UPDATE….A gunman killed 26 people, 20 of them children between the ages of 5 and 10,
Once again the insanity of gun ownership has raised it’s head and made headlines. Once again the NRA has to claim responsibility for the bloodshed.
These type of stories about gun crimes come at such a pace we become immune to them. Many in this nation pass them over as if it were another story about the fiscal cliff talks. Is this not the second this week? Or third?
The fact is the NRA controls the agenda by making sure that sensible and tough gun control legislation is not passed by hamstringing Congress. When someone with a microphone has the decency and intellect to address gun violence, as did Bob Costas two weeks ago, the gun freaks go crazy on right-wing media. Fact is, Costas was right.
Too many guns, too many shootings, too many deaths.
I keep asking on my blog when the NRA will start to pay for the burial costs from gun violence. It becomes frightfully silent when such a suggestion is made, but this morning it seems that another round of burials will need to be paid for.
The NRA needs to be held accountable.
A shooter on Friday opened fire at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, leading to multiple victims, the Hartfort Courant newspaper reported.
All Newtown schools were placed in lockdown after the shooting, the Newtown Public School District said.
The shooter, an adult, was dead and two handguns were recovered from the scene, NBC News reported without citing a source.
Danbury Hospital had received three patients from the scene, a hospital spokeswoman told NBC Connecticut.
One child was carried from Sandy Hook Elementary School by a police officer, and the child appeared to have been wounded, the town’s weekly newspaper, the Newtown Bee, said on its website.
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 
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I just wrote about the same thing. Every time our lax gun laws allow another gun into our society, it becomes easier for everyone, anyone, to get a gun. Every gun owner in the country, every defender of the right to bear arms, shares responsibility for horrors like today’s school shooting.
They won’t. They don’t’ have to. And the American people will express sympathy and dismay, and then turn their attention back to their Christmas shopping lists. The outrage necessary to prompt action to address this isn’t there. Jay Carney was reported to respond that “today is not the day for policy discussions.” Then WTF is the day Mr. Carney. Obama will play the “father card,” express sympathy, and nothing will happen until the next massacre, and then nothing will happen again.
We have legalized the killing of children in this country decades ago. We have killed literally hundreds of millions of our own children through abortion. We foster a mentality of disrespect for life. Everyone wants to blame the NRA when a mass shooting happens, but nobody wants to change the culture of death that accepts the killing of our own children at its core. You can pass anti-gun legislation. By doing so you will limit the rights of millions of people who have never killed anyone. And you will change nothing. Unless you are willing to change your attitude about the value of all human life, unless you are willing to stop the killing of children with the legistlator’s pen, then we are doomed to the bitter fruits of a culture embraces death as a solution to its problems.
Mark, have some respect. Even the most radically crazy right wing nuts of your stripe should show at least some dignity in situations like this. Do you have no heart to push your political agenda – one that HAS ZERO to do with the current tragedy – right now?!
No Alinkai, you have some respect. Not 20 minutes after the shooting an article pops up right away trying to blame the NRA for a mass killing. That is ludicrous. I’m not the one pushing a potlical agenda here. We can choose to ignore that 400 million babies have been legally snuffed out, and then try to pretend that when 20 children are killed by gunfire that somehow it is the NRA’s fault. I think that is extremely shallow. You can’t legitimize one and then aquit yourself of any blame for the other. I think we all need to examine or consciences. It’s just to convenient to point a finger at the NRA, and then just go back to your Christmas shopping as though there isn’t a much more serious problem in this country.
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I find it most remarkable, and disturbing that Mark would raise the issue of women’s health in reference to the slaughter from gun violence.
It is stunning that someone who seems to consider sanctity of life an issue seems unmoved by the logical conclusion after 31 school shootings in 13 years that the NRA is to blame for the bloodshed.
The NRA has the blood of the kindergarten kids on their hands. Defenders of the NRA must carry their share of the blame too.
I know first hand the way the NRA acts in legislative sessions when gun issues are on the floor. It insults the intelligent of ordinary people. I saw this play out while working in the Wisconsin State Assembly. Too many people who are duped by the NRA have no clue as to who they are in bed with.
I care too about life, and the issues that can make this country better.
But every time I see a conservative talk about ‘life’ and hear about abortion on one hand, and then the perverse idea of more guns on the other I know there is a silly person talking. I find it amusing to hear ‘pro-life’ people talking about promoting the death penalty, curtailing funding for better paid teachers, urging less regulations for clear air, decrying the need for national health care coverae….it would seem these conservatives could at least understand the need for health care coverage from all the bullets they condone flying in the bodies of children.
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