School shooting in Connecticut

[JaneAusten]

Part of the problem is where you have tough gun laws they are not enforced. In Chicago where I live, there was a handgun ban for years but it didn't prevent the city from setting the murder record for the country year after year. But law enforcement in Chicago turns a blind eye because they see most of the people killed as "deserving" because the majority of the murders are gang related. Forget the occassional bystander who gets caught in the crossfire. Maybe ask why NYC has one of the lowest big city murder rates in the country with twice the population of Chicago and LA.

Every other western democracy has strict gun laws that seem to be enforced and their murder rates pale in comparison to the US. We aren't that special to be excluded from those stats because our country is so much more "dangerous".

It's a complex issue yes. But I'd love to know why assault weapons for example are legal, aside from the NRA wanting it? What purpose does an assault weapon serve other than to harm people?

[SFK]

That's what troubles me. We aren't talking about your average hunting rifle to take down bucks and does. There are of course gun collectors who are into this sort of thing, but when a very young man walks into a shop to purchase such an assault weapon, I'd think a million bells, whistles, and red flags would go off and up. Or the retailers simply do not care and want to make the sell. If the background check is clear, what, they're still going to deny them the purchase? A background check says nothing about the first offense that hasn't happened yet. Then of course people are obtaining these weapons illegally. I remember a couple kids I went to elementary school with who were really into swords, knives, blades, grenades, et cetera. Thank God this "interest" never manifest itself in a tragic way, but if I'm to be honest, all of these boys I'm thinking of had a certain *quality*. Looking back, it's like, shame on their parents for indulging such interests. Of course no parent wants to believe that their child may be disturbed, but no fourth grader should have a weapon collection.

[Pine Charles]

If guns "bring safety", we should be the safest country of all.

[Soapsuds]

I've seen it too often with parents and their kids. Parents are in denial when the child is concerned. It seems like the child runs the parent. Parents are told your child needs help and what do the parents do....ummm...no not my child..there is nothing wrong with him...he is your average child...yeah right until he or she ends up in jail for a crime or does even worse....whose to blame...I still say parents for not seeing whats in front of them and not getting their child help.

[Toups]

My heart goes out to the victims and their families.

The gun laws in the US need to change but I don't think it will happen. I'm not American so the 2nd ammendment doesn't make any sense to me and I don't understand why that "right" can't be changed.

"Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it." - Kansas City sports Journalist, Jason Whitlock, on the murder/suicide of KC Chiefs football player Jovan Belcher.

[alphanguy74]

Yeah.. I'm not sure it would help, but I don't feel anythng should be legal that can shoot more than 6 bullets in succession. That's the maximum my 22 rifle does, and I don't think anyone needs anything more. My rifle was made in 1947, BTW. Sorry, Q-fan, the "Go to the supermarket" don't always work. And I have had to use my gun to kill the squirrels that were chewing off my door and window casings. So sometimes it's for food, sometimes not. Some people are truly so poor they need to shoot their meals, or fish for them.

[Money]

Tell that to the parents and loved ones grieving those dead kids and yet you make an excellent point. Something made that guy run amok on those children, he didn't decide to wake up, drink a glass of OJ and run rough shed on an elementary school. And yet, I shudder to think, even worse, that many of these folks do not have the deep psychological issues that we attribute to them to make sense of these senseless acts and on a superficial level it all really boils down to selfishness. They decided to say F*ck it, I'll show 'em, I'll show the world.

But what if the people who by the cold medicine and show legitimate ID want the medicine to get high? It still essentially ends up in the wrong hands. The bottom line is that there is absolutely no reason for a private citizen to own an automatic weapon, let alone have easy access to it. It's not just guns but violence and the intent to do harm to others in such a maniacal manner is the prevalent issue.

What i absolutely hate about this is that I now have to be subjected to a whole lot of posturing from both political parties for months. The media will milk this thing dry til there's nothing left. They will claim outrage, publically mourn the loss of these people and not a damn thing will be done to change the gun laws in this country since the N.R.A has these politicians by the nuts. The worse thing about this is that more tragedies like this will happen and even deadlier because that's now the American society we live in today.

[alphanguy74]

I always maintain that stuff like this is caused by serious mental illness, and we need to educate people on how to recognize it, and people need help in dealing with it when it arises. I remember how Thom Bierdz talked about how they took his brother to over 40 doctors, tried to have him committed, then he'd attack a nurse, and they'd dump him back on his mother, and he eventually killed her. the system FAILED that family, and I bet his is not the only one.

[Khan]

Fear not, Toups, the 2nd Amendment doesn't make much sense to many Americans either.

All these comments about how easy it is for anyone to purchase guns in the US, either legally or illegally, make a lot to sense to me.

[DRW50]

Carolyn McCarthy, who lost her husband and almost lost her son in the 1993 subway shootings, says she will "embarrass" Obama on gun control if need be.

I would say she should focus on the House, but since she's a member of the House, I guess she knows how futile that is.

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/12/mccarthy-i-will-embarrass-obama-on-gun-controls-152047.html

[Vee]

I think Obama wants this as much as she does. He has nothing to lose. The question is what can be done unilaterally George W. Bush-style, because that may be what it takes with this Congress.

[DRW50]

The question is what happens downballot. A lot of Democrats in Congress will tell him please don't do anything, because voters will punish them.

[CassieFan]

First of all, this is a heartbreaking tragedy, and I feel for everyone affected, directly or indirectly. Second, I understand that countless young lives are lost all over

the world due to wars, hunger and numerous other atrocities, and that this particular kind of horror can and does happen everywhere, not only in the United States.

Still, school shootings and similar kinds of public killing sprees done by lone, crazed gunpeople, happen much more in the US than anywhere else. And I just don't get how the "right to bear arms" is still perceived as a good thing. Why? For what purpose?

Yes, that is NOT the only problem that causes these kinds of things, including mental health in public health issues comes to mind as one of the others, but hey - still thinking that guns equal freedom and civil rights? Seriously? Children paying price of adults' "freedom" to feel superior to the unknown and invisible enemy is freedom and civil rights? That, I don't understand.

[marceline]

It's not really Obama's fight. A lot of the worst pro-gun laws are passed by state legislatures. If the gun control movement is ever going to amount to anything then they need to get organized and I mean it needs to become a grassroots machine because it will never have the funding of the NRA. Then it needs to work from the bottom up to pass reasonable gun laws, not full on bans but perhaps the same regulations we have on..oh say...cold medicine. Go after local and state representatives because, again, the federal level has been too poisoned by NRA money. They also need to understand what the NRA really is. Its a weapons industry trade group, not a civil rights organization. They use the Bill of Rights as a cover but their number one priority is to make gun manufacturers rich and the only way to do that is to put as many guns on the street as possible no matter who gets killed. The gun industry is the tobacco industry on steroids. They make a product that kills and they want to sell as much of that product as possible.

[quartermainefan]

Another reason why there needs to be a safety net. And I am sorry, I do not think your squirrels outweigh those kids in CT or the moviegoers trying to watch Batman. There should be no guns allowed for the most part, just like they aren't allowed in all those other countries that also have squirrels.