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Subscribe to RSSPolice say they recovered a rambling typewritten note from 62-year-old William Spengler, who lured New York firefighters into a deadly ambush. NBC's Ron Mott reports.
The terrifying moment when a gunman ambushed volunteer firefighters in upstate New York was captured in a chilling radio transmission made as the tragedy unfolded.
William Spengler, 62, opened fire on the volunteers as they responded to a blaze in Webster just before 6 a.m. ET Monday in a small cluster of homes near Lake Ontario, police said.
Michael Chiapperini, 43, a lieutenant with the Webster police, and Tomasz Kaczowka, 19, were shot dead, and Spengler killed himself as seven houses burned around him.
"We are being shot at," an unidentified voice told a 911 dispatcher in a recording aired Wednesday on NBC's TODAY. "Multiple firemen down. Multiple firemen are shot. I am shot. I think he is using an assault rifle."
Police investigating Monday’s killings said Tuesday that they had found what appeared to be human remains at the gunman's home. Authorities said they believed the remains were those of Spengler’s 67-year-old sister, Cheryl, who lived with him.
Two other firefighters, Joseph Hofstetter and Theodore Scardino, were shot but survived. One was struck by a bullet in the pelvis and the other in the chest and knee, NBCNewYork.com reported. It said the two were described as stable in a hospital and were expected to survive.
Cops said Spengler left a three-page typewritten note saying he wanted to burn down the neighborhood and "do what I like doing best, killing people."
“He was equipped to go to war, kill innocent people," Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering told reporters Tuesday.
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle said Wednesday that the funeral for Chiapperini, who was also a 20-year veteran of the Webster Police Department, will be Sunday, while a funeral Mass for Kaczowka, who graduated from high school last year, will be celebrated in Rochester at 10 a.m. ET Monday.
Spengler had lived in the house with his sister and mother, Arline, who died in October at 91. Arline Spengler's obituary asked that memorial donations be made to the West Webster Fireman's Association.
Watch US News crime videos on NBCNews.com
A former neighbor told The Associated Press that Spengler "loved his mama to death" and that he "couldn't stand" his sister. The neighbor said he thought Spengler "went crazy" after his mother died.
Spengler was convicted of manslaughter in 1981 after the death of his grandmother, Rose Spengler, 92, and was paroled in 1998. He remained under parole supervision until 2006, the Democrat and Chronicle reported. Before Monday's shooting, Webster police hadn't had any run-ins with Spengler since he was paroled, they said.
Although Spengler couldn't legally own firearms as a convicted felon, police said he was armed with a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, a 12-gauge pump shotgun and a Bushmaster .223 caliber rifle.
At least 33 people were displaced by the fire, which engulfed at least seven homes and a motor vehicle.
Ron Mott, Jason White and Andrew Mach of NBC News, NBCNewYork.com and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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- Video: Police officer jumps in frigid water to save woman
- Residents consider future as demolitions begin in Breezy Point
- Emotions run high as Newtown splits over gun control
- Snow, tornadoes threaten more holiday travel chaos
- Holiday wreck: 4 killed in wrong-way minivan collision
Leave a Comment:
Hmmm, this guy's arsenal included a Bushmaster just like the newtown school shooter.
draw your own conclusions.
...and his grandmother didn't.
draw your own conclusions.
He was also already a killer, let out of prison to kill again, just like the scum who killed my son with a shotgun, not a Bushmaster or any other AR-15 variant!
Here's the conclusion I draw... ban parole for violent offenders!
I suppose that the NRA will now say that we need armed guards at all homes to protect from the crazy people who just happen to have terrorist rifles..., not that the rifles have any blame.
Heck of a job, NRA.
Y'all have more blood on your hands.
Why don't we just have assault rifles surgically implanted with fetuses so they can come into the world in a blaze of glory.
Ultimately, I think that is where the Alice in Wonderland, NRA, is headed.
actually, it was his sister. and are you sure they weren't hers?
so the NRA is now at fault for the Lib prison system that let him out on a previous MURDER they reduced to manslaughter?...right.
I bet your mother wishes she had a girl. A real girl, that is.
markwills; Hmmm, this guy's arsenal included a Bushmaster just like the newtown school shooter.
I believe the colorado incident was identified as a Bushmaster too. The media won't let a scary term go to help out thier agenda. Bushmaster "Assault Rifle" sounds much scarier than Rock River, doesn't it?
Onward with the narrative!
The prison economy is a Reichwing cash cow.
Just look at Arizona and how its Teathuglicans (read: Party of No) are trying to make the state solvent by the privatization and construction of prisons.
Anyway, scooter, prisons are a construction of the Party of No mindset, not "libbies."
It still doesn't change the fact that virtually unregulated, military-grade guns are the problem.
Never Stop,
If you don't mind, can I ask you one simple questions?
If you open your eyes right now, do you see nothin' but your colon?!
Just ask'n because you're one of those people that just have to blame someone rather than the person who pulled the trigger.
If your brother chokes to death on a sandwich, are you going to say; Heck of a job Deli?
Now that I wrote that, I believe you would. Pfffft!
GA Scooter...
And, very good post. It's "ALWAYS" someone else's fault. Hmmh.
They keep on going through the same motions and that is,
Did you dimwitted NRA bashers miss that? .....oh that's right silly me....facts, tend to screw up the lib agenda. Bothersome isn't it....
Are you inferring that this is part of an overall false flag conspiracy to institute gun control ? The perpetrators, of such an evil plan, acquired a number of these rifles to put in the hands of hypno-programmed people ?
Creekdog, choking to death on food at a deli is not the deli's fault.
Being involuntarily shot while serving the "Public" is the fault of the shooter, not the victim, don't you think?
If you disagree, then you are blaming the firefighters for their own deaths?
I assume that is what you are feebly asserting, which is unconscionable and inhuman.
And there are tighter regulations on what a Deli can serve the public than there are on firearms. Go figure.
Hi Scooter, CD - Well, here goes nothing...
And just what would you "libbies" do with the criminals like this man? Please, please tell us.
Maybe, just maybe, Scooter was inferring that the shooter was legally prohibited BY LAW from having a gun but it DIDN'T STOP him from getting one.
Maybe, just maybe, Scooter was inferring that GUN CONTROL LAWS don't stop ANYONE but the people who LEGALLY FOLLOW LAWS.
Did your reading comprehension allow you to follow that?
By the way... as to the prison economy being a right wing thing... liberals can thank themselves for that. You wouldn't allow murderers like this guy to be executed so you handed right wingers the perfect economic opportunity. Prisons for cash. Then you jumped on the band wagon and allowed the murderers to go free after a few years.
@Never Stop Asking Questions:
Creek Dog was being sarcastic using an anology...
He was saying that you are the one that blames the Deli (NRA) when someone dies (the brother) by a gun (the sandwich)
Never Stop,
The deli was also serving the public and you're correct, it's not the deli's fault and your first sentence is "exactly" what I was hoping you'd write.
Your original statement is blaming the NRA for this guy going on a killing spree. Right?! Just like the millions of other clueless Anti-NRA people.
nopenshaw3 said it all. (Thank you!)
GA screminmimi :-)
Ridiculous, nopenshaw3.
But for the NRA lobbying for assualt weapons with high capacity magazines, this incident would not have happened.
Both the shooter and his lobby are directly responsible.
Game, set, and match.
By the way, I am no longer going to "cast pearls..."
Gun nuts are called gun nuts for a reason...something they categorically lack.
For the last five years in the U.S., twice as many people have been murdered with personal weapons (e.g. hands, fists, and feet) than with all rifles combined (not just "assault rifles"). So what conclusion am I supposed to come to? Should we ban hands and feet?
It's called the America Justice system, @$$^&#!! You know none of the details of the case or anything about the judge who passed sentence. If America could ever rid itself of such "thinking" we would be far better off than we are today. Truly the Far Right is a plague on this country.
What this case shows is just how easy it is for such a person to obtain firearms including assault weapons, even when he is banned from owning such things. Mainly because this nation is saturated with such weapons. And of course after Newtown the true lunatics in this country bought even more. That's their solution to everything, guns, guns, more guns! Proof many of the citizens of this nation are becoming less and less intelligent by the day. Not good when the dim-witted and heavily armed compose the same demographic! Doesn't bode well for the future.
My comment was a question, asked on drawing conclusions of my own from the original post made by Markwills, screminmimi. I am neither an NRA basher nor a communist gun grabber.
I agree with Creekdog.
We should fully arm:
Babies
Toddlers
Preschoolers
Teachers
Nuns
Priests
Bartenders
Park Rangers
Shopkeepers
Lifeguards
Bankers
Athletes
Janitors
Garbagemen
Postal Carriers
Firefighters
Fetuses
Newsanchors
Electricians
Waitresses
etc.
etc.
etc.
If anyone gets killed with all of these guns, it is the fault of those individuals, not the common denominator of a society saturated with guns.
Guns are the problem, people.
Never Stop,
WOW, I actually "agree 100%" with your post...........except the last two sentences but hey, you gave it a "shot".
Look man, more of every single person you mentioned above dies of second hand smoke than they do from guns each year. Google it man. Then post.
To all the NRA people here, give it up man.
The Anti-NRA are too shallow and simply cannot comprehend the fact that they are stereotyping and all NRA people are not the same. It's their "easy way out" as you can see above my post here.....
Somewhat funny though picturing the Anti-NRA guy trying to fend off a home invasion with a roll of paper towels or a pan from their sink......... Heh heh.....
If guns are legal even criminals will have guns... oh wait... that's not how it goes...
If it's illegal for felons to have guns they will have them anyway... hmm, doesn't sound right.
If guns are illegal only criminals will have guns... no that's not right either...
If guns are legal everyone will have guns so they can shoot each other when they shoot each other. Got it.
And may I say, in closing... God bless America.
Pretty messed up killing volunteer first responders, my heart goes out to them and their family. That being said, a 62 year old didn't grow up playing violent video games, NRA scapegoat #1 out the door.
McVeigh had an enormous collection of guns, but still used a bomb.
Amazingly, it is only when it comes to guns that the Reichwing has a "liberal" interpretation of the Second Amendment (despite the fact that it only protects Militias).
On all other issues, conservatives are "strict constructionists" and believe that Modernity should not check an 18th century worldview.
Ignorant hypocrites.
Heck of a job, Reichwing.
Creekdog, I left out 10,000's of jobs/professions where people should be armed to the hilt...and for that I apologize.
After all, when a firefight breaks out, all of us "good guys" will know who all of the "bad guys" are, and, all of the "bad guys" will know who all of the "good guys" are, right?
It is not until every organic entity is armed that we will all be perfectly safe.
You libs can blay the spin baby spin..."blame game" as much as you wish but it still comes down to the FACT...that this CRIME was committed by a KNOWN criminal who ILLEGALLY possessed firearms that should have NEVER been released in the first place.....period.
Just how stupid are you on a scale of one-to-one?
Someone that committed to killing doesn't need an assault weapon. ANY weapon will do.
Hey... here's a clue for all you anti-gun idiots...
Guess what the cartels are doing right now in Mexico? They have set up factories to make guns. Seeing the writing on the wall, what with the states here legalizing pot as so many of you have advocated as a way to cut into their profits, they had to find another cash cow.
Now, with the big push to cut down on gun sales, and the flow of guns to citizens soon to drastically slow down, and the flow of guns to Mexico soon to slow down, they have their new product.
Can't have guns in Mexico, you say? Suuuurrrrrreeeee.... that's why over 50,000 people are dead over there in the last couple of years. They are MINING ORE you fools, and shipping it on TANKERS to China. That's supposed to be done ONLY by the MEXICAN GOVERNMENT, and you think they won't be able to manufacture guns and get them into the US to sell on the black market?
You think your petty anti-gun campaign against legal gun owners will keep guns from the hands of people like this man and Adam Lansky?
Hum a few bars of "Oh, What A Beautiful Dreamer".....
Never Stop
And then…..
Maybe a moment of liberal insanity??? Looks like you might have actually contemplated that the fault might lie with the shooter…..oh wait, no, it has to be someone else…..NRA…….republicans………Bush……….maybe the altitude
I am so confused
Nobody said ALL the killings were done by those who played violent video games.
But the MASS killings at schools, malls and the Aurora massacre, done by the very young, all had that link. As to your assertion that McVeigh had lots of guns and still used a bomb.... very true. Which supports the assertion that more anti-gun laws won't necessarily stop these murderers... they may very well just use a more effective type of mass destruction.
And when they do, they may be harder to catch. Shooters have a tendency to either die at the site of their crime or be caught. When they start using bombs they have a better chance of getting away to cause more destruction, as they won't be the suicide type of Middle East variety.
JPJP-
My apologies.
I sometimes get a lot of exercise jumping to conclusions, and since this topic became the central and most discussed thread on the Vine, my legs are so sore....
I am a 61 year old woman living alone in the woods. Have had to use my rifle twice in the last year to run off men who thought it would be easy to rob me. My dogs take care of problems during the day, but I bring them inside at night and don't allow them to handle outside problems with humans, because I never know when the humans have guns and don't want them shot.
I also have feral animals and sometimes rabid ones I have to protect my livestock from, so any talk of confiscating "all" guns is a sore point with me.
Again, apologies for thinking your remark was directed at Scooter.
When this story 1st came out, the comments were flying assuming that this happened in a ghetto and that it was bunch of thugs protecting their drug house. Sad that posters feel that they have to say something even if they don't know what they are talking about.
I think we need to put police in every school in the nation and every fire department after I make my weapons manufacturers stock purchases.
The headline should read' " Convicted killer released, kills again. Liberals shocked, blame NRA."
screminmimi - Appreciate your apology. I understand how upsetting this gun debate can get a person. I'm 56 years old and worked alongside people in the military, criminal justice system and concerned citizens to keep our 2nd amendment rights during the Clinton Administration.
I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life. Let us be sure that those who come after us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race ; we kept them free ; we kept the faith. No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology. The most terrifying words in the english language are : I'm from the government and I'm here to help. Ronald Reagan
What's wrong with police in every school?
Your Congressmen, your President, depending on the place your live, your Mayor, City Councilmen, Governor, all sorts of people condemning the NRA have children who attend private schools where there are armed guards.
They travel to their schools under armed guards, and there are armed guards protecting them when they do their homework and go to the malls or to birthday parties.
Why should your children not get the same protection? Your tax dollars are paying for it for THEIR children.
Statistical perspective - In 2010 in Australia, there were 0.1 gun murders per 100,000 people - 229 total murders (12% by firearms). In the United States the murder rate was 30+ times higher, at 3.2 per 100,000.
unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/Homicide/Homicides_by_firearms.xls
data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=UNODC&f=tableCode%3a1%3bYearId%3a16&c=2,3,5,6,8,10
guncontrol.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1995-2006-1.png
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia
Australian court system - median/mean criminal sentences handed down by category,
aifs.gov.au/acssa/pubs/newsletter/n14pdf/Figure1.gif
Definition: libbie (n.) A conservative who hasn't been mugged yet.
campincouple-For the last five years in the U.S., twice as many people have been murdered with personal weapons (e.g. hands, fists, and feet) than with all rifles combined (not just "assault rifles"). So what conclusion am I supposed to come to? Should we ban hands and feet?
Here are stats from 2010.I'm going to guess the rest of your "five years" is similar.Before posting false statements like you did,you should figure someone will check:
In 2010, according to the UNODC, 67.5% of all homicides in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
Good lord people!!
I can't believe people are putting a higher value on the right to semi-automatics over the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... all of which the victims of Sandy Hook, V-Tech, Aurora and many more were denied of.
No one is trying to "take all your guns away", but I believe there should be limits to the amount of rounds in clips/mags, there should be restrictions on the types of guns in the civilian population, and we should provide stricter regulation to the purchase of firearms...
Surely you "law-abiding-citizens-with-no-ill-intent" can pass a stricter screening process... right? Or is there something we should know? =\
Since they'll just use something else lets do nothing at all about the out of hand gun violence?
btw who exactly is advocating to "take all the guns away"? Limiting magazines and how rapidly a weapon can fire is taking all guns away in your mind?
Hi, DB!
Welcome to the party!
Here is where I checked my facts uncle bob. I dare you to show me my false statements. I would expect an apology from an honorable person, but I will not hold my breath with you.
www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8
According to the FBI Uniform Crime report for 2011:
12,664 murders in the U.S.
Out of the total above 8,583 were murders by firearms, broken down as follows:
6,220 committed by handguns
323 committed by rifles
356 committed by shotguns
1,684 committed by unknown type of firearms
1,694 committed by knives or cutting instruments
1,659 committed by other weapons
728 committed by hands/fists/feet etc..
Out of 315 million people in the U.S. means your odds of getting murdered by a firearm is a small fraction of 1%. The odds are even smaller if you only consider murders committed with rifles.
Hi mimi,
Merry Christmas and happy new year.
Bella.Angel
Good lord people!!
I can't believe people are putting a higher value on the right to semi-automatics over the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... all of which the victims of Sandy Hook, V-Tech, Aurora and many more were denied of.
No one is trying to "take all your guns away", but I believe there should be limits to the amount of rounds in clips/mags, there should be restrictions on the types of guns in the civilian population, and we should provide stricter regulation to the purchase of firearms...
Surely you "law-abiding-citizens-with-no-ill-intent" can pass a stricter screening process... right? Or is there something we should know? =\ Historical evidence shows that total gun bans start slowly, Bella, until the final goal of confication is achieved. Paul Harvey on Guns
Are you considering backing gun control laws? Do you think that because you may not own a gun, the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment don't matter?
CONSIDER:
In 1929 the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, approximately 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From
1915-1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and others, who were unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million "educated" people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
That places total victims who lost their lives because of gun control at approximately 56 million in the last century. Since we should learn from the mistakes of history, the next time someone talks in favor of gun control, find out which group of citizens they wish to have exterminated.
Hello folks, what is it going to take to get the sheeple to see when they are being manipulated. They are going after Americas, our constitution again. The mindless sheeple who allow themselves to get herded fall for anything the government conjures up. They are now killing our children and feeding us BS and the sheeple tell them what good cooks they are.
They took us into Iraq under a false flag, they continually rob us through the banking system and they take away our civil rights because the sheeple buckle under and surrender all their rights for perceived security.
The international banking elite with tacit approval from Democrats and Republicans have given the world 1.4 Quadrillion in derivatives fraud, the HSBC drug laundering fraud, the MF Global fraud, the PFG fraud, the high frequency trading pilfering and stock market fraud, the manipulation of the precious metals and bond market fraud, the MERS mortgage fraud, nearly countless individual frauds from both Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, and the 800 trillion international LIBOR interest rate fixing banking fraud, just to name but a few recent FRAUDS and breaches of Bankster credibility and trustworthiness.
They stick us further in debt with QEinfinity(3) and Operation Twist on steroids. We now need to print 85 billion dollars a month to prop up our economy and the sheeple buy into all the lame excuses for the biggest bank robbery in history and the banks are doing the robbing. Guess who’s on the hook to pay all that money back?
The banksters whose recklessness and illegal behavior caused this terrible recession are now lecturing the American people on the need for courage to deal with the nation’s finances and deficit crisis. Before telling us why we should cut Social Security, Medicare and other vitally important programs, these CEOs might want to take a hard look at their responsibility for causing the deficit and this terrible recession.
Our Constitution, our most sacred document is meaningless because the sheeple give away our civil liberties.
We have lost most of our civil liberties through the passage of the Patriot Act, Foreign Investigation and Surveillance Act (FISA) and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the new National Defense Resources Preparedness (NDRP)! They have authorized the use of spy drones in American skies! You can be surveilled by any number of Federal agencies, have your phone and computer tapped, bank, medical, and private records accessed! You can be arrested without gaining access to an attorney or a trial. We are molested at the airports or radiated for “security”. And just recently added National Defense Resources Preparedness (NDRP) which comes on the heels of NDAA. This Executive Order allows the government to take pretty much whatever it wants including crops, farm equipment, vehicles, boats, aircraft and fuel to “prepare” for the national defense. This includes making people work for free. You think I’m kidding about the free labor? Here’s a line straight from the EO that says, “. . . to employ persons of outstanding experience and ability without compensation. . .” This is authorized even in peace time!
We the people used to stand up for our each other under one flag and one constitution, now we have to fight against the passivity and blind conformity of the sheeple.
When Benjamin Franklin left Independence Hall just after the second drafting he was approached by a woman on the street and she asked what manner of government have you bequeathed us? And Franklin said, a Republic Mam, if you can keep it. The responsibility of a country is not in the hands of a privileged few. We are strong and we are free from tyranny as long as each one of us remembers his or her duty as a citizen whether it is to report a pot hole at the top of your street or lies at a State of the Union Address. Speak out ask those questions, demand that truth. Democracy is not a free ride but this is where we live and if we do our job this is where our children will live.
May we garner and gather the strength to once again fight for our Republic.
"I bet your mother wishes she had a girl. A real girl, that is."
...and Sailcat demands dialog.
After serving in defense of this country for 20 years.....
everytime I see these statistics quoting how much safer other countries are, I have the same thought, what is keeping you here?????:
WHY DON'T YOU MOVE THERE? THIS IS A FREE COUNTRY, AND I SURE WON'T STOP YOU....
I still want to serve the country.....how about this:
Send all convicted violent criminals to my house, I'll protect you from them. All I ask in return is a 1000 acre property in the desert, an end-loader, and an earth mover. I'll supply my own rifle and ammo.
:)
OldDog47,
First, I'm sorry about what happened to your son. I have kids and I don't even want to imagine what it would be like to lose one of them like that. Second, you are right. There are some people who are just too dangerous to ever be set free.
Hello folks, this coincidentally points back to the dreadful and horrific experience that was perpetrated on the children, teachers and their loved ones at Sandy Hook. At a minimum we need to know the truth surrounding this tragic event. Let's not be blinded by fear but seek to put those responsible behind bars.
Sandy Hook massacre: Official story spins out of control
by Niall Bradley
Source: Veterans Today
The massacre of 20 children and 7 adults at the Sandy Hook elementary school last Friday was one more in a long line of atrocious mass murders committed in the USA. By now, five days later, an official version of events has more or less solidified to explain the chain of events. The familiar ‘lone gunman’ narrative has once more stoked the hot-button issue of gun control and left the general population as clueless as ever as to why people suddenly ‘go postal’ and target the most vulnerable members of society.
On closer inspection, however, there is clearly more to many of these mass shootings than meets the eye. Very often the earliest reports present information that directly contradicts key foundations of the final ‘official’ analysis of events. Granted, confusion is natural when a story breaks, but some of the initial reports conflict so completely with the lone gunman narrative that I’m going to compile them here and then try to put this tragedy in a more objective context. In his speech at the Sandy Hook Interfaith Prayer Vigil in Newtown, Connecticut on Sunday night, President Obama quoted the following biblical passage:
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
~ 2 Corinthians 4:18
The traumatised Newtown community deserves the facts without the spin. Everyone touched by this brutal event deserves to know what really happened, so let’s fix our eyes on what remains unseen…
A 20-year-old ‘tech geek’ named Adam Lanza is supposed to have snapped early last Friday, December 14th, shot dead his mother Nancy Lanza, loaded her car up with her guns and ammo, then driven it across town to his former school, the Sandy Hook Elementary School, shot dead 27 people in two classrooms and an adjoining hallway, then turned one of his guns on himself.
That’s how most will now remember the shooting, but is that actually what happened?
All the child victims were first-graders between the ages of 6 and 7. If there’s any saving grace to be found in this event, it’s that it was all over within minutes. Police were reportedly on the scene “instantaneously”, according to Connecticut State Police Commander, Lt. Vance and by then the shooting had ended. Listed among the slain school teachers and administrative staff was the school principal, 47-year-old Dawn Hochsprung. Right here we encounter our first problem:
The Newtown Bee
December 14, 2012
Sandy Hook School Principal Dawn Hochsprung told The Bee that a masked man entered the school with a rifle and started shooting multiple shots – more than she could count – that went “on and on.”
© The Newtown Bee
How could the principal have survived to give this statement to local press describing what happened … if she was one of the first to be killed? Incidentally, The Newtown Bee‘s article was taken down on Monday December 17th. Of course, a plausible explanation is that a reporter mistook another teacher for the principal.
We were initially told that two handguns – a Glock and a Sig Sauer – were found next to the body of the dead shooter, while a third weapon, a .223-caliber rifle was also recovered “in the trunk of a car” later, in the school’s parking lot. All of the weapons were allegedly legally bought and registered in Nancy Lanza’s name. The car was later identified as a black Honda, also registered in her name. More weapons have since been introduced to the story but we’ll get back to those later on.
Besides anonymous ‘law enforcement officials’ telling the media that Adam Lanza was a former pupil at the school, they also said his mother was currently a teacher there, that she was found among the dead and that her son had specifically sought out her classroom first. But when it emerged that teaching staff at the school had never heard of a Nancy Lanza, it was suggested that she was a substitute teacher whose name therefore mightn’t appear on staff lists.
But this claim too has disappeared down the memory hole because it’s now known that Nancy had no connection with the school. Adam Lanza was in fact home-schooled. Nancy Lanza has since been painted as a “survivalist” who loved firearms, taught her sons how to shoot and was “stockpiling” because she was “worried about economic collapse.”
Daily Mail, UK
December 16, 2012
Last night it also emerged Nancy was a member of the Doomsday Preppers movement, which believes people should prepare for end of the world.
Her former sister-in-law Marsha said she had turned her home ‘into a fortress’. She added: ‘Nancy had a survivalist philosophy which is why she was stockpiling guns. She had them for defense.
‘She was stockpiling food. She grew up on a farm in New Hampshire. She was skilled with guns. We talked about preppers and preparing for the economy collapsing.’
It’s not difficult to see that their efforts to insinuate that Nancy Lanza was somehow responsible for this massacre by being an irresponsible mother also serve to rile the large contingent of gun owners in the country, particularly the far-right who see a conspiracy on the government’s part to “take back our guns.” More on that later, but for now I just want to note that all of the Lanza family members seemed to live more or less normal middle-class lives. Yes, the parents were divorced, but it was apparently amicable and both put their own needs second to those of their children (and anyway, divorce in the US these days is decidedly ‘normal middle class’).
Despite “family insiders” claiming that he was a “deeply disturbed kid”, Adam Lanza, like so many other alleged ‘lone(r) gunmen’ before him, does not fit the profile of a mass-murdering maniac. His 24-year-old brother, Ryan Lanza, said he hadn’t seen his brother since 2010. This fact brings into question Ryan’s claim that his younger brother may have had his identity card on his person at the school shooting. Although perhaps the question that needs to be asked here is, why would a person bother to carry identification with them after going to the trouble of dressing up in a bullet-proof vest, mask and black camouflage gear and going on a killing spree …
The live emergency services audio feed from the scene reveals some interesting observations from first responders that have been completely overlooked by the mainstream media. Note that the unedited version lasts over two hours, so the abridged version I’m going to quote from has a compressed sequence of events that are not in real time. In this abridged version, we hear at 1.38′ a report that gunfire is still being heard, even though the shooting was supposed to have ended by the time police arrived. The next report at 2.35′ says that the shooting has stopped and the school is “in lockdown”. At 3.23′, the police relay a teacher’s report that she saw “two shadows running past the gym”. This is followed by another officer on the scene who says, “Yeh, we got ‘em, they’re coming at me! … [inaudible] … coming up the driveway real slowly!” That same officer at 5.40′ says he has them “proned out”, which presumably means he has apprehended them and they are laid out on the ground, before another officer comes on to say, “be aware that we do have a second [inaudible] …”
Later on, at 19.10′, an officer who sounds out of breath, like he’s just given chase, reports what I think sounds like “these guys” followed certainly by “multiple weapons, including long rifles and shotgun”. If these were found so early on, why were they not included in the initial press reports which stated that three firearms had been found – the above mentioned Glock, Sig Sauer and Bushmaster AR-15 rifle? Further conflicting, and possibly planted evidence was thrown into the mix by ‘law enforcement officials’ when they published video footage of a long weapon being retrieved from the trunk of a car. Look closely and you’ll see that it’s a shotgun, not a rifle. In addition, this ‘discovery’ was made late in the day (it’s dark outside), while the Bushmaster rifle was first reported found “in the trunk of a car” much earlier in the day. This would logically suggest that the rifle and shotgun were found in the trunks of two different cars.
Besides the above two suspects “proned out” in front of the school, another suspected gunman was apprehended after he gave chase, this time in the woods next to the school:
YouTube – Veterans Today -
The police are clearly chasing someone whom they appear to apprehend in the middle of the woods next to the school, a fact confirmed by several eyewitnesses:
YouTube – Veterans Today -
This fleeing suspect, wearing camouflage gear, a bulletproof vest and armed with four guns, has since disappeared from media coverage. Who was this person and how did he know what “it” was when he protested that “I didn’t do it”?
Perhaps most astonishingly, this suspect arrested in the woods was named in an Associated Press report as 24-year-old Ryan Lanza. The original report has long since vanished of course, but you can see it referenced here. This was despite the fact that Ryan had already been named as the deceased suspect inside the school, lying next to two handguns.
Ryan Lanza was actually at work in Hoboken, New Jersey, that morning when his name and photo began circulating in the media. And so, for most of Friday, the ‘lone shooter’ was erroneously reported as “Ryan Lanza, confirmed dead.” At the same time, we were being told that Ryan’s girlfriend and a room-mate were reported missing, also from Hoboken, New Jersey.
So this isn’t just a case of mistaken identity, as later claimed when it was suggested that Adam had a piece of identification belonging to his brother on his person. Not one, but BOTH Lanza brothers were being placed by ‘law enforcement officials’ at the scene of the shooting. It could be that Ryan’s quick reflexes to leave his workplace to get on a bus to go back to his apartment while protesting innocence via his Facebook page may have saved his life.
Now remember, all of this confusion somehow resulted from a single guy going into a school and shooting children and teachers and then shooting himself, all within three to five minutes. Surely it should have been fairly easy to rapidly and concretely identify the details of such a crime and a rough layout of the scene?
What it’s starting to look like is that the Lanzas were framed for this mass shooting in advance. Long before any suspects were named, and even as we were being told that Nancy Lanza was among the dead at the school, we were told that police were investigating a murder in … Hoboken, New Jersey, where a body had been found at the home of … Ryan Lanza! An older “confirmed” version of events had RYAN, not Adam, travelling to Hoboken that morning to murder his father before going to the school in Newtown, Connecticut. Other variants had Ryan OR Adam going to both their divorced parents’ homes and killing them before going to the school.
The narrative has now settled on the younger brother killing his mother in Newtown then going to the school. So what about the rest of it? Do we just put it down to ‘keen’ journalism that was having a field day last Friday as media outlets sought to bring us the latest ‘breaking news’? Confusion and ‘Chinese whispers’ undoubtedly play a part in the early stages of national media events, but I think back to those news anchors reading scripts about Osama Bin Laden within minutes of the first plane being hit on 9/11 and I think, ‘Wait a minute!’ All these misleading reports had to have been issued by someone or some people “confirming” to Associated Press and other media outlets that the Ryans’s father had been murdered [he wasn't even aware that the shooting at the school had taken place until journalists turned up on his doorstep], or that Ryan’s girlfriend had gone missing from Hoboken, or that either Ryan or Adam were pulled out of the adjacent woods in handcuffs yelling “I DIDN’T DO IT” to assembled parents. These aren’t just ‘little details’ that can be confused for other details, these are detailed narratives. So how, or why, would any member of the press come up with such details? They strike me as a set of alternative scenarios that might have found their way into the official narrative had facts on the ground turned out differently.
Watch this snippet of State Police Lt. Paul Vance at the press conference he gave the day after the shootings. His answer is as bizarre as it is revealing. When asked whether Nancy Lanza had any connection with the school, he replied defensively about something that is both unrelated and arguably the most significant fact that completely undermines the official narrative: the arrest of a second gunman in the woods:
YouTube – Veterans Today -
Most of the initial mainstream media reports have since been rewritten to fit ‘new’ facts proclaimed by ‘law enforcement officials’. Here’s an example from Business Insider. The following excerpts are the opening paragraphs from the ‘same’ article, one earlier original version, followed by the later revised version:
The massacre [...] was reportedly perpetrated with a .233 caliber rifle, a Glock pistol and a Sig Sauer pistol.
The Bushmaster rifle was found in the trunk of the shooter’s car. The Sig Sauer and Glock pistols were the only weapons used in the shooting, according to CBS. Now the question is what kind of magazine would allow a shooter to fire “100″ rounds in such a short period.
Indeed, I was wondering the same thing. How could two pistols do so much damage? The report was updated as follows:
The massacre in Connecticut that’s taken the lives of at least 26 people was reportedly perpetrated with a .223 caliber rifle, a Glock pistol and a Sig Sauer pistol, according to NBC:
The shooter was using one Sig Sauer and one Glock pistol, according to CNN. Later details emerged that the primary weapon was the Bushmaster “assault-style” rifle.
Altogether, though, it doesn’t matter what type of weapon the shooter used. The bottom line is that it was likely a magazine fed, semi-automatic, with enough rounds to shoot “100 shots” in a matter of minutes, as quoted in USA Today.
What actually happened may not matter to some, but surely a journalist’s role is to at least try to find out?
The three guns Adam Lanza is supposed to have brought to the school with him. © New York Daily News. The rifle was left in the trunk, leaving ‘Adam Lanza’ just the two handguns to let off “hundreds of rounds”… firing .233 caliber bullets that belonged to the rifle… which was left in the car
This Associated Press/Newsday article on Saturday, December 15th, reported that “Only the rifle was used on the victims“, a statement that is supported by Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, Connecticut state’s chief medical examiner. Of the seven autopsies he personally performed on Sandy Hook victims, all of them had “three to 11 wounds apiece”. He also said that the ‘gunman’ used a military-style rifle rigged to quickly reload, and that the ‘shooter’ was able to reload so quickly because he had “taped two magazines together.” Even before the State Chief Medical Examiner had given these statements, it had been stated that spent shell casings from .233-caliber (rifle) bullets were found inside the school.
So all the victims’ wounds were the result of rifle-fire, specifically from “the rifle”, the one we were told in early reports was found in the trunk of a car in the parking lot! This is simply not credible.
Remember that only “the rifle” was used on all the victims. If only this rifle was used, and if we try to make this claim fit into the (admittedly fluid) official version of events, then the alleged lone gunman would have had to leave the school, place the rifle back in his trunk, then return inside the school and shoot himself. No one reported any such maneuver on the part of any gunman or gunmen. What we do have, however, is live emergency services radio feed in which we hear that two men have been apprehended and are “proned out” AND live video footage supported by eyewitness testimony showing what appears to be a THIRD man being arrested by police in the woods.
We can see how the authorities’ hands are tied because they need to fit all the facts into the usual ‘lone gunman’ narrative. For that, there can only be ONE rifle and a couple of handguns. The problem is that they have already claimed to find that solitary Bushmaster rifle in the trunk of a car in the school parking lot, so the earliest police reports of a cache of long arms being found inside the school will no longer fit with the lone gunman narrative, especially as they’re now saying that he had already opened fire as he burst into the school.
Could “scrawny” 20-year-old Adam Lanza have stormed the school, solo Rambo-style, while carrying “multiple long arms, including rifles and shotguns”? Only one person was wounded. Everyone else who was shot was killed. How could Adam Lanza achieve such deadly accuracy, in such a short length of recorded time?
Initial reports put the beginning of the shooting in the school administrators’ office, where someone, reportedly the school principal, had a confrontation with the gunman(men). We know this because someone supposedly turned on the school intercom system, alerting the teaching staff to the loud swearing and commotion in the principal’s office and probably saving many more children from being gunned down as teachers took measures to hide the children in closets.
Similarly heavily armed men wearing black combat gear from head to toe… their job is to kill ‘terrorists’ to keep us safe, which they do by terrorising us all
One brave teacher, Kaitlin Roig, bundled a bunch of children into a bathroom and locked the door. What’s interesting about her testimony to ABC News is that when police arrived and asked her to open the door, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/kaitlin-roig-newtown-elementary-teacher_n_2303985.html">she refused, saying that “if they were really cops, they’d know where to find keys to open the door.” In addition, she requested that they slide their badges under the door.
Now, this is generally a smart thing to do in any and all interactions with the police, especially in the U.S. But to have the wherewithal to do so under such traumatic circumstances strongly suggests that Ms. Roig had logically deduced by that point that multiple perpetrators were involved, and that they were either impersonating police officers or were indistinguishable from SWAT team police commandos, either in the way they dressed or the way they behaved upon entering the building. It also reminds us just how narrow the time window of the actual shooting was. The shooting appears to have barely ended when men knocked on that bathroom door and told Ms. Roig they were police.
There are also conflicting reports about how the gunmen entered the building. We were told initially that they came in through the main front entrance and proceeded straight to the administrators’/principal’s offices. But Sandy Hook elementary school has a security system with a video monitor, which allows staff to screen visitors before buzzing them in. A “masked gunman dressed in black tactical combat gear” from head to toe would kinda raise red flags, don’t you think?
Another possible anomaly is that Victoria Soto, one of the teachers killed at the school, appears to have had an ‘in memoriam’ Facebook page created in her name four days before the shooting.
Regarding this alleged ‘LIBOR scandal’ connection between this shooting and the Aurora theater shooting, there is as yet zero evidence to support the claim that either father of Lanza or Holmes were going to testify to anyone about anything, so for now this must remain just another rumor. I rather think that this is being spread to create the impression of a direct link that can be easily refuted, as in a straw man argument. The obvious and direct link staring everyone in the face is that the official accounts of these events are hocus-pocus. The glaring connection between these two shootings, the Sikh Temple shooting and the Fort Hood shooting is that multiple gunmen were reported at the time by eyewitnesses, but they are now all officially claimed to have been carried out by ‘lone gunmen’. This logically tells us that the real perpetrators are being protected with cover stories of what really happened because if the truth were known, some section of the U.S. government would be implicated.
Wade Michael Page, the ‘lone gunman’ in the Sikh Temple shooting in Wisconsin in August this year, was a highly decorated U.S. army psychological operations specialist, according to the Pentagon. But what happened to the three other gunmen seen by witnesses? It can’t surely be coincidence that Wade was (former?) military psy-ops. The thought has crossed my mind more than once during the aftermath of the Connecticut shooting. Others too have suggested this was a ‘false-flag’ event, or that Lanza was some sort of Manchurian Candidate.
But maybe there’s a simpler explanation (albeit more outrageous) than that? Was that really Adam Lanza they found inside the school? Do we even know for a fact that one of the gunmen was found dead inside the school? What we have instead are reports of two or three masked gunmen, apparently all dressed similarly in black tactical gear from head to toe, being wilfully forgotten about at best, or protected by the Federal Government at worst. Based on the authorities’ persistent but futile efforts to connect the Lanzas to this school, the multiple eyewitness reports of two shooters, the Connecticut State Medical Examiner’s report that all the victims were riddled with bullets from a rifle that we’re simultaneously being asked to believe was in the trunk of a car the whole time, similar reports of multiple shooters in previous mass shootings in recent years and the media focusing the emotional outcry onto the hot-button topic of gun control … I’m left wondering if this was actually the work of some highly trained professional hit team?
Was the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, a psy-op, using what amounts to a ‘death squad’ and a carefully planned mission to terrorise people on behalf of the government, in combination with perception management to shape the narrative and vector the emotional fallout?
Gun control isn’t really the issue here. Control – period – is the issue. The U.S. government would long since have taken measures, quietly, to limit the supply of weapons, the 2nd Amendment of the constitution be damned (it’s “just a goddamned piece of paper“, remember?), if it was really concerned with limiting civilian access to weapons. That we’ve seen gun sales increase in the last few days to the point where Wal-Mart is all out of assault rifles is wholly unsurprising.
The psychopaths in power have absolutely no compunction about using state terrorism, in this case organising the deliberate massacre of innocent children, to control people. In effect, this is little different from what the U.S. government calls counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism in foreign countries, where it attacks innocent civilians to create the impression that they were killed by ‘communists’, ‘terrorists’, ‘insurgents’ or ‘militants’, with the aim of generating public support for the illusion that the common people need a strong, ruthless government to protect them from the ‘evil-doers’. When the common people buy into this manipulation, the end result, as history shows repeatedly, is an overt and brutal police state.
As for Spengler's funeral, a couple of rocks in his pockets and Lake Ontario about 600ft deep! The carp won't even eat him...
Trustverify, what? Did you say something?
@Oneslackr
Nice spin but that still leaves out the fact that the majority of murders are still by firearms. That our murder rate has gone down to such low numbers (a fact I attribute to video games and other media, which keeps people entertained doing stuff other than killing) does not change the fact that (statistically) if you DO get murdered, it will likely be by firearm. But nice try to spin the facts in favor of your argument.
Trust verify
And that Obama signed a Global gun ban treaty with the UN the day after the election....hmmm makes ya think huh,And many corrupt Govs have used similar tactics to get their agendas underway.Very interesting post and worth a closer look for sure.
TrustButVerify does have a good point....news reported that Lanza left the rifle in the car and then later changed the story....and said his mother worked at the school and then changed the story, and he killed his father too and then changed the story, and actually reported it was the brother of Adam that did the killing, and on and on. Lies, mistakes, inconsistencies, rookies, amateurs, clueless beginners who call themselves "reporters" and "journalists".
Journalists are NOT journalists anymore...they are dumb parrots who simply repeat what they hear from any dumba$$ source and the "report" it. They correct themselves later, often on a different, less significant page in the paper or to a different audience later, or whatever. This is the continued dumbing down of America and the dumber fall for it, Sandy Hook, Line, and Sinker.
Tons of lies and inconsistencies. Oh, and by the way, this liberal, dumb, incorrect, lying media is the best friend of Obama....I mean, they fooled over half of you into re-electing a liberal, lying, inconsistent guy again, didnt they?
The ONE thing that would have stopped this tragic murder is a good law...CAPITALISM. BEFORE you start criticizing and whining PERSONALLY talk to the wives and children of the firemen. Talk to their fellow firefighters and then do you whining. Don't whine and moan about capitalism here...go to the families and the fire chief and tell them why you think this man should have been allowed to murder again.
actually, it was his sister. and are you sure they weren't hers?
I said granny because she had the authority and moral ground to remove this guy from society seventeen years ago - as soon as he produced a hammer.
The truest point in all of this is the simple fact that had they executed the shooter for killing his grandmother with a hammer then none of this could have happened, 100% guarantee.
So liberals whats your take, a 100% guarantee that this was preventable or a 100% guarantee that he would have killed again using something else, proven by the fact that he did kill again.
Oh interesting that all these types of crimes just happen to involve a Bushmaster .223 caliber rifle, very interesting to say the least.
The NRA and its supporters can go f' themselves. There's going to be a gun registry and a prohibition on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and the sale of unlimited ammunition. The US will get its act together on this matter and get with the times and if you don't like it go eat dirt, you gun freak bastards.
"[whoever] when the United States is at war, shall wilfully utter, print, write, or publish
any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of
government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States"
So he kills someone with a hammer and then gets let out on parole, yet people are given life in prison for bogus marijuana charges?
we dont want anyone high now,they might get closer to reality and we cant have that.
Ban all fire!!
We need to make fire against the law!!
You going to post that everywhere Rocky ? @sshole
How many lives would be spared if we outlawed fire!!
Jeff-812327 is so angry when he learns people escaped..... and lived!
Not many considering that the majority of murders are commited by guns.
Vision: The majority of murders, by a huge margin, are committed with baseball bats. But nice try at propaganda libtard.
Ban assault weapons. Keep your baseball bats.
takenaka they already have a ban on assault weapons. You can own a look-a-like that can only shoot 1 round per pull of the trigger.
You can dress up a .22 to look like an M-16 does NOT make any more dangerous of a gun.
An assault weapon is any weapon that has the capability of switching to FULLY AUTOMATIC. The ones you can buy are only semi-automatic.
Thanks for playing.
Considering he was a convicted felon, he couldn't legally own a gun anyhow. Just goes to show how dis-inclined felons are to even try to obey the law in the first place. Not that they'd have become felons however, if they were law abiding. A bit of a matter of common sense there...
And Rocky, I'm guessing that you're trolling a little. But just in case you aren't trying to troll, fat chance at cooking your food, or drive your car (aka internal combustion engine), if there could be no fires.... I'm sure many a guy, on the fourth, who normally grills em burgers, would prefer serving raw hamburger...
Yeah I know, he's probably trolling a bit :o
Life sentence for Marijuana? Seriously? Dream that up smoking a bowl?
This LUNATIC kills his grandmother with a hammer - Yet they let him out of prison.
A FAILURE OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM!
He wants to burn down the neighborhood and do what he does best KILL PEOPLE
A FAILURE OF THE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM!
He is a convicted felon yet he obtains firearms
A FAILURE OF THE GUN CONTROL LAWS!
If this lunatic had been executed for killing his grandmother
NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED!
But NYS does not have a death penalty
ANOTHER FAILURE OF THE JUSTICE SYSTEM!
I'm glad someone finally mentioned the fact that he killed his grandmother , instead of giving him the death penalty ( cause we are more concerned about how painful it would be on him ) this incident doesn't take place.
While I have agonized over the deaths of the innocent these past weeks, and am horrified by the actions of a very remote few nut cases, I must stand by the fact that the 2nd amendment is inviolable. The whole reason behind the 2nd amendment is not for sportsman or hunters, or even to feed your family, PERIOD. It is solely meant to provide the American people the means with which to take out a government that has grown tyranical and subjugating. A militia is by definition made up of readily armed CITIZENS. It does not carry a caveat that they must retrieve their arms from a government agency in times of emergency. For the rights we are endowed with from birth, we are required to allow for certain sacrifices, such as the forgoing of sure safety in our community, and the deaths of the innocent and our loved ones. My ancestors fought and died for these rights in the Revolutionary war and in every war since. They did not do so, so that weak litlle pieces of human excrement like yourselves could just gladly give it all away.
With all of that being said I must say that I don't care who gets murdered, for it is better to face the reality of the risk of being murdered than to face a life of subjugation and tyranny. I would rather see my children murdered while living free than to see them be enslaved by the many who perceive themselves as the only ones worthy of ruling the lowly masses. Then again I have spent quite litterally my whole life (as a hobby) reading and studying the history of tyrants and despots that has plagued this world. I've got news for all of you scared little weaklings that seem to want to give up your rights, They still exist in the world and they are still horrifying.
I will not let this happen if at all stoppable.
Remember it is the act that matters, not the means. It was a tyrant that caused the deaths of 50 million people during WWII. It was a tyrant that ordered the deaths of 30 million people in communist Russia, just because they had the audacity to be a "perceived" threat to his power hold.
So all of you who are clamoring for the confiscation of guns and the forfeiture of our 2nd amendment rights can kiss my ass, and may you be the first ones they come after so that those who will stand against them have a chance to prepare.
I would have to agree. Just goes to show you that NY has one of the toughest gun laws in the country and it STILL DID NOT MATTER. Also goes to show you that too many liberals are willing to give some guy life in prison rather than put into place the death penalty.
You liberals bring this on yourselves.
Oh and I live in NY, so I know just how liberal people here can be.
The NRA and its supporters can go f' themselves. There's going to be a gun registry and a prohibition on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and the sale of unlimited ammunition. The US will get its act together on this matter and get with the times and if you don't like it go eat dirt, you gun freak bastards.
If the idea is, in order to create a safe society we identify threats to it and eliminate the threat. Why than when someone identifies there self as a threat to society, for example beating grandma to death with a hammer. Why do so many people insist on keeping known murderers around? Than want to blame an inanimate object when that person causes more destruction.
I watch the reporting of that hammer attack on tv when it took place. People for a safer more humane world got their way in that case. He was kept around. At my expense most likely. Point taken?
Adam Lanza, the Columbine shooters, the Virginia Tech shooter, etc, etc, didn't have a criminal record but access to deadly weapons. Point taken?
Olias,
No no no, you got me wrong. The US will get registry, prohibitions and many other such restrictions on fire arms adding to the many we already have. I believe that. It will happen.
Most folks don't want to live in a world were we have to deal with all the crap. Bandits, murderers, unreasonable men. One theory is these tools of destruction should just not exist, and we have to start somewhere taking them away.
I believe there is a GOD. I am tell'in you, if he had woke me up before he put me in my mothers womb and asked. Look down there, see all that, this is where you are going. Is that ok with you. I would have said ___— NO. Where ever it is in the world I started,IT IS NOT WHERE I WOULD HAVE PICKED!!!! Cause I don,t like it here. And I,m not talk'in about the climate.
Man started with nothing, no matter how you believe he got here. He started with nothing. Now look at all man has. Times changed. What is available to man at any given time has changed.
I am going to side with you. Lets go poof, now all guns are gone. Now we find out the people that decide to partake in brutal behavior will just use something else. Like a hammer.
Lets go farther poof all deadly weapons are gone. In the real world, " this one," do you know what that means? It means man, which includes you women," we don't exist." Remember the dad that run his daughter down in a parking lot with the family car. I don't think he had a criminal record, should now, he will provable get off too.
We will just make a law against something so we can arrest someone who is not bothering any one.
Someone that commits a real crime, aaaah. Treat the symptom Not the problem.
[By Olias of Sunhillow - I'm a Palestinian] Olias, if you're a palistinian, why are you concerned with the United States 2nd Amendment rights ? Why do you want gun control instituted in my country ?
Jpeepee, get out of my backyard and I'll get out of yours, fair enough? Besides, everyone is allowed to have an opinion, or is there a restriction on Palestinians?
This is amazing, the US has made it possible for Israel to completely destroy Palestine, occupy it for decades on end, and this guy wants to give me a hard time because I favor gun control. Gimme a break!
Olias, palestinians need to get their own crap in order before sticking their nose in American politics. When you people stop being a failed 12 century culture with too much sand, we'll let you sit at the big kids table.
no doubt this is music to the NRAs ears.
joe donahue
no doubt this is music to the NRAs ears.
Why? From my understanding, the NRA just teaches gun safety & wants the guns out of criminals & mentally unstable peoples hands. Do you honestly think the NRA condones shooting Firefighters? Some of you people believe any propaganda in print. Maybe it would be better if some of you people would pick up some NRA material , read it & educate yourselves.
The media picks our presidents, reports whatever they can dream up, they no longer deal in facts. Everyone watches these things as facts. People do need to be educated, but they will not. We r getting just as simple minded as the third world countries that have no self control, respect, or remorse.
Kevin,
That wouldn't go with their agenda,liberal/socialist/communist mind set is to repeat the propaganda mantras their politicians and media machine spews to them,they hate facts they just get in the way,here is another they hate to hear about...Switzerland.
In 1994, when the U.S. Congress debated whether to ban "assault weapons," a talk show host asked then-Senator Bill Bradley (New Jersey), a sponsor of the ban, whether guns cause crime. The host noted that, in Switzerland, all males are issued assault rifles for militia service and keep them at home, yet little crime exists there. Sen. Bradley responded that the Swiss "are pretty dull."
For those who think that target shooting is more fun than golf, however, Switzerland is anything but "dull." By car or train, you see shooting ranges everywhere, but few golf courses. If there is a Schuetzenfest (shooting festival) in town, you will find rifles slung on hat racks in restaurants, and you will encounter men and women, old and young, walking, biking and taking the tram with rifles over their shoulders, to and from the range. They stroll right past the police station and no one bats an eye. (Try this in the U.S., and a SWAT Team might do you in.)
Tourists--especially those from Japan, where guns are banned to all but the police--think it's a revolution. But shooting is the national sport, and the backbone of the national defense as well. More per capita firepower exists in Switzerland than in any other place in the world, yet it is one of the safest places to be.
According to the U.N. International Study on Firearm Regulation, England's 1994 homicide rate was 1.4 (9% involving firearms), and the robbery rate 116, per 100,000 population. In the United States, the homicide rate was 9.0 (70% involving firearms), and the robbery rate 234, per 100,000. England has strict gun control laws, ergo, the homicide rate is lower than in the U.S. However, such comparisons can be dangerous: In 1900, when England had no gun controls, the homicide rate was only 1.0 per 100,000.
Moreover, using data through 1996, the U.S. Department of Justice study "Crime and Justice" concluded that in England the robbery rate was 1.4 times higher, the assault rate was 2.3 times higher, and the burglary rate was 1.7 times higher than in the U.S. This suggests that lawfully armed citizens in the U.S. deter such crimes. Only the murder and rape rates in the U.S. were higher than in England. The small number of violent predators who commit most of these crimes in the U.S. have little trouble arming themselves unlawfully.
The U.N. study omits mention of Switzerland, which is awash in guns and has substantially lower murder and robbery rates than England, where most guns are banned.
Here are the figures: The Swiss Federal Police Office reports that in 1997 there were 87 intentional homicides and 102 attempted homicides in the entire country. Some 91 of these 189 murders and attempts involved firearms. With its population of seven million (including 1.2 million foreigners), Switzerland had a homicide rate of 1.2 per 100,000. There were 2,498 robberies (and attempted robberies), of which 546 involved firearms, resulting in a robbery rate of 36 per 100,000. Almost half of these crimes were committed by non-resident foreigners, whom locals call "criminal tourists."
Sometimes, the data sound too good to be true. In 1993, not a single armed robbery was reported in Geneva. No one seems to be looking at the Swiss example in the U.S., however.
Congress is stampeding to pass additional firearm restrictions in response to the events of April 20, when two students used guns and bombs to murder a dozen classmates and a teacher in Littleton, Colorado.
Yet in 1996, a man who legally owned guns under England's strict regulations went on a rampage, murdering 16 children and a teacher in Dunblane, Scotland. Parliament then banned all handguns and most rifles.
But there have been no school massacres in Switzerland, where guns and kids mix freely. At shooting matches, bicycles aplenty are parked outside. Inside the firing shelter, the competitors pay 12-year-olds tips to keep score. The 16-year-olds shoot rifles with men and women of all ages. In fact, the tourist brochure, "Zurich News" recommends September's Knabenschiessen (boy's shooting contest) as a must-see: "The oldest Zurich tradition consists of a shooting contest at the Albisguetli (range) for 12 to 16 year-old boys and girls and a colorful three-day fun-fair." The event has been held since 1657, and attracts thousands of teenage participants and spectators.
Kevin- Do you honestly think the NRA condones shooting Firefighters?
No one thinks the "NRA condones shooting Firefighters". What we believe is that the NRA doesn't care. They would do anything,and close their eyes to any amount of gun violence,if they can stop even the weakest controls on gun ownership. And they have plenty of others that agree with them.They are willing to sacrifice any number of Americans,men,women,even little children on the altar of unrestricted access to guns.
Nope, this is proof that convicted killers should serve their entire lives in prison. Unless they committed the crime when they were juveniles, they should never be given the option of parole. It's always too risky. Juveniles are the ones who have a better chance of changing their ways, with the right nurture and instruction. Adults who murder, may later have remorse, but there is a higher chance that they'll kill again. Many laws need to be changed.
I often see pro-gun people post about Switzerland and their gun laws.They seem to think that a society known for centuries for its peaceful character can be compared to the US.But I'm willing to play their game on that. Lets just take a look at how gun rules operate in Switzerland:
Gun politics in Switzerland
Gun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe. Switzerland does not have a standing army, instead opting for a people's militia for its national defense. The vast majority of men between the ages of 20 and 30 are conscripted into the militia and undergo military training, including weapons training. The personal weapons of the militia are kept at home as part of the military obligations; Switzerland thus has one of the highest militia gun ownership rates in the world. In recent times political opposition has expressed a desire for tighter gun regulations. A referendum in February 2011rejected stricter gun control.
Army-issued arms
The Swiss army has long been a militia trained and structured to rapidly respond against foreign aggression. Swiss males grow up expecting to undergo basic military training, usually at age 20 in the Rekrutenschule (German for "recruit school"), the initial boot camp, after which Swiss men remain part of the "militia" in reserve capacity until age 30 (age 34 for officers).
Each such individual is required to keep his army-issued personal weapon (the 5.56x45mm Sig 550 rifle for enlisted personnel and/or the 9mm SIG-Sauer P220 semi-automatic pistol for officers, medical and postal personnel) at home. Up until October 2007, a specified personal retention quantity of government-issued personal ammunition (50 rounds 5.56 mm / 48 rounds 9mm) was issued as well, which was sealed and inspected regularly to ensure that no unauthorized use had taken place. The ammunition was intended for use while traveling to the army barracks in case of invasion.
In October 2007, the Swiss Federal Council decided that the distribution of ammunition to soldiers shall stop and that all previously issued ammo shall be returned. By March 2011, more than 99% of the ammo has been received. Only special rapid deployment units and the military police still have ammunition stored at home today.
When their period of service has ended, militiamen have the choice of keeping their personal weapon and other selected items of their equipment. In this case of retention, the rifle is sent to the weapons factory where the fully automatic function is removed; the rifle is then returned to the discharged owner. The rifle is then a semi-automatic or self-loading rifle.
The government sponsors training with rifles and shooting in competitions for interested adolescents, both male and female.
The sale of ammunition – including Gw Pat.90 rounds for army-issue assault rifles – is subsidized by the Swiss government and made available at the many shooting ranges patronized by both private citizens and members of the militia. There is a regulatory requirement that ammunition sold at ranges must be used there.
The Swiss Army maintains tight adherence to high standards of lawful military conduct. In 2005, for example, when the Swiss prosecuted recruits who had reenacted the torture scenes of Abu Ghraib, one of the charges was improper use of service weapons.
Number of guns in circulation
In some 2001 statistics, it is noted that there are about 420,000 assault rifles (fully automatic, or "selective fire") stored at private homes, mostly SIG SG 550 models. Additionally, there are some 320,000 semi-auto rifles and military pistols exempted from military service in private possession, all selective-fire weapons having been converted to semi-automatic operation only. In addition, there are several hundred thousand other semi-automaticsmall arms classified as carbines. The total number of firearms in private homes is estimated minimally at 1.2 million to 3 million.
In 2005 over 10% of households contained handguns, compared to 18% of U.S. households that contained handguns. In 2005 almost 29% of households in Switzerland contained firearms of some kind, compared to almost 43% in the USA.
Buying guns
Conditions under the 1999 Gun Act
Changes due to the Schengen treaty
The rules laid out above were changed on 1 December 2008 as Switzerland joined the Schengen treaty; and all member countries must adapt some of their laws to a common standard. Following the draft of the Swiss government for the new Waffengesetz (weapons law), these points will change:
Storage of military-issued ammunition by militia members
Prior to 2007 members of the Swiss Militia were supplied with 50 rounds of ammunition for their military weapon in a sealed ammo box that was regularly audited by the government. This was so that, in the case of an emergency, the militia could respond quickly. However, since 2007 this practice has been discontinued. Only 2,000 specialist militia members (who protect airports and other sites of particular sensitivity) are permitted to keep their military-issued ammunition at home. The rest of the militia get their ammunition from their military armory in the event of an emergency.
Carrying guns
To carry firearms in public or outdoors (and for an individual who is a member of the militia carrying a firearm other than his Army-issue personal weapons off-duty), a person must have a Waffentragschein (gun carrying permit), which in most cases is issued only to private citizens working in occupations such as security.
It is, however, quite common to see a person serving military service to be en route with his rifle.
Conditions for getting a Carrying Permit
There are three conditions:
The carrying permit remains valid for a term of five years (unless otherwise surrendered or revoked), and applies only to the type of firearm for which the permit was issued. Additional constraints may be invoked to modify any specific permit. Neither hunters nor game wardens require a carrying permit.
Transporting guns
Guns may be transported in public as long as an appropriate justification is present. This means to transport a gun in public, the following requirements apply:
Recreational shooting
Recreational shooting is widespread in Switzerland. Practice with guns is a popular form of recreation, and is encouraged by the government, particularly for the members of the militia. Swiss firearms-related rights are supported by the organization ProTell.
200,000 people attend the annual Feldschiessen weekend, which is the largest rifle shooting competition in the world. In addition, there are several private shooting ranges which rent guns.
Black powder
In Swiss gun shops, people can freely purchase black powder and modern black powder substitutes for use in firing historical rifles. The buyer must inform the vendor as to name and address.
Gun crime
Government statistics for the year 2010 records 40 homicides involving firearms, out of the 53 cases of homicide in 2010.
The annual rate of homicide by any means per 100,000 population was 0.70. The annual rate of homicide by guns per 100,000 population was 0.52.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
UBob
Switzerland is not the US you are correct congrats,They have shown however that even children can use guns safely,and having them in their home DoesNot increase crime,Americans forefathers gave us the RIGHT to own guns they never said what kind and say nothing about restrictions or the gov coming in and making sure we clean them another difference between us and them,nobody suggest we go socialist except the left,But they do show how Humans can co-exist with gun ownership.And with mass murders being compleatly out of the norm,all of a sudden the left jumps on the BAN wagon,The Swiss have their crazes too but they don't blame the guns.
Where guns are takin from the People Tyrants show up,
Uncle Bob, I am NRA and I care! Speak for yourself.
You mean Obama's ears Joe?
Lol no pun intended...really.
Liberals don't care either about the nation's gun laws. They just assume that more gun laws will lead to more responsibility. It doesn't work that way. Any criminal if they want a gun badly enough will get it.
The only thing these gun laws are hurting are responsible gun owners.
The NRA and its supporters can go f' themselves. There's going to be a gun registry and a prohibition on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and the sale of unlimited ammunition. The US will get its act together on this matter and get with the times and if you don't like it go eat dirt, you gun freak bastards.
Sign this petition to 'clarify' gun ownership requirements:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/create-28th-amendment-gun-ownership-privilege/tRJtD6L7
Here comes all the comments on people wanting to take away the guns...
if one person had a gun on them, they could have shot him dead and saved life... instead of a greater loss of life...
but are semi-auto, high-capacity clip rifles really necessary?
I own three rifles, one shotgun and two pistols. I don't see the need for military-style assault weapons.
Yea. Granny.
So we should change the "Bill of Rights" to the "Bill of Needs"? I'll bet you have a TV, but a lot of people in the world wouldn't see the "need" for it!
Re Jonathan-1728701
He was waiting in ambush, concealed behind a hillock. The chances of anyone being able to effectively return fire would be very poor.
Jon, a couple of the guys were police and in their spare time volunteer firefighters.
How do you know they could have taken him out? He had taken up a fortified position.
You gun nuts just don't seem to get it. Sure it was illegal for him to own a firearm but those weapons he had were most likely sold to somebody legally to begin with, who in turn gave or sold them to him. it's not the selling of weapons that is the problem it's just that it's way too easy to buy an assault weapon.
markwills: Agreed. Military style weapons made for the general public are rarely used for home defense or hunting. They're more the property of egotists, crazy people and rich folk who think shooting a can in rapid fire is a fun thing (which it is, but that's beside the point).
Oh, and Mr. Obama Hater: speak crazy elsewhere.
I'm so sick of that argument!!! All these hero types saying, I would have just shot him with my gun if I was there. Idiots. In order for that argument to work, even person with a CPL would have to be on guard and ready to shoot (and able to read minds and situations) at all times. It's complete BS. There sre constant stories about armed people being shot before they can reach their weapons and armed people being shot with their own guns and police officers being shot at places like coffee shops (happened in Seattle last year). More people with guns, with extensive training or not, IS NOT THE ANSWER. This is not the movies. It's delusional to think otherwise.
OBAMA: America's Eva Peron - are you capable of a different thought/post?
right and all volunteer firefighters should always go armed to fight fires.
(sarcasm)
lavrn
So to use your view point, lets outlaw guns altogether. The criminals & black market alike will turn their in right along with law abiding citizens. The few that don't will have OPEN SEASON on the American Public. But hey, if in need you can call 911 & play Old Maid with the bad guys until the Police arrive ? Or maybe you can plead for your life, offer to be raped or whatever until the nice Policemen arrives?
Wake up America!! Every western nation allows gun ownership, yet only the US has this frequency of murder and violent crime.
There is something wrong with the mental health of these individuals, and in the "best country in the world" there is no excuse to not have the publically available treatment.
Assault rifles and pistols have no place in a peaceful public, however, the root cause is care for our citizens. Not whether we want to live in an armed society.
Oh goodie... Eva Peron is back.
@RTypO
Yeah, it's way too easy buying an assault rifle now, so let's ban them and make them just as hard to get as drugs... hahaaha
Coming from someone who is under 21, it is easier to buy illegal drugs than legal alcohol
*DISCLAIMER* I HAVE NEVER PURCHASED ILLEGAL DRUGS :)
That's a false equivalency and you know it. Kids aren't going to hang around a high school or college campus and sell assault weapons out of their back-pack. If there was a demand for it then you might have a point.
I can't get anything more specific than a top ten list of items stolen in home burglaries. Firearms are in the top ten. Maybe everyone should advertise they have weapons in their homes so burglars know where to go. You think any burglar with an ounce of knowledge will come to a home they know is currently occupied ?
Arnold and Markwills,
The Interview with the Police spokesperson also said the cop(good guy with a gun) that exchanged gunfire with the criminal saved lives,this awful person was hell bent on killing as many as he could,even put it in the letter he wrote.
But leftys don't seem to like facts just pick and choose what they want to hear.
ster-The Interview with the Police spokesperson also said the cop(good guy with a gun) that exchanged gunfire with the criminal saved lives,this awful person was hell bent on killing as many as he could,even put it in the letter he wrote.
But leftys don't seem to like facts just pick and choose what they want to hear.
Well I would "pick and choose" these:" Interview with the Police spokesperson also said the cop(good guy with a gun) that exchanged gunfire with the criminal saved lives.Trained policeman good guy.Not a gun-nut blasting away with his AR or Glock. Big difference in good guys. One almost always recognized as "good guy",and one that can snap at any time and turn into "bad guy with a gun".
an assult rifle is a great weapon is a great weapon to have defend yourself against a government that turns tyranical...
I personally dont own one but I would like to get one one day... they are great for hunting, home defense, and protecting this country...
if you start banning assult weapons whats next? semi auto pistols? then revolvers and shot guns? then bb guns? where does it stop?
the right to bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED! :-)
UBob
And how many trained cops have snapped and killed their kids,spouse,friend family member,stranger?Same with trained Military.And what makes you think that the majority of gun owners have not been trained or even raised and very capable to use a gun responsibly? Also seems to me all the mass murders are pretty good aim to and seem familiar with their choice of weapon.
Ster2, Exactly right. And nobody says that just because someone happens to be there, and happens to have a gun, that they would be able to stop the bad shooter. However the chances are greatly improved.
Jonathan,
I believe firemen have tools to carry because they have to put out a fire. Are you suggesting a fireman drops the tools and starts shooting????? That would be absolutely lame! How can he see well with the smoke??? What if he shoots an innocent person trying to get out?
The answer is better mental health system and if the guy wasn't crazy death penalty in 1981.
Thankx Bill I sometimes feel like Im tinkling in the wind trying to help inform those who don't seem to understand what their demand for safety would entail and it is your job as a free American to keep yourself and family safe,NOT the Gov and to respect and fight to keep the Rights our Forefathers sought to ensure our success as The Nation of the free,It's not The Nation of Goverment that gets to decide pick and choose who and what constitutes our freedom,We would have NO Freedoms if people like Obama and his puppet masters have it their way.Again you strip our right to guns and we will be unable to keep the others we enjoy,There is a saying The Safety you demanded is now mandatory and people who give up freedom for safety deserve neither.
Sorry porchmonkey Did I say something about your savior OBLAMER. You know he is all smiles over this its just another attack that you IGNORANT people think its with an assault weapon.
An assault weapon is any weapon that can be switched to FULLY AUTOMATIC or specifically built for the military.
The ones you IGNORANT people are talking about are just look-a-like rifles. You can dress up a .22 to look like a M-16, yet can still only fire 1 round with each pull of the trigger. My squirrel gun can rapid fire. A M-16 has a pin that allows you to pull the trigger and hold it and empty the macazine, that is a fully automatic assault weapon.
As to the whole argument about type of gun, the second amendment was meant to be a check on the government, as was the voting right. It was meant to be a protection against government encrouchment, something that was very much on the minds of our fore fathers after the tea tax, the stamp tax and many other encourchments on the colonists from the English parliment, which they commonly attributed to King George.
It should also be on our minds also, because though we are not at present this far gone; we do see it in the world at large, where the ruthless leaders some need to defend themselves against are individuals such as Gadafi of old, or Assad today, in Syria. That the possibility exists, to meet an armed citizenry that COULD fight the government, if things ever went that far, or deteriorated to that point we see in many Middle Eastern countries today, and the colonists faced in their own day, can serve as a deterent to any rationale individual. One that hopefully will never be needed, as such, but that it's there, could give many leaders pause to consider the crossing of certain lines, certain lines that would in essense violate the spirit of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the very founding principles upon which this nation itself (as opposed to their own tenure in office alone) had been founded....
The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was repleate with many checks and balances, because in the words of people like Madison (Federalist 51), ambition must needs be used to check ambition, and the government must be obliged to govern itself. This is one of those checks on power, for those who are supposed to be civil servants, having derived their power from the consent of the governed. The framers didn't trust human nature enough, to give anyone unfettered power, without restraint or check....
Can you all please define what an Assault rifle is for me? The CORRECT definition please. Just because a Semi-Auto AR-15 looks like a Military M-16 does not make it an "Assault Weapon" or a "Weapon of War". There is a HUGE difference between an AR-15 and a M-16.
The NRA and its supporters can go f' themselves. There's going to be a gun registry and a prohibition on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and the sale of unlimited ammunition. The US will get its act together on this matter and get with the times and if you don't like it go eat dirt, you gun freak bastards.
Olias, what is your definition of an Assault weapon? You realize that the AR-15's that civilians possess ARE NOT an Assault Rifle.
Olias, please tell me the Difference between these 2 Rifles, one of which would be called a "Assault Weapon" by the uneducated like yourself, the other would be a "Hunting" weapon.
Mossberg MVP Predator .223 Bolt action
and
Bushmaster XM-15 (AR style rifle) Also .223 Semi-Auto
Which is more dangerous? Which does more damage? and Why?
Definitions will change so as to restrict as many weapons as possible. Too bad for you.
per shot? or over a given time span (say 15 seconds)?
a bolt action would need to work the bolt and aim, a semi auto you can still spray as fast as you can pull the trigger. both are magazine fed
Markwills,
Im just trying to prove the point that there are people who will say the AR style rifle is more dangerous simply based on its resemblence to the Military M-16 rifle. Even though there are other rifles in the world which shoot the same round, whether bolt action, or semi-auto.
P.O.S Spengler should have started his little killing spree with himself. To the firefighters that lost their lives......Rest in peace gentlemen !!!
To the Clueless: If you have a freak living in your basement who is old enough to have a job and move out, but doesnt, you might have a killer in your midst.
If you have an old guy living with his sister, check it out...does he wash his hair? Is he a violent ex-con? You might have a killer in your midst.
IF you have a twentysomething with Autism in your basement, and you are a parent in total denial because all autistic kids are gentle and sweet, you might have a killer in your house.
Quit the denial, quit the false beliefs that everything is ok in the house, get rid of the guns in the house, idiot, to make it harder for YOUR freak to hurt innocent school kids, firemen, whatever.
In fact, leave a pistol laying around with just one bullet and hopefully the maniac will use it on himself instead of on others. Remember, no rifles with clips laying around, ok, dumb a$$es??? Sheesh. Get clues people.
People are so against guns now. I definately admit that I am against stupid people with guns, but to be against guns as a whole, is non-American... If you really think that making guns illegal will get them off the streets, you're crazy. Maybe we should make meth and cocaine illegal too. Even if guns did get made illegal, there would still be an illegal market for them, making the only people who have them, the people that commit these crimes anyways.
They're not against guns. Guns are a part of the US culture.
They're against the crazy people having guns.
And for that, a 7-day waiting period with real background checks and no hi capacity mags would be more sane.
Oh, and please don't accuse people of not being American for not wanting guns. It's my right to own guns. It's there right to speak freely. We can co-exist.
Monkey, it's obvious you have no real knowledge of firearms. High capacity magazines are at best a small advantage in any situation. In this case the shooter was firing from cover, so high cap magazines would have been no advantage at all! So far I've seen no mention of his magazine capacity.
I'm not against responsible gun ownership. I'm for limiting fire rate and high capacity magazines for assault weapons. Weapons designed for military and police (SWAT) use.
Monkey@Keyboard
He was a convicted felon. He wasn't supposed to legally own a firearm. Seven day waiting period, finger prints, DNA or whatever. All the criminals have to do is ask around on the Black Market & they can get anything they want. Criminals will find a way to get them , even if they have to steal or machine them themselves.
Not against guns - COMPLETELY against assault weapons and 30+ round magazines. NO ONE NEEDS THAT!!!! If you feel you do, you're either a really really bad shot or paranoid... either type of person shouldn't have a gun at all.
Yup - he probably got the gun illegally, blah, blah, blah. So, how about LESS AVAILABLE ASSAULT WEAPONS? Have to start somewhere. If there are less in circulation, there will be less for anyone to get them illegally. Right to bear arms - I'm fine with that. Right to own something that could shoot 100 rounds in under a minute (CT shooter), that's BS. Just like the right to free speech doesn't mean you can yell "bomb" in an airport. The right to bear arms doesn't mean you have the right to have an arsenal... which only increases the possibility for a nut-job to get his hands on another ridiculous weapon.
OldDog47: The topic was what could be done to support gun control without limiting the rights of gun owners.
And if you want to rate my gun knowledge, meet me in Butte, Idaho, this April. http://guntrainingidaho.com/training/costa-at-reliance-arms/. I train on Glocks and Kimbers.
Kevin D. Hoke: Yep. Criminals will find a way to get a gun. But that still doesn't mean we should irresponsibly avoid a waiting period and make military style weapons available to the public. You and I both know you can get any weapon possible at a gun show with fake ID. Don't be naive.
@lavrn
"Not against guns - COMPLETELY against assault weapons and 30+ round magazines. NO ONE NEEDS THAT!!!!"
It's not about "needs", it's about rights! Look it up it's called The Bill of Rights. You don't "need" free speech either, but I'll bet you feel you have a right to it!
Every weapon sold should have a valid name associated with the weapon into a national database. Then if one is ever used in a crime, the person with the name in the database should be charged as well as the criminal.
If the weapon was stolen and used in a crime, then the person should be banned from ever buying a weapon again because they are irresponsible and can't be trusted to lock it up safely.
And that goes for ammo as well.
a 12 gauge is pretty adequate for home defense...
Monkey, are you aware that under the current proposals your Glocks would be banned? Your the worst kind of gun owner, it's OK to ban what others use, just not yours. It would seem the rest of us didn't realize you had determined a topic we should all follow. As to meeting you in Idaho in April, hell no, the weather in Idaho sucks in the spring!
RTyp0, thanks for the laugh!
You and I both know you can get any weapon possible at a gun show with fake ID. Don't be naive.
You better have a photo ID of someone that can pass a background check then. The ones I have bought at gun shows & have seen other purchase here in Texas, fill out ALL the paper work & go through a background check just like they do at any firearms store. Now if your talking about the person to person sales OUTSIDE the gun show, that is no better than the Black Market. I believe that is already illegal. But it has nothing to do with a legal purchase & real background checks.
another expensive failure, where it was put up, it was a joke
not really, but he probably would need to get some new clips for them.
right because there are so many home invasions with 12 intruders involved....(sarcasm)
OldDog47: My Glock 27 carries 9 rounds, which is factory default. That is not in the target of the bill.
I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
hey arnold, that was just the talk from a macho man. sounds like a friend of mine. In a restaurant that can't be more that 18 ft wide, he's saying that if someone came in and tried to rob the place he'd pull out his piece and shoot. I told him that it would be great except that there are a half dozen diners in the line of fire. Gun people like that need their heads examined and are probably more dangerous to the public than the guy robbing the place would be.
Eva Peron
"It's better to have it and not need it, then to need it and not have it."
Yeah, the all wise and knowing.
Right. As if that statement applies to every situation. If the pro-NRA comments on this message board are the minds of NRA members, everyone on their list should be double-checked for sanity. Why do they feel such a strong need to own guns? This isn't centuries ago. We have law enforcement now. Whatever happened to getting security alarms and guard dogs, instead of guns. Even video surveillance and good lighting are better options than owning guns. I see the problem now...simple minded.
Monkey, I've seen proposals lately to limit handguns to 6 rounds. That aside, There's no need to limit magazine capacity since it only takes about a second to change mags. I'm just saying that gun owners shouldn't be too hasty in making concessions to the gun haters. They'll take your help now, and screw you in the end!
The shooter did not have an assault rifle. He had a semi-automatic AR-15.
A true assault rifle is a fully automatic military grade weapon (i.e. machine gun or one that can be switched to full auto mode). An AR-15, used in this incident, is a semi-automatic rifle & is the civilian version of the select fire M-16. The media has incorrectly labeled semi-auto black rifles as assault rifles for years. It plays into their anti-gun agenda.
A semi-auto clone of the AK-47, another popular rifle, is also classified as an assault rifle.
All semi-auto pistols, rifles, & shotguns function the same way. They fire 1 round each time you squeeze the trigger. No more, no less. Then they automatically load another round from the magazine into the chamber making the gun ready to fire again.
This is in contrast to their counterparts - revolvers, bolt-action & lever action rifles, & pump action shotguns, which either don't have a magazine (i.e. revolvers) or require physical manipulation to chamber the next round from the magazine in the case of bolt-action/lever action rifles & pump action shotguns.
All of the above guns, whether semi-automatic or not, only fire 1 round each time the trigger is squeezed. No more, no less.
You can go to your local gun store right now & buy a magazine fed semi-automatic hunting rifle with wood stocks chambered in .223 caliber (same caliber the AR-15 fires). Then take the hunting rifle & put it next to a black AR-15 & then ask the average person which one is more dangerous.
Do you know what the answer will be? The average person will tell you that the AR-15 is far more powerful/dangerous & much scarier. Yet they both fire the exact same caliber bullet.
Most hunting rifles are chambered in larger, more powerful calibers than .223. Most hunting rifles are also more accurate & can hit targets at greater distances than an AR-15.
I'm not saying an AR-15 isn't dangerous, since any gun in the wrong hands can be.
However, anyone who says they are in favor of banning AR-15 & similar so called 'assault rifles' then must also be in favor of banning semi-automatic hunting rifles, which can do far more damage at greater distances more accurately.
There is no point in pointing out it wasn't a real assault weapon, just a prettied up regular rifle. They don't listen, they have their agenda and don't need facts confusing them.
@ ONESLACKR: Thanks for explaining the differences about assault rifles and hunting rifles. I didnt know that and I am glad you took the time and explained them. I now fully understand why people who own them have them and their rightful purpose. By your comments I now see the need for weapons like the AR-15 and the heavy magazines that allow you to shoot thirty rounds. At first I didnt see the need and felt that those types of assault weapons were completely unnecessary, but since you explained their functions and the different types, I now see the need and understand completely why people own them.
I sincerely hope the president and congress do not band them. I hope they find a more realistic and less complicated solution. Because I dont think banning all assault weapons is the correct answer at all. I think we need to come up with a much better solution than that. Like so many of the other posters on here, whats next for them to ban? Banning all assualt rifles would mean that hunting rifles would also be banned and that would be completely unfair to everyone who loves to hunt.
It is so wrong to punish a whole group of law abiding citizens for a few crazed idiots who were mor than likely put up to these heinous acts, by some activist group put together by the governement so they could abolish the second amendment all together and disarm the American people. And it seems like these people are getting thier agenda accomplished and it really is sad. And whats even worse are the all the people who are for loosing their constitutional rights, buying into their agenda. Im like the other poster on here, if want to live in a country that is totally gun free and private citizens cannot own guns, leave the U.S.A. and move to those countries. They will be very happy over there.
I am not trying to loose any of my constitutional rights, although alot of those have been greatly reduced in the bginnig of this millenium because George W. Bush with the Patriot Act. And then John Mccain sponsoring and having the president to sign into law the NDAA Act. I seriously hope a future president will/would repeal both of those acts.
However I still want the remaing of our constitutional rights. Everybody else who feels the complete opposite should be allowed to leave the country and move to a country of their choice.
The NRA and its supporters can go f' themselves. There's going to be a gun registry and a prohibition on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and the sale of unlimited ammunition. The US will get its act together on this matter and get with the times and if you don't like it go eat dirt, you gun freak bastards.
Olias:
This comment is getting old. Anyone who has seen the news knows this is not the fault of the NRA. Why can't you just admit defeat? Tougher gun laws do not mean more responsibility.
New York is already a liberal state. So why did this happen there?
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the two men who were killed and I pray that the other two that were wounded have a quick recovery.
How about the death penalty back in 1981 when he killed his grandmother?
At least life without parole!
They may have not given it to him because he was crazy????
If he was crazy, the mental health system failed and the criminal justice system failed. Death penalty in 1981 could have saved the firemen. I say fix the mental health system or don't let the crazies out. Did he get out because the prisons were overcrowded?
Who owned the guns?
What about the death penalty back in 1981 when he killed his grandmother?
Liberals hate that death penalty thing, you know that. They like to coddle the criminals, especially the crazy ones that had a rough upbringing. Total denial and self-guilt. Liberals.
Liberals hate gun ownership, but love criminal coddling. Ever notice that???
Yet they are the first to scream loudly against gun owners and NRA...mainly because they are liberal and therefore dont like to actually talk about factual things.
Well, chief, are you aware that putting someone to death costs waaayy more than keeping them in prison for life. Maybe if you cons weren't such anti-tax zealots you could have the prison system of your dreams.
This clown should never have been allowed to rejoin society in the first place! He killed his grandmother, and somebody thought it was a good idea to let him out of prison. Now all the libs are going to try to blame the gun... blame the courts and the parole board!
Many laws need to be changed, including guns being banned from those who aren't law enforcement. Fire fighters should undergo law enforcement training as part of their education. upon completion, they should also be allowed to carry guns, but only when on the job. You NRA members need to get counseling for your paranoia and think of other solutions beyond owning guns. There are other ways to stay safe.
focustruthreform
"Many laws need to be changed, including guns being banned from those who aren't law enforcement."
Yeah, lets change the First Amendment too, including free speech being banned from all who aren't the press! If you want guns banned from all but law enforcement there's plenty of places like that already. Please feel free to move to any one of them! Let me suggest China.
Let's bring the Parole Board that thought it was a good idea to free this freak onto The View next time Obama is on the show (should be within a week or so, according to schedule)(can you say narcissist??) and let the NRA folk ask the questions. Now that would be a great show with very high ratings!!!
Of course the Libs would never go for it...it would bring out the Truth, something they like to avoid and hide. It keeps their idiot voter base in line.
Cops said Spengler left a three-page typewritten note saying he wanted to burn down the neighborhood and "do what I like doing best, killing people."
Sounded hell bent on killing people wheather he beat them to death with a hammer, burnt them to death or shot them. Think the man would have killed if he had access to a gun or not. Be thankfull he didn't use an IED & take out the entire block along with dozens of Firefighters.
Absolutely right! And yet someone thought it was a good idea to let him out of prison!
He was doing okay until his mother died. The guy was mental and the system set him free. What a lousy mental health system we have.
Goss, you are kidding...you are blaming the mental health system now?
Blame the shooter. He's an idiot. Plain and simple. Always was. His family just was in denial his whole pathetic life. Which Blue State did this happen in again? Was it Blue Connecticut? California? Oregon? I forget which Liberal Blue state we are talking about.
Another day, another shooting by people armed to the teeth. We should definitely keep ignoring that there is a problem and just go about our merry way. Obviously the answer is to arm our firemen. It's not like they have other things to worry about.
That was sarcasm, NRA members.
And a very poor attempt at sarcasm at that!
how are those strick gun laws workin out for ya in NYC? bout the same as chicago?
NYC is a large city with the crimes associated with one. What we don't have is mass shootings with military-grade weapons.
The murder rate dropped when more cops where put on the streets (under Guilliani) - in other words, people who are trained to handle firearms. not by changing laws to make gun ownership easier.
Ride a subway someday and tell me how it would go if people started opening fire at each other.
that's not whats happening and you either know it or are not paying attention. they are calling for Bans and more laws for those who legally own firearms. like in NYC it will have little if any effect on criminals. and that is what we are talking about here.
been to nyc several times and rode the mass transit. so what? this state issued over 5.000 deer hunting licenses alone this year, commonplace to see rifle racks in pickups. yet no mass shootings. yet the country should enact MORE gun laws?....... the few should dictate to the many?
Sir - you don't know what you're talking about. You were referring to NYC, now your talking about the country and upstate New York? First off, I have no problem with hunters and hunting rifles. But as usual, gun advocates just start throwing unrelated facts around.
What the hell does that have to do with turning the subway into the wild west? We rational people want CERTAIN gun regulations on CERTAIN type weapons. But you don't get it. With the gun advocates, it's all or nothing, black and white. Grow up and stop with the extremes.
I can play that game too: if we don't regulated military-grade weapons, next thing you know civilians will have tanks and Apache helicopters. Seems pretty stupid, doesn't it? Well, stupid is what happens when you see the extreme and not the logical restrictions.
And we are not the "few." We are many...
@ DVNYC
You obviously don't know much about guns.
The shooter did not have an assault rifle. He had a semi-automatic AR-15.
A true assault rifle is a fully automatic military grade weapon (i.e. machine gun or one that can be switched to full auto mode). An AR-15, used in this incident, is a semi-automatic rifle & is the civilian version of the select fire M-16. The media has incorrectly labeled semi-auto black rifles as assault rifles for years. It plays into their anti-gun agenda.
A semi-auto clone of the AK-47, another popular rifle, is also classified as an assault rifle.
All semi-auto pistols, rifles, & shotguns function the same way. They fire 1 round each time you squeeze the trigger. No more, no less. Then they automatically load another round from the magazine into the chamber making the gun ready to fire again.
This is in contrast to their counterparts - revolvers, bolt-action & lever action rifles, & pump action shotguns, which either don't have a magazine (i.e. revolvers) or require physical manipulation to chamber the next round from the magazine in the case of bolt-action/lever action rifles & pump action shotguns.
All of the above guns, whether semi-automatic or not, only fire 1 round each time the trigger is squeezed. No more, no less.
You can go to your local gun store right now & buy a magazine fed semi-automatic hunting rifle with wood stocks chambered in .223 caliber (same caliber the AR-15 fires). Then take the hunting rifle & put it next to a black AR-15 & then ask the average person which one is more dangerous.
Do you know what the answer will be? The average person will tell you that the AR-15 is far more powerful/dangerous & much scarier. Yet they both fire the exact same caliber bullet.
Most hunting rifles are chambered in larger, more powerful calibers than .223. Most hunting rifles are also more accurate & can hit targets at greater distances than an AR-15.
I'm not saying an AR-15 isn't dangerous, since any gun in the wrong hands can be.
However, anyone who says they are in favor of banning AR-15 & similar so called 'assault rifles' then must also be in favor of banning semi-automatic hunting rifles, which can do far more damage at greater distances more accurately.
@DVNYC
" Well, stupid is what happens when you see the extreme and not the logical restrictions."
And you get to decide what are "logical" restrictions? Lets throw a couple of facts around, as you put it. This shooter could have done at least as much damage, if not more, with a hunting rifle. As to turning the subway into the wild west, seems the NYPD do a pretty good job of that all by themselves!
@ DVNYC
Are you referring to those expert marksmen on NYPD who shot 9 civilians by accident recently while taking down 1 suspect. Wow, I feel safer already. LOL
The NRA and its supporters can go f' themselves. There's going to be a gun registry and a prohibition on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and the sale of unlimited ammunition. The US will get its act together on this matter and get with the times and if you don't like it go eat dirt, you gun freak bastards.
@ Olias
What's wrong? Are you jealous because you can't own a gun in your country? I'm surprised Cuba even allows you to have internet access. Jealousy is such as ugly emotion. Just be happy with what you have & don't worry about things in the U.S.
Yeah, he LOVED his Mother to death. I bet he did. Sick F*ck.
Ah BS. Why not remember the devastation in Florida (hurricanes), the Gulf coast (oil spill). Louisiana consistent hurricanes, California mudslides and wildfires in Colorado and elsewhere? I am tired of reading statements about anything happening in NY as if the world is coming to a F'n end. Move out of there if you don't like it. To all you all in Sandy Hook, move.
The media burns rubber out of Newtown to leach on another tragedy and milk it for all it's worth.
I think it is more than the media, I think it is the leach mayor and governors and I think the residents expect way too much from Obama and everyone else for that matter. They ought to move anywhere near the Gulf Coast to see what life is like when disaster hits on a regular basis.
New gun laws will definitely keep this type of weapon out of the hands of individuals like this, since he, as a felon, could not posess any firearm legally. So he must have gotten these weapons illegally which goes to show that criminals are going to obtain this type of weapon or any weapon whether you pass a law prohibiting it or not.. Think with something that was supposed to be between your ears not just to keep them apart.
Having guns in the house should be illegal for anyone who isn't law enforcement. Don't you get it? If everyone who isn't a criminal is allowed to own a gun, eventually some sane people become insane and kill innocent people. No one ever knows who's going to snap. So why risk it? That's what rational people are trying to teach you NRA oblivious individuals.
@focus
Either you're being sarcastic or at least you're one of the gun grabbers who actually is willing to tell the truth about the real agenda of gun grabbers, which is to ban all guns.
A gun ban would:
1. Ensure that only criminals would have guns bought on the black market, since criminals don't care about your stupid laws/restrictions/bans
2. Make gun running cartels filthy rich since a ban would create a huge black market, just like there is for illicit drugs.
3. Turn a large number of the 85+ million law abiding gun owners in the U.S. into criminals because many would refuse to turn in their guns.
4. Add 100,000s to the unemployment line who currently work for
a. Gun Manufacturers
b. Gun stores
c. Gun Ranges
d. Companies who make accessories for guns etc.....
That's all a ban would accomplish.
Has anyone here ever met an NRA member that didn't have a raging case of little man syndrome? I haven't.
They live in Pasco County Florida.
RTyp0
Nancy Pelosi?
Nancy is a LMS victim if I ever saw one.. ;)
The small manhood argument is as ineffective as you claim the "guns vs cars" argument is.
Wasn't arguing anything. Simply speaking from my experience.
Never met a lib that was a real man RTypo
ster - I never met a conservative who was a real Christian
@ Middle American Man- That is the truth! Real Talk! Because I definitely have never met a conservative who was a real christian either. They are just like the phariseeds and saduceeds, just a bunch of reliogious nuts who want to control everything and everybody. Thats all they are.
And at the posters who think we should get rid of the constitution and the second amendment, Go live in another country that feels the exact same way you do, and feels thier citizens should not have any rights and all the power and freedom should belong to the goverment. There are plenty of countires for the both of you that share and practice these sentiments. You can always leave the United States and relocate there. We love our freedom and we want all of our constitutional rights.
Start frying these sicko's and our problems will start to go away. Capitol punishment is the answer. We let criminals control our system, they have more rights than everyone. I say forget that. It's time to plug the electric chair back in... It is clear that treating these sicko's humanly has so worked in our favor!! What a joke! It's time that these criminals start to realize, that we as people, government, courts,Etc. Will not put up with it anymore. Don't blame guns, blame us for allowing this to happen.. It's the way we vote. To try to rehabilitate these people. HAHA How's that working out for us????????? Joke is on us.
Take all the semiautos off the market. It is that simple. Death penalty for use in a crime and if they want to keep them:
1. $50,000,000 wrongful death insurance required for all weapons other than bolt action rifles or single action shotguns.
2. Lethal Weapon tax of $20,000 per weapon per year
3. Stop all sales of semi auto and allow 10 years to give them up. BAN ALL TRADING IMMEDIATELY.
4. Single shot weapons only, only loadable one shell at a time.
5. Exemption for double barreled shot guns
6. ID required and background on all shells, reloading equipment etc. National ID is time to implement.
7. Phase out all Assault weapon ammo and mandate one or two calibers for hunting other than shot guns or 22.
Armed guards in schools is pure insanity. People that suggest this must be locked up or their safety and ours.
Get the guns.
Assault weapons are not a deterent to invasion. The 16 active nuclear subs are and any one could take out Newton, New York or Chicago even if everyone had a dozen Glocks and Bushmasters each.
The NRA is a threat to our security, and a direct threat to the lives of our children, friends and relatives and should be treated as the Taliban or al Qaeda. The NRA proloferation of weapons in American has caused more American deaths than all the terrorists and all the deaths of Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan and every other terrorist act for the past 100 years by a factor of 50 in the past 10 years.
The NRA is paid to arm Americans and cause death and so is every congressman and woman who vote to not ban weapons.
Hunt all you want. Just use a single shot weapon.
The Second Amendment was intended to help arm a militia without the expense of having to buy arms and to insure Catholics and Protestants alike that neither would be treated any differently like they had been in England and Europe.
This is such a great idea, because it will definitely keep weapons out of the hands of individuals like this who legally can't own firearms of any kind already. Great thought. Quit thinking with what you sit on.
Hmm, I wonder what a native American would say to that post.
Lifelibertypursuitof happiness
Maybe we could put an invisible bullet proof force field around everyone. Sounds about as feasible. None of your ideas would even pass the ULTRA LIBERAL smell test. I'm trying to be nice so I will just leave it at that.
In 1994, when the U.S. Congress debated whether to ban "assault weapons," a talk show host asked then-Senator Bill Bradley (New Jersey), a sponsor of the ban, whether guns cause crime. The host noted that, in Switzerland, all males are issued assault rifles for militia service and keep them at home, yet little crime exists there. Sen. Bradley responded that the Swiss "are pretty dull."
For those who think that target shooting is more fun than golf, however, Switzerland is anything but "dull." By car or train, you see shooting ranges everywhere, but few golf courses. If there is a Schuetzenfest (shooting festival) in town, you will find rifles slung on hat racks in restaurants, and you will encounter men and women, old and young, walking, biking and taking the tram with rifles over their shoulders, to and from the range. They stroll right past the police station and no one bats an eye. (Try this in the U.S., and a SWAT Team might do you in.)
Tourists--especially those from Japan, where guns are banned to all but the police--think it's a revolution. But shooting is the national sport, and the backbone of the national defense as well. More per capita firepower exists in Switzerland than in any other place in the world, yet it is one of the safest places to be.
According to the U.N. International Study on Firearm Regulation, England's 1994 homicide rate was 1.4 (9% involving firearms), and the robbery rate 116, per 100,000 population. In the United States, the homicide rate was 9.0 (70% involving firearms), and the robbery rate 234, per 100,000. England has strict gun control laws, ergo, the homicide rate is lower than in the U.S. However, such comparisons can be dangerous: In 1900, when England had no gun controls, the homicide rate was only 1.0 per 100,000.
Moreover, using data through 1996, the U.S. Department of Justice study "Crime and Justice" concluded that in England the robbery rate was 1.4 times higher, the assault rate was 2.3 times higher, and the burglary rate was 1.7 times higher than in the U.S. This suggests that lawfully armed citizens in the U.S. deter such crimes. Only the murder and rape rates in the U.S. were higher than in England. The small number of violent predators who commit most of these crimes in the U.S. have little trouble arming themselves unlawfully.
The U.N. study omits mention of Switzerland, which is awash in guns and has substantially lower murder and robbery rates than England, where most guns are banned.
Here are the figures: The Swiss Federal Police Office reports that in 1997 there were 87 intentional homicides and 102 attempted homicides in the entire country. Some 91 of these 189 murders and attempts involved firearms. With its population of seven million (including 1.2 million foreigners), Switzerland had a homicide rate of 1.2 per 100,000. There were 2,498 robberies (and attempted robberies), of which 546 involved firearms, resulting in a robbery rate of 36 per 100,000. Almost half of these crimes were committed by non-resident foreigners, whom locals call "criminal tourists."
Sometimes, the data sound too good to be true. In 1993, not a single armed robbery was reported in Geneva. No one seems to be looking at the Swiss example in the U.S., however.
Congress is stampeding to pass additional firearm restrictions in response to the events of April 20, when two students used guns and bombs to murder a dozen classmates and a teacher in Littleton, Colorado.
Yet in 1996, a man who legally owned guns under England's strict regulations went on a rampage, murdering 16 children and a teacher in Dunblane, Scotland. Parliament then banned all handguns and most rifles.
But there have been no school massacres in Switzerland, where guns and kids mix freely. At shooting matches, bicycles aplenty are parked outside. Inside the firing shelter, the competitors pay 12-year-olds tips to keep score. The 16-year-olds shoot rifles with men and women of all ages. In fact, the tourist brochure, "Zurich News" recommends September's Knabenschiessen (boy's shooting contest) as a must-see: "The oldest Zurich tradition consists of a shooting contest at the Albisguetli (range) for 12 to 16 year-old boys and girls and a colorful three-day fun-fair." The event has been held since 1657, and attracts thousands of teenage participants and spectators.
Eva Peron
I thought you had been deleted totally..... too bad!
First time I've ever left a comment on MSN, because it seems like the lunatic-to-sane ratio is extremely skewed on here. However, if I hear one more gun-toting maniac whine about their rights, I'm going to lose it. What about my right to feel safe and not worry that one of my neighbors will hear a noise outside and accidentally shoot me? Furthermore, why are you all so opposed to enacting sensible laws that will limit carnage-causing weapons and still let you shoot animals and protect your home. I think liability insurance is a brilliant idea. As for all those criminals who will still be armed? Make owning a gun without licensing, insurance, training and so on a crime with steep jail time. I can guarantee that if you start arresting these "gang bangers" (as that idiot Eva Peron keeps ranting about) for possession and give them 20 years, there will be a serious drop-off of people waving their guns around for show. If the founding fathers had known what this country would turn into -- a bunch of xenophobic, hateful crazies with advanced weaponry that hadn't even been imagined yet who think their "rights" trump everything else in the world -- they might have reworded that 2nd Amendment. I surely wish they had.
@ TheQuatch
This is what I hear from you anti-gun loons, "Oh, I'm so scared one of you gun nuts is going to shoot me. I need to feel safe."
Yet as soon as a pro-gun person says, "Hey, I have a right to defend myself", you anti-gun nuts start screaming, "No one is going to attack you. You're just a paranoid/coward gun nut."
Well, which is it? Is society dangerous/scary because of all the guns out there or is it completely safe & pro-gun people are just paranoid cowards. You anti-gun loons can't have it both ways.
BTW, in 2011 there were 8,583 murders caused by firearms (all types) according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report.
Out of 315 million people in the U.S. means your odds of getting murdered by a firearm is a small fraction of 1%. The odds are even smaller if you only consider murders committed with rifles, such as an AR-15.
And how many of those deaths were criminal on criminal makes that 1% even smaller.
You need to get rid of the "Liberty" in your user name as you obviously wish to live in a Police State and wish for the government to rule every aspect of your life. If you wish to live that way, go live in Syria, see what an Unarmed populace will face when the Government no longer has Checks and Balances to guarentee it stays honest.
The NRA and its supporters can go f' themselves. There's going to be a gun registry and a prohibition on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and the sale of unlimited ammunition. The US will get its act together on this matter and get with the times and if you don't like it go eat dirt, you gun freak bastards.
@ Olias
What's wrong? Are you jealous because you can't own a gun in your country? I'm surprised Cuba even allows you to have internet access. Jealousy is such as ugly emotion. Just be happy with what you have & don't worry about things in the U.S.
A fireman, volunteer at that, is not thinking anyone wants to shoot him as he drives to the fire!
This lunatic should have stayed in jail for life. What defense could his grandmother put up? And they let him out on parole?
And who sold him this assault rifle?
Could have been the obama administration, since they sell guns illegally. Otherwise, another seller who doesn't obey the law. Not a legally authorized dealer.
Maybe the guns belonged to the sister he killed and left in the fire,she may have even had them locked in a safe and couldn't get to them to save herself....no matter how he got them he never should have been walking around,had he been 6 feet under where he belonged None of this woulda happened,Thank God a good guy with a gun( police man) was there to stop him from killing all his neighbors,The left hates capital punishment,And yet the murder of millions of unborn babies (heartbeat at 26days) makes them scream when it is suggested that a young girl needs her parents guidance before ruining her life by murdering her baby,or restricting the time period of months/weeks a baby can be murdered,Partial Birth Abortion anyone?So don't even pretend to be outraged by the loss of life,something you demand to have the right to take from the most defenseless among us.
We need to offer better mental heath or make it to where we can again lock up looneys..
Kjosee - best idea yet. Unfortunately, thanks to the "Progressives" and "Liberals", you just cant go locking up loonies anymore UNTIL they snap. The good old days are gone. Of course, then the Progressives and Libs have to blame the NRA rather than the parents who had the loony in the first place. Blame the Gunner, not the Gun.
Stop Coddling Criminals.
The 38 revolver and 12ga. pump are both more powerful than the .223 rifle. So why not ask who sold him those? The media has made the world paranoid over the phrase "assault rifle".
Listen to the 911 call. The victim can tell it is an assault rifle given the rate of fire.
A 12 Gauge isn't effective at distance, so he picked the correct rifle for the death he wanted to inflict
According to the text the man did not have an assault rifle. No, the Bushmaster AR-15 .223 caliber rifle is not an assualt rifle.
Finally! Someone pointed out the fact of the other guns!
Thats some great ears you got there Tom. too bad there's nothing but empty space between em. its a SEMI auto weapon. but you can tell by the rate of fire....B.S.
A gun is a killing machine regardless if it is an assault rifle or not. Ban guns.
I think everyone realizes there are several ways to kill people, not just by using guns. That doesn't mean it should be legal to sell cars equipped with a harpoon or accessory buzzsaws for clearing sidewalks of pedestrians.
Let's see, baseball bats, cars and guns.. Which one was designed with a specific purpose to kill do you think? And which one of those probably should have the most regulation?
RTypo, killing is not a bad thing when necessary. It's murder thats the problem. And none of those things were designed for murder. (including guns)
Excluding accidental shootings, killing with a gun is murder technically speaking, despite your symantics. I've murdered a few deer and varmits in my time. And yes, they were all first degree... ;)
But my point: baseball bats were designed to hit a ball. cars are designed to take a person or persons from point A to point B. A knife was designed to cut things, food, rope etc.
A gun was designed to kill somthing. Period. There is no disputing this. And since that is the designed purpose with the greatest potential for injury or death, it's the strongest candidate in that group for regulation.
Dont ban guns; ban bleeding heart liberals who saw it in their bleeding hearts to let this poor man out of prison for murder after just 17 years. He is clearly deranged. Wait, let me guess...there is a law against holding him any longer than that....and the law was written up by???? yep! Whiny liberals who then make the first call to control guns.
Fact: Liberals hate the guns, love the criminals. Fact.
Fact: conservatives love straw man arguments, fact.
The NRA and its supporters can go f' themselves. There's going to be a gun registry and a prohibition on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and the sale of unlimited ammunition. The US will get its act together on this matter and get with the times and if you don't like it go eat dirt, you gun freak bastards.
@ Olias
What's wrong? Are you jealous because you can't own a gun in your country? I'm surprised Cuba even allows you to have internet access. Jealousy is such as ugly emotion. Just be happy with what you have & don't worry about things in the U.S.
Yes, the only way to stay safe according to the NRA is for all Americans to be required to carry a gun.
Tell me again. How many people died of gun violence in England last year? France? Germany?
The madness is out of control.
Indulge me, tom, and tell me again how many people died of gun violence in Kennesaw, GA last year. Google it. See what's different about Kennesaw. Then offer an argument.
@ tom
If you are so worried about getting murdered by someone with a gun (odds are a small fraction of 1%) then there is a very simple solution to your problem. Just pack up & move to England, France, or Germany where you can feel safe. No need to thank me. I'm happy to help you with your problem.
Here is Mayor Bloomberg's opportunity to put law enforcement out of circulation until something is done about gun control. I guarantee that if cities told the communities to deal with the crime because the police are not going to it wouldn't take but a few years for the communities to eliminate the bulk of these bastards that our media call suspects and our justice system seems to think deserve more than the communities that they create all of the heart ache in. Sad that our government would force us to start taking the law into our own hands but that seems to me to be the solution at this point.
The REAL PROBLEM with those promoting sensible gun control is they are being used.
There are ultimately 2 major groups behind the scenes...the folks promoting guns and the guys that want them removed ENTIRELY!
Many of us are in the middle, so my best advice would be, if you hear about any new rules from either side (be it removing guns or promoting guns)....VOTE AGAINST IT!