We watched in horror last week as the news unfolded for us what may have been one of the most shocking and unbelievable mass shootings in modern history here in America. If you were like me, you raged on the inside, thinking about the loss of those innocents. You became ill either physically or in your soul. You could not fathom or understand the depths of depravity and monsterousness of the perpetrator of this crime. It was nearly unbelievable that some mentally unstable cuckoo would murder his own mother to get to a supply of weapons so he could go on to kill children in a school. Then those mother#$%^&%$# libtards got their hands on it and started politicizing this tragedy before we could even finish processing what happened; even before we had all of the facts.
It started on twitter and the leftist media, talking heads calling for the banning of guns, the limits of the second amendment, etc. It moved to brain-dead politicians and movie stars, morning talk show hosts, and a number of unqualified, uneducated, and unsympathetic people. What was that line Rahm was so fond of, “Never waste a crisis.” Well here were these people out there calling for more gun control. Guess what, you’re all #$%^& morons, every single one of you who think more gun laws will stop things like this. I’ll break your argument right now.
Did Lanza get the guns he used legally? No? Okay, that makes him a criminal who broke gun laws to commit a crime. Your argument is broken. Wait? If there were tougher gun laws he wouldn’t have been able to get them because his mother wouldn’t have had them? Really, a man who showed no trepidation in murdering his mother to get a firearm would show a much greater restraint if the person who had the gun was a stranger? Again, no, your argument is broken. I honestly believe the more weapons you have in a society the safer it is.
In fact, most mass shootings happen in your gun free zones, where “crazy” people know there is a much smaller chance of encountering an armed citizen, 12 incidents in the last 30 years have happened at schools, 19 were workplace shootings at 31 happened in shopping malls, restaurants, government buildings, and military bases. Where are your gun free zones, oh wait, schools, workplaces, malls, restaurants, government buildings. Wow, enlightening huh? But none of this is the debate we should be having; we should be looking at why we don’t lock up people who are a danger to themselves and others.
It used to be that there were state-run institutions where people ill enough to pose a threat to themselves or others were kept for observation and treatment to ensure they didn’t hurt anyone. However, starting in the 1950s in California, the ACLU successfully filed lawsuits to take the mentally ill out of hospitals, known as “deinstitutionalization.” By the 1980s, most state-run mental health hospitals had closed. Where were all the crazy people going? They weren’t any less disturbed. Oh sure, they had meds, but all they had to do was not take them, no one was going to make sure they stayed on their meds and stayed sane.
In the past 30 years there have been 63 incidents of mass or spree shootings in the United States. The massacres that have occurred all had one thing in common: From Columbine, Xerox, Westroads Mall, Trolley Square, Aurora and this most recent in Connecticut nearly every single attacker gave warning signs of his mental instability long before the act occurred. Yet no one acted on the information, no one seems to remember this recurring fact and no one has tried to do anything about it, probably because it does not make exciting news. It isn’t flashy. If these psychos were locked up, they wouldn’t have been able to kill people.
Blaming guns is not the answer, blame instead those who have successfully kept the mentally unstable out of institutions where they can be cared for. Blame all those tree hugging, granola eating liberals too worried about whether institutionalization is wrong and not about the repercussions of letting these people roam the streets freely.
You lock up the crazies, the nutjobs, and the criminally insane, give the rest of the citizens guns and have them carry them all the time and not only will violent crime drop, but non violent crime will too. As the famous American author, Robert Heinlein once wrote, “An armed society is a polite society.”