Using Newtown Shooting for Political Purposes? You don’t say!

(Any comments would be much appreciated.)

We are now two days away from Christmas and the people of Newtown Connecticut and the entire nation are still reeling from the horrible tragedies that took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary school. So much has unraveled since that terrifying day when dam Lanza killed twenty-six people before doing himself in, many of those things I have covered here in this blog. But one thing I haven’t been covering as much is the use of the tragedy by politicians for their own purposes. I did say in an earlier blog that we shouldn’t expect too much from politicians as they will only offer us sympathy and promises with no real solutions.

The political tension in the wake of Sandy Hook is rising as Democrats and Republicans are both coming up with their own ideas as to how these tragedies can be prevented and how their own agenda can be furthered. Republicans are saying that armed guards should be present in all schools for protection, while Democrats are saying that gun control laws are too lax and that further regulation of firearms and ammunition is needed.

But this is the perfect time for either party to take a shot at one another as well. In an article I found on Yahoo! News Grover Norquist accuses President Obama and Democrats of using the Newtown tragedy to push their gun control agenda. 

Grover Norquist on ABC accusing Obama and Dems of using Sandy Hook for political purposes

 FROM THE ARTICLE:

"We ought to calm down and not take tragedies like this, crimes like this, and use them for political purposes," Norquist told me on "This Week." "President Obama has been president for four years. If he thought some gun control could solve this problem, he should have been pushing it years ago."

I love that first part of the sentence, "We ought to calm down and not take tragedies like this, crimes like this, and use them for political purposes”, as Norquist himself is actually endorsing an NRA recommendation to place armed guards in our public schools for protection. So who should be calming down? The guys who want to regulate guns more, or the guys who think armed guards should be in every school? In my opinion, both. 

NRA recommends all schools have armed guards.

When you’re anti-something, there is always going to be another side to the issue, a pro-something side, like anti-gun/pro-gun, and people who are anti-gun will call for the amount of guns to be reduced while pro-gun people will call for a proliferation of guns. And after an event like the Sandy Hook shooting the anti-gun folks are going try to make you believe this happened because there are so many guns in the country and they are easily obtainable, while the pro-gun people will try to get you to believe the tragedy happened because there aren’t enough guns.

And now it’s time to point the fingers in the political world and blame each other for taking political advantage of a horrible occurrence even though both sides are doing the same exact thing.

How can Norqusit come out and accuse Obama and other Democrats for using the Sandy Hook event to push gun control laws when he and Republicans are using the event to push gun proliferation? Norqusit says he thinks Democrats should “calm down” and not turn this into a political hot button and at the same time saying that we need to put armed guards in every school to protect our children. 

Retired marine Staff SGT standing guard at local school

Don’t both of those ideas sound the least bit alarmist to you? I mean, how can we be so fearful as to put armed guards in our schools yet tell others they need to clam down about the ease in which guns are available?  Or vise versa.

The gun control debate itself doesn’t seem to be centered around a all out ban of hand guns or assault weapons, although those ideas are being vocalized by politicians, but rather on the ban of extended magazines and high capacity ammunition clips.

One writer believes that giving up these extended clips is the real solution and that focusing on mental health is just a distraction.

FROM THE ARTICLE:

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan said that LaPierre's suggestion that the effect of a violent culture on the mentally ill has contributed to increased gun violence, but she believes that Congress should pursue some gun control measures.

"I am for the banning of the extended magazines and extended clips," Noonan said.

Editor and Publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel said that focusing on the mentally ill is a distraction from the issue of gun violence.

"The mental illness argument has been used to evade action," vanden Huevel said. "More guns and bullets, more dead children."

The idea that more bullets and more guns equal more dead children is absolute horse shit. According to this writer the ban of extended mags and high cap clips will reduce the amount of children being shot up in school violence. I hate this argument, because if I was out of my mind and wanted to hurt somebody I DO NOT need either of those extended capacity ammunition clips, PERIOD.

When we look at these shooting incidences we see that they all have one major thing in common; they are all suffering from some type of mental issue or some case of extreme anger in which case therapy or any other type of help was not sought or was not successful. These events don’t just happen at schools either, as proved by the recent shootings at malls and movie theaters by deranged psychopaths who have no sense of wrong or right and simply put are deluded individuals. The excuses, “I wanted to see what would happen” or “I wanted to kill all the phonies” or “I was upset with the way my life was going” or the excuses of people who have little to no moral compass or little to no understanding of the consequences of their actions (unless of course they do understand their consequences in which case they just don’t care or are planning to off themselves anyway at the end of their deed).

I guess what I am saying here is that we shouldn’t get caught up in thinking that only one side of the political spectrum is using this event for political gain. They both are, and it is quite evident that they are.

Norquist was right about one thing though, we do need to calm down, all of us. Those who want guns in our schools for protection and those who wanted to place regulations on firearms. The presences of armed guards in schools won’t limit tragedies, and neither will a ban on high capacity ammunition clips.

If we have armed guards in school surely they may not be able to react quickly enough to each and every instance. The idea that a bad guy with a gun can only be thwarted by a good guy with a gun is pretty accurate, but what if the good guys couldn’t react in time and a few people died?

The ban of high caps won’t do shit. As I said, if I truly wanted to hurt someone I can do it without a lot of ammunition. If Adam Lanza forced his way into Sandy Hook with only one hand gun and a regular capacity ammunition clip he would have STILL KILLED PEOPLE. Sure it may not have been as many, but the deed would still have been done, nothing can stop that. And if an armed guard was on the premises maybe he would have gotten to Adam sooner and only a few people were injured or killed, but still the act was accomplished, people died.

Adam Lanza was in fact a troubled young man. According to reports he hardly spoke to anyone and would rarely if ever look them in the eyes. He was hiding from the world, descending into his basement room where he would hide every day and immerse himself in the fantasies he created that he was more able to cope with. He was truly a young man who was in need of some serious therapy, which his mother tried to provide for him.

There are many people who knew Nancy Lanza that are being quoted in news articles saying that Nancy was trying to find help or Adam, and a conflicting report that she had considered to commit him to a mental institution.

With that being said, why are people trying to say that the mental health argument is just a distraction from the real cause? The real cause IS mental health, and this needs to be addressed in our country.

What I do find funny is that the Republicans are the ones who are really saying that this is an issue of mental health rather than firearms regulation, yet the Republicans are responsible for 4.3 billion dollars worth in cuts for mental health programs.

So yes, this is very much a matter of mental health and it should be treated as such. No need to go into a fear mongering campaign by either trying to reduced or increase the amount of weapons available to the general population. The more people who have healthy minds the less senseless violence will occur. 

SOURCES: 

Yahoo! News Article

The Shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School

On Friday, December 14^th 2012 a horrible tragedy occurred in Newtown, Connecticut when an armed 20 year old forced his way into an elementary school where he opened fire killing twenty school children and six adults, before finally shooting himself in the head.

The attack occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown Connecticut around 9:30 AM EST when a young man named Adam Lanza forced his way into the school armed with two hand guns and a semiautomatic rifle. He opened fired killing twenty school children who were ages six through seven and six adults. It all happened very fast and within minutes twenty-six people were dead not including the shooter himself.

According to news reports Adam Lanza was a troubled man who perpetrated the attacks using guns that were actually owned by his mother. Why he did this…I really don’t care. I don’t care about people who are crazy and kill a bunch of young innocent kids before killing himself. He was sick, that’s all we need to know about this asshole. The reason I don’t care is because the more I think about it the more it drives me crazy. Why would someone do this, even if they are miserable and hate their own life why do they need to take others out with them. The thought upsets me, so I try not to think about it.

All the same, this tragic event did happen and it saddens me to think that out there some kid may do this again in the copycat fashion that is so prevalent these days thanks to our 24 hour media providers. I’m sorry for all those people who lost something and are suffering because of this psycho, but I think we need to grieve and move on.

This event is prompting politicians to bring up the gun control argument again, and even Rupert Murdoch has jumped on the band wagon saying that automatic assault weapons should be banned. The politicians use fear like this to further agendas, and thanks to the media they are able to do this. But aside from being able to bring up politic issues like gun control tragedies like this are used as distractions and we must be careful to not get sucked all the way into this to the point where we forget everything else in the world that is affecting us.

The truth is that horrible things happen around the world all the time and we are ignorant and selfish to it because 1) it’s happening far away, 2) we aren’t shown it in the media, 3) if it’s not involving Americans than it doesn’t matter. I understand that some people may say they care about what happens to others over seas in third world countries but they always end up saying that we have a vested interest in things that happen within our boarders. And that is true, we do and should have a vested interest in the happenings of our own country, but here are a few truths for all of you:

Children die on their birthdays in Gaza.

They die from abuse all over the world.

They die every day here in America.

They die in sex trafficking crimes

They die from drugs

They will continue to die and there is nothing we can to do stop it because some day we will die.

This event that occurred is absolutely terrible, and by all means I know how sensitive people are about this. It strikes at the hearts of all of the, the horror of it all. But remember to that that horror exists all over and always has, and we shouldn’t let this event distract us from what is actually going on that affects us, like the fiscal turmoil this country is in. Our President is our in Newtown right now and he is going to give a speech about the event, and politicians will be giving us promises and trying to sooth the wounds by being sympathetic to us and the victims, but in reality they are going to get as much television exposure as they to further their own agenda and you will see no solutions to the problems.

So remember people, step back from the TV for a while and take some time to think about it on your own. Don’t listen to the news or the radio or read it on the internet. Just take a few to separate yourself from the constant bombardment of information provided to you by the media. Grieve if you must, but remember that we must keep focused here. 

(What do you think about the shootings that occurred in Connecticut on Friday? Post your thoughts below.)

SOURCES:

CNN ARTICLE

Anonymous Takes Down Westboro Baptist Church Website

Today the group known as Anonymous hacked the website of the Westboro Baptist Church in response to the church’s intentions to protest the funerals of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting that occurred in Connecticut on Friday. The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC for short) is well known for protesting funerals of soldiers who died while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming that they were killed in action by God because he was upset with our country for allowing gay rights to pass legislation. They’re plan to protest this upcoming funeral, which consists of twenty children ages 6 and 7, and six adults, who were killed when a mad man named Adam Lanza, age 20, forced his way into the school armed with two hand guns and a semiautomatic rifle and started shooting, saying that this was an act of God and that those who died were killed because God is upset with our country allowing gay marriage and other such civil rights.

WBC took a poke at the group (which I’ll just call ANON) a while back when they claimed that ANON sent them a message telling them they were going to be hacked for their hate messages. WBC responded to ANON in a message saying “bring it” and in a video where a member of ANON speaks with Shirley Phelps the member says that the message sent to WBC was a hoax and was never sent to them with any knowledge of the ANON group. Shirley Phelps continued to disagree with the ANON member, calling the group names and saying that no one will ever silence them and that the internet was created specifically for them to send out their hateful messages and that it is God’s will. After ten minutes of silliness ANON became impatient and shut down the WBC websites, replacing them with this message:

This domain has been seized by Anonymous under section #14 of the rules of the Internet.
Greetings Westboro Baptist Church,

If you're reading this, it means that Anonymous has lost its patience with you, likely because you've threatened us again after we denied you a war.

Your recent antics to gain media attention for yourself were found to be laughable. In response to your rather poorly-written "bring it" letter, wherein you tried to goad Anonymous into giving you yet more attention by calling us "crybaby hackers", we wrote, sincerely, a press release explaining clearly the hoax behind the initial declaration of war against your church.

We had thought this latest release would be enough to make you realize that we have no interest in going to war with you. Anonymous is hard at work with ongoing operations such as those involving Bahrain, Libya, and Iran, not to mention we are working tirelessly to maintain coverage of all our HBGary leaks for the public to enjoy.

Your continued biting of the Anonymous hand, however, has earned you a swift and emotionless bitchslap, in the form of this very message. Despite having had the capability to hack your sites previously, we chose not to and instead responded maturely to your threats, but you have not respected this.

For this unremitting display of overzealousness, we award you no points. Take this defacement as a simple warning: go away. The world (including Anonymous) disagrees with your hateful messages, but you have the right to voice them. This does not mean you can jump onto Anonymous for attention.
God hates fags: assumption. Anonymous hates leeches: fact.

Now after the tragic events that occurred in Connecticut WBC wants to picket the funerals, a truly unfathomable action, but hey they’ve done shit like this before. They’re crazy, and nothing is going to stop them from this craziness. Unless…maybe ANON could?

I asked a few for their opinions and the most conversation I got was from Bree Still, who believed that this is a case of media mongering and that both WBC and ANON are just going for the flavor of the month and that ANON is silly for doing this saying that WBC has already lost and it’s like kicking a dying rabid dog before it stops breathing. I happen to disagree, only because I dislike WBC so much and I think it’s great that ANON is willing to step in and disrupt their hate machine.

When WBC said they were planning on picketing the funerals ANON shut down their sites and sent them this nice little message:

"We will not allow you to corrupt the minds of America with your seeds of hatred. We will not allow you to inspire aggression to the social factions which you deem inferior. We will render you obsolete. We will destroy you. We are coming."

I think that WBC members should be ashamed of the things they say, do and feel about everything. I’m glad to see that members of ANON are willing to shut down the hate machine and disrupt their evil ways. What I would like to know is how much more will they do? I can’t wait to see this unfold.

I will agree with Bree on this one though. WBC has lost, it lost a long time again and the majority of America disregards their message. Hell even Fox News pundits don’t like the messages that WBC spreads, now that is saying something. But I don’t really mind watching this dying, rabid, evil wolf get kicked a few more times before it takes it’s last breath, and then maybe a good shock from a cattle prod.

(What do you think about Anonymous attacking the Westboro Baptist Church’s website because of their plan to picket the funerals of those who died at the Sandy Hook school shooting? Feel free to post a comment.)

SOURCES:

YOUTUBE VIDEO: 

ARTICLE: Westboro Baptist ChurchHacked by Anonymous as Group Plans Protest at Sandy Hook Elementary School