Rico says that The New York Times went overboard, as usual, about gubs since the Aurora shooting, with four different pieces in today's issue:
A column by by Michael Black, a retired Chicago police officer and the author of I Am Not a Cop, with Richard Belzer, and the forthcoming book Sacrificial Offerings:
As the families of James E. Holmes’ victims continue to deal with this senseless tragedy, anti- and pro-gun groups are exchanging their standard barbs on gun control in America. Representative Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas, recently suggested that if this incident had occurred in his state, where many citizens carry concealed weapons, the crazed shooter could have been quickly terminated. I wonder if the Congressman considered the confusion and terror that occurs in a real-life firefight?I spent over thirty years as a police officer in the Chicago area, and I was required to carry a weapon both on and off duty. A few years after 11 September, laws were extended to allow officers to carry their weapons across state lines and retired officers to continue to be armed, the logic being that those men and women had been screened and trained and knew when and how to use their weapons in emergencies. Excluding our brave military personnel, police officers are probably the only individuals who rush toward the sound of gunfire.
I’ve faced people with guns many times and arrested violent, armed offenders for such crimes as robbery and homicide. Although my gun often left its holster on those occasions, I am grateful that I never had to shoot anyone. I never lost sight of the responsibility of carrying a weapon. Despite what many people think, it’s not something to be taken lightly.
Illinois is the only state that does not allow ordinary citizens to carry concealed firearms. A few years back, I was visiting my father at the laundromat where he worked, when one of the regulars, who knew I was a cop, asked if I was “strapped”. When I said yes, he complained that he should have the right to carry a gun, too, since he was “a law-abiding citizen”. I’d heard this knucklehead spout off about minorities on numerous occasions and didn’t think he was a good candidate to be packing a weapon in public, though in many states, he could have been. The Trayvon Martin case shows the consequences of an untrained person with a gun. Police officers must go through psychological screening and a lot of training before they’re allowed to carry a weapon, and even then problems sometimes arise.
I once told a rookie that you never forget the first gun you take off the street. Mine was taken from a guy named Homer in 1978. It was close to midnight, and we got a call reporting two men trying to break into an apartment building. I pulled up and caught the guys— Homer and a friend— at the doors. It turned out that the caller was an ex-girlfriend of Homer’s who lived in the building, and had made it clear that he was not welcome. Homer had a record, and a .22-caliber handgun in his pocket.
A month later, he saw me outside the courtroom and cordially waved. “It ain’t nothing but a misdemeanor,” he said, which at that time was true. “I’m just gonna plead it out and get rid of it.” And that’s what he did.
The last shooting incident I was involved in happened at three in the morning on 26 December 2010, my last Christmas before I retired. We responded to a report of two men arguing, one threatening to shoot the other. My radio blared: “Shots fired! Man with a gun.” When I reached one man, running in the darkness between two houses, he had already been shot by another officer. When the officer had ordered the man to stop and identify himself, the man had pointed a pistol at him. The officer ducked behind his car door and fired half the bullets in his Glock 21 before finally hitting the offender once in the left buttock. We eventually found the shooter’s silver semiautomatic deep in a snowdrift.
The suddenness and confusion of that moment points out the folly of the politician’s belief that an armed civilian could have easily taken out James Holmes. Imagine the scene: speakers blasting, larger-than-life heroes and villains on the screen, and suddenly real gunshots, a man in a gas mask firing one of three weapons— a shotgun, handgun and rifle, with extended magazines for extra ammo capacity— into the panicking crowd. Even a highly trained, armed police officer would have been caught off guard. Try adding a bunch of untrained, armed civilians into the mix— this type of intervention could have made things much worse.
Illinois is routinely called the “most repressive state” by gun rights groups. It requires everyone to obtain a firearm owner’s identification card before purchasing firearms and ammunition. This gives the police another tool to work with if an armed crook is caught without a card. It also creates a paper trail for repeated, in-state purchases. Perhaps if some kind of effective tracking safeguard had existed in Colorado, James Holmes’ purchases— all of which were legal— might have been flagged.
Both the pro- and anti-gun groups need to sit down and let common sense rule. We register automobiles and require proof of driving proficiency before granting driving licenses. Is it so unreasonable to consider a national or state-by-state registry for firearms? While I’m not totally opposed to concealed carry laws, why not require comprehensive background checks, psychological screening, and training? And while it might be considered un-American to prevent an ordinary citizen from owning an assault rifle, would it be too much to ask why he needs to have a specially modified hundred-round magazine?
As a former policeman, I know that such measures would help law enforcement do its job. As an American, I hope that they could help us head off the next tragedy of this type.
A column by Nicholas Kristof:
Cinemas like the one in Colorado where the shooting took place last week are closely regulated in virtually every respect but one. Federal law requires large theaters to have wheelchair seating, ramps as well as stairs, and bathrooms that are accessible to the disabled. Fire codes limit audience size. Emergency fire exits must be illuminated.
We have a ratings system to protect children from nudity or offensive language. Indeed, on that horrific night in the theater last week, only one major element wasn’t regulated: the guns and ammunition used to massacre viewers.
As a nation, we regulate fire exits, but not hundred-round magazines. We shield youngsters in cinemas from violence— but only if it’s on the screen.
Almost a week after the cinema shooting, we can also be sure what won’t happen: serious gun control. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney have supported a ban on assault weapons in the past, but both seem to have backed off for an obvious reason: the public has become pro-gun.
Since 1959, Gallup has asked Americans if they favor banning handguns. When the polling started, sixty percent said yes; the latest poll showed support from a new low of 26 percent. The latest poll also found that, for the first time, a majority of Americans, 53 percent, opposed a ban on assault rifles.
Indeed, the immediate reaction to the Colorado shooting was a scramble to buy guns. The Denver Post reported a roughly forty percent jump in background checks to purchase firearms.
“It’s been insane,” a gun store employee told the paper.
Yet if traditional efforts at gun control are at a political dead end, there should still be room for a public health effort to mitigate their harm.
Take auto safety, one of the great successes of public health. Many car accidents involve unlawful behavior such as speeding or driving while intoxicated. We prosecute those offenders, but, for decades, we’ve also taken a broader public health approach. We’ve required seat belts and air bags, we’ve created graduated licenses for young drivers, and we have engineered roads and intersections so that accidents are less lethal.
The upshot is that the traffic fatality rate in the United States has fallen to a record low. Seat belts alone save more than twelve thousand lives a year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. So, if we can make cars safer, without banning them, then why not try to do the same with guns?
Look, I know this isn’t sexy. It certainly isn’t as satisfying to gun opponents as a ban on some kinds of firearms. But this approach might actually save thousands of lives.
Yes, the National Rifle Association will rant. But NRA members are much more reasonable than their organization. There’s room for progress if politicians will show leadership. Hello, President Obama?
A recent survey found that more than seventy percent of NRA members approve of criminal background checks for would-be gun owners. That suggests broad backing for one of the most crucial steps: a universal background check for all gun buyers, even when buying from private citizens. I’d also like to see us adopt Canada’s requirement that gun buyers have the support of two people vouching for them.
Other obvious steps include restricting high capacity magazines and limiting gun purchases to one a month. Making serial numbers more difficult to erase would help. And bravo to California for trying to require that new handguns imprint a microstamp on each bullet so that it can be traced back to the gun that fired it.
We should also finance research to design safer firearms. Many accidents would be averted if a gun always indicated if a round were in the chamber. And there should be ways to employ biometrics or a PIN so that a stolen gun would be unusable.
David Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public Health has written an excellent book about public health approaches to firearms. But he argues that we need changes not just in laws but also in social mores— just as we’ve stigmatized drunken driving. Not to mention other kinds of irresponsibility.
“Where I see social norms changing is dog poop,” Hemenway said in an interview. “You’re not allowed to let your city dog run loose now, and you have to pick up your dog poop.” He muses: what if people felt as responsible for their guns as for their dogs? For starters, one result might be more people buying gun safes or trigger locks.
The bottom line is that to promote public health and safety, we regulate everything from theater fire exits to toy guns (that’s why they have orange tips). And if we impose rules on toy guns to make them safer, shouldn’t we do the same with real ones? Quite.
A column by Andrew Jensen, who served for five years as an infantry officer in the United States Army:
In 1999, I was a student at Chatfield High School, in Littleton, Colorado, where students from nearby Columbine High were diverted after thirteen people were killed in the 20 April massacre there. After graduating, I joined the Army. When friends and family asked why, I replied that the tragedy made me realize that the people you love can’t always protect themselves. Serving, I thought, was a way to help them.
My career as an infantry officer included two years in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of miles from Aurora, Colorado, where my dad, my brother and his fiancée now live, less than a mile from the movie theater where James E. Holmes fatally shot twelve people last week. And they’re just the kind of fun-loving, adventurous people who would go to a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises.After years of training and war, I’m left wondering: can you ever really protect people you care about? As a veteran, should I register for a concealed-carry license and always be armed? Even then, would I, as a trained rifleman, really be able to shoot a single person through a cloud of tear gas in a movie theater full of people screaming and running? What if I started shooting, and there was another person with a gun in the crowd?
Or should I lobby for increased gun control?
For months after the Columbine massacre, people were constantly telling one another: “I wish I’d been there, I would’ve tackled that guy.” My Chatfield classmates and I would stand on the steps of our school and watch as Columbine survivors limped into class on their crutches. The reality, of course, is that we wouldn’t have tackled the shooters. Shooters aren’t tackled until their clips are empty, and by then it’s too late.
Serving in a combat zone means constant vigilance against unseen enemies. It means wearing heavy body armor, no matter what the weather is doing. It means taking weapons with you when you eat or use the restroom. It means, quite literally, never putting them down. The common argument made by gun-rights advocates is that they “don’t want to be in a one-way firefight,” which argues for not restricting the sale of things like semiautomatic weapons, high-capacity magazines, and tear-gas grenades. Their contention is that the only real way to stop dedicated shooters is for there to be plenty of other shooters around. Those who truly believe that need to be carrying a gun right now, wherever they are. They need to keep it closer than I kept my weapon in Iraq. In Iraq my fellow soldiers’ lives were on the line. Soldiers’ lives are important— but our families’ safety is even more precious.
Those who truly believe that anyone should be able buy semiautomatic weapons will need a gun at soccer practice, at church, at Batman movies. That’s the only logical choice. And civilian life will feel almost like being in Iraq.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has compiled a sixty-page list of mass shootings since 2005. What’s striking is that there isn’t a single example of a concerned bystander with a concealed-carry permit who stopped a mass shooting. I believe that what I learned in Iraq holds true for the United States: constantly carrying weapons is harder than it sounds, and a determined gunman will orchestrate a mass shooting precisely where and when we are least prepared for it.
We’re also excessively pessimistic about our ability to control firearms in the United States. Since 9/11, federal officials have done an excellent job of restricting the fertilizers and chemicals required to produce homemade explosives. Were we to enact a ban on semiautomatic weapons, we would eventually be able to recover enough of the existing gun inventory to make a difference. Providing for the safety and security of its citizens is any government’s core function. We should urge our government representatives to immediately enact more stringent restrictions on firearms ownership and to increase enforcement of existing gun laws.
There will always be violent loners. If they don’t kill with guns, they’ll find some other way to do it. Semiautomatic weapons, however, are what enable them to shoot dozens of people in a movie theater. Is someone’s right to buy an assault rifle worth having to carry a weapon yourself, every moment you’re outside your home, for the rest of your life?
An article by Trip Gabriel about Romney's views:
Rejecting new gun control laws, Mitt Romney said the answer to horrific acts of violence may be “changing the heart of the American people.”
In London for the opening of the Olympics, Romney spoke to NBC News, the broadcaster of the Summer Games.
Asked if he thought it was time to look anew at controlling access to assault weapons after last week’s mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, or to limit an individual’s right to buy thousands of rounds of ammunition, Romney repeated his position that the country did not need more gun-control laws.
Americans “sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away,” Romney said. “It won’t. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what’s essential, to improve the lots of the American people.”
Romney’s campaign website explains his position on gun control: that the country has all the laws it needs and that it should focus on enforcing them to punish those who use firearms to commit crimes.
Romney said in the interview that the suspect in the Colorado rampage, James E. Holmes, whom the police have accused of killing twelve and injuring 58, was illegally in possession of weapons. “Well, this person shouldn’t have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices, and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already,” Romney said. “But he had them.”Officials have said the three guns used in the mass shooting were bought legally. A spokesman for Romney, Ryan Williams, said he was referring specifically to what the police identified as homemade incendiary devices in the suspect’s apartment, which are illegal in Colorado, not to firearms.
Romney, who will attend the Olympics opening ceremony, side-stepped a question about the horse that is co-owned by his wife, Ann, and competing in the elite sport of dressage. “For those of us who don’t follow the sport, what happens?” he was asked. “I have to tell you, this is Ann’s sport,” Romney said, declining to even utter dressage, a French word meaning “training” and sometimes described as horse ballet. “I’m not even sure which day the sport goes on,” Romney said. “She will get the chance to see it; I will not be watching the event. I hope her horse does well.”Romney has a busy day of meetings on Thursday and what the British news media calls “photo sprays” with political leaders, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair and current Prime Minister David Cameron.
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