A few years ago, the leaders of the Chicopee Sportsmen’s Club had a bad feeling about a guy who was taking their firearm safety class. He didn’t have the right “type of temperament,” club vice president Richard Mastronardi told me. So someone made made a nonchalant call to the local chief of police, just to suggest that, if it were him, he wouldn’t issue a permit to a guy like that.
That single act hints at a world that’s not far from our grasp — a world in which the right to bear arms is weighed against the damage guns can wreak, a world where people who want guns for self-defense can still agree that a powerful weapon is worth regulating closely. A world in which a disturbed 20-year-old man wouldn’t have access to a weapon that could kill so many children in a horrifying flash.
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We should address the 33 states that allow gun purchases at gun shows. The main problem we face is mental illness, there are 300 million guns in this country, nobody in their RIght mind would ever commit such a horrific crime.
Well said!
The NRA should be invited to the table because the VAST majority of gun owners are NOT gun nuts. One suggestion regarding assault weapons. Most people just want to shoot them a few times. I'd argue one thing the government could do is to have state run gun shows where law abiding gun owners could shoot those weapons under controlled, but "fun", circumstances. The only gun owners who want to own such weapons believe in the UN helicopters and they believe they will have to fight the government or fellow humans at some point. Most people understand this will not happen.
What are the arguments for allowing assault weapons to be available to civilians? I completely understand people wanting to own guns for hunting or self-defense, but assault weapons don't seem to be necessary in either of those scenarios. What is the rationale for allowing them to be available outside the military?
Go to youtube and search for AR15 shooting competitions. It is a shooting sport like any other.
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The NRA needs to come out of its closet and LEAD the discussion on how to get a grip around this phenomenon of disturbed people wreaking mass destruction on innocent... children. Legislators are so cowed, so needful of its backing, that turning to our elected leaders for action becomes almost pointless. This organization/lobby is famous for being able to mobilize its members--an answer must come from them. The responsibility to craft a solution lies squarely on their shoulders as the NRA is responsible for inhibiting any kind of progress on addressing this most horrid problem. Change the terminology (gun "control")! How about Measures to Protect and Defend Innocents from Massacre?
I think we need very strict laws on gun control, with harsh penalties for law breaking with guns, and for illegal ownership. But further, we need to change the culture, begininning with the video game industry. We need censorship here. Kids ought NOT see the easy way guns can kill, and then have it turned into a game. We need God allowed in the schools, and all kids should have two married parents in the home.....
Seriously simplistic. Why is it that right-wingers only want to restrict others' freedom? Let's see- forget about separation of church and state (leaving questions about "God" aside), get married parents for each student's home (maybe Macy's is having a sale), and "censor" the video game industry (how? why?).
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Mrs. Lanza told a babysitter "Never turn your back on my son". So then she has these weapons and takes the kid to a firing range. Does this make any sense? Maybe she should have been more closely scrutinized before being given a permit.
I am pretty upset with Mrs. Lanza, too, but let's be careful. I heard the comment from the babysitter but the media cut the interview there. Maybe she was worried he got into mischief or wandered away. No one who knew him saw this coming...at least not that we know. Something made him snap and the guns were there. If the guns had not been there, he might have driven a car into the school but would probably not have killed as many kids.
That said, I do fault her for having guns in the house. Adam grew up with a somewhat crazed mom. She was piling up guns and ammunition and planned to use them against people, not animals. We ought to make clear that that is not acceptable behavior. We ought to encourage kids to turn their parents in for stockpiling weapons.
To SingleMomofCollege:
Turn parents in for stockpiling weapons? Hate to burst your bubble, but there is no such crime. BTW, that is dripping with the kind of thing that went on in the Soviet Union and East Germany.
I was agreeing with your post, right up until you wrote THAT.
What? A person who writes with a brain instead of an agenda? How did this happen?
Joanna makes many excellent points in her piece. I enjoy shooting, everything from 1911's (that is a .45 semi automatic pistol for you folks not familiar with gun, invented in 1911) to an AR15 and trap shoot. My wife and I belong to two clubs. I am a VietNam veteran. That just gives you some background on where my comments come from.
I am not a huge fan of MA gun laws, as the author stated, they can be abused and have been abused in certain jurisdictions. But like the banning of all weapons, should the gun laws be thrown out with the bath water? Probably not. Instead, how about getting some uniformity to the implementation of our laws?
She also brings up the issue of "assault style" weapons with large capacity magazines. Often times when I am at the range I see young shooters show up with this type of weapon. She is correct when she states that it is for the "thrill" as they rip off 20-30 rounds at a high rate of fire. Regulars at a gun club generally do not participate in this type of activity, and for the most part think it is stupid. Which brings up another point that she makes about a divide among gun owners. There certainly is a divide.
Visit NorthEast Shooters forum, after reading, you will discover that some shooters are referred to as "Fudds". This is a reference to "Elmer Fudd", a bumbling hunter. Fudds are viewed on that forum almost as poorly as anti gun "libtards" because they do not believe they will need high capacity military style weaponry to defend themselves. The core regulars of that forum are out to "educate" new shooters as to how they have to defend themselves from the ".gov" in all it forms.
I would agree that the "need" for high capacity magazines by the general public cannot be justified, unless that person truly believes they are going to get into a war with the government. But frankly, high capacity magazines do not win wars, determination does. If we believed that we needed high capacity magazines to keep our government in check, then we should also have machine guns, tanks, jet fighters, etc to level the battle field.
Ms. Weiss also mentions what is actually used for home defense, pistols. I mentioned that I own everything from pistols to an AR15 and shotguns. My home defense weapon is the .45 pistol. So, she is right about that, too. Too many of these 20 somethings picture themselves stalking through their homes at night like a SWAT team clearing rooms, so they have equipped their AR15's with LED flashlights, etc. They are role playing, which is what they have done all their lives on their video games.
Ms. Weiss, thank you for an EXCELLENT opinion/article!
What reasonable person truly believes he is going to get into a war with the US Government?
I often hear gun owners, like the commenter, state that they "only use" their pistols for home defense. But, really, how often has that had to be done? Is your house being regularly broken into? Do most gun owners live in high crime areas? I don't think so -- in fact, I think most legal gun owners deliberately live away from high crime areas. I hate to say it, but even the most responsible and least paranoid gun owners still seem too paranoid, "protecting" their homes from something that is extremely unlikely to occur. But, hey, I'm willing to be disabused of this notion.
There are a lot of Adams out there...a lot of kids who don't have friends...kids whose mothers see their lonliness and worry about them. Perhaps we'll hear more about how the Lanza's fit in or did not fit in to the community when Adam was growing up. There is a lot we don't know.
A few years ago, the Globe ran a story about Anthony, a young man from the North End who had died. Anthony was different. He didn't have friends. The old neighbors had taken care of him after his mother died. Unlike Adam, Anthony was an extrovert. The whole neighborhood new him and accepted him the way he was. There was no bullying, no being made to feel lonely. Maybe Anthony was just lucky. He wasn't as smart as Adam and he wasn't as lonely. Maybe he was lucky because he wasn't as rich. His mother hadn't bought weapons to protect herself and Anthony in case of hard times. She had assumed that when those hard times came, people would help each other. After she was gone, people helped her son.
Even in a neighborhood that had known its share of violence and lost innocence, Anthony did not become Adam.
Something was different for Adam, some combination of fear and guns and separation from people. We may never know why. What are we willing to do for the other kids out there...the Adams who are in first grade now?
Since he committed suicide at the scene a psychiatric diagnosis is not possible. If the examples of Laughner and Holmes are any sort of predictor (psychotic break), then no, there are not a lot of Adam Lanzas out there. Typically, psychotic illnesses manifest themselves when an individual is between 14 and 24, but it can happen earlier, and it can remain undiagnosed for a long, long time. The key, and a very difficult one at that, is to recognize the earliest possible signs of rage, paranoia, delusions of grandeur, and the like, and intervening. Most of the time, such hints of danger are 'below the radar', but if a parent or teacher or family doctor recognizes that something is off, there needs to be greater levity in further evaluating such individuals.
Maybe if it wasn't so easy to hide your kids away by Home-Schooling *someone* might have realized how sick this kid was.
Good piece Joanna.
Ok, Momma Lanza is a whacked out nut job survivalist gun collecting nutjob. Sonny boy goes to the range shooting with her. Where in all of that did he get the idea to go down to the local grade school and start killing children?
I don't buy the "I am a lonely person, so I go shoot children to get attention" theory.
Wonder if we will see the pharmacology report of what prescription drugs they had him on? Some of those anti depressants result in violent outbursts, dissociative behavior, etc in certain individuals. Or maybe he was off whatever drugs he was supposed to be on?
Or maybe it was the violent video games that he played. Nothing like being able to blow away a bunch of people in a video game as practice for the real thing. Aside from Lanza's mother's thinking that guns would teach him responsibility, maybe she should have thought about a severely introverted child playing a game where he can kill those he's never been able to fit in with. While violent video games are not going to cause every child to go on a shooting spree they probably should be restricted from those with emotional problems.
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This is a reasonably well written article. I agree that there is some room for discussion and also very much agree that there are some people who lack the temperment to ever have access to a gun of any type. Mind you this is coming from a Life Member of the NRA among other notable groups. I've had my CC permit in MA for nearly 30 years and take the resposibility very seriously. I've grumbled about and then adapted to the changes in the laws here (some of which have been excellent). Although I rarely ever talk about the hardware that I own and I never let anyone know when I am carrying a gun, I take pride in the fact that I follow the law and the rule of common sense. God forbid but if the situation called for using it, I would rise to that. I have no idea what the situation was inside of the Lanza home. I may never know. Unfortunately the one assumption I can pretty much take to the bank was the fact that he had or in some way, figured out how to access the weapons. That is a failure on the part of the gun owner and yes, regulations can change that for most owners as it has here in MA. I understand why the NRA is quiet. This is a time of healing.
The "rule of common sense" is where things go wrong. You may exhibit it but unfortunately too many don't and that, often times, leads to these atrocities. I won't rehash what I've already posted about Lanza's mother but, clearly, she had a lack of common sense in her dealing with guns. This is a very complex problem that "fixing" just one thing will not solve.
Why not eliminate the gun business, the gun lobby, gun fanatics, chicken-hearted politicians, and have a popular referendum similar to the one concerning marijuana? Let the majority speak. Something eliminating military style weapons and numbers of weapons owned.
Obviously an impossible objective but I'm more curious about why your comment is self dissolving. You mention eliminating the gun business and list even it as your first which suggests that it is your most important point. Then you allow for a popular referendum which implies that you'd be OK with it if the vox populi voted in favor of it. I'm with you on the lobbyists and chicken hearted politicians but I don't understand why you conflict yourself with the other. FYI, were there no customers, there would be no manufacturers. Very similar to your marijuana POV. Have you seen the sales figures of both items? I'd argue that the public has already spoken.
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My question is why do gun owners or enthusiests have rights over my rights to peace, health and safety? Assualt weapons should be banned, period as they serve no needed purpose other then to provide excessive and unneeded fire power required only by those who want to accomplish mass murder and damage.
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You obviously are not a shooting enthusiast. You know nothing of shooting sports. You believe what you read about guns. AR15's are used in shooting sports all over the country. A revolver, in the hands of an accomplished shooter can achieve the same deadly results as an "assault" rifle. More kids die by drowning in backyard pools each year than by assault rifles. I never saw the need for a backyard pool. They are dangerous and we should consider banning them.
One dimension of gun violence is almost completely absent in the aftermath of Newtown: getting gun owners to secure their weapons. None of the regulations being proposed, would have prevented the massacre of innocents. If Nancy Lanza had had the awareness, training, and sense of responsibility to put her arsenal in gun safes or secure them with trigger locks, her unbalanced son would have had a much harder time carrying out his rampage. She herself could still be alive.
I'm all for more regulation of gun & magazine sales. But isn't the horse already out of the barn? We have almost one weapon for every citizen; re-imposing an "assault weapon" ban will do NOTHING to make our existing inventory any safer.
Why the silence or perhaps, ignorance?
Excellent post. The storage and security of all guns is paramount to ownership. The investment I made in security far outweighed the dollar value of the hardware I had on hand at the time. There's a nearly tragic back-story I've told on the old B.com pages before as to why I bought "up" but one event was all it took for me to understand the need. That was before the laws were tightened-up to also regulate storage and security here in MA and yes, I've upgraded since.
You beat me to citing this as an excellent post, RD. Personally I will not own a firearm for the simple reason that I believe one has to be able to see well enough to evaluate a target/threat in order to use a firearm, and I do not fit that bill. Nevertheless, safely securing a firearm and its ammunition is far more important than defining which ones should be banned.
According to an article in today's Globe, Lanza's mother thought it made sense to use guns as a way to teach her son responsibility. What you proposed today would have maybe removed the military-style Bushmaster rifle from what Lanza had access to but he still could have stormed the school with hand guns. Granted, not having a weapon that sprays bullets would have saved the lives of many but still many would have died. Hopefully laws will be changed to better control automatic weapons but how do you stem the other factors in this tragedy? Lanza had a son with supposed deep emotional issues that made him severely introverted who, according to reports, played violent video games, and she thought that working with guns would teach him responsibility? Obviously she never envisioned what happened but what was she thinking? Some form of gun control would probably help to keep the scale of these atrocities down but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Another good post. For the record, "spray" could apply to the weapon being an "automatic". This rifle was not. It was one pull of the trigger per round discharged just like a typical pistol or revolver. No idea what type of sights the gun had or if it mattered but the high capacity magazine certainly was a bad ingredient. If he was skilled, he could have used any type of gun with any size magazine and achieved nearly the same disgusting results. Again, he should never have had access. In the end, I sure hope they are able to get something off of his computer hard drives. The fact that he went to great lengths to destroy them tells me there is strong evidence is there.
Why no mention of the 2nd Amendment? "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." That's right out of the Constitution and it's really cut and dry. If you want to infringe upon my right to keep and bear arms, you need to amend the Constitution. Any discussion about infringing upon the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens that doesn't include amending the Constitution is a non-starter and a waste of time.
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It really doesn't matter what people feel, today or any day, about guns. The issue has been decided long ago. The business of America is business, as they say, and the gun industry is very big business. There are more gun sellers in the USA than there are MacDonald's franchises. Within a ten mile radius of the Sandy Hook School, there are 36 registered gun sellers! The industry is way, way too integrated into American culture to change it significantly.
This will all blow over, just like every one of these "massacres" do. The popular will is not to ban or even significantly restrict guns. For far too many Americans, these massacres are the price of freedom -- their freedom to own guns without restrictions. They're a kind of "collateral damage" in the defense of that freedom. Too many Americans believe that gun deaths happen somewhere else, to someone else, and will never happen to them -- and they're pretty much correct. So, why change anything, right?
did you think ever that if the teacher or teachers had a licensce to carry, some of the children may be alive today, but no, the liberals don't allow guns in school. In some part their responsible for not protecting the children,because of their ridiculous ideology!!!
Clearly, you're not a teacher.
Well, did you ever think that if we closed all the schools and kept the kids at home (well-armed homes, of course), and then if all the kids were home-schooled, it would be really, really difficult for any shooter to get that many kids in such a short period of time? See, we could spend all day coming up with absurd "what if" scenarios. I also find it curious that the people who claim the teachers should've been packing, never seem to want to pay for security guards at the schools as probably a more professional alternative.
Someone should tell Mastornardi (and you) that the reason Gabrielle Giffords and other may still be alive today is because people took down the shooter as he was trying to reload his gun!
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/jared_lee_loughner/index.html
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The event is an extremely emotional one for any normal person. We would all like to solve the problem right now, forever. There are those who see the solution as banning all guns. Let us imagine that actually happens, a law is passed that every person in possession of a gun is told to relinquish that gun or face severe prison time. In reality, all 300M+ guns would not get turned in. Criminals would ignore it as well as those who feel they absolutely must have those guns to defend themselves from criminals or the government. Some of those guns will continue to kill people long into the future. But more importantly, the insane person who desires to kill a large number of innocent victims quickly will turn to other means, they are called IED's. As we all know, they can be made from lots of different common chemicals and materials.
So the great anti gun law is passed and all the teachers and children go to school feeling warm and fuzzy. Until a truck roars up to a school, or school bus and explodes. Then what?
What is going on is a form of terrorism, it is very hard to fight as we have learned.
So what do we do? We shouldn't put the responsibilty of solving this into the government's hands by having them pass a few laws to make people feel warm and fuzzy. It is highly doubtful a total gun ban would happen anyhow. As people who actually care about each other, people who abhor guns and gun owners alike need to ask themselves: "What can I do as a person to help stop this sort of thing from happening?"
The very first thing we all need to do is teach young people that human life is sacred, that it should never be taken unless it is defense of your own life or the life of another. That idea has to be drilled into every person from birth. I am not sure how video games fit into that picture, I am not a psychologist. But maybe it is time we had a law crafted concerning those games to see if it works, but I am sure that video game designers would scream their rights were being violated.
The next thing is that if we are gun owners, we need to be ever vigilent with our weapons as has been mentioned elsewhere. No one who does not have proper authority should have access to them, period. It does not matter if that person is your son or daughter, unless they are under your direct supervision, no access.
Also as gun owners we should be honest with ourselves. Am I buying that particular weapon because I want to look "cool" or am I buying it because it is really something that I am going to use for sport shooting or hunting? Buying it just to go rip off 30 rounds at a time to be cool really isn't a good reason to put a weapon in a personal inventory. BTW, many ranges prohibit that type of rapid fire, or loading of more than five rounds at a time.
We need to look at our priorities. As a nation, we have spent trillions fighting wars overseas, protecting other people. It would seem to me that it would be quite a bit less expensive to protect our children here at home?
We need the media to stop 24/7 coverage of these events. The mentally disturbed feed on that kind of information. I would propose a law to limit their coverage. Can anyone imagine how the media would howl about THEIR 1st ammendment rights being trampled on?
In the end, it is going to take each and every one of us to solve this problem, not some feel good laws. The laws will help a bit, but they are not the be all, end all answer to this problem.
Should gun owners rights get trampled on? I am not so sure they would be trampled on. I live in MA, there are some towns where the Police Chief violates state law by not processing license applications in accordance with the law. However, in my experience, I have not been prevented from defending myself or enjoying any of the legitimate shooting sports by the laws in this state. I have not had any problem not owning a 20 or 30 round magazine, machine gun or howitzer.
Its a complex problem to be sure, but to suggest its just as easy for someone to formulate hundreds of pounds of feertilizer explosive an load up a truck as it is to grab a gun is not right.
I did not state that it was just as easy. However, an insane person will go to great lengths to achieve their goals. Also, not all IED's require hundreds of pounds of fertilizer. It is dependent on how resourceful and what resources the person has at their disposal.
Back in 1927 a nutjob in Michigan spent months setting up a school. He then blew it up, followed by himself and bunch of other people when he detonated his truck. That was actually the largest school killing in history. If we were smart, we would not have driveways getting anywhere near schools, and have barricades to prevent anyone driving across a lawn to get close to them after that incident so long ago.
Two side-notes:
1) Bushmaster's current ad campaign makes fun of men who are afraid of "tough looking 5th graders" saying they should have their "man card" revoked.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott/bushmasters-shockingly-awful-man-card-campaign
2) Our own Scott Brown led the Senate in donations from the gun lobby:
http://www.golocalworcester.com/news/scott-brown-leads-all-senators-in-donations-from-the-gun-lobby/
And a third: Grover Norquist is on the board of the NRA. Anyone suprised?
Demand Safer Guns !!!
Solve the Gun Problem with what we Americans do best,
Science and Money..
Haptic technology can be developed such that a trigger will only work for one registered sane person.
Also bullets can be made with an on/off switch.
Like the 10 cent devices put in clothes that set off an alarm as they go out the door.. bullets could be shut off as they enter a school,movie theater,shopping mall or playground.
The technology is available, as a sane country lets develop it,all it will take is MONEY.
I need and insurance policy to drive each car and motorcycle i have,require an annual insurance policy for every gun owned.
The box of 233 bullets cost less than a box of candy, 70 cents for each dead child last week.
Lets tax each bullet to pay for development of a safer gun and gun use.
Just as it took a generation to change the culture of tobacco, it will take that long with guns.
But those 20 6 year old kids desired better.
Let Us start now...