Ted Rall for December 24, 2012

“Is wery difficult, Comrade, to put the mushroom-shaped cloud back into the stainless-steel container!”

OOOOHH, this bites!As it should. Wake up.Guns do kill people. What kind of logic can deny that?

Crazy or not, a knife is harder to kill with than a gun. It just is.All those Chinese kids lived, unlike the CT and VA kids. If that guy in CT had only a knife, he probably would never have even made it into the school. If psychos only had knives, these incidents would end a lot differently than CT did.

“I haven’t seen the anti-gun nuts-nuts post this:…[China school stabbing].”

Are you kidding? This has been posted a thousand times, since Day One. The thing is, the pro-gun side ignores the result “NOBODY DIED” and the anti-gun side emphasiszes it (which is probably why you’ve blocked your memories of them).

Come on, Ted. If we ban just one military grade assault rifle, every single US citizen will be raped, robbed, and murdered every single second of every single day. Oh, and the terrorists will win.

How do you identify the pyschos? Make them wear yellow stars on their clothing.

Two firefighters shot and killed this morning in NY, two others wounded, a POLICE officer and an innocent bystandar shot and killed in Houston, as in Texas, NOT a “gun control state”. Yep, there’s some humor for Ima!!

As stated many times here, this “liberal” IS a gun owner, and like Ted, don’t see the need for taking away all guns, or having “the government” be the only ones with guns. BUT, the “government”, as in police and miltary troops, should be the ONLY ones with these high capacity COMBAT WEAPONS, just like claymore mines, hand grenades, mortars, RPGs, and fully automatic weapons like the M-60 and its decendents, combat weapons should NOT bring combat to our streets, like in the Bank of America robbery, where the “bad guys” had our cops outgunned, with easily available weapons and body armor.

Well, it’s obvious that you ignore anything that contradicts your pre-conceived belief. The China attack has been hashed over in these forums ad-nauseum.The upshot? The nut case in China did not kill a single child. Not one. It’s obvious to anyone who is not blind to reality, that if killers have less deadly weapons, they kill far fewer people.

Great, now convince the NRA, wayne lapierre and others screaming that their right to any guns is being violated when the mention of regulation is brought up. Not banning, sensible and reasonable REGULATION.

I would think that those children’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would have been important, more important than possessing big clips, automatic weapons and assault weapons.

Yes, uncle ronnie raygun did shutter mental health system in California. I was in law enforcement at the time. I saw the nut jobs, I saw the files, where they had been before uncle ronnie raygun let them out.

That would be better than what we do now, that’s sticking them in jail and prison for a while without treatment and then putting them back on the streets.

It’s totally true that guns don’t kill people, or at least rarely- about the only way you can kill someone with a gun is to beat them to death with it.There is no point in outlawing guns. They are out there, there are millions, they are made of metal and will last for a thousand years if they are kept oiled. Failing that, I could find materials in my basement that would produce a workable gun, and it doesn’t take much knowledge of the subject to figure out how to do it.BULLETS, on the other hand, are time consuming to make and require special equipment. Production of enough to do serious damage would require planning and patience that are not characteristic of those who shoot up elementary schools. And, working on such a project might attract the attention of someone sane.Bullets can be individually stamped, and their sale can be registered and entered into a computer base. They can be tracked from production to use, so that every bullet can be traced back to the person who purchased it. This way, a guy who wants to buy a couple boxes of bullets to go shoot deer, or the woman who wants a box to keep with the gun in her bedside drawer, won’t set off any warning bells. But the guy who is buying an arsenal will attract attention before he finds a more lethal way to do it.

We really do need to evolve beyond the perception of “2nd Amendment rights” and outlaw all firearms except in the hands of active duty military and law enforcement officers. No private citizen has any need for a gun, which is a device designed for only one thing, the murder of another living being. As Puck says in Midsummer Night’s Dream, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Apparently you are too stupid to see it.

Tigger: Virginia is more purple than blue. And the Texas Tower Massacre? Some blue state there! It’s not the state, it’s the state of mind, along with the availability.

Tigger: These are blue states? Virginia is purple. And what about the Texas Tower Massacre? Hardly a blue state. It’s the mentality, along with the availability that makes the difference.

“Deinstitutionalization began in the 1960s . . .”I’m hearing a lot of superficial opinions being tossed out on this topic, including some from those getting paid for their opinion.Your post is thorough and informative, and obviously based on experience in the field. Very helpful. Thanks.

Republicans have no morals, period. They will support anything that puts money in their pockets. People who support anything that puts money in their pockets are often Republicans. That’s what they are all about. Always have been, and always will.

Yes, I know Abe Lincoln was a Republican. The party originally stood for something good for the general public. Then it got co-opted, and controlled by the greedy rich and powerful, who can never seem to get enough money and power. Are they happy with a million? No, they want more. Happy with a billion? No. They want more. Their greed is insatiable. So why give them more, if it’s only going to make them unhappy. They wouldn’t be satisfied with those tax cuts. They’d still want more. What they really need is electroshock therapy.

The criticisms of the mental health system and the harsh way that some institutionalized individuals were treated were legitimate. The problem is that instead of recognizing that those folks needed outpatient care, they were just cut loose till they ended back in some other institution like US prisons. This nation has a problem. Our non-gun homicide rate is higher than most European country’s homicide rates. Eliminating all guns, even if it were possible and a good idea and there was no substitution effect for other weapons STILL wouldn’t bring the US homicide level to that of Europe.

We have other problems.

I take issue with the Anti-gun nuts for obscuring the fact that guns in the hands of responsible citizens do make people safer. Kellerman, despite his anti-gun agenda and flawed methodology (he eventually recanted his findings since issues like undercounting of handguns produced a bias), produced data that showed people who owned shotguns had a lower risk of homicide than those who did not. And this finding is borne out by other studies.

Heck, Obama’s kids go to a school where ALL the kids are protected by armed professionals. We seem to be looking at a class issue here, in regards to those who push the notion that simply reducing the number of guns can solve all our ills. The result is that the president’s kids are protected, but the guy selling jewelry on the corner store won’t be, because he can’t afford an armed guard.