There's Something On That I Don't Like

First off let me say two things;
1) The tragedy at Newtown CT was a horrible, vile act of violence that should never have happened nor should happen again in the future.
2) I have some bias. I don't like guns and would love to have no guns ever, but I realize that is impossible and so I try not to let my bias impact me too much. And for this article I also play video games, so there's that.

Ladies and gents, its time for my views, not on the shooting itself but on the response by the NRA. They mentioned in an earlier press release that they are finally ready for some change and willing to make some concessions, or at least some ideas on ways to improve the situation. Rachel Maddow (yes more bias but she makes good points, stick with me on this) commented that it is good that the NRA is finally willing to talk, but if they make this about video games and mental illness, then they are merely sidestepping the issue at hand. Yes these are important areas to cover, but the NRA knows about guns, and they should be focusing on their side of things. [Can't find the clip, was playing last night around 11:30 pm Central time]

So with that I am going to be breaking down the NRA's press release and my opinions on each part. I know my bias, but I promise to try to keep it to a minimum. The transcript can be found here: http://home.nra.org/pdf/Transcript_PDF.pdf

The National Rifle Association's 4 million mothers, fathers, sons and daughters join the nation in horror, outrage, grief and earnest prayer for the families of Newtown, Connecticut … who suffered such incomprehensible loss as a result of this unspeakable crime. Out of respect for those grieving families, and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from comment. While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent.

Basic start as one would expect. That last line is a little iffy but I'll let that slide for now.

[Also I will just bracket and put in quotes the NRA's part instead of reformatting everything]

[NRA] "Now, we must speak … for the safety of our nation's children. Because for all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one — nobody — has addressed the most important, pressing and
immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works? The only way to answer that question is to face up to the truth. Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free School Zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them. 2
And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.How have our nation's priorities gotten so far out of order? Think about it. We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses — even sports stadiums — are all protected by armed security. We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers. Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it. That must change now!"

So besides this being a major stab at emotion rather than reasoning I will try to break down a few other things. No one wants guns by our kids (okay maybe the NRA wants to start training them young, damn it I said not trying to be biased, I'll do better, promise) so getting guns out of schools is great. Personally my high-school I believe had a good policy (at least this is what I remember) that I think could apply to other schools and would be acceptable to both the NRA and non-NRA. What my school did was have a higher-powered weapon in a vault only accessible by the police officer assigned to work in the school. In the event of such a situation, he would be able to access it and use it if needed, before the rest of the police force was called in. After talking to a few people on the subject, I would be okay with more than 1 person having access to this weapon, requiring the need of monthly evaluations and lots of training, or something similar but as effective.

This may be covering some things that will be discussed later, I only got to the video game part of the NRA's release before deciding I wanted to write this, so apologies if I will be reiterating myself.

Some people (possibly not in the NRA transcript) have called for arming all/most of the teachers, but there are a few problems with this. One is that a student would have much greater access to these weapons and could possibly overwhelm a teacher (especially one who doesn't want to shoot a student) and cause mayhem in a situation that could easily have been avoided through other safety measures. Another is that many of these people who are calling for the arming of teachers are the same people that said a few weeks ago that the teachers are inept, overpaid, underqualified, etc. There is a definite conundrum in that regard. But back to the press release.

[NRA]

The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever
comprehend them. They walk among us every day. And does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn't planning his attack on a school he's already identified at this very moment? How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine that rewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave — while provoking others to try to make their mark?

To start, yes there are some people that are just evil and will do violence just to do violence. That will be addressed more in the next part. And yes there is a legitimate problem with the media publicizing the names of the perpetrators of this violence that should stop. But this is a problem for the media to deal with. Your expertise is with guns NRA, and how we can keep our civil liberties (I'm not going to argue about the 2nd amendment here, I'll let you have that one) but make it so it is hard/impossible to commit these crimes in the future. Restrictions on magazines maybe? Harder to obtain weapons? Locked up at gun ranges/hunting reserves? Non-lethal bullets for home protection? This is what I believe you should be talking about. And maybe you do later on, let's keep reading.

[NRA]

A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?

Okay so you decided not to address those issues yet. But yes NRA, I do agree with you! More attention for the mentally ill and treatment and also maybe some education for the public. Not all people that are mentally ill will commit violence and not all people that commit violence are mentally ill. That second part may be harder to argue but personally I don't think you need to be mentally ill (standard diagnosis of schizophrenia, psychopath, etc.) to commit this violence. Something needs to be wrong with you to do such things, but a strong bout of depression and a want to leave an impact on the earth (albeit a horrible one) to be recognized is far from what I would describe as mentally ill. (This is sort of hard to argue and I kind of don't believe myself 100% but I hope you see what I am getting at.) The point of this paragraph is supposed to be that just because someone is mentally ill, does not mean they will commit violence or are even prone to violence. Let's not scare the public into an unjustifiable, pointless pogrom in that regard.

[NRA]

And the fact is, that wouldn't even begin to address the much larger and more lethal criminal class: Killers, robbers, rapists and drug gang members who have spread like cancer in every community in this
country. Meanwhile, federal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40% — to the lowest levels in a decade.
So now, due to a declining willingness to prosecute dangerous criminals, violent crime is increasing again for the first time in 19 years! Add another hurricane, terrorist attack or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you've got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization.

So this is an issue I dont have much experience or knowledge of, so I would love some other people to comment on it. Cant be arsed to look up the data write now, must finish this behemoth of a post, but I would bet that lots of gun violence in this country is through legally obtained weapons. Also thank you for your concern about the environment NRA, but lets leave that out of this discussion please.

[NRA]

And here's another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.
Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here’s one: it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come
my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it? Then there’s the blood-soaked slasher films like "American Psycho" and "Natural Born Killers" that are aired like propaganda loops on "Splatterdays" and every day, and a thousand music videos that
portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life. And then they have the nerve to call it "entertainment."
But is that what it really is? Isn't fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography? In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes — every minute of every day of every month of every year. A child growing up in America witnesses 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18.

And the reason why I wanted to write this all in the first place! There's probably going to be a lot here of just personal anguish, but I'll try to not get too biased again. My first objection to this is going to be the First Amendment, Freedom of Expression. Don't tell me that real guns have less impact than fake guns. Yes it allows people to actually "participate" in violence of unreal sorts before they go and do it in real life, but unfortunately this argument doesn't hold up too much. For the more lucrative example, you do not see people pretending to be Scorpion and throwing knives attached to ropes out of their hands and pulling their victims close to them so that they (as Scorpion) can breathe fire on them. Doesn't happen. And the more down-to-earth example is that the number of school shootings in the rest of the world is much much less than in America. These people play the same games as us, but do not have the same atrocities attached. After the CT shootings, many people blamed video games, but on the same day there was a similar incident in China, I believe, where around 22 students were stabbed by a man. Was this man playing too many knife-wielding video games? Probably not. Yes there are video games and movies that have violence, but people used to put this kind of pressure on Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. But it is not a video game or a movie or even music that puts the weapon into a person's hands.

[NRA]

The media call semi-automatic firearms "machine guns" — they claim these civilian semi-automatic firearms are used by the military, and they tell us that the .223 round is one of the most powerful rifle calibers ... when all of these claims are factually untrue. They don't know what they're talking about! Worse, they perpetuate the dangerous notion that one more gun ban— or one more law imposed on peaceful, lawful people — will protect us where 20,000 others have failed!

Once again I'm a little uneducated on this issue. If the media is falsely representing information then that should be fixed. But as long as they are legal to get, guns will most likely cause problems. There are ways of making unlawful use of a gun harder, and this is what we should be focusing on. Something that the NRA does not seem to be commenting on. Especially in this next paragraph.

[NRA]

As brave, heroic and self-sacrificing as those teachers were in those classrooms, and as prompt, professional and well-trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable — through no fault of their own — to stop it. As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at school. The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away ... or a minute away? Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you'll print tomorrow morning: "More guns," you'll claim, "are the NRA's answer to everything!" Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word "gun" automatically become a bad word? A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn't a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn't a bad word. And when you hear the glass breaking in your living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won't be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you. So why is the idea of a gun good when it's used to protect our President or our country or our police, but bad when it's used to protect our children in their schools?
They're our kids. They're our responsibility. And it's not just our duty to protect them — it's our right to protect them.

So it does not appear that the NRA is calling for any ways of making guns harder to get. Even though he comments on this himself, Wayne LaPierre seems to be calling for more guns. Personally, I do not want more guns. Schools with armed guards just makes me think of a police state and that is way against what America stands for. I believe we may be able to compromise and have something like I mentioned my school had earlier. Guns in easy range, but not out 24/7. That way we have someone there who is capable, but not that is armed all the time. I would feel uneasy if my child were in a school with armed guards, and I would feel uneasy if I myself was in a school with armed guards. A gun in the hands of a Secret Service member is not bad because he is thoroughly trained and is guarding a subject where much hatred is directed, unfortunately. Children are not always targeted and guns associated with children has been bad for awhile. Many things could go wrong with guns around children, and so I'd like to lessen that as much as possible. And I'd like to mention that there are ways of stopping a bad guy with a gun besides a good guy with a gun. One of those ways is making it hard for a bad guy to get access to a gun. That would certainly help. And speaking of which, if a bad guy broke into your home (unless you live in a few states) if you shot that man you would be held liable and could go to jail. Is that right? Probably not but is an issue that needs to be addressed as well (tangent, sorry). I would much rather advocate for non-lethal stopping measures, of which we have plenty right now, rather than the straight up only gun alternative.

(As I am getting tired of saying the same things over and over again, I'll try to keep the rest of this short)
[NRA]

You know, five years ago, after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy. But what if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he had been confronted by qualified, armed security? Will you at least admit it's possible that 26 innocent lives might have been spared? Is that so abhorrent to you that you would rather
continue to risk the alternative? Is the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America’s gun owners that you're willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal left to surrender her life to shield the children in her care? No one — regardless of personal political prejudice — has the right to impose that sacrifice

It is possible that 26 lives could have been spared. It is also possible that one of those armed guards could have accidentally fired his weapon, or someone could have taken it from them and done something as well. Keeping guns in schools offers more opportunities for bad things to happen, and a guard could respond to the violence too late. Even if one student was killed before a guard intervened that would be too much. So why not make it harder to get the guns or lethal weapons in the first place. Prevention over treatment people.

[NRA]

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no national, one-size-fits-all solution to protecting our children. But do know this President zeroed out school emergency planning grants in last year's budget, and scrapped "Secure Our Schools" policing grants in next year's budget. With all the foreign aid, with all the money in the federal budget, we can’t afford to put a police officer in every school? Even if they did that, politicians have no business — and no authority — denying us the right, the ability, or the moral imperative to protect ourselves
and our loved ones from harm.

First let me start by laughing. President does not make the budget on his own, there is considerable pressure and concessions made and lots of public works programs (possibly including safety measures for schools) has been scrapped due to partisan politics. I'm not going to flat out say that lots of NRA members are Republicans and that they had a hand in this, but I pretty much just typed it. If you have more information on the specifics here, I would be pleased to fix this section up with more data or remedy my statements and apologize if they are false. Rather than increase taxes on millionaires and people making over $250k, Republicans have been wanting to cut program funding. So there's that. And once again, we can protect ourselves in more ways than just one. Like education and mental health treatment! But again issues that the NRA shouldn't be focusing on.

[NRA]

Now, the National Rifle Association knows that there are millions of qualified active and retired police; active, reserve and retired military; security professionals; certified firefighters and rescue personnel; and
an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained qualified citizens to join with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every school. We can deploy them to protect our kids now. We can
immediately make America's schools safer — relying on the brave men and women of America’s police force. The budget of our local police departments are strained and resources are limited, but their dedication and courage are second to none and they can be deployed right now. I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school — and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.

Once again budget cuts etc., Repubs cutting programs instead of raising taxes, armed guards not necessarily a great thing. Lets make it harder to get this stuff out in public rather than put more people with guns out there. But yes, more funding for police, firefighters, schools I like. Just focus on your side of things instead of pushing it onto others NRA.

[NRA]

Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else, as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school
in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work —and by that I mean armed security.
Right now, today, every school in the United States should plan meetings with parents, school administrators, teachers and local authorities — and draw upon every resource available — to erect a cordon of protection around our kids right now. Every school will have a different solution based on its own unique situation.
Every school in America needs to immediately identify, dedicate and deploy the resources necessary to put these security forces in place right now. And the National Rifle Association, as America's preeminent
trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years, is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help.Our training programs are the most advanced in the world. That expertise must be brought to bear to protect our schools and our children now. We did it for the nation's defense industries and military
installations during World War II, and we'll do it for our schools today. The NRA is going to bring all of its knowledge, dedication and resources to develop a model National School Shield Emergency Response Program for every school that wants it. From armed security to building design and access control to information technology to student and teacher training, this multi-faceted program will be developed by the very best experts in their fields.

More of the same. Look at my other responses to get how I feel on this. More guns and no emphasis on restriction of guns in public, non-violent measures, etc. Shit needs to change. I won't infringe on you being able to hunt, shoot weapons on a range, or even own your own weapons as long as you cannot have lethal ammunition in your house, bring range-weapons with ammunition home or other things of that nature. There is a way to have compromise between non-gun owners and gun-owners, but we need REAL compromise and not to push all the blame onto mental illness and video games which unfortunately seems to be the whole of this press release.

I have proposed some ideas throughout this post, as well as what my old high-school has done which I think is a much better alternative. Let me know what you think and let me know if I have some things just plain untrue and I will try to fix them.

Thank you.