President Obama has side-stepped Congress by implementing portions of the UN Small Arms Trade Treaty through an executive order which can be used to ban the import of all firearms, ammunition and related supplies and accessories.
While patriots across the nation rejoiced when the US congress rejected flat on its face an attempt to force the United States into the UN Small Arms Treaty just weeks later a more sinister ulterior motive has been revealed.
Today, President Obama by passed congress and signed an executive which gives the federal government a power to completely ban the importation of guns, ammunition and even parts and accessories related to firearms.
While the UN Small Arms Treaty would have prevented the United States from both importing and exporting weapons, Obama has effectively signed on to the treaty with his new executive order while allowing the United States to export weapons of deaths to covertly funded clandestine operations in overseas nations where it seeks to further its imperialistic agenda.
At the same time, with nearly every other nation in the world signing on to the UN Small Arms treaty, other nations are now banned from doing the same which further leverages the United State’s power of shotgun diplomacy in nations that refuse to be puppets for the globalist elites that control America.
Back in the homeland Americans now face a dire situation.
With the United States government already having complete control over domestic corporations the power to ban all international imports effectively create what is nothing short of a firearm and ammunition killswitch.
At the same time, despite our elected representatives rejecting such legislation flat on its face, dictatorial executive orders continue to be enacted.
Not only are we being subject to international rules and regulations mandated by the UN, without any representation in the process, we also not longer are being represented in major political decisions being made at home.
This comes as the media has spent the last several days repeatedly selling the public on the notion that it is okay for the government to suspend the constitutional rights of a citizen at anytime and haul them off to a CIA blacksite to be tortured in the wake of the Boston Bombings.
In this video BeforeItsNews.com staff writer Alexander Higgins joins Arch Angel to discuss the newly signed executive order and how it has effectively set the stage for the government to completely suspend the constitution.
This hard hitting piece from Mac Slavo at ShtfPlan.com explains the order in detail.
Obama To Ban Importation of Ammo, Magazines and Accessories Without Congressional Approval
Over the course of the last month, while Americans were distracted with the threat of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula and the devastation wrought by the Boston bombings, President Obama was quietly working behind the scenes to craft laws and regulations that will further erode the Second Amendment.
Congress, and thus We the People, may have unequivocally rejected federal legislation in March which aimed to outlaw most semi-automatic rifles, restrict magazine capacity, and force national registration, but that didn’t stop the President from ceding regulatory control over firearms importation to the United Nations just two weeks later. What the UN Arms Trade Treaty, passed without media fanfare by 154 counties, would do is to restrict the global trade of, among other things, small arms and light weapons. Opponents of the treaty argue that loopholes within the new international framework for global gun control may make it illegal for Americans to purchase and import firearms manufactured outside of the United States.
To further his gun-grabbing agenda, however, President Obama and his administration didn’t stop there.
Now they’re taking another significant step against Americans’ right to bear arms – and they’re doing it through Presidential Executive Action, a strategy that, once again, bypasses Congressional oversight and the legislative process.
…it appears that the BHO Administration is taking executive action on firearms importation. Take a few minutes to read this: After Senate setback, Obama quietly moving forward with gun regulation. Here is the key portion of the article:
“The Importation of Defense Articles and Defense Services — U.S. Munitions Import List references executive orders, amends ATF regulations and clarifies Attorney General authority “to designate defense articles and defense services as part of the statutory USML for purposes of permanent import controls,” among other clauses specified in heavy legalese requiring commensurate analysis to identify just what the administration’s intentions are. Among the speculations of what this could enable are concerns that importing and International Traffic in Arms Regulations [ITAR] may go forward to reflect key elements within the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.”[Emphasis added.]
Depending on how it is implemented, the implications of this change could be huge. With the stroke a of a pen and without the consent of Congress, ATF bureaucrats could make ANY gun part or accessory (including magazines) or ammunition that were originally manufactured or perhaps even those designed for military use no longer legal for importation for civilian use. That might mean no more milsurp parts sets. No more milsurp magazines. No more milsurp ammo. No more milsurp optics. Perhaps not even spare firing pins. This could be ugly.
I strongly recommend that you stock up on magazines, ammunition and spare parts for any of your imported military pattern guns, as soon as possible! Once an import ban is implemented, prices will skyrocket.
Source: James Rawles’ Survival Blog via The Prepper Website
Just five days ago the President vowed to push forward on gun control without Congress and Nancy Pelosi argued that no matter what Congress says, gun control is inevitable.
This latest round of Executive Actions is what they meant.
A direct on attack on the Second Amendment is difficult if not impossible, so they are trying to slither their way in through the backdoor by restricting international trade so we can’t import new firearms, by restricting access to accessories and gun parts, by heavilytaxing ammunition and gun purchases, by mandating policies like forcing gun owners to have liability insurance, and of course, by identifying potentially dangerous gun owners and simply taking their firearms because of public safety concerns.
The President recently suggested that the American people have spoken, and that they want guns to be restricted, banned and heavily regulated.
If that’s so, then how is that a bipartisan Congress overwhelmingly rejected the President’s bid to restrict and outlaw private ownership of millions of weapons and gun accessories?
Going through the United Nations and now implementing Executive Actions to bypass America’s Constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances is an act of desperation.
Those who would take our rights have been left with no choice but to try and force their agenda upon us through dictatorial means.
Over the course of the last month, while Americans were distracted with the threat of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula and the devastation wrought by the Boston bombings, President Obama was quietly working behind the scenes to craft laws and regulations that will further erode the Second Amendment.
Congress, and thus We the People, may have unequivocally rejected federal legislation in March which aimed to outlaw most semi-automatic rifles, restrict magazine capacity, and force national registration, but that didn’t stop the President from ceding regulatory control over firearms importation to the United Nations just two weeks later. What the UN Arms Trade Treaty, passed without media fanfare by 154 counties, would do is to restrict the global trade of, among other things, small arms and light weapons. Opponents of the treaty argue that loopholes within the new international framework for global gun control may make it illegal for Americans to purchase and import firearms manufactured outside of the United States.
To further his gun-grabbing agenda, however, President Obama and his administration didn’t stop there.
Now they’re taking another significant step against Americans’ right to bear arms – and they’re doing it through Presidential Executive Action, a strategy that, once again, bypasses Congressional oversight and the legislative process.
…it appears that the BHO Administration is taking executive action on firearms importation. Take a few minutes to read this: After Senate setback, Obama quietly moving forward with gun regulation. Here is the key portion of the article:
“The Importation of Defense Articles and Defense Services — U.S. Munitions Import List references executive orders, amends ATF regulations and clarifies Attorney General authority “to designate defense articles and defense services as part of the statutory USML for purposes of permanent import controls,” among other clauses specified in heavy legalese requiring commensurate analysis to identify just what the administration’s intentions are. Among the speculations of what this could enable are concerns that importing and International Traffic in Arms Regulations [ITAR] may go forward to reflect key elements within the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.”[Emphasis added.]
Depending on how it is implemented, the implications of this change could be huge. With the stroke a of a pen and without the consent of Congress, ATF bureaucrats could make ANY gun part or accessory (including magazines) or ammunition that were originally manufactured or perhaps even those designed for military use no longer legal for importation for civilian use. That might mean no more milsurp parts sets. No more milsurp magazines. No more milsurp ammo. No more milsurp optics. Perhaps not even spare firing pins. This could be ugly.
I strongly recommend that you stock up on magazines, ammunition and spare parts for any of your imported military pattern guns, as soon as possible! Once an import ban is implemented, prices will skyrocket.
Source: James Rawles’ Survival Blog via The Prepper Website
Just five days ago the President vowed to push forward on gun control without Congress and Nancy Pelosi argued that no matter what Congress says, gun control is inevitable.
This latest round of Executive Actions is what they meant.
A direct on attack on the second amendment is difficult if not impossible, so they are trying to slither their way in through the backdoor by restricting international trade so we can’t import new firearms, by restricting access to accessories and gun parts, by heavily taxing ammunition and gun purchases, by mandating policies like forcing gun owners to have liability insurance, and of course, by identifying potentially dangerous gun owners and simply taking their firearms because of public safety concerns.
The President recently suggested that the American people have spoken, and that they want guns to be restricted, banned and heavily regulated.
If that’s so, then how is that a bipartisan Congress overwhelmingly rejected the President’s bid to restrict and outlaw private ownership of millions of weapons and gun accessories?
Going through the United Nations and now implementing Executive Actions to bypass America’s Constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances is an act of desperation.
Those who would take our rights have been left with no choice but to try and force their agenda upon us through dictatorial means.
Nancy Pelosi has been sworn into Congress eleven times. Each time, she has taken the same oath to defend the American Constitution. This oath states, in relevant part, that “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same….”
Proving that both her listening and critical thinking skills are a bit sub par, Pelosi believes she’s taken a different oath, one that obligates her and her fellow Congressmen to “protect and defend the constitution and the American people.” In other words, based on an imaginary oath to protect and defend the American people, she is violating her real oath to protect and defend the American Constitution.
After President Obama’s aggressive push for gun control went down in flames on Wednesday, Pelosi immediately promised the American people that she would continue to ignore her oath of office and, instead, attack the Constitution. During a press conference, she announced that gun control is “inevitable.” Said Pelosi, “It’s a matter of time. It might be inconceivable to the NRA that this might happen; it’s inevitable to us.”
Ignoring that recent polls show that only 4% of the American people give the gun control issue priority in their lives, Pelosi blithely announced that “Something must be done, because that’s what the American people expect and what they deserve. We’re just not taking no for an answer.”
Using the usual illogical thinking we’ve come to expect from Democrats, she attacked those Democrats who voted against gun control of turning their back on public safety – even though there’s no evidence that any of the proposed legislation would keep guns out of the hands of criminals and crazy people. Buoyed by magical thinking, Pelosi tried to shame those Democrats who placed their careers and the Second Amendment ahead of the Progressives’ gun grab, people control agenda:
It always makes me wonder at a time like this how important we each think we are, that any one of us thinks our survival politically is more important than the safety of our children, that we can’t have the courage to take a vote. You’re afraid of the gun lobby? How about the fear of the children who had to face that violence in the classroom?
Now that you’ve had a moment to laugh at Pelosi’s ignorance and irrational thinking, remember that this is not the time for those who genuinely support the Constitution to relax. The Left, in its overwhelming arrogance, will never stop its quest to disarm American citizens. Because we know human nature, and because we know evil exists, we also know that there will be other Sandy Hooks, and that the Progressives will again try not to let a crisis go to waste.
Even though the gun bills died in the Senate, they didn’t in Connecticut, or New York, or Colorado, or Maryland. It’s up to us to remind other Americans that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. If we give up on this message, then the next time something bad happens, or the time after that, or even the time after that, Nancy Pelosi will win.
Ironically, while accusing others of lying, President Obama resorted to false claims and statistics about current laws, including the repeatedly debunked argument that 40% of gun sales are private, and that guns can be bought over the Internet without background checks. It was partly the dishonesty of those very arguments that had led potential supporters of new bipartisan legislation to doubt the administration’s motives in supporting the bill.
The administration’s defeat came earlier Wednesday, when the Senate failed to pass a cloture motion to end debate on a bipartisan proposal introduced by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA). Only 54 votes of the necessary 60 votes could be found to support an expanded federal background check system (among other changes), partly because of fears that extending such checks would require the creation of a federal gun registry that could lead to confiscation.
The failure brought an end to four months of fervent campaigning by the president during which he used the Newtown disaster-or, in the eyes of many critics, exploited it-to make an argument about the urgent need for new laws, even if such laws would not have prevented the Newtown atrocity itself. Many Democrats rallied behind him, hoping at first to pass a new assault weapons ban, then abandoning that effort for more modest regulations.
Along the way, the administration lost the support of Democratic Senators in conservative states, many of whom will face re-election in 2014. President Obama made clear his intention to use Wednesday’s defeat to rally supporters against Republicans, whom he blamed directly and angrily, suggesting that they had defied the will of the American people and attempted to silence the families of Newtown victims who had a “right” to be heard in the debate.
Forced to cover a rare political defeat for the president, the mainstream media largely echoed his emotions. Virtually all of CNN’s correspondents agreed that the Manchin-Toomey bill had been defeated because of the power of the National Rifle Association and the fear of politicians afraid to take on Second Amendment activists. None considered that support for gun control has been declining, or that the legislation itself was deeply flawed.
Again and again, President Obama noted that 90% of Americans, and a majority of National Rifle Association members, supported expanded background checks. The former constitutional law lecturer seemed to expect that that majority’s will should be self-executing, ignoring the fact that constitutional rights like the Second Amendment exist precisely to protect minorities against majoritarian passions and presidential demagoguery.
Indeed, while the president described the failure of the legislation as a failure of “Washington,” it was also-and primarily-a failure of his administration. A White House operation and Obama campaign apparatus that is regarded as brutally effective ought to have been able to sell a proposal allegedly supported by 90% of the voting public. Yet persistent troubles in execution and failures of policy raise questions about whether Obama secretly preferred failure to success.
His opponents, the president insisted, refused to make it more difficult for “dangerous criminals” to buy weapons-ignoring one of the core arguments of the other side, namely that dangerous criminals frequently ignore the law to obtain weapons, while law-abiding citizens bear the burden of new rules and restrictions. He reduced his opponents’ motives to pure politics, accusing them of being afraid of being punished by an organized, determined minority.
Rarely have Americans ever seen a president attack his opponents so viciously, expressing and evoking such visceral emotions-especially at a time of mourning. President Obama’s tirade contrasted with his reserved, measured response to the Boston Marathon bombings, in which he urged Americans to speak and act with restraint. If this has been, as he claimed, “a pretty shameful day in Washington,” the president’s tantrum was the most shameful moment of all.
CNS News – by Gregory Gwyn-Williams, Jr.
During Barack Obama’s presidency there have been 32 background checks for gun purchases every minute.
Since February of 2009, the first full month of Obama’s presidency, there have been 70,291,049 background checks for gun purchases, according to data released by the FBI.
Using February 1, 2009 as our starting date, and March 31, 2013 as our end date, (the latest data from the FBI) Obama has been president for 1,520 days.
That equates to 36,480 hours, or 2,188,800 minutes.
Divide the 70,291,049 background checks by 2,188,800 minutes and you get approximately 32 checks for gun purchases every minute!
(Ammoland.com)- Vociferous Pro-Victimhood Advocate David Hemenway, PhD, Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center managed to insult 10′s of millions of Americans in a recent interview by declaring that anyone who chooses to defend their lives or the lives of their loved ones is a “wuss“. ( http://tiny.cc/o1b8uw )
“The gun is a great equalizer because it makes wimps as dangerous as people who really have skill and bravery and so I’d like to have this notion that anyone using a gun is a wuss. They aren’t anybody to be looked up to. They’re somebody to look down at because they couldn’t defend themselves or couldn’t protect others without using a gun.”
So the good doctor deigns to look down from his ivory perch and hurl invective at anyone that is handicapped, injured, weak (or weaker, such as women vs man, elderly vs criminal), outnumbered or simply not a martial arts expert as “wusses“.
Dr Hemenway has a long and “illustrious” history of doing anything necessary to advance the Citizen Disarmament agenda of the elites. He also admits his desire, parroting that of Eric Holder and Dr. Mark Rosenberg, Director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Control and Prevention (NCIPC) who in 1994 told The Washington Post:
“We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly, and banned. That it is imperative to “change the social norms”
“This is not acceptable behavior anymore. Another area we talk about where social norms have changed is smoking. What a magnificent change we’ve had in smoking in the United States. We need to see a social norm change on gun violence. “
According to Hemenway, and far to many others, we are supposed to simply accept the notion that only a “wuss” would insist on armed self defense, that a 110lb woman must be able to defeat her potential attacker(s) or submit to rape or anything else that happens to her, or she is not worthy of respect. That a senior citizen (such asMary Sheppard, who was savagely beaten by a recently released violent felon) , that can not cold cock their significantly younger and stronger attacker should be viewed with contempt, or that even a mixed martial arts expert that cannot win out when set upon by multiple attackers such as those found in repeated cases of rampaging flash mobs around the Country is some kind of “lessor” being.
Of course this is also presuming that the potential attackers are all also unarmed, which is never the case.
Give the Dr this much, he’s at least open and public with his contempt, disdain and bigoted views, something that many Anti Gun advocates try desperately to hide from public view. The thing is, his public remarks are a huge, arrogant mistake.
Generally speaking its considered a good idea to not insult millions of people you are trying to persuade to come around to your view point.
Then again, Anti’s like the Dr make these same arrogant mistakes all the time, and as a rather famous General and Political Leader once said ” Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake” - Napolean Bonaparte.
In that light, I would strongly encourage the good doctor to keep opening his mouth at every opportunity.
(investmentwatchblog.com) Newtown parents, including Mark Barden, spoke at the state capitol building on Monday to call for a complete ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines
Lawmakers in the US state of Connecticut have agreed to a sweeping set of gun restrictions, including a ban on new high-capacity magazines.
The proposal requires background checks on all gun sales and expands the state’s assault weapons ban.
It comes as new federal gun measures appear to have stalled in Congress.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21997806
HARTFORD, Conn. (CBSNewYork) — Connecticut state lawmakers came to an agreement Monday on what they said will become some of the nation’s toughest gun control laws.
As CBS 2?s Lou Young reported, the deal included a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, such as the one that was used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre in Newtown. The deal also calls for a new registry for existing high-capacity magazines, and background checks that would apply to private gun sales.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/04/01/connecticut-lawmakers-reach-deal-on-gun-control-laws/
Connecticut lawmakers announced a deal Monday on what they called some of the toughest gun laws in the country that were proposed after the December mass shooting at a school in Newtown. Some highlights from the proposal:
GUN LAWS
—Ban sales of high-capacity ammunition magazines;
—Background checks for private gun sales;
…
Connecticut Lawmakers Agree to Gun Control Bill – Bans Magazines over 10 rounds, Requires a State Issued Permit to Buy Ammo, & Mental Checks!
Connecticut Lawmakers Agree to Gun Control Bill
Bans Magazines over 10 rounds
Requires a State Issued Permit to Buy Ammo
Must submit to universal background and Mental Checks
Bans any weapon with any “assault weapon” characteristics (pistol grips or anything that “looks scary”)
http://offgridsurvival.com/connecticutgunban/
Conn. lawmakers unveil bipartisan gun control plan
It took “conservative” Republicans to trot out mandatory and market-based health insurance in the same mouthful. 
Don’t ever forget to thank them for this.
Well, it’s time for the next step: Mandatory guninsurance - also “market based” and “incentivized,” of course.
Here it comes, directly from one of the insurance Mafia’s chief consiglieries, Robert Hartwig. He is president of something called the Insurance Information Institute – which is an outfit funded by the insurance Mafia for the purpose of spewing propaganda favorable to the insurance Mafia and to wheedle for more laws that extort fresh “customers” for the insurance Mafia:
Mandatory gun insurance, he says, would “. . . (cover) individuals whose person or property was in some way injured or damaged as a result of the use of a firearm.”
What Hartwig avoids mentioning is the guns that will be pointed at gun owners who decline to be “covered.”
But why would anyone decline such a valuable “service”?
Perhaps so that they can afford to keep the gun. Or even buy one in the first place.
And here we come to the true object of this enterprise: To make the legal ownership of guns progressively more expensive, so that within a period of years, very few people except the affluent elites (and eventually, perhaps not even they) will be able to legally own guns. No registration – or confiscation (as such) will be needed. The public – most of it – will be disarmed via being priced out of the “market” using “incentives” provided by the insurance Mafia.
Or they will be criminalized – by the government – for not having bought the required insurance. Exactly as has been done already to car owners who fail to purchase the required insurance. And will soon be done to people who fail to purchase the required health insurance.
It’s quite brilliant, really.
The Mafia would “reward” gun owners who own fewer guns – and levy surcharges upon those who own “too many” guns – or guns deemed “too powerful” or “excessive,” such as those of a certain caliber, or which have magazines that hold “too many” bullets. Conceal carry? Higher risk – you pay more.
It will work in exactly in the same way that the insurance Mafia has made owning powerful cars and motorcycles – especially more than one – financially untenable for most average people. Gun owners who do not keep their guns stored unloaded and /or locked up – and therefore, largely useless for home defense - will be surcharged into penury. And just as the insurance Mafia is already pushing hard for in-car monitors for drivers, so also will the insurance Mafia push for random checks or in-home monitoring for gun owners – to “make sure” the guns are “kept safe.” Either accept these terms and conditions – or give up your guns.
Or, become an outlaw – subject to potentially years in prison if they ever find out you failed to comply.
Every gun owner will be strongly “incentivized” to become a good little Clover – to do as he is told.
And most will.
Bet your bippie that Obamacare – brought to you by these same “conservative” Republicans – never forget that – will tie into this. Already, doctors are asking probing questions of their patients: Do you own a gun? The patient is Catch-22′d either way. If he says yes, the doctor – now in cahoots with the government and the insurance Mafia – will jot that information down on the patient’s files – files that are no longer private. Files that are going to be read with great interest by the government – and the insurance Mafia (which amounts to the same thing) because your “health care” is now a matter of public concern – and must be “incentivized” with “market-based” nudges – you know, orders enforced at gunpoint (the guns owned by not-you, of course).
Or, the patient lies and says no.
Now he’s probably committed some sort of actionable offense – one must always tell the truth to the government – even though the government rarely retruns the favor and is never obliged to. The patient who fibs to Uncle – his eternal in loco parentis – must live in perpetual fear of Uncle discovering his fibbing.
Much worse – for the patient – he tells the doctor to piss off and mind his own goddamn business. Patient is belligerent and paranoid; potentially dangerous. Immediate e-mail to Homeland Security. Cue the thug scrum. (This is no exaggeration, by the way. It has already happened to several people. Their doctors narced them out to the insurance Mafia’s enforcers – you know, the police – and “for their safety,” these people’s guns were physically taken away despite their having done nothing to anyone – much less committed any crime. See here and here and here, for openers.)
Don’t just bet your bippie. Bet your ass this is coming.
Efforts are currently under way to get mandatory gun insurance laws passed in the following states: California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. But the real push will come from Washington – from deep within the reticulated colon of tyranny, soon to issue forth its predictable product.
This is their strategy – and I expect it’s going to work. Because for it not to work, there would have to be a successful challenge of the idea of forcing people to buy insurance, period. Put another way, if it is wrong – or even merely unconstitutional – to force people to buy insurance in order to legally own a gun (even in their own homes) then it must also be wrong to force people to buy health insurance to “cover” their ownselves. Or their cars, for that matter. To be compelled to buy any insurance at all – except in cases of property not yet fully paid for, in which case one has the free choice to not buy the property – or to wait until one has the means to do so outright, without taking a loan.
The very idea of mandatory insuranceitself must be thrown in the woods.
Do you expect that to happen? The system hasalready decreed it’s just fine – ethically peachy and legal – to literally threaten to cage people at gunpoint for failing to purchase a health insurance policy. And a car policy. What makes you think they will stop at that?
I don’t think they will stop.
The basic idea behind mandatory car and health insurance has been accepted by most people – to say nothing of the courts. And that is the real problem. If you have to buy car insurance because you might cause damage to someone else’s property (even if you never actually do) then surely you should also be required to cough up for a gun insurance policy. If you have an obligation – enforceable at gunpoint – to hand over money to the health insurance Mafia for “coverage” because you might get sick and might impose “costs on society” – then surely you have the same obligation when it comes to owning a gun.
Right?
Who will argue the principled opposite? That it is better to accept that when it comes to any given thing,some people may (indeed will) occasionally behave irresponsibly – and accept the consequences of this (and hold only them responsible for their actions) as the price of living in a free society – than it is to chase the unicorn of a risk-free society and along the way, treat everyone as presumptively irresponsible? To put a finer point on it: To punish the responsible – the innocent – based upon the actions of the irresponsible and the guilty – in an ever-speeding-up vortex of dumbing-down and its inevitable corollary, the clamping down on whatever freedom of action remains. A world in which nothingyou do or might do isn’t someone else’s business. And theirs, yours. Everyone a prisoner of everyone else – and hating one another for it.
Hell on earth, realized.
We are well on our way there.
Jefferson characterized the either-or this way:Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem. That is: Better freedom with danger than slavery with safety. And even the sage of Monticello made the error of accepting the premise that slavery can buy safety; it can’t – it never has. Ask the Soviet-era Ukrainian kulaks how “safe” they were under Stalin’s “protection.” Or on a smaller scale, the 77 victims of Anders Behring Breivik, all of them living in a legally disarmed, “safe” society that proved to be anything but “safe” for them.
So, here’s our choice.
Either people take a principled stand – and forget the utilitarian arguments – or they will accept what’s coming. They must reject not just the idea of being compelled to purchase gun insurance in order to be “allowed” to own a gun, they must question the whole filthy juggernaut that’s steaming along behind it. The very idea of mandatory any insurance.
It’s as simple – and as complicated – as that.
Government, if it has any ethical justification at all, exists solely to protect the rights of the individual. It is an assault on the rights of the individual to deprive him of his rights before he has done something to justify it. That he – that “someone” – might behave irresponsibly is thin gruel, inadequate to override the fact that he hasn’t yet. Any government that abuses any person’s rights – that punishes any person pre-emptively for things he hasn’t done but which someone “might” – is itself abusive and no longer legitimate.
Our rights are sacred – but we’ve forgotten. Most of all, we have forgotten that there has to be a damn good reason to forcibly deprive any human being of any of them.
Doing so because some other person did something - or might do something (and thus, “you might, too”) – is an absolute outrage.
And to accept it, a degradation.
Will you accept it?
Throw it in the Woods?
More @ http://ericpetersautos.com/category/politics/
(RT) -Lawmakers in South Dakota have passed a bill that would allow school districts to arm staff and teachers with guns to make their schools “safer”.
State Senators on Wednesday voted 21-14 to pass the measure, despite large-scale opposition from school administrators and personnel, who are largely opposed to bringing weapons into their schools.
Supporters of the bill claim that arming teachers could prevent tragedies like the Dec. 14 massacre in Newtown, Conn. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Craig Tieszen, R-Rapid City, said that he would leave the decision to arm teachers up to individual school districts, but that he strongly recommends it.
When Craig advocated for the measure earlier this year, he said that having gun-free schools would simply make them more vulnerable and invite potential mass murderers.
“The possibility of an armed presence in any of our schools is a deterrent,” Craig told Fox News, claiming that no shooter would attack a school whose teachers are armed.
Supporters of the bill also argue that teachers would only become armed after partaking in a “School Sentinel program” that would provide them with firearms training by law enforcement officers. No teachers would be forced to take part in the program and could choose to remain unarmed.
But opponents, including many teachers themselves, remain uncomfortable about the prospect of having dangerous firearms in schools. Rep. Troy Heinert, D-Mission, said teachers should not be employed to act as law enforcement officers and that arming them would make him uncomfortable about sending his child to kindergarten.
“Doesn’t this blur the line between a teacher and a law enforcement officer?” he told Fox News. “Do we want to tell our children the only way to be safe is to carry a gun?”
The South Dakota Education Association claims that guns should only be provided to trained professionals and that no training program could properly instruct a teacher how to respond to a situation like the massacre in Newtown, Conn.
“It’s one thing to have firearms training,” the group’s spokesperson, Sandra Waltman, told KTIV TV. “It’s a completely different thing to be trained on how to handle those very difficult circumstances if they should arise. We believe that students should be taught by professional teachers, and we think they should be protected by professional law enforcement.”
Some school officials and administrators have expressed their concern about gun-related accidents. Others say the weapons would distract from the purpose teachers serve in schools.
“It defects everything we’re trying to do with reading, writing and arithmetic, and getting the kids ready for society,” Dakota Valley Superintendent Al Leber told KTIV. “All we do, we spend hours and hours debating whether there should be a gun or shouldn’t be a gun in school.”
Despite the ongoing debate on such a sensitive matter, the legislature has passed the bill, leaving the decision to arm schools in the hands of the state’s individual school districts.
The vote comes days after an online national survey by the School Improvement Network found that 91.6 percent of teachers feel safe in their schools and 72.4 percent would most likely refuse to carry a firearm, even if it were allowed. The South Dakota bill goes against the wishes of the national majority, but legislators believe that the solution to gun violence is arming instructors and giving them to capability to protect their students.
(menrec.com) In order to pass the New York SAFE Act, which substantially erodes a citizens Constitutionally granted Second Amendment right to bear arms, Governor Cuomo had to circumvent his own state Constitution. That document has an amendment requiring a three-day public review of all laws. By issuing a “Message of Necessity”, Cuomo was able to pass the law without public scrutiny, with the Senate actually voting on the bill a mere 30 minutes after receiving it.
The process led to State Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin to say that, “Moscow would be proud of our state Legislature and Executive Chamber, but every New Yorker should be outraged.”
Now Cuomo is admitting that allowing a three-day public review would have killed the momentum behind his gun control bill.
“Nothing like that will ever happen without a message of necessity,” he said.
Via the Times Union:
“I think we did a great thing,” Cuomo told the Times Union Editorial Board on Monday. “Nothing like that will ever happen without a message of necessity.”
It’s not a revelation that Cumo is a results-over-process guy. But he seems clearly ruffled by criticisms that he’s heavy-handed, like the Times Union’s editorial knocking his use of a message of necessity, to have the bill immediately enacted.
Cuomo began by noting the gun bill was a special circumstance, because now-banned assault weapons would fly off the shelves in any waiting period. Then he began to share blame with legislative leaders who, he said, could have taken his message and still waited to act.
But then he moved into a direct defense of the message of necessity:
“Any pressing piece of legislation, whether it’s the fiscal cliff, any big deal in Washington — it is an evolving situation and you take the vote when you have the vote. It never gets static for three days. That’s not the nature of the beast, because it’s constantly changing,” he said. “Unless you call the vote when you actually have the vote, it’s shifting sands … It will never happen if you put it on the desk for three days. Well, from a process standpoint, wouldn’t it be better if you could do it and put it on the desk for three days? Yes! Yes, I believe that, and that’s why I’ve done fewer than anyone. But if say we’re going to be salve to a process requirement and not get really big things done, then I disagree with you.”
Indeed, Moscow would have been proud. Perhaps more importantly, bypassing the three day waiting period allowed the bill to be passed without a now publicized Democrat wish list of gun control measures to ever be discussed; a wish list that includes confiscation of guns and ammo, and practically eliminates all semi-automatic weapons on top of so-called “assault weapons”.
Moscow would be proud of Governor Cuomo, indeed.
(CAV News) - Looks like the first hearing for the Newtown task force brought in a few ideas for safety in schools. First: Ramp up security. Second: Arm police officers. Third: Which was the focus to this article, bring in mental health services and screenings.
As you will read below, a lot of the speakers at this meeting want to profile, however, they aren’t calling it that. It’s assessing behavior patterns.
So, if the these clowns get their wish, basically they’ll add more shrinks into schools, diagnose and misdiagnosed more youngsters, and probably ignore one of the most crucial problems of all, prescribe them what they don’t need, psychotropic drugs.
If we want to get serious about the safety of our children, don’t you think a good start would be individually? Parents need to educate themselves better, without government and health industry interference, about the side effects of psychotropic drugs. Federal and state employees don’t want to deal with individuals, they don’t like hyper children, and certainly love funding. So why not hand out some drugs? Mold your children right to the floor at the wishes of a shrink and the pressure coming from state and federal government above.
Meanwhile, little Tommy, and his little head, is about to explode. He sniffles, he winces, shakes out of control, and throws little withdrawal fits when red and blue pill isn’t in his system. Sounds perfect.
Just a thought: Ever notice what happens to mental health patients at wards when they are off their drugs? They go nuts.
Here’s the full story from Hartford Courant:
For weeks, talk about making schools safer has focused on panic buttons, door buzzer systems, bulletproof glass and armed police officers, but at the first legislative hearing on the subject Friday, the need for better mental health services for youngsters took center stage.
“I don’t want this subcommittee to come to the conclusion that the magic bullet is an armed police officer,” said Lara Herscovitch, deputy director of the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance. “There are other professionals that can do this prevention work.”
Herscovitch said she thinks the “limited resources” would be better spent on increasing the numbers of school social workers and psychologists who can help “kids with the root cause” of troubling behaviors.
A number of speakers did call for a greater police presence and other security improvements. But, like Herscovitch, many of those testifying — and legislators on the hearing panel — spoke of their concern for the school climate and the need to identify students who need help early on.
The hearing was held by the school security subcommittee of the legislature’s Bipartisan Task Force on Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety and attracted a wide range of speakers, from educators to police officers, social workers, psychologists and others. The task force is charged with developing recommendations in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, where a gunman, Adam Lanza, killed 20 first-graders and six educators before killing himself.
At one point in Friday’s hearing, Sen. Beth Bye, D-West Hartford, asked a panel of educators, if an emergency occurs, “Do we have a mental health professional at the ready?”
Joseph Cirasuolo, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, said that very few mental health professionals are available to respond to an emergency situation. “If they are in the building,” they might be able to help out “tangentially,” Cirasuolo said, but most are involved with special education. “Resources have not been there to do what you are talking about,” Cirasuolo told Bye.
Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn, also expressed concern about behavioral and mental health issues.
“I’m very interested in what we can do to help the next generation of students identify problems early on,” he said. “I’m a big believer in early identification and prevention.”
Williams said he knows that school psychologists are “severely overburdened” and suggested that it might help if schools had a “dean of students” who would address disciplinary issues and children acting out and relieve administrators of some of that burden.
Rep. Mitch Bolinsky, a Republican from Newtown, echoed the importance of finding a way to get the proper help when a child or youth is having a problem.
“Profiling is obviously a terrible word, but 25 or 30 years ago, we walked away … from the business of mental health care and drove it into the community and did not fund initiatives,” Bolinsky said. He said this has led particularly to having “young men with violent tendencies that have manifested and are among us.”
Bolinsky said he has had high school students identify students who concern them, but he said: “We don’t have school counselors that focus directly on mental health. Instead we intervene by emergency only.”
He asked how it is possible to identify students who may have problems, while protecting their privacy and avoiding “possible stigmatization.”
“I don’t think that Mr. Lanza was a secret,” Bolinsky said. “There were many people that knew of him as a threat, and yet he was in a position to do the unspeakable.”
University of Connecticut Police Chief Barbara O’Connor told Bolinsky that the universities have “struggled with that exact issue.” She said UConn has a “threat assessment team” that considers a student’s behaviors. “It’s not profiling,” she said, “What we need to do is focus on behaviors.”
She said the threat assessment team includes mental health professionals, administrators and law enforcement representatives and, without violating a students’ privacy, she said the team assesses how a student is doing, if he or she is getting mental health services.
O’Connor said she thinks an approach that involves a coordinated team is one that might work in the community. Often she said, people “have the information, they just don’t know where to go with it.”
The committee also heard from Thomas Kuroski, president of the Newtown Federation of Teachers, who said that with “the loss of the precious lives of the students, colleagues and friends who perished that day, we also lost our sense of security.”
Kuroski said it is important that decisions around school safety involve teachers, parents, school administrators, elected officials and students. “If educators have a voice, we feel safer and more confident in our ability to teach, nurture and protect out students,” he said.
Better Locks, Alarms
Others suggested installing betters locks, lighting, alarm systems and video surveillance cameras, and increasing the number of school resource officers.
Waterford Police Officer First Class Steven Whitehead, a school resource officer, stressed the importance of communication, particularly between school psychologists and social workers, and police officers and school staff.
A student’s privacy must be protected, “but when safety is an issue,” Whitehead said, such communication would help. He also said it would help to have police officers stationed not only in high schools — where most school resource officers are located — but in elementary schools so that children can learn to be comfortable with them.
“We work hand-in-hand with the schools to make sure the kids are safe and comfortable in their learning environment,” Whitehead said after testifying.
Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said if he had to choose between sinking resources into beefing up mental health services at schools or adding armed guards, he would choose the former.
Boughton said behavioral health care for children is particularly helpful when it starts when they are young. However, he said, parents would most likely prefer to fund more police officers in schools if given the same choice, because they are more visible.
(FromtheTrenchesWorldReport) The mainstream propaganda machine, having lost all credibility and being completely dismissed via the alternative media, has pulled an old tool out of the box in what appears to be an attempt to counter the facts that have caused the great awakening of the American people – the infamous ‘conspiracy theory’ theory.
If I reject the mainstream propaganda, say in an instance like Sandy Hook wherein there was one shooter, there were two shooters, no there were three shooters, no there was just one shooter, there was a purple van with the back window shot out and the fellow driving it was arrested in a nearby town, no, no, that is not right, there was just one shooter with two handguns, no, four handguns, no, no it was a Bushmaster .223, but no, that gun was out in the car, no it wasn’t, yes it was, stay tuned and the State Police Sergeant will give you the official story and tell you that to say anything to the contrary on social media will result in your arrest, but wait, wasn’t Brian Lanza the shooter?, no, that was yesterday, today it is Adam Lanza who had Brian Lanza’s identification, I guess his driver license didn’t have a picture, but wait, he hadn’t seen his brother in three years, and what about those nuns?, what happened to the nuns?, I am so confused, I don’t know what to believe, I don’t know if anything happened, and if it did, I don’t know what it was, I am a conspiracy theorist.
Something happened at Sandy Hook, guns are bad, and that is all we need to know. Stop questioning whatever happened at Sandy Hook just because it is being used as an excuse to implement gun confiscation. This government wouldn’t lie to you and it most certainly would not dispossess and enslave you once you are disarmed.
It is all just a conspiracy theory. And how do we know this? Because Chris Matthews told us so. He even said that his dad actually believed that Roosevelt knew that the Japanese were coming to attack Pearl Harbor two weeks before the incident occurred and let the attack go forward, in order to bring America into World War II, in spite of his campaign promise not to do so.
Chris’ dad was a chief petty officer in Naval Intelligence but of course Chris condemned his father as a conspiracy theorist. But wait a minute. It has been revealed within the mainstream that Roosevelt absolutely did know about the attack two weeks before Pearl Harbor.
Chris Matthews is telling us that any assertion contrary to that which is put forth via the mainstream is a conspiracy theory. And what are his credentials as a mainstream propagandist? Well, he is a sleazy two bit parasitic communist scumbag that obviously puts his communist agenda, not only above the truth, but even his own father.
How could anyone put the smallest degree of trust in such a dirt bag?
Face it Chris, you have lost the war of words as lies cannot alter physical reality and one day you are going to answer for your participation in this communist attempt at insurgency. I wonder what your children will be saying about you, twenty years from now.
God bless the Republic, death to the international corporate mafia, we shall prevail.
(FreedomOutPost) -If you still think the Left really cares about “the children,” especially in light of the Newtown, Connecticut shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, all you need to do is see the glee they display in pushing their agenda against guns and the Second Amendment. The latest example of this is former Governor Ed Rendell (D-PA). Listen to the way that Rendell is a bit giddy in stating, “The good thing about Newtown is, it was so horrific that I think it galvanized Americans to a point where the intensity on our side is going to match the intensity on their side.”
This is more than exploiting a tragedy for political gain. This is actually looking at the deaths of 27 people, including the shooter, 6 adults and 20 children, and declaring it good because of it being “so horrific” enough to get people “on his side.” It is nothing more than using the tragedy in Newtown to push the Left’s agenda to push forward legislation that will seek to keep guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens.
During the video, you will note that host Alex Wagner said that there should be “sensible gun laws.” What she really means is completely get rid of the Second Amendment. Think I’m just trying to read a liberal’s mind? Think again. These are her own words.
In November of 2011 she appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher and during a conversation about what Maher and Former Governor David Paterson (D-NY) wanted to change in the Constitution, Wagner was asked by Maher, “Let’s ask Alex. What would you change in the Constitution?”
“Well, I’m going to be pilloried for this. I think get rid of the second Amendment, the right to bear arms,” she answered. “I just think in the grand scheme of the rights that we have; the right of assembly, free speech, I mean, owning a gun does not, it does not tally on the same level as those other Constitutional rights. And being more discreet about who gets to have a firearm and right to kill with a firearm, I think is something that would be in our national interest to revisit that.”
Well I say let her own it! She doesn’t get that the Second Amendment secures the First Amendment that she is so happy to keep.
Liberals simply use the phrase “sensible gun laws” to push ahead for the eventual goal of completely banning guns. I think they are going to find they have their hands full.
(Thomas Dishaw) A new petition on the White House web site is demanding an end to the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories.
On January 10 2012 “Angela ” created the petition demanding that we “ make it an illegal act to use the internet to create, promote, or profit from any content that suggests that the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy was a hoax.”
Also including ” any content that suggests that the victims or their families were actors and/or that they are not actually deceased.”
I guess Angela doesn’t believe in freedom of speech. She has a lot to learn on this basic principle that protects both of us.
Sandy Hook White House Petition.
(PekinTimes)
After Barack Obama joined the rest of us in mourning the slaughter of innocent children in Newtown, Conn., Sanford Berman, a Minnesota civil liberties activist, wrote me: “Obama’s tears for the dead Connecticut kids made me sick. What about weeping over the 400 or more children he killed with drone strikes?”
Indeed, our president has shown no palpable concern over those deaths, but a number of U.S. personnel — not only the CIA agents engaged in drone killings — are deeply troubled.
Peggy Noonan reports that David E. Sanger, in his book “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power,” discovered that “some of those who operate the unmanned bombers are getting upset. They track victims for days. They watch them play with their children.” Then what happens: “‘It freaks you out’” (“Who Benefits From the ‘Avalanche of Leaks’?” Wall Street Journal, June 15).
For another example, I introduce you to Conor Friedersdorf and his account of “The Guilty Conscience of a Drone Pilot Who Killed a Child” (theatlantic.com, Dec. 19).
The subtitle: “May his story remind us that U.S. strikes have reportedly killed many times more kids than died in Newtown — and that we can do better.”
The story Friedersdorf highlights in the Atlantic first appeared in Germany’s Der Spiegel about an Air Force officer (not CIA) who “lamented the fact that he sometimes had to kill ‘good daddies’” … (and) “even attended their funerals” from far away.
And dig this, President Obama: “as a consequence of the job, he collapsed with stress-induced exhaustion and developed PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).” Yet these drones, “Hellfire missiles,” are President Obama’s favorite extra-judicial weapons against suspected terrorists.
Getting back to the Air Force officer, Brandon Bryant, with the guilty conscience. Friedersdorf’s story quotes extensively from Der Spiegel’s article, which recalls that, when Bryant got the order to fire, “he pressed a button with his left hand and marked the roof (of a shed) with a laser. The pilot sitting next to him pressed the trigger on a joystick, causing the drone to launch a Hellfire missile. There were 16 seconds left until impact …
“With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds …
“Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says. Second zero was the moment in which Bryant’s digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif. Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared.
“Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.
“‘Did we just kill a kid?’ he asked the man sitting next to him.
“‘Yeah. I guess that was a kid,’ the pilot replied.
“‘Was that a kid?’ they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.
“Then someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. ‘No. That was a dog,’ the person wrote.
“They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?”
Friedersdorf adds: “The United States kills a lot of ‘dogs on two legs.’ The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported last August that in Pakistan’s tribal areas alone, there are at least 168 credible reports of children being killed in drone strikes.” As for those in other countries, he adds, that’s “officially secret.”
He writes: “Presidents Bush and Obama have actively prevented human-rights observers from accessing full casualty data from programs that remain officially secret, so there is no way to know the total number of children American strikes have killed in the numerous countries in which they’ve been conducted, but if we arbitrarily presume that ‘just’ 84 children have died — half the bureau’s estimate from one country — the death toll would still be more than quadruple the number of children killed in Newtown, Conn.”
Are you proud, as an American, to know this?
After reading about Obama’s silence in “The Guilty Conscience of a Drone Pilot Who Killed a Child,” does the conscience of those of us who re-elected Obama ache?
As Friedersdorf writes, Obama has never spoken of these deaths as he did about the ones in Newtown, when he said: “If there’s even one step we can take to save another child or another parent … then surely we have an obligation to try. … Are we really prepared to say that dead children are the price of our freedom?”
Do you mean, Mr. President, only the dead children of Newtown?
These targeted killings continue in our name, under the ultimate authority of our president — as the huge majority of We The People stays mute.
Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. He is a member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Cato Institute, where he is a senior fellow.
Washington Post – by Philip Rucker
With President Obama readying an overhaul of the nation’s gun laws, a liberal think tank with singular influence throughout his administration is pushing for a sweeping agenda of strict new restrictions on and federal oversight of gun and ammunition sales.The Center for American Progress is recommending 13 new gun policies to the White House — some of them executive actions that would not require the approval of Congress — in what amounts to the progressive community’s wish list.
CAP’s proposals — which include requiring universal background checks, banning military-grade assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips, and modernizing data systems to track gun sales and enforce existing laws — are all but certain to face stiff opposition from the National Rifle Association and its many allies in Congress.Obama, as well as Vice President Biden, who is leading the administration’s gun violence task force, has voiced support for many of these measures. Yet it is unclear which policies he ultimately will propose to Congress. Biden is planning to present his group’s recommendations to Obama on Tuesday.CAP’s recommendations, presented Friday to White House officials and detailed in an 11-page report obtained by The Washington Post, establish a benchmark for what many in Obama’s liberal base are urging him to doafter last month’s massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
“There’s nothing here that interferes with the rights of people to have a gun to protect themselves,” CAP President Neera Tanden said. But, she added, “We have daily episodes where it seems that guns are in the wrong hands, and that’s why we think it’s important that the president acts.”
On Monday, Tanden will moderate a public discussion with three Democrats who have played leading roles in the gun debate: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who during the Clinton administration helped get the 1994 assault-weapons ban passed; Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who helped write that bill as a House member; and Rep. Mike Thompson (Calif.), who chairs the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force.
One of CAP’s suggestions to toughen federal regulation of gun sales is to make the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is currently an agency within the Department of Justice, a unit of the FBI. CAP says absorbing the ATF into the FBI would better empower the ATF to combat gun crime and illegal trafficking.
“It is a beleaguered agency lacking leadership and resources,” said Winnie Stachelberg, senior vice president of CAP. “It needs to be a well-functioning federal law enforcement agency, and we need to figure out ways to ensure that happens.”
CAP’s top recommendation is to require criminal background checks for all gun sales, closing loopholes that currently enable an estimated 40 percent of sales to occur without any questions asked. The organization also wants to add convicted stalkers and suspected terrorists to the list of those barred from purchasing firearms.
CAP is urging the Obama administration to back Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s proposal to ban assault weapons. The California Democrat wants to prohibit the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of military-style assault weapons and ammunition magazines that carry more than 10 bullets.
The group also suggests requiring firearms dealers to report to the federal government individuals who purchase multiple semiautomatic assault rifles within a five-day period. Current law requires reporting multiple purchases of handguns, but not semiautomatic assault rifles.
CAP also wants the administration to free public health research agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to study the impact of gun violence on injuries and deaths. For years, lawmakers, urged by the NRA, have placed riders on spending bills that restrict these and other agencies from conducting such research.
I’m done being nice.
And I’m doubly-done with the damned leftists in this country performing the moral equivalent ofritual human sacrifice of children to advance their gun-control agenda.
That’s what I charge they’re doing.
And I’m going to back it up with mathematics, using just one of the common psychotropic medications used commonly today — Paxil.
This is from the prescribing information for Paxil:
Clinical Worsening and Suicide Risk:
Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), both adult and pediatric, may experience worsening of their depression and/or the emergence of suicidal ideation and behavior (suicidality) or unusual changes in behavior, whether or not they are taking antidepressant medications, and this risk may persist until significant remission occurs. Suicide is a known risk of depression and certain other psychiatricdisorders, and these disorders themselves are the strongest predictors of suicide. There has been a long-standing concern, however, that antidepressants may have a role in inducing worsening of depressionand the emergence of suicidality in certain patients during the early phases of treatment. Pooled analyses of short-term placebo-controlledtrials of antidepressant drugs (SSRIs and others) showed that these drugs increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults (ages 18-24) with majordepressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24; there was a reduction with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults aged 65 and older.
That’s a problem. What’s worse is this:
The following symptoms, anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, and mania, have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for majordepressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric. Although a causal link between the emergence of such symptoms and either the worsening of depression and/or the emergence of suicidal impulses has not been established, there is concern that such symptoms may represent precursors to emerging suicidality.
And it doesn’t end there:
Screening Patients for Bipolar Disorder
A major depressive episode may be the initial presentation of bipolar disorder. It is generally believed (though not established in controlledtrials) that treating such an episode with an antidepressant alone may increase the likelihood of precipitation of a mixed/manic episode in patients at risk for bipolar disorder.
Now let’s be frank: Mixed manic states are mental states during which all sorts of really ugly things happen, including panic attacks, agitation, impulsiveness, paranoia and rage — all at extreme levels.
In other words, if you miss someone being bipolar and give them this drug you may precipitate a full-on Hulk-style “rage monster” sort of attack!
How often does something like this happen?
Activation of Mania/Hypomania:
During premarketing testing, hypomania or mania occurred in approximately 1.0% of unipolar patients treated with PAXIL compared to 1.1% of active-control and 0.3% of placebo-treated unipolar patients. In a subset of patients classified as bipolar, the rate of manic episodes was 2.2% for PAXIL and 11.6% for the combined active-control groups. As with all drugs effective in the treatment of major depressive disorder, PAXIL should be used cautiously in patients with a history of mania.
So if you miss a bi-polar person in your “analysis” before prescribing, it’s more than doubly-likely that they will have a “rage-monster” episode than if not.
So let’s assume we’re not talking about bi-polar people — that is, let’s make the assumption that we properly screen for each person and perfectly identify all bi-polar people before we prescribe.
What is the expected number of people who will undergo some sort of manic episode, which includes the subset that will turn into rage-monsters and shoot up schools, movie theaters and other public places?
Answer: About 0.7% more that can be charged to the drug (the risk if you do nothing is 0.3%.)
Other similar drugs have similar risk profiles; Paxil is not particularly-remarkable in this regard.
I note, and you should note, that 0.7% is a pretty low risk! That is, 993 people out of 1000 can get a perfectly good outcome from the drug (or at least no harm) but that other 7 in 1000 have an outcome ranging from bad to catastrophically-bad.
Now let’s assume for the sake of argument that we are 99% effective in physician monitoring of these patients. That is, we’re able to somehow confirm that they take the drug exactly as prescribed (no more or less), and we have enough time and physician resources to evaluate them on a regular and continuing basis. This, incidentally, is a fantasy-land level of performance; no profession could possibly meet that standard of care, but we’ll use it to make the point.
But this level of performance, which we can never meet, would provide that of the rage monsters we potentially create with these drugs we catch 99% of them before the episode escalates into something “bad.”
That’s 1% of 0.7%, incidentally, or 0.007% of the total users who (1) have the bad reaction and then (2) we fail to detect via monitoring. In other words, those are the people who shoot up the schools, movie theaters and US Representatives.
The last figures I have are that in 2005 27 million people in the United States, or close to 1 in 10 of all persons, are on some sort of antidepressant carrying these risks.
So if 0.7% of 27 million people have a manic episode caused by these drugs – that is, under perfect conditions where we catch every single bipolar individual first and never prescribe to any of them we will have 189,000 persons in a year who have a manic reaction to these drugs.
That’s horrifying.
But what’s worse is that if we assume 99% effective surveillance by the medicalprofession — that is, 99% of the time the doctor intercepts the person with themanic episode and modifies or terminates their use of the drug before something bad happens….
WE CREATE AND THEN FAIL TO DETECT, WITH NEARLY PERFECT PERFORMANCE (that we will never achieve) 1,890 RAGE MONSTERS EVERY YEAR WHO ARE MENTALLY CAPABLE OF COMMITTING A MASS HOMICIDE.
We’re surprised that there are a few of these a year, when we create more than 5 of them each and every day with near-perfect performance — and likely several times that many given the real-world monitoring that can actually be achieved?
We create these Zombies.
We prescribe the drugs to them.
We do this knowing that the risk exists and that at least one subset of that risk is materially higher for those under the age of 25 who are consuming these drugs.
In point of fact, most of the rage monsters who have committed these crimes are under the age of 25 and either using or having recently terminated the use of these drugs.
Again I reproduce the information directly from the maker of Paxil:
There has been a long-standing concern, however, that antidepressants may have a role in inducing worsening of depressionand the emergence of suicidality in certain patients during the early phases of treatment. Pooled analyses of short-term placebo-controlledtrials of antidepressant drugs (SSRIs and others) showed that these drugs increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults (ages 18-24) with majordepressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Short-term studies did notshow an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24;
Something changes around the age of 24 with these drugs and their interaction with the human mind. We don’t know exactly what it is, but we know that it happens. We also know that these substances have a low but present risk of inducing mania, including rage.
Utterly nobody is bringing this element to the table in debate, but we must, as the rise of these incidents isdirectly correlated to the gross increase in the number of people, including most-especially young people, taking these drugs. The number of users doubled from 1996 – 2005.
If you want to address a problem you must look at the data and follow it where it leads.
Where it leads is into a horrifying mess of prescription psychotropic drug use among our youth and the rare but catastrophic side effects they sometimes produce.
I have friends who have versions of the problem in their families among older individuals; members of the family who doctor-shop for prescription on top of prescription and are mentally questionable to start with. We’re supposed to have some sort of reasonable check and balance on this and indeed Florida claims to have clamped down on the “pill mills” but I can tell you right now that this is utter and complete crap. There is nothing preventing people from going to 10 different doctors until they find three or four that will write scripts and then abusing the drugs — and when they run out “early” calling up for a refill — and getting it. It happens every damned day and if other family members try to intervene, including getting the physicians or the law involved (prescription fraud is supposed to be illegal!) they’re blown off!
It’s true that most of the crazy people in the world aren’t violent, and that being crazy, standing alone, is perfectly legal. It’s also true that nearly all of the people who take these drugs won’t become violent — that’s a side effect that only bites a small percentage of the people who take the drug.
But the risk of turning people into rage monsters and suicidal maniacs appears to be mostly confined to those under the age of 24 according to the drug companies own information and this information is strongly correlated with the actual real-world data on these incidents.
We must have a discussion about this as a society. We might decide that out of the 27 million or more Americans taking these drugs that enough get benefit that we are willing to accept the occasional school or movie theater shooting gallery as the price of prescribing these drugs to those under the age of 24.
If so then we need to be honest about the trade-off we have made as a society and shut the hell up instead of dancing in the blood of dead children to score political points and destroy The Constitution.
But if not, and you can count my vote among the “No” votes in this regard, then we must ban these substances from those under the age of 24 until we understand what’s different among that age group that alters the risk unless and except those persons are under continual professional supervision such as inpatient hospitalization.
Yeah, I understand this will cut into the profits of the big drug companies and thus is “unacceptable” to many political folks, not to mention that the media won’t even talk about the subject due to the advertising they run on their networks on a daily basis for this drug or that.
But unless we want to keep burying kids we had damned well better have that debate.
Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama and the rest on both the left and right who are refusing to go where the data leads are all practicing the moral equivalent of ritual child sacrifice, fueling the pyre under the bodies of our kids with the Bill of Rights.
Stand up America and say in a loud voice: ENOUGH!
(breitbart.com) Their move will allow custodians to undertake training and carry handguns on the K-12 school grounds in Williams county.
It will be a show of force and a real life defense against criminals like Adam Lanza.
School board president Larry Martin said the crime at Sandy Hook Elementary forced his hand: “Our main goal is to offer safety for our students while they are in our classrooms and in the building. We have to do something and this seems like the most logical, reasonable course to go with.”
Superintendent Jamie Grime echoed Martin’s sentiment: “There is a need for schools to beef up their security measures… guns in the hands of the right people are not a hindrance. They are a means to protect.”
(Huffington Post)— Taft Union High School in Taft, Calif., normally has an armed guard on campus to help officials with problems that go “beyond the scope” of the administration.
But on Thursday morning, as a student showed up with a shotgun and fired two to four shots at a teacher and a classmate, the officer was nowhere to be found. “He couldn’t get there because he was snowed in,” Sheriff Donny Youngblood of the Kern County Sheriff’s Department said in a press conference Thursday afternoon.
To what extent the officer’s absence contributed to the situation at Taft Union will never be known. Law enforcement officials were grateful on Thursday that the impact of the shooting had been limited. The suspected shooter injured only two individuals: a teacher who received what Youngblood called a “pellet wound” to the head, which did not cause significant damage, and a 16-year-old student who was evacuated to a hospital, where he or she remained in critical but stable condition.
Had another teacher and a campus supervisor not talked the shooter down from firing more rounds, Youngblood stressed, the situation could have been far worse. Youngblood estimated that some 20 additional students were at risk. Police arrived at the scene a minute after the first calls came in at 9:00 a.m. PST., and the suspect was in custody by 9:20 a.m.
The shooting goes down as yet another chapter in a series of recent instances of gun violence. Coming at the start of what promises to be a contentious political debate around gun control legislation, it could potentially alter the course of that conversation.
That’s because Taft Union High School had already adopted the type of preemptive security approach that the gun rights community has been advocating for. In aSchool Accountability Report Card for the 2011 to 2012 year, officials listed the following under the heading: School Safety.
“Two campus supervisors and a uniform deputy sheriff (the school resource officer) monitor the campus before, during and after school.”
A separate document from the school notes that ”two campus supervisors and a full-time sheriff’s deputy work with the assistant principal on matters of student welfare.” The document also notes that the high school “contracts with the Kern County Sheriff’s Department to employ a full-time school resource officer to deal with truancies and disciplinary issues that are beyond the scope of our administration.”
A separate law enforcement official, briefing reporters on Thursday afternoon, said he and his colleagues were grateful for the school’s policy, regardless of the fact that the armed officer had been unable to make it to the school that crucial morning.
“Unfortunately they can’t be every place at all times,” the official said.
Others following the gun policy debate have been more critical of the idea of posting armed officials on the campus of every school, a proposal pushed by the National Rifle Association following the shooting deaths of 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Many observers questioned both the cost and the efficacy of the idea. An armed guard, after all, had been at Columbine High School the day of the shooting there. In addition, not all mass shootings take place at schools, raising the question of whether the country should have armed officials at every mall, movie theater and house of worship as well.
But the idea does poll well. And as Vice President Joe Biden puts together a list of recommendations with his gun policy task force, it’s been suggested that he could throw the NRA a bone by proposing more money to place guards at schools.
(DailyMail) -Outrageous claims made by a professor who specializes in conspiracy theories are set to provoke grieving family by saying that the Sandy Hook massacre may not have happened at all.
James Tracy, a tenured history professor at Florida Atlantic University, wrote a lengthy post on his personal blog saying that the shooting that left 20 children and six teachers dead may not have happened the way that it is widely believed, if it happened at all.
Backed solely by the erroneous early reports filed during the midst of the horrendous incident, Mr Tracy ‘s claim is preying on the confusion of the tragic day.
‘While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place — at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described,’ he has said.
The 47-year-old professor bases his outrageous claims largely on the flurry of conflicting media reports that were made as news of the shooting was released throughout the day on December 14.
As with many conspiracy theorists who find darker linings in even the most horrific tragedies, this is far from his first foray into the world of the unproven.
Mr Tracy has written a number of book chapters about media coverage of wars, economic overhauls, and union negotiations.
On his blog, however, he has hit a number of the classic conspiracy theories: the September 11 attacks, the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, the PATRIOT Act, the death of Osama bin Laden and Fukishima have all been topics of interest.
Shut down: Sandy Hook Elementary School is now closed, seen here on January 3, but a professor in Florida argues that the shooting that took place in the school may not have happened as is conventionally believed
Tragic: One of the points of professor James Tracy’s argument is the fact that there have been no photos of the bodies of the 20 child victims or the six teachers
In his latest shocking claim, he focuses much of his attention on the fact that early reports claimed that police were either searching for or had two suspects in custody.
The story then progressed that Ryan Lanza was the lone gunman, based reportedly on the identification that the shooter had on him at the time of the attack.
Ryan, 24, was then found at his home in Hoboken, New Jersey- two states away from his 20-year-old brother Adam, the shooter.
Even though he is paid to teach a class called Culture of Conspiracy which will undoubtedly produce outrageous ideas, Florida Atlantic University appears to feel that the questioning of the murder of first graders was a bridge too far.
‘James Tracy does not speak for the university. The website on which his post appeared is not affiliated with FAU in any way,’ school spokesman Lisa Metcalf said to the Sun Sentinel.
Though his ultimate end goal is unclear, he says that the end goal of the ‘supposed’ shooting was political in nature.
The moment he heard: Mr Tracy believes that there were government forces at work in the shooting at Sandy Hook, and theoretically then this may not be the moment President Obama was told
Predictably, his statements have sparked outrage from people across the country and not just in the still-grieving Connecticut town where much of the last three weeks has been spent picking up the pieces.
‘Is there something in the water in Florida that makes for idiocy,’ commented Ray Gillies on the story by the local ABC affiliate WPBF.
‘How dare you suggest this was a hoax and entertain that this didn’t happen,’ said a Sun Sentinel reader with the username JimNasium1.
‘I’m afraid that you do not seem to be worthy of the teaching credentials that you hold and were any of my kids students of yours, I’d withdraw them from your roster within the hour.You are NOT good at what you do and you suck as a human being.’
Political ends: He argues that the shooting was enabled in order to speed up legislation against guns
Instead, he is speaking plenty for himself and other believers by posting repeatedly on his blog, memoryholeblog.com, and appearing on talk radio shows to promote the theory.
‘As documents relating to the Sandy Hook shooting continue to be assessed and interpreted by independent researchers, there is a growing awareness that the media coverage of the massacre of 26 children and adults was intended primarily for public consumption to further larger political ends,’ he wrote.
He argues that Senator Dianne Feinstein was already in the midst of trying to rework the assault weapons ban that she co-sponsored back in the 1990s, and that the shooting gave her leverage to move it through the legislative process quicker.
It is unclear if Mr Tracy has any vested interest in the gun control debate or if he himself owns any guns. Calls to Mr Tracy were not immediately returned.
(RawStory) -A petition started on the White House website seeking to charge Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) with treason has crossed the threshold needed for an official response.
The petition, created last month, claims that Feinstein’s proposed assault weapons ban is a violation of the Second Amendment, which guarantees Americans right to keep and bear arms. Feinstein promised to introduce the assault weapons ban on the first day of the 113th Congress in the wake of the tragic Newtown elementary school shooting.
“She is actively working to destroy the 2nd amendment with her 2013 assault weapons ban,” the petition reads. “For this reason we the people of the united States petition for her to be tried in Federal Court for treason to the Constitution.”
As of Tuesday, the petition had more than 27,000 signatures, which is 2,000 more than required for an official response from the White House.
The assault weapons ban would prohibit the sale of more than 100 military-style firearms, according to a statement issued by Feinstein. The proposed law also targets large ammunition magazines, which have repeatedly been used in mass shootings.
A previous assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 was also authored by Feinstein.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that a similar petition seeking the deportation of Piers Morgan would receive a response.
“In the meantime, it is worth remembering that the freedom of expression is a bedrock principle in our democracy,” he added.
(Examiner) - The 6-year-old suspended for making a pretend gunshot has had his suspension lifted and his record cleared, according to the boy’s lawyer.
The Montgomery County first grader was suspended for a day from Roscoe R. Nix Elementary School after making a pretend gun with his hands, pointing it at another student and saying “pow.” Attorney Robin Ficker said that school principal Annette Ffolkes sent a letter to the student’s parents Jan. 3 saying, “I am going to rescind the suspension and remove the record from [the child’s] file.”
“The parents and the child are delighted with the result,” Ficker said. “This little boy was simply playing and never meant to shoot or hurt anyone.”
Montgomery County Public Schools spokesman Dana Tofig said it was policy not to comment on specific student disciplinary matters, adding that suspensions can be reconsidered if raised by a student or family member.
Attorney Robin Ficker says that the suspension was unnecessarily harsh. The boy “had no intention to shoot anyone,” Ficker said, describing the child as soft-spoken, with no propensity for violence. “He’s skinny and meek. In his words, he was playing.”
According to the Washington Examiner, the boy’s family received a letter from Assistant Principal Renee Garraway, in which the gesture was described as “a serious incident.”
The letter read, “[He] threatened to shoot a student. He was spoken to earlier today about a similar incident.”
The family apparently does not know what this ‘similar incident’ is and claims they have never been informed of any previous problems regarding their child and are appealing the decision.
Ficker said, “It just shows the overreaction. They could have called the mother in. They didn’t do that. They just said, ‘You’re suspended.’ Five years from now, when someone in Montgomery County looks at his permanent record, they’re going to see that he threatened to shoot another student.”
There was a conference planned to discuss the matter on January 2, when students returned to school, and apparently the ruling can be appealed within 10 days of the incident.
The school apparently thinks that the gesture was insensitive, coming shortly after 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. – 20 of which were children.
However, the 6-year-old probably did not understand the implications of his seemingly harmless action.
“He doesn’t understand,” Ficker told NBC4. “The law says he is not old enough to form intent.”
Dana Tofig, spokeswoman for Montgomery County Schools, told NBC that she could not comment on individual cases.
“Generally, in an incident involving the behavior of our younger students, we will make sure that the student and his family are well-informed of any behavior that needs to change and understand the consequences if the behavior does not change,” she said.
“And that’s especially true if the behavior is affecting the learning environment or how safe another student feels,” she added.
According to another spokesperson for the school district, parents are informed of incidents such as the above, and they said that the elementary school did not indicate any feelings of endangerment felt by the other student.
(WesternJournalism) -The widely anticipated Senate bill soon to be introduced by gun-banner extraordinaire Dianne Feinstein will do far more than eliminate “assault weapons” (AW’s) and “high capacity” magazines.
According to a summary on the senator’s website, concealed carry license holder Feinstein–who proposed an outright ban on all handguns while packing her own for self-defense—will demand that owners of guns affected by her legislation: pay a $200 fee for each banned weapon owned; submit pictures, fingerprints and register AW’s with the ATF; have local law enforcement attest to the owner’s identity and specify the address at which each weapon will be kept.
But the NRA reports that the senator intends to go much further than bans or registration. For assessment of an acquired draft of Feinstein’s bill reveals a provision demanding that guns defined as assault weapons be immediately turned over to the federal government upon the current owner’s death.
Under existing Federal Firearm Legislation, owners of AW’s are permitted to sell their weapons outright, modify them or pass them along to heirs. But not anymore. For should Feinstein’s bill become law, AW’s will be grandfathered into the possession of their current owners and “…[will] remain with [that] …owner until [his] death, at which point they [will] be forfeited to the government.”
In short, our political ruling class would literally appropriate millions of “assault weapons,” rent the freshly acquired firearms back to their original owners and then seize them after those flagrantly cheated individuals have died.
It is a very clever scheme of mortality-based confiscation!
Registration of the appropriated weapons will be conducted according to the National Firearms Act of 1934, the law which, among other things, regulates ownership of machine guns and silencers. Fortunately the $200 per weapon fee has historically been charged only on the transfer of a weapon rather than on a yearly basis. But of course those banned, “high capacity” magazines must also be taken into account—and taxed.
Feinstein’s bill has yet to be completed, though she has vowed to read it on the Senate floor by January 3rd. Given the massive, nationwide dissent and bitter animosity which would surely result should the contents of the bill be published in an open and honest form, it’s possible that, like ObamaCare, Congress will have to pass the legislation before the American public finds out what’s in it.
One thing is certain–gun owners will undoubtedly acquire many new responsibilities while preserving very few rights.
For example, Feinstein and Co. might demand holders of “assault weapons” purchase some form of renter’s insurance in order to protect themselves from legal responsibility should a gun be stolen and used in a crime. Naturally, the legal responsibility would be levied either by Congress itself or one of its partners in crime—the ATF comes to mind. After all, it would be a swell way to pick up a few bucks while encouraging a “pre-demise” weapon turn-in by owners who wish to avoid legal exposure or the expense of congressionally-mandated insurance coverage. Imagine the required purchase of an “ATF-approved” policy at $500 per year per weapon. A protection racket to make even Capone blush!
Will the Feinstein bill succeed? Almost certainly not. But consider how much closer it will likely come to passage now than a year ago. And what will happen after the next brutal murder spree deliberately facilitated by the left and its “gun-free zone” legislation? And the next and the next?
Feinstein’s legislation reveals what the left is determined to achieve, sooner or later and by any means necessary. Those who wish to remain free must be prepared to do anything necessary to defeat them
(TheIntelHub) -In recent weeks and months forces within the government who want to see more gun control have been taking advantage of tragedies in the media and using them to scare people out of their right to defend themselves.
In addition to the legislation that has been in the news recently, Obama said in a press conference on Sunday that he will “not be putting off” new gun control legislation. Whether this was in reference to the measures that were already drafted, or more extreme federal measures has yet to be seen.
According to the Washington Post:
“President Obama reiterated his commitment to passing new gun control measures in an interview broadcast on Sunday morning, saying he would like to get such legislation done in the first year of his second term. He also expressed skepticism about a proposal to put more armed guards in schools across the country”
“The question is are we going to be able to have a national conversation and move something through Congress,” Obama said on NBC News’s “Meet The Press.” “I’d like to get it done in the first year. I will put forward a very specific proposal based on the recommendations that Joe Biden’s task force is putting together as we speak. And so this is not something that I will be putting off.”
Towards the end of the interview Obama claimed that “We’re not going to get this done unless the American people decide it’s important.”.
There is no doubt that this just political rhetoric, aimed to mask the intentions of the ruling class with the imaginary figment of collectivist imagination called “the American people”.
The truth is that while similar groups of people live within the geographical area known as “America”, there are still so many different ideas and points of view that there is no one definitive agreement on any one topic among “the American people”. Even if this was possible, in a world that was truly free, a majority vote, or the majority of people thinking that something was “important”, would not be enough to take away the inalienable natural born rights of another human being.
Unfortunately, that isn’t the world that we live in today, but it is always important to remember and call attention to what an ideal and moral world would look like, so we can better align our goals with the future that we want to create.
With that being said “the American people” that actually decide public policy, as in… the politicians, the elites, the special interest groups, and the media, these groups will find that gun control is an “important” issue in 2013, regardless of what anyone says, so this is certainly going to be an important issue to keep an eye on.
(Hard Nox) -On Sunday December 17, 2012, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in San Antonio to kill his X-girlfriend. After he shot her, most of the people in the restaurant fled next door to a theater. The gunman followed them and entered the theater so he could shoot more people. He started shooting and people in the theater started running and screaming. It’s like the Aurora, CO theater story plus a restaurant!
Now aren’t you wondering why this isn’t a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting?
There was an off duty county deputy at the theater. SHE pulled out her gun and shot the man 4 times before he had a chance to kill anyone. So since this story makes the point that the best thing to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun, the media is treating it like it never happened.
Only the local media covered it. The city is giving her a medal next week. Just thought you’d like to know.
On December 17, 2012, recent breakup set off a shooting spree that ended with the suspect wounding a man at the Santikos Mayan Palace 14 movie theater Sunday night before being shot by an off-duty deputy, authorities said. Police are shown questioning men outside the theater Sunday night.. Jesus Manuel Garcia, 19, an employee at a nearby China Garden restaurant, apparently became upset Sunday night after his girlfriend broke up with him.
(Hat-tip Skip)
I remain disgusted with the media’s deliberate attempt to whitewash news while at the same time creating their own narrative for whatever sinister reasons.
(TheDailySheeple) - A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of a 6-year old student survivor of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting.
The suit, which is seeking $100 million in damages, alleges that the state of Connecticut and school district failed to provide a “safe school setting” and “an effective student safety emergency response plan and protocol.”
The unidentified client, referred to as Jill Doe, heard “cursing, screaming, and shooting” over the school intercom when the gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, opened fire, according to the claim filed by New Haven-based attorney Irv Pinsky.
“As a consequence, the … child has sustained emotional and psychological trauma and injury, the nature and extent of which are yet to be determined,” the claim said.
Pinsky said he filed a claim on Thursday with state Claims Commissioner J. Paul Vance Jr., whose office must give permission before a lawsuit can be filed against the state.
“We all know its going to happen again,” Pinsky said on Friday. “Society has to take action.”
It’s not clear exactly what safety procedures the plaintiff is arguing should have been in place.
Numerous opinions suggest that security measures at the school were inadequate, which allowed gunman Adam Lanza direct access to school administration offices in the building, as well as classrooms.
Reports indicate that Lanza first entered the principal’s office, at which point principal Dawn Hochsprung turned on the school wide intercom system, likely in an attempt to alert teachers of the situation as it was unfolding. Hochsprung was killed in the attack.
Some teacher’s responded by immediately locking students into classrooms, while others may not have had time to react or were not sure what to do in response to the chaos unfolding live on the school alert system.
A debate has ensued in the aftermath of the shooting about whether the solution to preventing future attacks is to ban assault weapons like those that were supposedly used at Sandy Hook, or whether teachers and school administrators should be authorized to carry firearms on school property.
President Obama and some Congressional members who have weighed in on the conversation have said they will pursue weapons restrictions, but have made no mention of arming school officials.
The school attended by President Obama’s daughters has 11 armed guards, though some vocal anti-gun proponents are against such measures for public schools, claiming that Americans can’t afford to put a police officer in every school.
By now I am sure everyone is aware that a new “Assault Weapons” (their words, not mine) Ban will be introduced by Dianne Feinstein at the start of the 2013 Congress.
You can see what the preliminary language of the bill is going to ban here.
I know many people, including some self identified supporters of the Second Amendment, are out there right now saying, “Who cares, this ban doesn’t affect me. It only goes after military weapons and assault rifles. I can hunt and defend my family just fine with my 30-06 rifle and my 9mm Glock.”
Well, wait a second, let’s look at just what could be banned under the new proposed law. Here is the wording that Feinstein is currently using on her website:
“Stops the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of more than 100 specifically-named firearms as well as certain semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds.”
I’m not sure many people realize just how far reaching that statement is.
Let’s break it down into a list that is a little easier to read.
Under Feinstein’s proposed bill, the following types of guns would be banned:
We aren’t just talking about 1 or 2 specific models of guns here. We’re talking about thousands of individual models that will no longer be available for purchase or transfer.
Decided you don’t need one of your Glock handguns anymore? Want to sell or pawn it to help with some bills? Sorry bud, that gun is yours forever. I suppose you could always turn the gun in to the government for destruction.
OK, so you only own 6 shot revolvers, pump shotguns that hold 5 rounds, and a bolt action hunting rifle. You’re good to go, right? Why should you throw your hat in the ringwith these other gun owners? You don’t even believe in those semi automatic doohickies anyway.
What do you think is going to happen once all of the semi-autos are more or less gone? Are crazy people going to stop killing other innocent people? No, they’re just going to change weapons. They are going to use lever action rifles and revolvers. THEN they will be coming after your hunting rifles, your bird shotguns, your target shooting guns, and the revolver you keep in your nightstand to make sure you can keep your family safe if evil kicks in your door at 3am.
Rest assured, when there are no more evil “assault weapons” to blame for senseless violence of crazy people your weapons will be next.
Supporters of gun rights, regardless of what type of weapons you own, should all bandtogether to fight any new legislation that restricts gun ownership.
Some people may be too young to remember, or weren’t paying attention because themedia wasn’t as powerful then, but back in 1986 gun owners made concessions to the anti-gun lobby in order to protect the future rights of gun owners. The Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986outlawed machine gun ownership for automatic weapons not manufactured and not registered before 1986. Many gun owners were completely fine with the legislation saying, “What would I need a full auto gun for? I have my semi-autoversions, which are cheaper anyway. Besides, they’re letting people keep the ones they have now, you’ll still be able to get one if you really want one.” However, over 25 years later automatic weapons are almost unattainable due to price and availability. Those same gun owners who were OK with keeping their semi-autos are now the same ones fighting for their rights to keep those weapons legal.
An attack on any part of the Second Amendment is an attack on the entire Second Amendment.
by Ron Paul
The senseless and horrific killings last week in Newtown, Connecticut reminded us that a determined individual or group of individuals can cause great harm no matter what laws are in place. Connecticut already has restrictive gun laws relative to other states, including restrictions on fully automatic, so-called “assault” rifles and gun-free zones.
Predictably, the political left responded to the tragedy with emotional calls for increased gun control. This is understandable, but misguided. The impulse to have government “do something” to protect us in the wake national tragedies is reflexive and often well intentioned. Many Americans believe that if we simply pass the right laws, future horrors like the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting can be prevented. But this impulse ignores the self evident truth that criminals don’t obey laws.
The political right, unfortunately, has fallen into the same trap in its calls for quick legislative solutions to gun violence. If only we put armed police or armed teachers in schools, we’re told, would-be school shooters will be dissuaded or stopped.
While I certainly agree that more guns equals less crime and that private gun ownership prevents many shootings, I don’t agree that conservatives and libertarians should view government legislation, especially at the federal level, as the solution to violence. Real change can happen only when we commit ourselves to rebuilding civil society in America, meaning a society based on family, religion, civic and social institutions, and peaceful cooperation through markets. We cannot reverse decades of moral and intellectual decline by snapping our fingers and passing laws.
Let’s not forget that our own government policies often undermine civil society, cheapen life, and encourage immorality. The president and other government officials denounce school violence, yet still advocate for endless undeclared wars abroad and easy abortion at home. U.S. drone strikes kill thousands, but nobody in America holds vigils or devotes much news coverage to those victims, many of which are children, albeit, of a different color.
Obviously I don’t want to conflate complex issues of foreign policy and war with the Sandy Hook shooting, but it is important to make the broader point that our federal government has zero moral authority to legislate against violence.
Furthermore, do we really want to live in a world of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras, metal detectors, X-ray scanners, and warrantless physical searches? We see this culture in our airports: witness the shabby spectacle of once proud, happy Americans shuffling through long lines while uniformed TSA agents bark orders. This is the world of government provided “security,” a world far too many Americans now seem to accept or even endorse. School shootings, no matter how horrific, do not justify creating an Orwellian surveillance state in America.
Do we really believe government can provide total security? Do we want to involuntarily commit every disaffected, disturbed, or alienated person who fantasizes about violence? Or can we accept that liberty is more important than the illusion of state-provided security? Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives.
We shouldn’t settle for substituting one type of violence for another. Government role is to protect liberty, not to pursue unobtainable safety. Our freedoms as Americans preceded gun control laws, the TSA, or the Department of Homeland Security. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference, not by safety. It is easy to clamor for government security when terrible things happen; but liberty is given true meaning when we support it without exception, and we will be safer for it.
(Natural Society) -It’s no surprise that Adam Lanza was on heavy-duty pharmaceuticals, as was Aurora shooter James Holmes, the Columbine shooters, Ted Kaczinski the Unambomber, and many more. Many of the drugs handed out to troubled individuals have troubled histories in Food and Drug Administration testing themselves, and come with a list of side effects including hostility, aggression, confusional states, and impulse-control disorders.
There is nothing about these drugs that should make them so easily prescribed by doctors whose pockets are being lined by the likes of GlaxoSmithKline, which was recently fined for faking research and for 14 infant deaths in illegal vaccine testing. To decry their use in toto, however, might be irresponsible, since violent behavior is linked to these drugs. But perhaps partially so because those using it were prone to violence, anyway, and perhaps not due to the drugs themselves. In example, someone with a history of violent behavior addicted to opiod medications like Oxycontin may turn to violence to sustain their addiction, or a schizophrenic already leaning toward violent tendencies may, regardless of the drug’s intended consequences, be violent anyway.
Most of us, however, are better off without the aid of bank-breaking, mind-crushing pharmaceuticals and are better off addressing emotional issues and even some neurochemical imbalances with nutrition, sunlight, exercise, sleep, a little help from those around us, and stress management. This list of drugs, published in the journal PLoS One and based on the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System, shows which are most linked to violent behavior.
A photo of Pusley standing guard outside the Hughson Elementary School was posted to various websites. In the photos, he wore the insignia of the rank of sergeant. According to the Christian Post, when he was asked why he was standing guard outside the school, he said he wasn’t going to allow children in the neighborhood live in fear of coming to school. He told a reporter: “I just want to have a word to this community that I stand between them and any danger.”
The Modesto Bee reports Pusley said: “I’m part of a Marine Corps fraternity, and I started noticing online postings that if Marines stood in front of schools, we never would have had the Connecticut problem. When I enlisted, I swore to defend this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. I just want to be sure all these kids go home safe for Christmas.”
NY Daily News reports that Pulsey, who has a 3-year-old son, stood guard in combat fatigue but was not armed. He said he does not need a weapon: “I don’t have a fear in the world that if someone came here, I’d have the strength and the ability to protect.”
Although, media reports said Pusley, 28, left the Corps as a sergeant after deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, Navy Times reports that Marine officials say he graduated from boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, but was in the service less than a year. According to Navy Times, Pusley is not a Marine Sergeant and he has never risen above the rank of private first class. His official designation is “basic Marine.”
However, Pusley told Marine Corps Times that he never lied about his military service. He claimed that the reporter who first interviewed him got her story wrong. He said: “There’s a lot of fabrication to this story that didn’t come out of my mouth. All I know is that I talked to a Modesto Bee lady, and everything went crazy.”
Military Times, however, reports that Mick Rubalcava of Modesto News, provided a video of Pusley saying he is a sergeant and that he served in Afghanistan. He claimed he was wounded in Afghanistan.
Pusley claimed that he’s still in the Marine Corps Reserve with “123 Weapons.” According to Military Times, this refers to the “Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines.” Pulsey told Marine Times that he left the Corps in 2008, after serving a year because officials said he went on unauthorized absence. Military Times reporter confirmed that story.
Navy Times also points out that photographs show him wearing the rank insignia of a sergeant. He said he borrowed the uniform from a friend and that he was not aware of the implication of the insignia. He said: “I feel horrible about this. My intention was for the kids. I don’t understand why everyone has to find a negative in every situation.”
But the Christian Post reports that his claim that he borrowed the uniform from a friend only complicates issues for him because such an act is against Marine Corps policy.
He has offered to stand guard in front of the school without wearing Marine Corps uniform. But Navy Times reports that Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Mike Barrett, said: “This is not the right thing. Not the right time. And not the right place. The uniform doesn’t make the man. It’s your character that defines you.”
Military Times reporter comments: “We come across people in Pusley’s predicament frequently… Donald Laisure… in 2009… claimed to be a retired four-star general who earned the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and an Air Medal in a 54-year career that included service in Vietnam, Panama and the Persian Gulf War. In reality, he served less than a year on active duty before leaving the service as a private. California records also show he was once married to convicted murderer Susan Atkins, the ex-wife of serial killer Charles Manson.”
Digital Journal also reported that a Marine and father in Nashville, Staff Sgt. Jordan Pritchard, stood guard outside his childrens’ school, Gower Elementary School, in fatigue without a weapon.
He said: “I feel like this is something I had to do.”
(GlobalResearch.com) It is now beyond question that the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. all involved patsies, additional gunman and perhaps most importantly, mass media complicity to achieve their political ends. Along these lines and in a fashion now characteristic of how such public executions are framed, the observations and analyses of citizen journalists and alternative media suggest how coverage of the Newtown Connecticut school shooting was substantially altered in the several hours and days following the event.
After the 1995 Murrah Federal Building bombing central elements that would help the citizenry make sense of the event, such as unexploded ordnance found in the structure and Timothy McVeigh’s accomplice, were stricken from the official narrative. Along these lines at the probable behest of government authorities a second gunman accompanying Jared Lee Loughner in 2011 was quickly tossed down the memory hole by news outlets covering the incident. Similar reportorial lapses took place at the Aurora Colorado massacre last July where eyewitnesses attested to spotting James Holmes’ collaborators (or handlers) inside the theater.
When the news media act as willing partners in such acts the public becomes an unwitting accessory in its own psychic imprisonment, lulled into the notion that fair play still exists and public servants remain are intent on service.
“One of the most important red flags of a staged shooting is a second gunman,” health science and investigative writer Mike Adams observes,
indicating the shooting was coordinated and planned. There are often mind control elements at work in many of these shootings … James Holmes, for example, was a graduate student actually working on mind control technologies funded by the U.S. government. There were also chemical mind control elements linked to Jared Lee Loughner.[1]
Emerging Contradictions
Several independent researchers and most recently Infowars.com reporter Rob Dew have over the past few days pointed to evidence strongly suggesting how two additional Sandy Hook shooting suspects were apprehended by police in the minutes following 9:35AM when officers were dispatched to the elementary school.[2]
Recordings of the 911 dispatcher and first responders to the campus all but wholly corroborate initial reports of at least two persons attempting to flee from the scene, with audio evidence of law enforcement officers actually encountering the suspected assailants at around 9:40AM. Excerpts were replayed on Fox News the evening of December 14.
Dispatcher: All units: The individual that I have on the phone is continuing to hear what he believes to be gunfire.
Dispatcher: All units are responding to Sandy Hook School at this time. The shooting appears to have stopped. It is silent at this time. The school is in lockdown.
Dispatcher: I have reports that the teacher saw two shadows running past the building, past the gym, which would be rear ([inaudible] … to the shooting.
Officer: Yeah. We’ve got him … [Voice quickening] They’re coming at me [inaudible] … down the left side.[3]
In the above encounter one suspect is apparently detained by police outside the school and subsequently referenced in an Associated Press interview with a Sandy Hook student who briefly sees the detained man while being evacuated from the school building.
Unidentified student: And then the police like were knocking on the door, and they’re like, “We’re evacuating people! We’re evacuating people!” So we ran out. There’s police about at every door. They’re leading us, “Down this way. Down this way. Quick! Quick! Come on!” Then we ran down to the firehouse. There’s a man pinned down to the ground with handcuffs on. And we thought that was the victim [sic]. We really didn’t get a good glance at him because there was a car blocking it. Plus we were running really quick.[4]
Accompanying aerial footage depicts officers pursuing another suspected shooter in a wooded area outside the aforementioned gym and behind school grounds. They apprehend him and he is seen prone and surrounded by police before being escorted in front of students’ parents to a squad car, an episode recounted by one anonymous bystander interviewed on a local CBS affiliate.
Unidentified Witness: They did walk a guy out of the woods. I saw them walk a guy out earlier with handcuffs. He walked by us and said he didn’t do it.
Reporter: It was a grown man?
Witness: A grown man. Yeah, he’s sittin’ in the front of the police car over there now. So, I mean—
Reporter: He didn’t have a gun?
Witness: No, I didn’t see any gun. [They] just had him handcuffed and he walked by us and looked into the parents eyes and said, “I didn’t do it.”
Reporter: How was he dressed?
Witness: Ah, camo pants with a dark jacket.[5]
Sandy Hook Official Narrative
Such information was carefully expurgated from the official narrative presented by corporate media within hours of the massacre, a storyline Americans are painfully familiar with. Here the 20 year-old Adam Lanza is depicted front and center as the chief culprit of the killing spree. Predictably there is not the slightest reference of additional suspects in ABC News’ representative “timeline” example below.
Reporter Don Harris: 9:40AM: Reports of gunfire at Sandy Hook Elementary
Police Dispatch: “Sandy Hook School. Caller is indicating that she thinks someone is shooting in the building.”
Harris: Police say 20 year old Adam Lanza, seen here as a teenager, wore a bulletproof vest and was carrying at least three semi-automatic weapons, including a rifle.
Alexis Wasik, 8 year old: “Everybody was a little scared crying and I felt, actually, a little sick.”
Harris: Within five to ten minutes the first SWAT teams arrived.
Police Officer: “I need units in the school. I got bodies here.”
Harris: Officers helped to lead several hundred students to a nearby fire station.
[By this time Connecticut law enforcement had apprehended the additional two shootings suspects.]
Ben Paley [student]: “When the policemen came in to get us he told us to close our eyes and—like on the picture on the news—do this [demonstrates hands-on-shoulder position with other child] and run.”
Harris: At 10:30AM President Obama was briefed on the situation while police discovered a second crime scene. The shooter’s mother, Nancy Lanza, who authorities believed may have worked at Sandy Hook at some point, was found dead. Police say Adam Lanza shot her before he stormed the school.[6]
Empowering Myths and Media Manipulation
As the lessons of 9/11 impart, when public knowledge of such horrific events is so woefully deficient the nation’s recollections become the fodder for empowering myths dangerously removed from reality. Devoid of information and effective means for political expression the masses are cajoled to exercise faith and hope in empty promises and an system providing the semblance of empathy, hope and change. Under such circumstances violent calamity, appropriately propagandized by mass media, often provides ample public distraction for decisive political maneuvering.
Journalists capable of exercising a modest degree of autonomy and personal insight would have clearly recognized such leads, thereby extending them to a more rigorous examination of law enforcement spokespersons and the broader Newtown community. Instead, the news media once again wholly abdicated any such responsibility to serve the public by unquestioningly parroting official pronouncements and carefully instructing their audiences on exactly how to interpret the event.
“The anchors are the priests at the funeral before the funeral happens,” journalist Jon Rappoport notes. “They set the stage. They convey to the public the meaning and atmosphere and essence of the whole event. And having done that, there is simply no room for anything that would intrude on this sepulchral mood.”[7]
Behind the meticulously crafted façade a deep vagueness and sorrow remains that cannot be wholly explained away by the made-for-television storyline of an awkward and lagging young man who inexplicably murders his mother, destroys his computer hard drive, gains access to a supposedly high security facility and proficiently executes 26 individuals within minutes. Yet only in an age of almost universal deceit is the public asked to accept such without further inquiry and comment. All the while amidst mass grieving political leaders and public figures showboat their legislative priorities. It is difficult to imagine a more profound marker of an utterly decrepit politics and civil society than the shallow and unquestioning media that churns out a monochromatic worldview while giving adherents the insidious impression of being informed.
Notes
[1] Mike Adams, “Newtown School Shooting Already Being Changed by the Media to Eliminate Eyewitness Reports of a Second Shooter,” Natural News, December 16, 2012.
[2] Rob Dew, “Evidence of 2nd and 3rd Shooter at Sandy Hook,” Infowars Nightly News, December 18, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nCFHImNeRw. A more detailed yet less polished analysis was developed by citizen journalist Idahopicker, “Sandy Hook Elem: 3 Shooters,” December 16, 2012.
[3] Fox News, “911 Call Dispatch Audio Reveals Police Response to Sandy Hook School Shooting,” December 14, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16AfZXH33eQ
[4] Associated Press [difficulties with url below], “Raw: Student Describes Scene at School Shooting,” December 14, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orGjK5q6vGc&list=PLnwt1fUa-EVjR5nrBhKdQEXattQ_76dK9
[5] CBS News, “Sandy Hook Elem: Two or More Shooters,” December 14, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhwm6z3PQWU
[6] ABC News, “Newtown Connecticut Shooting: Timeline of Events at Sandy Hook Elementary,” December 15, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8GINzldb-Y
[7] Jon Rappoport, “Lanza, Bloomberg, Obama, Guns, Psychiatric Meds, and Mass Hypnosis: The TV Script,” JonRappoport.Wordpress.com, December 15, 2012.
This article originally appeared at Global Research
