Investors Daily Business has a story about the extreme goals of Obama appointee picks. In this case it is his [OBAMA!] U.S. Surgeon Generals choice:
Second Amendment: The administration’s choice to be the nation’s doctor in chief views gun ownership as a public health issue and not a constitutional right, and wants doctors to query patients about guns in their homes.
Cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal’s champion, Debo Adegbile, President Obama’s defeated pick to be assistant attorney general for the civil rights division at the Department of Justice, is not the only radical on President Obama’s wish list.
That list includes gun-grabbing advocate Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy, Obama’s nominee to be U.S. Surgeon General.
Nose In Air
Another guy who seems like he can tell ordinary citizens what to do and what not to do.
Murthy is the 36-year-old president and co-founder of the anti-gun group Doctors for America, which advocates ObamaCare and gun control laws.
His group, which has been dubbed “Docs vs. Glocks,” has pushed Congress to ban “assault” weapons and “high-capacity” magazines.
He also wants to spend more tax dollars on more research to prove that fewer guns mean a lower crime rate, despite the fact that a number of reputable studies prove the opposite.
[….]
The call for universal background checks, including at all gun shows, ignores that the guns Adam Lanza used at Sandy Hook were legally purchased and registered by his mother.
Just such a gun-free zone policy is why the Aurora, Colo., shooter carefully chose the theater he did. And unlike the mall in Clackamass, Ore., where a concealed-carry holder prevented a massacre, there was no one in Aurora to shoot back.
At Sandy Hook, 27-year-old teacher Victoria Soto hid students in a bathroom or closet and died trying to protect them from shooter Lanza. If she, the principal or any of the other adults at the school had access to a firearm, things might have turned out differently.
A recent Department of Justice study found only 0.7% of guns were purchased at gun shows and only 20% of guns used in crimes were purchased anywhere. Chicago street gangs, which are responsible for most of that city’s homicides, are unlikely to line up for gun permits.
The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which did nothing to prevent Columbine, was largely based on a weapon’s cosmetic appearance, not on its capability for carnage.
Another story in the horror was a girl who had the wherewithal to act deceased in the middle of a blood bath!
An unnamed six-year old Sandy Hook survivor played dead in a pile of 15 corpses of her classmates last Friday. When the the shooter, Adam Lanza, left the classroom, she then ran out of the school “covered from head to toe with blood.”
Jim Solomon, a pastor close to the girl’s family, told ABC News that her first words to her mother were, “Mommy, I’m OK but all my friends are dead.”
“Somehow in that moment, by God’s grace, [she] was able to act as she was already deceased,” the pastor said.
The girl “waited until she believed it was safe hiding among the corpses, then ran from the building covered with blood from head to toe.”
Gun control advocates just need to look at Virginia. Between 2006-2011 gun sales went up by 73% and at the same time gun-related violent crimes fell 24%. Virginia Commonwealth University professor Thomas R. Baker, who specializes in research methods and criminology, said this proves that more guns do not in fact cause more violence.
“While there is a wealth of academic literature attempting to demonstrate the relationship between guns and crime, a very simple and intuitive demonstration of the numbers seems to point away from the premise that more guns leads to more crime, at least in Virginia,” said Baker.
Baker examined six years of data from the Virginia Firearms Transaction Center that broke down the number of gun transactions for every federally licensed firearm dealer in Virginia. Background checks went up from 243,251 in 2006 to 420,829 in 2011. In 2006 there were 23,431 violent crimes in Virginia and dropped to 18,196 in 2011.
Handgun purchases increased 112% between 2006-2011 and violent crimes committed by people using handguns dropped by 22%.
Guns are a major part of Switzerland’s culture. Instead of a standing army they have a militia. Men between the ages of 20 and 30 are put into the militia and undergo military and weapons training, which means Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world. Yet, Switzerland has a low crime rate. In 2010 there were only 40 gun homicides.
Which supports the idea I intimated on my FaceBook the day of the attack:
I am even madder at Mayor Bloomberg (NY) and Mayor Menino (Boston) are using this opportunity to politicize a horror. I was listening to Larry Elder talk to a security expert, he made the point that our banks, federal buildings, many corporations, and the like have armed security. But our schools are soft targets. He said “you don’t think a bunch of terrorists are putting two-and-two together. Twin Tower type attacks… hard. Walking into a school… easy.”
[…]
If only 5% or 10% of the staff were trained and were able to carry concealed firearms… this would not have been so tragic. But crazy lefties are wanting to restrict what can only help in this type of situation. Crazy.
[…]
I watched 60-Minutes and the nurse that lived through the ordeal hid in the closet for 4-hours… and she said she felt helpless. No duh! Even having a 22 in her purse (or other faculty) and shooting out his kneecaps would have stopped countless deaths. And she wouldn’t have felt helpless.
Gateway Pundit shares this story of the Police Chief saying “its time to arm staff:”
St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch says after the shooting last week in Newtown it is time to arm the teachers. Local KMOX reported:
St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch says it is time to talk about arming civilian school personnel following Friday’s massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, comparing it to arming airline pilots after September 11, 2001.
“I see it no differently,” he said. “Pilots have been armed now for many many years, we’ve not had another hijacking and the issue is, for the bad guy, he doesn’t know which airplane he’s getting on, if the pilot is armed or not.”
Fitch said the killing will not be stopped by legislation or laws. “If there’s somebody that’s really hellbent on doing something like this, they’re not going to care what the law is.”
PORTLAND — Nick Meli is emotionally drained. The 22-year-old was at Clackamas Town Center with a friend and her baby when a masked man opened fire.
“I heard three shots and turned and looked at Casey and said, ‘are you serious?,'” he said.
The friend and baby hit the floor. Meli, who has a concealed carry permit, positioned himself behind a pillar.
“He was working on his rifle,” said Meli. “He kept pulling the charging handle and hitting the side.”
The break in gunfire allowed Meli to pull out his own gun, but he never took his eyes off the shooter.
“As I was going down to pull, I saw someone in the back of the Charlotte move, and I knew if I fired and missed, I could hit them,” he said.
Meli took cover inside a nearby store. He never pulled the trigger. He stands by that decision.
“I’m not beating myself up cause I didn’t shoot him,” said Meli. “I know after he saw me, I think the last shot he fired was the one he used on himself.”
This shooter saw an armed citizen, and took his life. Similarly, when Adam Lanza heard the first responders coming, he turned the weapon on himself.
Another recent example for the record books here at RPT, via Free Republic:
Two people are hospitalized after a gunman chased terrified restaurant patrons into the lobby of the Santikos Mayan 14 movie theater during a showing of “The Hobbit” last night, 1200 WOAI news reprots.
Police detectives and sheriff’s investigators say the incident started in the China Garden Restaurant on Southwest Military Drive about 9 PM Sunday, when an employee of the restaurant walked in looking for a woman.
When the woman, who officials say is also a restaurant employee, wasn’t there, the man pulled a gun and attempted to open fire in the restaurant but his weapon jammed.
“It started at the restaurant and then went into the parking lot and then into the movie theater,” Deputy Lou Antu told 1200 WOAI news.
Investigators say some of the terrified restaurant patrons poured into the movie theater, and the gunman followed.
He opened fire, shooting one man in the chest, before Antu says an off duty sheriff’s deputy who was working security at the theater shot him once.
In February 2012, Connecticut Senate Bill 452 (SB452) was put forward to remedy the fact that Connecticut was one of less than ten states in the U.S. to lack an “assisted outpatient treatment” (AOT) law.
But the bill was passed to Connecticut’s Joint Committee on Judiciary in March, where it quietly faded away because of opposition by those who viewed it as “egregious” and “outrageously discriminatory.”
[…]
Why didn’t the legislation pass? Because the ACLU and other “civil liberties” groups and individuals cried foul. The ACLU in particular said 452 would “infringe on patients’ privacy rights by expanding [the circle of] who can medicate individuals without their consent.” They also said it infringed on patient rights by reducing the number of doctors’ opinions necessary to commit someone to institutionalization.
To be clear, no one can know that the passage of SB452 would have stopped Lanza for sure, as there’s no guarantee a doctor or mental specialist would have seen the warning signs in time to institutionalize him for treatment.
However, it is worth noting that proponents of SB452 had the prevention of situations like Friday’s shooting in mind when they tried to provide Connecticut residents with another layer of protection from the mentally ill (and criminal).
….read more…
Gateway Punditbrings up a couple of stories that really find their genesis in leftist groups decades ago. Similar to my conversation with the Michael Berryman (actor), we see the hands of far left groups making impossible health related options for these sick individuals… even helping cause deaths in the wake of the many homeless (mentally ill) people on the streets:
Months before the Newtown massacre far left groups defeated a Connecticut mental health protections law. Counter Contempt reported:
Here’s a fact you might not know – Connecticut is one of only SIX states in the U.S. that doesn’t have a type of “assisted outpatient treatment” (AOT) law (sometimes referred to as “involuntary outpatient treatment”). There’s no one standard for these types of laws, but (roughly speaking) these are laws that allow for people with mental illness to be forcibly treated BEFORE they commit a serious crime. Whereas previous legal standards held that the mentally ill cannot be institutionalized or medicated until they harm someone or themselves, or until they express an immediate intent to do so, AOT laws (again, roughly speaking) allow for preventative institutionalization or forced medication (I highly recommend reading the data cited in the link I provided in this paragraph, especially regarding what is known as “first episode psychosis”).
AOT laws vary state-by-state, and often bear the name of a person murdered by an untreated mentally ill person (“Kendra’s Law” in New York, “Laura’s Law” in California, etc.).
In my conversation with Berryman, I pointed out that the blame often associated with Reagan for this is in fact deserves to be laid at the feet of the ACLU and the liberal/progressive Democrats of that day and now:
The people who ‘liberated’ the inmates tended to be on the opposite end of the political spectrum. In fact, it was the ACLU who provided legal representation to force the VA to release these patients.
[…]
The ACLU was the main catalyst behind fighting for the rights of these people to be free, even the freedom to live in alleyways and eat from trash cans. Anything but a conservative or Republican institution, they were one of the main thrusts behind both California and later a nationwide release of patients. They [the ACLU], have long heldthat involuntary institutionalization of an unwilling person, even if mentally or physically incapable, is the worst of two evils.
It actually very hard to force people with severe mental diseases to be treated because of a range of reforms pushed by progressives starting in the 60′s:
1)Ronald David Laing, a Scottish Psychiatrist, In the 60′s put forth the foundation of the Anti-Psychiatry movement. He maintained that schizophrenia was “a theory not a fact”. The popularity of Laing’s theories is blamed for decline in students entering the psychology profession. 2) President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 Community Mental Health Centers Act accelerated the trend toward deinstitutionalizationwith the establishment of a network of community mental health centers and changes in laws regarding commitment. 3)Kenneth Kesey, wrote “One Flew over the Cukoo’s Nest”based in part on Laing’s thinking (and his own intensive use of drugs). “Kesey did not believe that these patients were insane, rather that society had pushed them out because they did not fit the conventional ideas of how people were supposed to act and behave.” The Book,play, and later the movie, portrayed a anti-psychiatry philosophy leading to a public displeasure with residential mental facilities resulting in further deinstitutionalization policies. 4) Deinstitutioanlization led to many legal and structural changes. American public mental hospital patients declined from more than 550,000 in 1955 to fewer than 40,000 at present. The displaced patients now represent 30-50% of the homeless populations.
As a result of Laing, Kennedy, Kesey and public efforts to transform the mental health care system to be more humane, to characterize mentally ill people as “Just thinking differently”, and characterizing mental health care as some form of evil, we now have a system that makes it virtually impossible to get folks like Loughner the care they need.
Deinstitutionalization policies driven by “do good” liberals and the federal government put focus on limited bad acts. Kesey wrote a story based on his LSD induced observations in one VA mental hospital. Once his story was put into film, his small example falsely characterized the bulk of mental health care as dehumanizing and made it impossible to force the Laughners of the world to get treatment.
Critics will focus on gun control after today’s school massacre. The focus should be on failed liberal policies that excuse rather than assist extremely dysfunctional individuals.
So again, the people who say they are for the “little-man” are in fact hurting everyone, even our kids.
