If by a “tragically familiar pattern“, as their headline reads, they mean “Democrats attempting to take away Constitutional rights and punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty”, well, yes. In 1989 a deranged gunman shot up a school (from outside) in Stockton, California with a “military-style rifle” (nice to know that the writer received the White House’s talking points about that)
The stunning attack 24 years ago, which left five elementary school children dead and 29 others wounded, was the nation’s “Sandy Hook” before last December’s massacre in Newtown, Conn. Almost a quarter of a century later, the nation’s contentious fault lines over gun rights and the debate over how to curb senseless mass killings remain similar.
Except for the fatal scale of the Connecticut shooting (20 children and six educators were killed Dec. 14), the assault at Cleveland Elementary School here featured near-identical and tragic themes: young victims, a troubled gunman and a military-style rifle. Then, Patrick Purdy, a deranged 24-year-old drifter, turned a schoolyard packed with children — many of them sons and daughters of southeast Asian immigrants — into a killing field. He later fatally shot himself.
Like Newtown, the Stockton shooting helped prompt a heated national debate about gun control, culminating in a landmark, 10-year federal ban on assault weapons, which expired in 2004. A shock to the national psyche, the schoolyard shootings and the testimony of Stockton officials, including then-Mayor Barbara Fass, first served as an emotional springboard to broad gun-control legislation in California before Congress approved its assault weapon ban in 1994.
So, how do we curb senseless mass killings? According to Democrats, we do this by punishing law abiding citizens by passing laws that restrict their 2nd Amendment rights.
“For all those who say we shouldn’t and can’t ban assault weapons: How can they say that?” Vice President Biden said in late March, urging Congress to reconsider including the assault weapons ban.
It’s actually pretty easy, Joe. The vast majority of us are not criminals and won’t use the scary looking guns, or any others, to commit crimes. What you are saying is that you want to punish us, the innocent, because a few people are deranged and/or criminals. Why not go after them?
The other side of the debate is represented by an unlikely foe: Rob Young, a 30-year-old police officer, who still bears the physical scars of a day he “will never forget.”
“There isn’t a gun law in place that would have stopped what happened to me,” Young said. “I have never blamed the gun. It wasn’t the fault of the AK-47. If Patrick Purdy didn’t have a gun and still wanted to do something, he would have found another way to do it.”
Young was shot in Stockton on that day 24 years ago, and he seems to understand something that Democrats (and the USA Today, which has delved into advocacy rather than news) don’t: you blame the criminal, not the object. But, Democrats couldn’t care less, they want to do away with private gun ownership, and, much like Obamacare is a step towards single payer, this gun control is a step towards a total ban. Except for criminals, who’ll get and use guns regardless.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.
I wish the mother of Adam Lanza had her 2nd Amendment rights restricted.
And the amount of dems that wish to take away all guns is not significant. Some conservative TOWNS have made it illegal for people NOT to own guns.
Of course you wish that people have their rights restricted john. In Sandy Hook and in all but one incident of so called “mass shootings, ” the rights of the victims to defend themselves was restricted. You have blood on your hand john and want more.
As for the towns that require gun ownership, there are always allowances for those who object. Furthermore, those towns have much lower crime rates than surrounding areas.
In fact, nationally, areas with more gun control restrictions have a highrr crime rate.
You don’t care about the rights or safety of people john.
You and other liberals have blood on your hands.
So, like any good little progressive (ie nice fascist) , John has no problem restricting the rights of the innocent for partisan political purposes.
GWOSH.. that sounds like an awful long time. Why not just say its a fortieth of a millenia? Or, heck, I dunno, maybe just say its “almost 25 years later”?? nah, doesn’t have the flow to it. Needs to be PERKIER when talking about MASS KILLINGS!!!11!!
(where’s that squiggly font?)
Hey john, you hear about all the race rioting going on of late? How come there isn’t any in the supposed racial hotbeds of southern states? could it be that there isn’t much racial animosity in the south? could it be that the presence of armed victims has the criminals looking to less armed cities?
BTW, I’ve asked this in other blogs and have not gotten a decent reply.
What is a “military-style assault weapon”? What is “military-style”?
Does that mean one that shoots bullets? Or is it just that ones that are black or camo in color? Or is it just guns that are not made with any wood products?
And, why are guns being banned as assault weapons when they have a bayonet clamp? Please tell me how adding a knife to a gun that shoots bullets makes that gun now too deadly? or the presence of sling mounts? Being able to sling a rifle over a shoulder a certain way means the rifle is now military-grade?
Our esteemed host wrote:
Simple: because they don’t know how, and don’t want to know how.
Forget the mentally ill shooters: they are really a tiny part of the problem. The real problem is the gang-bangers in Chicago and Camden and Philadelphia, a Newtown shooting every week, in effect, but spread out over a week, with victims — usually other gang-bangers — about whom nobody cares and we are, quite frankly, better off when they are dead.
To address that problem means addressing all of the harm that liberal policies have done to our society, especially in the black community, by encouraging unwed parenthood, absent fathers, a welfare culture and drug-using society. When liberal policies destroy child discipline, they create thugs. When liberal policies encourage irresponsible sex, they create children growing up without fathers, and they create gang-bangers. When liberals push for, and add to, a welfare society where working for a living is both optional and seen as foolish, they create gang-bangers.
Every single problem we have as a society today can be traced, directly traced, to the creeping growth of liberal ideas and liberal policies. The left can’t actually examine the real problems, can’t actually go after the actual bad guys, because it is an indictment of everything they’ve supported for forty years.