I can't understand being so angry at my mother that I shoot her in the face several times as she sleeps. I can't understand it, but just for the sake of argument let's say I can. I mean, spouses shoot spouses, kids have definitely shot parents before. It's happened, so just because I can't understand it, it happens. So, even though I can't understand it, I can speculate that rage might drive it. A temporary emotional state that seems "right" at the time, but I can't understand that temporary emotional state leading to the planning of more killing.
My ability to comprehend what that fucker in Newtown did ends, now, but let's, just for the sake of argument, say that I can see why I can understand why the next bright idea to pop in his head was to drive to the local elementary school and kill a bunch of kids. That took time, planning, time to think. "Hey, I'm going to prison for this. I may as well take a bunch of kids with me."
I start to feel a little sick to my stomach at this point, but it gets worse.
It's time to interject something. My heart goes out to the first responders and medical examiners. They'll carry the results with them the rest of their lives. Imagine walking into a classroom full of cute little kids, dressed in cute little clothes, some of them mutilated beyond recognition by multiple bullet wounds, all lying in what must have been a huge pool of blood. Imagine being in a morgue, receiving those 20 small bodies, resigning yourself to cutting them all up to remove the bullets as evidence. You KNOW what killed them. It's not an autopsy. It's recovering evidence. And the killer's dead. I can imagine asking myself "Why?", can't you?
I wouldn't trade places with those people, the kids (who's last minutes must have been horrifying), the first responders, the medical examiners, for anything. Nothing could get me to do that.
OK, so I'm the shooter. I've shot mom in the face. I know I'll be caught, so I somehow have rationalized driving to the school and killing some kids before I"m caught or killed. I've broken in, and I'm in a classroom with a bunch of angelic faces staring at me. I pull the trigger.
Several of those cute faces begin to explode in a spray of blood and flesh as the bodies fall to the floor, limp.
Here's what I truly can't understand;
HOW COULD HE KEEP FIRING?
Given what I wrote above about how the first responders and medical examiners must have felt, how in God's name could that bastard keep killing kids after, what? ... 5, 10, 15 were lying on the floor in a growing pool of blood?
It's beyond my understanding how anyone could do this.
Having said all of this, I'm now sure I'm not a liberal. Maybe starting now, maybe I never was. Maybe, no make that I'm sure, I've always been a strong supporter of the Constitution.
Because I watched the paroxysm of rage and frustration after 9-11 turn into a rollback of our rights. And now I'm watching the paroxysm of rage and frustration turn EVERY liberal blog into a call for the rollback of our rights.
Once we give up our rights, we NEVER get them back. The Patriot Act is still in effect, and (IMO) it violates the 4th amendment. I'd like to overturn that act, on constitutional grounds. Get the SCOTUS to rule that it's unconstitutional, once and for all.
And if, in response to the horrible crime in Newtown, Congress chooses to pass another unconstitutional law (I'm looking at you, again, DiFi), banning citizens from owning infantry style weapons, I hope they'll (eventually) overturn that law, too.
If you have enough money, you can buy a tank.
If you have enough money, you can buy a fighter jet.
But we can't trust a (poorer, but otherwise law-abiding) citizen with a 13 round clip?
Seriously?
This is the liberal "solution"?
Seriously?
How about confiscating all of the semi-automatic weapons?
Thanks a lot. I'm not going to be hiding in the woods to "protect" my own semi-automatic weapons from confiscation, or because I'll have finally agreed that the U.S. government has finally gone too far and it's time to go all "Red Dawn" on their ass. I'll be hiding from the fucking WAR that people that think "Red Dawn" WILL START.
There are answers to this. "Sensible" gun laws have nothing to do with it.
Give the parents of "troubled" adult children more power over their lives after they turn 18. And, while we're at it, STOP medicating our kids whenever they show the slightest sign of not being ready for the corporate job machine.
It's unpleasant to think of, but we have domestic terrorists in our midst. GUARD the places with the "highest value", like schools (and malls and movie theaters). Have highly trained people there to deal with "potential" terrorists. We have armed guards where I work, and I"m comforted by them, not scared of them. One of them is named "Jay". There's a chick that keeps hitting on him. She's cute. I keep wanting to ask him about that, but it's uncomfortable asking someone about it. Jay has a gun strapped to his hip. I don't, and can't. It's prohibited. Even with a concealed weapon permit.
We'll need more metal detectors and densitometers. "If you want to come in here, you have to leave your fucking gun at home." It works.
But stop believing the fantasy that getting rid of 50,000.000 (I have no idea, but there are 300,000,000 guns in America, so a substantial number of them are machine guns and semi-automatics) semi-automatic guns is the answer. Stop believing that high capacity clips (there have to be more of them than there are guns, I personally own 6, and I'm hardly a "gun nut" or a member of "the gun culture") can somehow, magically, be "eliminated".
Chances are the SCOTUS will rule that the right to keep and bear arms is rooted in the constitution, so any law that passes will have a limited lifetime, if it's overly restrictive. That's even if we somehow manage to elect a LIBERAL court.
I understand the events of last Friday were painful, but let's look at what we CAN do, not what we WANT do to. Is Daily Kos still the "reality based community".