This reader agrees that it can be done:
Why do we need semi-automatic guns? I grew up on a farm surrounded by guns. Any hunter who cannot hit a running jackrabbit, or coyote, with a single shot 22 is not much of a hunter. Hunting is not a justification!
Look at the statistics! This is a good question for an advanced mathematics class to address. How often has a privately owned semi-automatic weapon saved a life in the US due to the fact it was semi-automatic? Has it happened once this year? How often has a privately owned semi-automatic weapon murdered a person in the US, and turned a disaster into a multiple death disaster due to being semi-automatic?
The following is from the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
“Other countries offer a road map. In Australia in 1996, a mass killing of 35 people galvanized the nation’s conservative prime minister to ban certain rapid-fire long guns. The “national firearms agreement,” as it was known, led to the buyback of 650,000 guns and to tighter rules for licensing and safe storage of those remaining in public hands.
The law did not end gun ownership in Australia. It reduced the number of firearms in private hands by one-fifth, and they were the kinds most likely to be used in mass shootings.
In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings — but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. The murder rate with firearms has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to data compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and the suicide rate with firearms has dropped by more than half. “
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What Caused Columbine?
May 12, 1999
by Eagle Forum
Everybody’s looking for the causes of the terrible tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and for ways to prevent such horrible happenings in the future. Hillary Clinton has volunteered her intuition that “part of growing up is learning how to control one’s impulses.”
Putting aside the point that most of us don’t have impulses to go on a killing rampage, who is going to teach kids to control their impulses? Certainly not the “village” (i.e., the government or government schools), which Mrs. Clinton believes should have prime responsibility for raising children.
For the past 25 years, the prevailing dogma in public school teaching has been Values Clarification (as in the tremendously influential 1972 book of the same name by Sidney Simon). That means teaching students to reject “the old moral and ethical standards” and instead create “their own value system.”
Values Clarification teaches that, since there are absolutely no absolutes, students can make their own decisions about behavior instead of looking to God, the Ten Commandments, parents, church, or other authority that teaches that behavior should conform to traditional morality. Indeed, Eric Harris created his “own value system.”
Modern public school teaching exalts “tolerance” of other people’s behavior as the highest virtue, and “self-esteem” as education’s principal objective. We are forbidden to be “judgmental” about the behavior of others when they indulge in their impulses instead of controlling them.
As best described by the late Senator (and former university president) Sam Hayakawa, the public schools adopted “an educational heresy . . . that rejects the idea of education as the acquisition of knowledge and skills . . . and regards the fundamental task in education as therapy.” These “therapy” courses opened the floodgates to all sort sorts of psychological courses, one of the weirdest of which was Death and Dying.
In 1987 Colorado Eagle Forum produced a two-hour video in which student Tara Backer spoke at length about the relentless focus on death, dying and suicide in her sophomore classes at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. She and several of her classmates attempted suicide as a result of this depressing teaching, and it took them many months to recover from the experience.
Tara was subsequently interviewed for an ABC 20/20 program in 1988, where she said, “I had thought about [suicide] as a possible option for a lot of years, but I never would have gone through with it, never, because I wasn’t brave enough. The things that we learned in the class taught us how to be brave enough to face death.”
She added, “We talked about what we wanted to look like in our caskets.” ABC’s Tom Jarriel concluded the segment by asking if these courses “suggest death as an answer to adolescent problems.”
The 20/20 segment showed morbid visuals of student visits to cemeteries, embalming labs, and crematoriums, and told about picking some bones out of the ashes. It was clear that Tom Jarriel and Hugh Downs thought that death ed was bizarre.
An investigative piece in Atlantic Monthly the same year confirmed that death and dying courses are given in “thousands of schools,” often sneaked into health, social studies, literature or home-economics courses without parents’ knowledge. The magazine described how these courses include requiring students to write their own obituaries, epitaphs, wills, or suicide notes, and to decide how they would prefer to die, have their body disposed of, and who they want for pallbearers.
Unfortunately, parents in Illinois, Michigan and Florida have attributed their sons’ suicides to public school courses in death, dying, or suicide.
Death ed is apparently still taught at Columbine. One student told the Associated Press that shooter Eric Harris was asked to write out his will as part of a class assignment.
Littleton, Colorado has been a focus for many years for all the trendy “edufads” such as Outcome Based Education (OBE). In 1993, parents rebelled against this dumbing-down process and, by a two-to-one vote, elected a “back-to-basics” school board.
The teachers union hit back in the following election and retook control of the Littleton schools. The union was supported by People for the American Way, who used the usual negative slurs, accusing those opposed to OBE of being “fundamentalists” and part of the “religious right.”
Some politicians are using the Columbine tragedy to push their liberal political agenda, such as gun control. That’s obviously not the answer since killers Harris and Klebold violated 18 current federal and state gun control laws that, had they lived, would have kept them locked up for the rest of their lives.
We are paying a terrible price for allowing public school curricula to teach students to create “their own value system” instead of respecting moral laws such as “Thou shalt not kill.” It’s time to overturn the foolish Supreme Court decision that bars the Ten Commandments from public school classrooms.
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There are many petitions on the White House website ie this issue. Add your name to them so that the politicians CANNOT ignore the concerns. Filter by “firearms” https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions
Or Let’s stop pussy footing around and repeal the 2nd amendment
http://wh.gov/RF7C
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And here’s a petition to bring prayer and GOD back into schools: http://signon.org/sign/bring-prayer-and-god
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George Will on more Gun Control…from this morning:
From George Will this morning:
WILL: Yes. And our response is always to think that there’s some defect in the social system or some prompting in the social atmosphere that causes this and, therefore, we assume, we can tailor a law to correct the defect.
The problem is, the law can do three things. It can deter with severe punishments. Of course, we already have lots of deterrents against murder. They can impede the access to public spaces or to weapons. Or, third, the law can monitor and, in some cases, confine people who meet the profile of these people.
The problem with this is, these people are determined, psychotic, and often suicidal. It’s very difficult to deter someone like that or impede. And then when you come to the question of monitoring or confining, you look at the profile. These are often men, young men, young, unmarried men, young men who are socially awkward, and sometimes young, unmarried, socially awkward men who have been diagnosed or even prescribed some kind of psychotropic medicine. The civil liberties and privacy issues involved in trying to monitor people in this not insignificant cohort who fit that profile are insuperable.
In 1996, a man went into a gym class in Scotland, killed 16 5- and 6-year-olds and the teacher. A few years ago in Norway, a young — deranged young man killed, what, 69 people on an island, mostly teenagers. Connecticut has among the toughest gun laws in this country. Didn’t help. Scotland and Norway have very tough gun laws. Didn’t help. So…
we did have a ban — we did have a ban on assault weapons. When we put the ban in place, these incidents did not really decline in a measurable way. And when we took it off, they didn’t increase in a measurable way.
Well, we ought to bring in Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago. Chicago is in an epidemic of violence with young, largely unparented — that is, no father in the home — adolescent males. Now, that’s a problem quite separate from this.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-tragedy-elementary-school/story?id=17985934&page=5#.UM4Roo7qpUQ
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Columbine Caused By
Curriculum, Board
Member Charges
By Bill Scanlon -Denver Rocky Mountain News
Scripps Howard News Service http://www.denver-rmn.com
4-6-00
DENVER – The Columbine High tragedy was caused in part by a curriculum that overemphasizes death and doesn’t teach right from wrong, a Colorado state school board member said in a recent speech.
“When all the kids’ videos are about violence or sex, when kids are allowed and even encouraged to make such videos, what do you think is going to happen with some of these kids?” board member Patti Johnson said Wednesday, amplifying remarks she made in Cincinnati last week.
Her speech in Ohio was titled “The Real Killers at Columbine: A Curricula Gone Bad.”
Johnson said Colorado schools have too many teachers who encourage students to question the values taught at home and who push them to talk about death.
A spokesman for Jefferson County Schools disagreed. “The bigger story is why a state board member is talking about something she has no knowledge of,” Rick Kaufman said.
“Patti joins a list of people across the country who are exploiting the tragedy to their own personal or professional gain,” he said. “They talk about why they think the shooting occurred, what motivated Eric and Dylan to do that, basing it on what they read in the media.”
Johnson is no stranger to controversy. She was the catalyst last year behind a state board of education proclamation that Ritalin and other prescription drugs shouldn’t be used to treat schoolchildren.
She said the drugs Eric Harris was taking before April 20 may have played a part in the rage he and Dylan Klebold worked up to commit the act.
Johnson also said discussions about suicide and death didn’t by themselves cause Harris and Klebold to kill 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves.
But she said schools that don’t teach absolutes of right and wrong, that stress relative truths and that encourage students to find their own values are playing a dangerous game.
“To Harris and Klebold, their decision was a rational one,” she said.
Johnson points to a lifeboat scenario popular in some classrooms, in which six or seven students decide which life is most expendable _ the disabled person, the rich man, the healthy doctor, the pregnant woman.
“Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did their own lifeboat scenario,” Johnson said. “They didn’t like blacks, jocks or Christians.”
Johnson says teachers shouldn’t put students into a position to weigh the relative value of human life, because to her all life is sacred. She maintains that when a suicide survivor gives a talk, some students who never would contemplate suicide become obsessed about it.
Kaufman said Johnson’s contention isn’t backed up by research.
“Certainly, discussions on death and suicide may be appropriate in some venues,” Kaufman said. “Particularly because teen suicide is a topic of concern of educators and students. From a prevention standpoint, discussion can help people understand, absolutely.”
Johnson puts part of the blame on cultural diversity units, which she says too often are so negative that students emerge distrustful.
“They say all this dirt was done to this group in the past _it was always the white man who was evil,” she said. “They never point out how many people died trying to free the slaves. They create more division and create more hate and anger.”
Kaufman said Johnson doesn’t know enough about Columbine to speak with authority about it.
“She was not at Columbine, she was not a part of curriculum development,” Kaufman said.
.
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This is one of the few times when I wholeheartedly agree with Kristof. In my opinion, semi-automatics should be banned, for starters. Momwith a brain’s comments are utter trash.
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Well aren’t you open minded. Maybe prayer and GOD back in the schools would help. ?? Maybe getting kids off of these psychiatric drugs would help?
As a mother who was with my oldest son when he was a baby ALONE in my home when someone tried to break in and found out that when you call the police, amazingly they sometimes do NOT COME, I’d argue against repealing the 2nd amendment. You have NO idea what it is like to be a sitting duck, as a young mother with a baby in your home and being threatened. I will NEVER be a sitting duck again and will fight for my right to defend myself.
If you don’t like guns, don’t own one. For many years I refused to own one because I feared guns. Well I have worked to overcome that fear because I fear my life being threatened again even MORE than a gun in my home.
Now tonight, the PResident will come to Newton surrounded by guards carrying guns. I do not have the funding to hire an armed guard.
Did you notice the shooter picked a school that advertises that they are unarmed and did not choose the local police station OR gun range?
Do you think criminals will not get guns?? Clearly outlawing recreational drugs simply meant, the criminals will get drugs and the law abiding citizens will not. How’s that working for us?
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Columbine Caused By
Curriculum, Board
Member Charges
By Bill Scanlon -Denver Rocky Mountain News
Scripps Howard News Service http://www.denver-rmn.com
4-6-00
DENVER – The Columbine High tragedy was caused in part by a curriculum that overemphasizes death and doesn’t teach right from wrong, a Colorado state school board member said in a recent speech.
“When all the kids’ videos are about violence or sex, when kids are allowed and even encouraged to make such videos, what do you think is going to happen with some of these kids?” board member Patti Johnson said Wednesday, amplifying remarks she made in Cincinnati last week.
Her speech in Ohio was titled “The Real Killers at Columbine: A Curricula Gone Bad.”
Johnson said Colorado schools have too many teachers who encourage students to question the values taught at home and who push them to talk about death.
A spokesman for Jefferson County Schools disagreed. “The bigger story is why a state board member is talking about something she has no knowledge of,” Rick Kaufman said.
“Patti joins a list of people across the country who are exploiting the tragedy to their own personal or professional gain,” he said. “They talk about why they think the shooting occurred, what motivated Eric and Dylan to do that, basing it on what they read in the media.”
Johnson is no stranger to controversy. She was the catalyst last year behind a state board of education proclamation that Ritalin and other prescription drugs shouldn’t be used to treat schoolchildren.
She said the drugs Eric Harris was taking before April 20 may have played a part in the rage he and Dylan Klebold worked up to commit the act.
Johnson also said discussions about suicide and death didn’t by themselves cause Harris and Klebold to kill 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves.
But she said schools that don’t teach absolutes of right and wrong, that stress relative truths and that encourage students to find their own values are playing a dangerous game.
“To Harris and Klebold, their decision was a rational one,” she said.
Johnson points to a lifeboat scenario popular in some classrooms, in which six or seven students decide which life is most expendable _ the disabled person, the rich man, the healthy doctor, the pregnant woman.
“Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did their own lifeboat scenario,” Johnson said. “They didn’t like blacks, jocks or Christians.”
Johnson says teachers shouldn’t put students into a position to weigh the relative value of human life, because to her all life is sacred. She maintains that when a suicide survivor gives a talk, some students who never would contemplate suicide become obsessed about it.
Kaufman said Johnson’s contention isn’t backed up by research.
“Certainly, discussions on death and suicide may be appropriate in some venues,” Kaufman said. “Particularly because teen suicide is a topic of concern of educators and students. From a prevention standpoint, discussion can help people understand, absolutely.”
Johnson puts part of the blame on cultural diversity units, which she says too often are so negative that students emerge distrustful.
“They say all this dirt was done to this group in the past _it was always the white man who was evil,” she said. “They never point out how many people died trying to free the slaves. They create more division and create more hate and anger.”
Kaufman said Johnson doesn’t know enough about Columbine to speak with authority about it.
“She was not at Columbine, she was not a part of curriculum development,” Kaufman said.
.
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Wow! Values of Clarification “curriculum” hasn’t been in MI schools for 20+years. Neither has stress reduction because conservative Christians have banned these ideas. I have students of all religions and no religion in my classroom. Just whose religion is the right one?
Yet, guns have been increasingly prevent in my classroom. I have to continually tell my students to stop using their hands as guns. Pencils are tools not toys and we are watching the video to learn about this animal’s habitat not trying to pretend shoot it.
Perhaps our media culture which glorifies violence has more to do with it than the 15% of time a child is in school.
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Good points Lynette, however moral relativism is alive and will in our schools. I suspect that “banning” of these ideas maybe a bit harsh. As a mom, I’m sick to death of these
“ideas” being used on kids like they are guinea pigs. When the Board member acknowledges a SERIOUS problem with the curriculum, MAYBE we should consider what is going on in these schools.
I agree that the media culture that glorifies violence is an EXCELLENT point and one to seriously consider.
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Maybe….MOMS know best:
‘I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother’: A Mom’s Perspective On The Mental Illness Conversation In America
Posted: 12/16/2012 9:15 am EST | Updated: 12/16/2012 2:34 pm EST
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Written by Liza Long, republished from The Blue Review
Friday’s horrific national tragedy — the murder of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut — has ignited a new discussion on violence in America. In kitchens and coffee shops across the country, we tearfully debate the many faces of violence in America: gun culture, media violence, lack of mental health services, overt and covert wars abroad, religion, politics and the way we raise our children. Liza Long, a writer based in Boise, says it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.
While every family’s story of mental illness is different, and we may never know the whole of the Lanza’s story, tales like this one need to be heard — and families who live them deserve our help.
Three days before 20 year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.
“I can wear these pants,” he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.
“They are navy blue,” I told him. “Your school’s dress code says black or khaki pants only.”
“They told me I could wear these,” he insisted. “You’re a stupid bitch. I can wear whatever pants I want to. This is America. I have rights!”
“You can’t wear whatever pants you want to,” I said, my tone affable, reasonable. “And you definitely cannot call me a stupid bitch. You’re grounded from electronics for the rest of the day. Now get in the car, and I will take you to school.”
I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.
A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan — they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.
That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn’t have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.
We still don’t know what’s wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work.
At the start of seventh grade, Michael was accepted to an accelerated program for highly gifted math and science students. His IQ is off the charts. When he’s in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who. He’s in a good mood most of the time. But when he’s not, watch out. And it’s impossible to predict what will set him off.
Several weeks into his new junior high school, Michael began exhibiting increasingly odd and threatening behaviors at school. We decided to transfer him to the district’s most restrictive behavioral program, a contained school environment where children who can’t function in normal classrooms can access their right to free public babysitting from 7:30-1:50 Monday through Friday until they turn 18.
The morning of the pants incident, Michael continued to argue with me on the drive. He would occasionally apologize and seem remorseful. Right before we turned into his school parking lot, he said, “Look, Mom, I’m really sorry. Can I have video games back today?”
“No way,” I told him. “You cannot act the way you acted this morning and think you can get your electronic privileges back that quickly.”
His face turned cold, and his eyes were full of calculated rage. “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. “I’m going to jump out of this car right now and kill myself.”
That was it. After the knife incident, I told him that if he ever said those words again, I would take him straight to the mental hospital, no ifs, ands, or buts. I did not respond, except to pull the car into the opposite lane, turning left instead of right.
“Where are you taking me?” he said, suddenly worried. “Where are we going?”
“You know where we are going,” I replied.
“No! You can’t do that to me! You’re sending me to hell! You’re sending me straight to hell!”
I pulled up in front of the hospital, frantically waiving for one of the clinicians who happened to be standing outside. “Call the police,” I said. “Hurry.”
Michael was in a full-blown fit by then, screaming and hitting. I hugged him close so he couldn’t escape from the car. He bit me several times and repeatedly jabbed his elbows into my rib cage. I’m still stronger than he is, but I won’t be for much longer.
The police came quickly and carried my son screaming and kicking into the bowels of the hospital. I started to shake, and tears filled my eyes as I filled out the paperwork — “Were there any difficulties with… at what age did your child… were there any problems with.. has your child ever experienced.. does your child have…”
At least we have health insurance now. I recently accepted a position with a local college, giving up my freelance career because when you have a kid like this, you need benefits. You’ll do anything for benefits. No individual insurance plan will cover this kind of thing.
For days, my son insisted that I was lying — that I made the whole thing up so that I could get rid of him. The first day, when I called to check up on him, he said, “I hate you. And I’m going to get my revenge as soon as I get out of here.”
By day three, he was my calm, sweet boy again, all apologies and promises to get better. I’ve heard those promises for years. I don’t believe them anymore.
On the intake form, under the question, “What are your expectations for treatment?” I wrote, “I need help.”
And I do. This problem is too big for me to handle on my own. Sometimes there are no good options. So you just pray for grace and trust that in hindsight, it will all make sense.
I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am James Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.
According to Mother Jones, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. Of these, 43 of the killers were white males, and only one was a woman. Mother Jones focused on whether the killers obtained their guns legally (most did). But this highly visible sign of mental illness should lead us to consider how many people in the U.S. live in fear, like I do.
When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”
I don’t believe my son belongs in jail. The chaotic environment exacerbates Michael’s sensitivity to sensory stimuli and doesn’t deal with the underlying pathology. But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise — in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population.
With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill — Rikers Island, the LA County Jail and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nation’s largest treatment centers in 2011.
No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”
I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.
God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.
(Originally published at The Anarchist Soccer Mom.)
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This makes more sense. 30 round magazines are really not necessary.
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