 PM
Up yours!
Since the left makes billions every year churning out this stuff, what chances are there to get them to stop? None. Therefore, I’ll keep the weapons to protect myself.
Blake on December 16, 2012 at 1:35 PM
We haven’t really tried beating them over the head multiples times, so maybe…?
sharrukin on December 16, 2012 at 1:36 PM
I imagine there is or will be a huge run on gun sales.
Blake on December 16, 2012 at 1:37 PM
Utter nonsense!
OldEnglish on December 16, 2012 at 1:37 PM
Melinda is a cow who deserves not to be free. To work and live like her, based on such stupidity, should not be granted.
Schadenfreude on December 16, 2012 at 1:45 PM
Obama and Hillary have blood on their hands in Benghazi, cow Melinda. You never focused on that.
Schadenfreude on December 16, 2012 at 1:46 PM
She’s out of her league on this one. Tripe.
WisCon on December 16, 2012 at 1:47 PM
I’m for boycotting and bankrupting the Mass Media Industrial Complex that pushes this propaganda, attacks our liberties, and turns law-abiding citizens into criminal elements.
When is the right going to care about the country and not care about making $$$ linking to this garbage or railing against it on talk radio?
People with anti-constitutional and anti-2nd Amendment stances should not be a part of mainstream political discussion.
Punchenko on December 16, 2012 at 1:49 PM
We NO longer are that country, due to cows like Melinda.
Here Honey, just for you Melinda, you chickenbrain.
Schadenfreude on December 16, 2012 at 1:49 PM
Not going to happen. Around 1970 the Democrat party along with a liberal Supreme Court mandated that the mentally ill could not be taken care of against their will. Half of the homeless are mentally ill the rest have addiction problems for the most part. I was working at the Nevada mental institution in Sparks as an apprentice when this happened. The management said these things would happen when they had to release patients who were being housed,taken care of and supervised. By the way the people who work in those facilities are true angels from what I saw.
Progressives have no kindness in them. My vote says throw out the welfare bums and take care of the mentally ill who can’t take care of themselves. But one group votes the other doesn’t.
BullShooterAsInElk on December 16, 2012 at 1:50 PM
Remember when liberals thought that using publicized horrors that statistically amount to irrelevant background noise to drive national policy and curtail freedom was Exhibit A of the self-evident stupidity of American sheeple?
HitNRun on December 16, 2012 at 1:52 PM
Melinda, would you want a group home for schizophrenics or autistic adults like Adam Lanza on your block?
Ah, yes, I thought so. Not In My Back Yard.
Just like Teddy Kennedy loved wind power, but not just in his sailing grounds or where it would spoil the view from his Hyannis Port summer house.
Or John Kerry is a committed environmentalist, but Teresa is not giving up her carbon-belching private jet.
Wethal on December 16, 2012 at 1:55 PM
She just answered her own question.
HitNRun on December 16, 2012 at 1:57 PM
Ever noticed that these crazy guys never go shoot up a police academy or an infantry school?
Knott Buyinit on December 16, 2012 at 1:57 PM
The US government kills innocent children everyday – collateral damage – during their disastrous and endless foreign interventions. Where is the outrage?
MoreLiberty on December 16, 2012 at 1:59 PM
Really ? Please do connect the dots?
Too many on the left , true to their nature, look to blame anyone but the killer.
CW on December 16, 2012 at 1:59 PM
But we sure do like ourselves some drones…. who cares about some Pakistani family.
/
CW on December 16, 2012 at 2:02 PM
Ask your fellow liberals. They were sure concerned when Bush was in office.
MelonCollie on December 16, 2012 at 2:04 PM
We need bigger signs which say “Gun Free Zone” because too many criminals are obviously myopic.
Or…OR…we need more funding for myopia.
Bishop on December 16, 2012 at 2:08 PM
“Bow down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly on you and may history forget you were ever our countrymen.” Or something like that.
JohnBrown on December 16, 2012 at 2:10 PM
That was you I saw on TV calling for more restrictions on the use of drones….oh wait a minute….forget about it…
and your position on abortion is?….
CW on December 16, 2012 at 2:10 PM
This is a fundamental logic failure that needs to be addressed if it is not too late.
Most governments would certainly let it slide though.
I seem to remember a few Brits in an Arab country who had tshirts printed that said, in Arabic, “Guns don’t kill people – I do”.
This did not go down well with their CO.
CorporatePiggy on December 16, 2012 at 2:11 PM
Psychotics in America are now copying the arab/muslim terrorists who commit these unspeakable acts (as they are primitives and violent barbarians) and are coddled and adored by the idiots and traitors in our own government. The arab terrorists who love to blow up children (even their own, as honor killings of their own daughters is a clear example of a wholly psychotic culture – a sick, demented culture) are being feted at the fetid UN, given states as rewards for their violent cowardice and insanity and are now being emulated by our deranged lunatics, who see how the world and the US seem to have no problems with terrorists and giving in to their every demand.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on December 16, 2012 at 2:20 PM
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/china-calls-for-no-delay-on-gun-controls-in-u-s/
davidk on December 16, 2012 at 2:21 PM
Or a casino. A place where there are copious amounts of both firearms and liquor. And people who believe that Fate has cheated them, rather badly…
JohnGalt23 on December 16, 2012 at 2:22 PM
Melinda, the Pope also referred to abortion and euthanasia as part of the “culture of death.”
Are you suggesting we take on “the fraidy cats in thrall to” Planned Parenthood, and the “right to die” movement that got physician-assisted suicide legalized in WA and OR?
No, I thought not.
Wethal on December 16, 2012 at 2:25 PM
Gotta keep the guns away from the future Wolverines?
Wethal on December 16, 2012 at 2:26 PM
I’m against abortion unless the mothers life is endanger, rape or incest. You see I actually believe in individual liberty, redistribution of wealth via our foreign policy at expense of our taxpayers, I’m for fiscal responsibility, federalism, and a small limited government. I support all the amendments, to include the 2nd.
MoreLiberty on December 16, 2012 at 2:29 PM
China, the land of forced abortions and the Cultural Revolution that killed 50 million people. China has never had any respect for human life, at all. What silly Westerners call “The Great Wall” the Chinese call “The World’s Longest Graveyard” as people were worked to death building it and stuck inside it when they popped off. China’s own history – up to this very day – does not speak well for that place. Their pretense at caring about any individual life is pathetic as China has been organized about the exact opposite.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on December 16, 2012 at 2:30 PM
sorry – AGAINST redistribution of wealth via our foreign policy at expense of our taxpayers, I’m for fiscal responsibility, federalism, and a small limited government. I support all the amendments, to include the 2nd.
MoreLiberty on December 16, 2012 at 2:37 PM
… Within your dipsh*t question lies your answer.
thirtyandseven on December 16, 2012 at 3:17 PM
Weapons Grade Stupid.
BigWyo on December 16, 2012 at 4:13 PM
Well, in a battle of wits, she would be unarmed.
trl on December 16, 2012 at 4:32 PM
Wethal on December 16, 2012 at 1:55 PM
Austic adults? Adam Lanza’s Asperger’s Syndrome didn’t make him kill. I’m also AS…remember?
Some people are just evil.
annoyinglittletwerp on December 16, 2012 at 4:39 PM
Do you think cave men had arguments over whether or not to ban wooden clubs after one too many died from blunt force trauma to the head?
tdpwells on December 16, 2012 at 4:39 PM