“Columbine, 1999. Virginia Tech, 2007. Sandy Hook, 2012. San Bernardino, 2015. Pulse Nightclub, 2016. These tragic incidents share one thing in common: they could have been prevented had there been stricter gun control laws . . . By increasing regulations on guns and limiting the purchase of firearms to those who are mentally stable, we significantly reduce the risks of innocent children being massacred by unknown shooters and babies killing either themselves or their families.” – Amherst Regional High School Junior Won-Ho Lee in Gun issue continues to haunt Americans [via gazettenet.com]
The author of the paragraph is woefully ignorant.
Columbine and sandy Hook shooters stole their firearms, San Bernandio was Sudden Jihadist Syndrome (terrorism), Orlando was gay on gay violence. Only VA Tech might have been stopped by more gun control, Lack of a firearm usually results in a different sort of weapon being used.
Orlando was not gay-on-gay violence. The FBI found no evidence of gay behaviorby Mateen. It was just a diversion to distract people from an Islamic terrorist attack and like Big Gay always does, use a tragedy to advance their agenda.
Homosexuality is not defined exclusively by behavior, any more than heterosexuality is. There are millions of people who are gay or straight who also happen to be virgins. Many of them have also engaged in no interpersonal amorous behavior.
Sexuality overall is a blend of behavior, orientation, and self-identification. It’s the presence of a trait, not the absence of it, that defines the person. A person can be homosexual, despite not identifying as gay or ever engaging in that behavior, if they are oriented that way and are attracted to members of the same sex.
A total non sequitur Big Gay talking point.
Mateen was not gay. End of story.
Big Gay talking point…my chuckle for the day. Question if I watch Rue Paul and fine great humor watching grown men cat fight and cackle like hens during a bunko night, does that make me gay and a secret Milo lover? Not that he would have an OWFG.
Just wondering out loud?
You know what sounds totally gay?
Saying things like “Big Gay” and getting all aflutter about some mean ol’ (nonexistent) Big Gay Agenda out to hold you down and make you do things you would totes never do unless forced! Twice!
What evidence do you have that Mateen wasn’t gay? I’d like to see the recording of the interview you did with him where his sexuality was discussed.
Your logical fallacy is:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof
The Virginia Tech shooter passed a background check to purchase his handgun prior to the shooting. He, like the Aurora theater shooter, had previous mental issues that went unreported therefore was not marked as a prohibited person. Never mind that the Virginia Tech campus is a gun-free zone as all firearms are supposed to be checked and stored at the campus police station.
The Second Amendment says, concisely, “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
This is a blanket prohibition against the government deciding who may or may not own or bear arms, any arms. It includes no provision for the government (at any level) to decide who is or is not prohibited, much less set a standard of mental health or competence.
Remember the phrase “Liberalism is a mental disorder”? How about a turn-around to “Conservatism is a mental disorder.” If you allow the government to set the standard of mental disease and then to deny their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected rights based on that government standard then there is no way to stop the government from putting any political opponent on that list.
Consider that in the face of tyranny, when we would most need our arms, the tyrannical government would most certainly classify any dissident as mentally ill and/or a felon.
Per the Second Amendment (SCOTUS be damned) there can be no such animal as a “Prohibited Person”.
The phrase “Liberalism is a mental disorder.” itself is pretty short-sighted when you consider that 2A itself was an idea of classical liberalism. As it is, “liberal” and “conservative” are entirely subjective concepts.
The Virginia Tech shooter’s mental illnese wasn’t simply “unreported”, as in his shrink knew but never told anyone. That shooter had actually been found by a court to be a danger to himself and was sent to a psychiatric facility for treatment.
Therefore, he had been adjudicated as a mental defective and had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility, either of which would render him ineligible to possess a firearm. The entire background check system failed. That’s more than just “went unreported.”
Understand, I don’t mean this as a criticism of you. I just want to illustrate fully the futility of feel good background checks.
I think it is important to add that merely “fixing” the reporting system will do little. Let’s imagine that the Virginia Tech shooter’s “t’s crossed and I’s dotted” “mental defective” state were instantly reported to NICS. Would all be well with the background-check scheme? That is one instance that MIGHT have been prevented; but, more likely, it would have only been inhibited. He likely would have gotten a gun elsewhere. More importantly, how many of the other incidents, whether mass or singular, been prevented/inhibited?
Should we entertain the idea that if we tighten-the-screws enough we will prevent/inhibit the dangerously-mentally-ill from acquiring arms? What would that look like? Requiring mental-health practitioners systematically report all their patients whom they diagnose as positive for any mental illness? Requiring all medical practitioners to systematically report any patient they SUSPECT is mentally ill? Requiring teachers, managers, etc. to report those under their supervision to report mere SUSPICIONS. Suppose we had done all that; how many gun murderers might we have prevented/inhibited? What would that cost in adjudication of claims of mental illness? Could we afford clogging our courts each time a Tom reports that he thinks Dick is crazy?
And I have to say again, background checks have never accomplished anything whatsoever, other than spending other people’s money. They were never intended to do anything, only to be a stepping stone when they did not work, first to UBC (requiring registration) and then to confiscation.
Our situation now is likely not an accident, and not the result of stupidity, other than thinking that confiscation would be a positive thing. But confiscation is clearly the only goal, otherwise laws would be enforced!
One Hung-Lo here couldn’t be be in much more of an echo chamber. The Amherst in question is Amherst, Mass, the home of those bastions of free-thought Amherst and Hampshire Colleges and of course UMass-Amherst, the home of “Trigglypuff”, and, sadly, my alma mater. Not much further away are three of that uniquely American bit of “good” separate but equalness, the women’s college (Smith, Mt. Holyoke, and Elms).
“The author of the paragraph is woefully ignorant”
The author is in junior high school. At the age of 12 or 13, the brain is so far from fully developed that following a logical argument is impossible. Therefore the entire statement is ridiculous, but the stupidest thing going on is the assignment to such a student of such a paper. The teacher should be fired, first for the assignment, and then fired *again* for distributing something so meaningless to the press.
It would have been just as meaningful if it had, instead, stated that these tragedies could have been avoided, if only the authorities allowed unicorns and rainbows to roam free, and to spread their music to the masses. It suggested nothing but magic, not a hint as to how this magic was to be accomplished. Thus, it is a simple answer, because it is a simplistic answer.
Naw, I checked him out…he’s well on his way to academia land
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkzWyOaS8kU
“These tragic incidents…could have been prevented had there been stricter gun control laws”
Quite the claim, kid. I noticed you didn’t provide any actual facts or sound logic to back it up.
Relax, it’s someone in Junior High.
Actually a junior in high school, I believe. Almost ready to go out into the world after public school as a fully brainwashed leftist.
Dyslexia get me every time. 🙂
Don’t be so sure. The accompanying photo is of a junior high school, something was reported wrong.
Oh Columbine. You mean the shooter who left a dozen or so empty 10 round magazines? That kind of failed “gun control” in a “gun free” “gun control” zone?
How did that work out?
This sort of celebrates the brain-washed, uninformed product of contemporary American Middle Schools. It also makes an ominous statement about what kind of people will influence/shape America’s future.
When I went to school it was quite common, very common in fact, to see shotguns and rifles hanging in the rear windows of pickups on the parking lot.
Strange, there were no school massacres in those days.
And if there were more unicorns and rainbows, we would all be happy. Or not.
Why do so many “issues” brought up by the Left either have binary choices (nobody has guns or everybody has guns) or the solution(s) has (have) only one side (restrict guns so that bad people won’t get them)? A less than stellar analogy might be: we must restrict the size and allowable speed of motor vehicles to prevent or reduce injuries in accidents. It’s the only way. It’s for the children. Etc. What has been done is to improve vehicles safety features because we know that no matter how hard we try, auto accidents will happen. Just saying’.
Alinsky, “Orlando was gay on gay violence.” That seemed more like Muslim on infidel violence, but the point is somewhat moot.
It was the much more common, “armed on unarmed violence”.
Well… it worked for France.
Norway and Tunisia too!
There are no studies that show a statistically significant correlation between mental illness and propensity to violence. In other words, people who are not mentally ill committ violence at just about the same rate as people who are mentally ill.
And people who are not “mentally ill” when they bought their firearm(s) could snap tomorrow.
Either way it’s a red herring argument. There is no provision in the 2A for the government to set such a standard nor enforce it.
I get that “mental illness” has been used as an excuse by virtually every corrupt regime ever to discredit, imprison, and even exterminate its critics. Still, it works because there really is such a thing as crazy.
I also get the whole “if they can’t be trusted with a gun, then they can’t be trusted with their freedom” bit, too. I’m not disagreeing with that.
What I am saying is that if you keep defending wholesale the right of bat crap crazy people to run around with guns, you’re apt to find yourself not only discredited, but disarmed, as well.
It matters not if you believe bat shit crazy people should have firearms, there are people who are determined to disarm you regardless of what you think.
Jonathan,
Since Progressives love to use the “social utility” angle, let us apply that standard to the subject of mental illness and criminal use of firearms.
How many thousands/millions of people have governments deemed mentally ill (whether labeled something along the lines of “deplorables” or literally “mentally ill”) as justification for marginalization/elimination (via deprivation of rights, imprisonment, and/or execution)? Contrast: how many dozens of victims have truly mentally ill people killed in mass murder events?
Wisdom instructs us to employ classic risk management. The risk of a person who is truly mentally ill attacking someone in our nation is very high. And the consequences are a few dead victims. The risk of a government attacking the masses is low. And the consequences are catastrophic. Prudence dictates that we err on the side to prevent a catastrophic outcome.
Perhaps even more interesting, the previous risk analysis has a hidden gem: a huge reason that the risk is so low that a government would attack the masses in our nation is precisely because so many of the masses are armed! If almost everyone was unarmed, the risk of a government attacking the masses increases exponentially.
You are thinking of *adjudged mentally ill*, anybody who goes out and deliberately murders strangers is *most definitely* mentally ill, crazy as a bedbug. Mental hospitals are filled to the brim with people who are nowhere near as crazy!
And if you think you are somehow serving your religion, that doesn’t change a thing, if you are deliberately murdering strangers, you are *NUTS*!
When will we finally wake up and make murder illegal? Since criminals follow the law, passing laws against murder should stop mass shooters.
Unless they mount a successful insanity defense.
Orlando should have been the death blow to the narrative about “limiting the purchase of firearms to those who are mentally stable”. Mateen was twice vetted by the FBI, he held a special license as a private security guard and was cleared to work as security in a courthouse. He came with a glowing letter of recommendation from local law enforcement. He had been rubber-stamped “mentally stable” by various levels of government six ways from Sunday.
Yeas DaveL. Don’t forget it was EZ to see he was a moose-lim nutjob jihadist too. I was surprised but not shocked all the gay shite they hung on Omer. As in Nice he could have mowed down more with a truck…
Reads like a high school assignment with about as much information and references. We can all applaud young Won-Ho Lee’s efforts to make a meaningful contribution to a subject he has little knowledge of other than a Google search.
Or he doesn’t believe a word of it and just wrote what he was pretty sure would get an “A” from the teacher.
I wonder how much of a Google search he did.
It always amazes me how lazy people are when they hit the net for info. That goes for students and, especially, op ed writers.
Ranger Rick, speaking of High School, When I was a child….Socialized Education wasn’t widely taught, yet (Atlas Shrugged was still a recommended book). Compare that to current Common Core teachings!
Socialized education?
When all the kids go to a school that is a government entity, paid for by tax dollars, you have socialized education. In other words, our educational system is the most pervasive example of socialism in the U.S.
An opinion piece written by a child. No problem, except that we have a generation of children brainwashed to think that rights belong to the collective, and not the individual.
…we have a generation of childish Liberals brainwashed to think that rights are bestowed by government and belong to the collective, not the individual.
FIFY
Sounds good.
And if someone was able to prove that strict “sex control” would virtually eliminate rape, would that justify forcing all teens and adults to register themselves and to pass background checks before the state graciously allows them to engage in consensual sex? Note that, under such a system, everyone would have to pass a background check every time they wanted to engage in consensual sex and anyone who had a mental health history which failed the background check would not be able to legally engage in consensual sex.
When we put background checks and mental health screening in those terms, it should be even more obvious how truly offensive and ineffective background checks and mental health screening are.
We now live in an age where young people don’t know how to fix things and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are satisfied with internet, smart phone, a girlfriend on standby and mom’s basement.
Folks the real fear is young people facing the insignificance of their lives and the horror being force to adopt the gun to protect it. Me thinks it’s too much to bare.
Lee is everything we’ve come to expect from the American education system. Kudos, teachers and administrators. You’ve created yet another high-functioning idiot.
Name the law. What would have worked?
I’ll be waiting. I’ve yet to hear one.Anywhere. Ever.
“…they could have been prevented had there been stricter gun control laws ”
Nope. Not even a little bit.
Is “Won-Ho Lee” related to “Won-Hong Lo”?
That’s a powerful statement that kid makes. I would be interested in seeing his proof he used to come to that conclusion. Absolutisms like that needs to be accompanied by equally solid facts.
France had more people murdered in public mass killings in 2015 than the US has had during 7 years of the Obama administration. 400ish in France compared to 500ish for the US. Frances population is also almost 5 times larger than the US population. These people need to chew on that before spewing their nonsense.
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