The Eyes Of A Murderer

Doubling Down on Anti-Gun News - Brent Bozell - [page]:

To be sure, the "news" manufacturers aren't hoping for a school shooting. But that doesn't mean they aren't ready to exploit it. Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen was explicit back in 1999: ""Perhaps it will take one more school shooting to move the majority of Americans into a position more powerful than that of the NRA. Perhaps it will take one more school shooting to move us from people who support gun control to people who vote it." 

A new Media Research Center study reviewed a sample of 216 gun-policy stories on ABC, CBS and NBC in the first month after Newtown, from the Jan. 14 shooting through the morning after President Obama's Feb. 16 speech pushing new gun control proposals. The number is instructive. That's not 216 stories in a month on Newtown. That's 216 stories just about the policy "solution" -- more gun control.

"One more school shooting".

That's a frightful Shot In The Dark, isn't it?  That some MSM comentators might be wishing .. hoping .. praying? ... for "one more school shooting" to teach we Conservative/Second Amendment advocates that our priorities are just "wrong headed"?

I don't think that Brent Bozell believes that of his Liberal colleagues, nor do I believe it of them.  I don't always (okay .. usually) agree with the opinions of Liberal Columnists, but you and I know that the detestation of massacres is universal.

Well, except for The Men With The Guns, of course.
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The thing is .. I know a whole lot more Men With The Guns than Brent and Anna do.   Combined.   And all of their friends, and all of their friends' friends, for that matter.

Nobody that I know evinces the "eyes lighting up with glee" symptoms of a murderer.

Some of us have been in the military; we have killed our nation's enemies, and we regretted it.

The rest of us cannot imagine us taking a life; we hope and pray that we are never found in the position where we would have to kill some benighted soul to defend our family, although many (most?) of us still stand ready to do so .. reluctantly.   We do not talk about it between ourselves, which I think is a good sign that our reluctance is profound.

The thing is, the East Coasters probably don't usually even own a firearm, let along do they have any experience or expertise with gun-handling.  That may be a "Left Coast"  thing  (isn't it odd?  That California should share their coast with Oregon and Washington .. and Northern California?)

The Left Coast is, I'm sad to say, largely populated with people who have the ability to Hit What They Shoot At, if not the will.  I'm mot saying that East Coaster don't include equally qualified shooters;  Good Heavens, I don't know what any other man .. or woman, for all that .. is capable of doing under the right (or "wrong") circumstances.  I'm just saying that the 'willingness' to shoot to kill in defense of self and family is evident in my own personal area.  Whether or not that same determination .. or "sange froid" .. is  as common in the East Coast states, I don't know.  I don't even know if I wish they do, or do not, share this personality characteristic .. or moral lapse.

But what I DO know is, I hope that our commentators can find a balance between "Defense of Home and Family" and "Respect for Human Life".


Both are important .. equally important, except that in the final analysis, I firmly believe that the life of my family (and home!) is worth more than the life of some bozo who is so willing to deprive me/us of our well-being and our property (who is to know what is more valuable to him?).

And so, I stand ready to kick his ass.  Literally, and figuratively.

But still .. there was a time 40 years ago when I was obliged by my government to take the lives of people I didn't know, and who had no grievance against me except that I was "The Enemy".  And so they became my Enemy, and I killed them.

It bothered me not one little whit, except that I grieved for the waste.   I don't know if I have that same detachment in me, now.  I would rather  I did not, but I don't know.  I'm pretty sure that it would "bother me" a lot more now, than it did "then", to take a human life.

I made a pledge to myself some time ago that I would never do so again; it's important to me, and if someone were to invade my private life so that I felt obliged to defend myself .. I would be grieved.

Or, in other words .. it would severely piss me off.  I REALLY don't want to do that!
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Getting back on our original track:  I/we must acknowledge (but not necessarily accept) that some people MAY wish for "On More School Shooting"  in order to advance their political agenda of .. whatever.  Enhanced Gun Control?

 No Guns Ever, Anywhere, Anyone? 

Reasonable Measures?

Common-Sense Gun Laws?

It doesn't matter what the rhetoric, it's still all the same:   It's much easier (and cheaper, if not more effective) to legislate against civil rights than it is to deal with Mental Health, the Culture of Violence, and people who ignore laws and societal values in favor of doing whatever-the-heck they want to do.

Like ...  some people just want to kill people.  Not because  they harbor any personal animosity against the individuals, but .. be cause they CAN!

There are some people who are Just Evil, and there are some people who are Just Crazy.  And there is an overlap of those who are both Evil and Crazy.  We can't always tell who is which, and It Doesn't' Really Matter, does it?  Evil or Crazy, they do the same evil/crazy things.  The same people die, and for the same lack of any reason at all.

I think .. it doesn't matter what their motivation is.   All that matters is that we probably can't recognize them until they start doing their Evil/Crazy thing, and then we stop them.  Dead.  Right There.

The people who I have chosen to tag as "East Coasters"  (or "Liberals" or "Clueless" or "Sheeple" .. words don't really count for much in the final analysis) don't, and won't ever, "get this".  They  MAY not be 'part of the problem', but they will NEVER be "Part Of The Solution".  They won't carry a gun into a mall, or a church, or a school, or into any other "Gun-Free Zone" because .. hey, it's against the law!

That would be the same set of laws which the Shooter has already decided to ignore; but never mind.  The East Coasters already don't "Get That". and they never will. In a "worst case" situation, they might be hoping for another school shooting so they can justify new  Draconian Anti-Gun Laws.

(Oh dear, I had already decided I wouldn't go there, hadn't I?)

Okay, getting back on-line:

• Cops will never get to the scene of a school/church/mall shooting in time to make a difference .. in terms of human lives;
• Liberals will never enter this factor in their "Human Equation", so they will not accede to the concept of "First Responders" (eg: armed teachers/staff) who may be pre-positioned in the target area.
   

And Murderers just don't give a shit.  All they are looking for is a target-rich environment with a minimum of risk.

Thesis: There is a severe element of risk in our public areas
Antithesis: murderers will find somewhere else to predate if the public areas are too problematic for them.
Conclusion: make our most important areas (schools, churches, malls?) so dangerous to predators that they will avoid them.

I don't know; it's so obvious to me, I must be missing something. But the solution does not .. to me ... include restricting access to firearms for honest citizens.  I'm looking at the Israeli solution, and I see that they have a lot of people who want to kill them, and THEIR solution is to put armed teachers in their schools, on their buses, and in their public places.  No teachers have yet gone "rogue", but they have stopped the Crazies in their gracks. Maybe it's too early to tell?

Oh, I don't really know.  It's a complicated issue, and I'm not qualified to  say whether its safer to have more guns, on no guns in our public areas.  All I know is that the "no guns" thing has been demonstrated not to work, and the 'at least one gun" In the case of the Clackamas Mall/Oregon) has been demonstrated to .. at least NOT have a negative outcome.

Ultimately, do we need "one more school shooting" to justify abrogation of the Second Amendment?

I don't think so.  "No Guns In The Mall" hasn't worked all that well for us, but "One Gun In The Mall" has.

I'm too tired.  YOU do that math!