Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

QUICK TAKES

Daniel Greenfield - The Internalized Racism of White Leftists

Walter Williams - Culture and Social Pathology

Cal Thomas - China's Big Hack Attack

Raymond Ibrahim - Islam's Jihad on Churches

David French - S.C. Suspect Caught and the Politicization begins  (* Especially important)

            Question - Was Dylann Storm Roof taking anti-depressant drugs?  Update: Apparently YES!

MEDIA BURIES PSYCHIATRIC DRUG CONNECTION TO NAVY SHOOTER

Blame the weapon, not the drugs, that's the media's philosophy. After all, to blame the drugs would be to harm the pharmaceutical industry which spends billions on advertising.  Paul Joseph Watson writes:  (HT: Drudge)

Despite every indication that Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis was on SSRI drugs that have been linked to dozens of previous mass shootings, the mainstream media has once again avoided all discussion of the issue, preferring instead to blame the tragedy on a non-existent AR-15 that the gunman didn’t even use.

We now know that Alexis “had been treated since August by the Veterans Administration for his mental problems.”

As Mike Adams points out, “This is proof that Aaron Alexis was on psychiatric drugs, because that’s the only treatment currently being offered by the Veterans Administration for mental problems. Alexis’ family members also confirmed to the press that he was being “treated” for his mental health problems. Across the medical industry, “treatment” is the code word for psychiatric drugging.”  [more . . .]

LA TIMES: "GUN CRIME HAS PLUNGED, BUT AMERICANS THINK IT'S UP, SAYS STUDY"

Emily Alpert writes:

Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show.

Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.

In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium.

The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released Tuesday. Gun crimes that weren’t fatal fell by 69%. However, guns still remain the most common murder weapon in the United States, the report noted. Between 1993 and 2011, more than two out of three murders in the U.S. were carried out with guns, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found.

The bureau also looked into non-fatal violent crimes. Few victims of such crimes -- less than 1% -- reported using a firearm to defend themselves.

Despite the remarkable drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said gun crime had declined compared with two decades ago, according to Pew, which surveyed  more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased.   [more. . .]

A BIBLICAL VIEW ON SELF-DEFENSE AND OWNERSHIP OF GUNS

There weren't guns in Bible times, but there certainly were weapons.  Wayne Grudem tackles the issue in his book,  Voting as a Christian: The Social Issues, pp. 93-107.   Grudem also discusses the subject in this podcast taken from a Sunday morning Bible class.   An outline of his talk may be found here.  Dduardo D. Co Jr. recently wrote a paper  for a Theology course in Asia Theological Seminary in the Philippines which draws heavily on Grudem in its final section.

 

NOTES ON THE SENATE'S REJECTION OF THE PROPOSED GUN CONTROL LAW

A friend sent me Gabby Gifford's passionate New York Times op-ed, "A Senate in the Gun Lobby's Grip'"   to which I replied with the following responses: 

I'm afraid we disagree on this issue.  

Charles Krauthammer writes: (video available)

Charles Krauthammer objected to the Democrats’ perpetual invocation of the children murdered in Newtown throughout the debate over gun-control, calling it “emotional blackmail.”

“If you’re going to make all of these emotional appeals,” he said, “you’ve gotta show that if this had been law, it would have stopped Newtown. It would not have. It’s irrelevant. I wouldn’t have objected, I might’ve gone the way of McCain or Toomey on this, but it’s emotional blackmail to say ‘You have to do it for the children.’ Not if there’s no logic in this, and that I think is what’s wrong with the demagoguery that we’ve heard out of the president on this issue.” 

-- Victor Davis Hanson, one of the most astute commentators I know, says:

It is a bad idea to demonize your opponents with epithets such “shameful” and “lying,” given that the case was not made that proposed gun-control legislation would have prevented a Sandy Hook. To prevent these school-shooting horrors might require either armed guards in schools, or Draconian new laws about gratuitous screen and video-game violence, or more frequently incarcerating the mentally unstable, or, on the theory of reducing rapid rates of fire, confiscating millions of previously sold semi-automatic handguns and rifles. All those measures would have offended millions across the political spectrum in ways that demonizing the NRA apparently does not. In the end, it was not the “lying” “gun lobby” that persuaded enough senators to defeat the bill, but the president’s inability to make the argument that his proposals would help stop another Sandy Hook or Columbine. . . . 

- A particularly useful, dispassionate analysis can be found in this Wall Street Journal article - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324493704578430672176449846.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

- Not directly relevant to the vote on gun control is an interesting chart showing more Americans think guns make home safer.

Great Article by David Mamet in Newsweek

I know that's not the greatest heading, but it will have to do.  Please go and read the entire article.  It will do you good, and enhance your sense of logic and good sense.  The article begins:

Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death.

For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia. The agency is called “The State,” and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read “The State will take from each according to his ability: the State will give to each according to his needs.” “Needs and abilities” are, of course, subjective. So the operative statement may be reduced to “the State shall take, the State shall give.”

All of us have had dealings with the State, and have found, to our chagrin, or, indeed, terror, that we were not dealing with well-meaning public servants or even with ideologues but with overworked, harried bureaucrats. These, as all bureaucrats, obtain and hold their jobs by complying with directions and suppressing the desire to employ initiative, compassion, or indeed, common sense. They are paid to follow orders.  [more . . .]

JESSIE DUFF, CHAMPION SHOOTER, OFFERS A DEMONSTRATION OF SEMI-AUTOMATIC GUNS

Two days ago Hannity televised a terrific segment (video) featuring Jessie Duff, a world champion shooter.  Using a variety of semi-automatic weapons, she demonstrated how they fire and the size of the damage they do.  This will be an eye-opener for many. 

Also to be noted, Mike Huckabee highly recommends Larry Correia's article on guns and gun control as one of the best things he has read on the subject.  It's long but thorough.

PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS AN UNDERRATED, UNDERSTUDIED FACTOR IN MURDER CASES

Blame the guns, says the media.  But shouldn't the media take a hard look at the prescribed medicine most killers are on when they commit murders?   In an article titled, "The giant, gaping hole in Sandy Hook reporting, David Kupelian says:   (HT: Drudge)

Whether we like to admit it or not, it is undeniable that when certain people living on the edge of sanity take psychiatric medications, those drugs can – and occasionally do – push them over the edge into violent madness.

Kupelian cites case after case where psychiatric drugs played a role in murders.  His list is long!  Since so little reporting of this fact exists, one must ask, are drug companies being protected?  At the end of his article Kupelian urges:

[We] respectfully but urgently ask the question: When on earth are we going to find out if the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook school massacre, like so many other mass shooters, had been taking psychiatric drugs?

In the end, it may well turn out that knowing what kinds of guns he used isn’t nearly as important as what kind of drugs he used.

That is, assuming we ever find out.        

Read the whole article.

.  I should mention that I dropped off the two series of videos (Truth Project and Ask) on Mark Carlson’s desk. 

FBI: MORE PEOPLE KILLED WITH HAMMERS, CLUBS THAN RIFLES

Interesting statistics, to say the least.  Awr Hawkins reports:  (HT: Drudge)

According to the FBI annual crime statistics, the number of murders committed annually with hammers and clubs far outnumbers the number of murders committed with a rifle.

This is an interesting fact, particularly amid the Democrats' feverish push to ban many different rifles, ostensibly to keep us safe of course.

However, it appears the zeal of Sens. like Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) is misdirected. For in looking at the FBI numbers from 2005 to 2011, the number of murders by hammers and clubs consistently exceeds the number of murders committed with a rifle.

Think about it: In 2005, the number of murders committed with a rifle was 445, while the number of murders committed with hammers and clubs was 605. In 2006, the number of murders committed with a rifle was 438, while the number of murders committed with hammers and clubs was 618.

And so the list goes, with the actual numbers changing somewhat from year to year, yet the fact that more people are killed with blunt objects each year remains constant.

For example, in 2011, there was 323 murders committed with a rifle but 496 murders committed with hammers and clubs. . .   Another interesting fact: According to the FBI, nearly twice as many people are killed by hands and fists each year than are killed by murderers who use rifles.

All of this is exceedingly interesting, indeed.   

ANN COULTER - "WE KNOW HOW TO STOP SCHOOL SHOOTINGS"

Coulter has produced a MUST-READ article.  Her logic and the evidence she musters are irrefutable.

Also see my previous post:

IS GUN CONTROL THE BEST RESPONSE TO THE SANDY HOOK SCHOOL MASSACRE?

IS GUN CONTROL THE BEST RESPONSE TO THE SANDY HOOK SCHOOL MASSACRE?

Gun control advocates and statists are pressing hard to use the Connecticut murders to advance their gun-control agenda. But, as Charles  C.W. Cooke has said, 

Gun control propositions are by no means new, and nor is there a lack of a “national conversation on the subject.” Instead, the national conversation is ongoing, and the Left is losing it badly. Gun control advocates may talk of national soul searching and dialogue, but in truth that already exists; what they mean is that they’d like to win for a change.

American liberties, including the Second Amendment and the 40-plus state-level guarantees of the right to bear arms, pre-exist the federal government, and are defined and protected in the same document from which the state derives its authority and its structure. In a free republic, the people cannot be disarmed by the government, for they are it’s employers, and they did not give up their individual rights when they consented to its creation. There is no clause in our charters of liberty that allows for the people to be deprived of their freedom if and when a few individuals abuse theirs.  [my emphasis]

The internet is filled with articles and blog posts pro-and-con gun control.  Joseph Farah reports the many cases when guns carried by law-abiding people subdued robberies and thwarted mass killings.  He also posts a photo of how violence is thwarted in Israel, which raises the question, how would the situation at Sandy Hook school been changed if teachers had been armed?

Ben Stein is exercised over "shoot ’em up video games online or on machines."

In these games, the “player” just spends his whole day attempting to exercise and exorcize his loneliness and low self-esteem by shooting imaginary creatures and creating damage all day long.

At a certain point, just “killing” on the console blurs into doing it in real life. “Killing” is just what the kid does all his life. How much of a stretch is it for him to shoot into a movie theater or a political gathering or a kindergarten in “real life” if his life is so pitiful that he does not know what’s real and what is not? If you are looking for a villain, try shoot ’em up games.

Stein goes on to make a point I've not seen anywhere else:

The whole world is rightly overwrought and crazed with grief over the murder of twenty totally innocent and blameless souls last Friday in Newtown. It was and is a catastrophe for the ages. But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promises to kill every Jew in Israel and then in the whole world, including babies… and he had his defenders, even at the Democratic National Convention.

He goes on to speak of the silence and even acquiescene of opinion makers in the United States at the time of  Nazi, Soviet communist, and Khmer Rouge killings.

The ever-thoughtful Thomas Sowell has an important column which should be read in its entirety since he answers critics and deals with comparisons with other countries. 

The key fallacy of so-called gun-control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.

If gun-control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive.

Wintery Knight has a major post arguing that "The Sandy Hook, Ct. school shooting shows need for tougher fatherlessness laws" and in another post notes that "10 People shot on Friday in Chicago, the city with the strictest gun control laws." 

In another post he argues "Connecticut shooting shows why we need to ban gun-free zones."

Conclusion:  To strip the populace of guns would be folly.  Further, I don't think it wise to start the "gradualist" approach by banning Bushmaster rifles as a first step to banning guns altogether.  See Switzerland versus Germany in terms of crime statistics and gun ownership cited by Thomas Sowell above.  As well, note what the editors at National Review write:

Simply put, so-called “assault weapons” are nowhere near the root of the American violence problem. According to FBI data, of the two-thirds of murders that involve firearms, about 69 percent involve handguns rather than rifles or shotguns of any kind. Most estimates place the contribution of assault weapons to gun crime at around 1 or 2 percent. These numbers should not be surprising: Rifles are difficult to conceal, and a criminal who decides to use a rifle has little reason to prefer an assault weapon over any other semiautomatic option. Contrary to popular myth, assault weapons fire only once for each pull of the trigger; they are not machine guns.  [more...]