While it is not clear whether any of the proposals would have had an effect on the massacre at an Connecticut elementary school, the set of recommendations could provide a blueprint if the Obama administration chooses to go forward with more aggressive steps to curb gun violence. The Justice Department’s list included several measures that President Obama could enact by executive order even if Congress failed to take any new actions.
December 15, 2012
After the Tucson massacre, the Justice Department drew up gun control ideas and let them drop.
The NYT reports.
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As far as can be determined (this may change, of course), Adam Lanza had never been convicted of any crime, the police had never been called to his house, he had never been judged mentally incompetent and he had never spent any time in a mental hospital.
Peter
He wept this time (instead of some big speech he gave in Tucson complete with T-shirts). So may be he will do something useful now that he didn't do then. There is still hope for his minions.
What help does Obamacare have for mentally ill and their caregivers?
It's clear to me, at least, that none of the proposals noted in the article would've prevented Nancy Lanza from buying those guns.
It doesn't matter if it will help or hurt, we have to DO SOMETHING! Obama will make sure those children didn't die in vain!
They needed to push civility for all it was worth.
With all that new "flexibility", they don't have to be flexible any more.
Just take a look at Moochelle.
It's clear to me, at least, that none of the proposals noted in the article would've prevented Nancy Lanza from buying those guns.
Or Adam Lanza, for that matter.
Peter
Well now, could Obama decide to prohibit the mass subsidy of Dennis Dugan aka Richie Brockelman I consider worthy as part (ART) of "several measures that President Obama could enact by executive order even if Congress failed to take any new actions."
If the POTUS has this power, I am concerned.
Mainly I am concerned about my concern; but still, I am concerned.
> if the Obama administration chooses to go forward with more aggressive steps to curb gun violence
Fallacy alert: The writer's takes it for granted is that these proposals would in fact curb gun violence.
Indeed, Palladian, it matters if it hurts rather than helps, 'cause that's what Obama wants. As you say, DO SOMETHING. As Bluto said, "Let's do something incredibly stupid!"
The only thing nuttier than having Eric Holder's DoJ draft proposals for controlling gun violence would be...shit, I don't know...having Maxine Waters as the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. LOL! Could you imagine? How fucked up that would be?
Wait, what's that? They did? When? Oh... I see...
But anyway! Gun control is a fetish among only the most left-wing of Democrats--which means basically the entire press, which is why this is a perennial issue when most people don't care. In fact, some of the most enthusiastic gun owners I've ever met were Democrats. And not even old-school blue collar Democrats, but socially liberal, anti-rich people Democrats.
I'd love to see Obama pursue gun control in his second term. It would fail. Miserably.
Yeah, what the Democrats need going into the 2014 election is to energize the NRA, that'll help them keep all those Senate seats in an off-year election that they only barely won on Obama's coattails in 2008.
No relation to Mario Lanza... as far as I know.
I just ckd the Internet... that Mario Lanza crack is already a day old.
We need Internet control legislation.
"In conclusion, we can make America safer by rounding up all the guns and shipping them to Mexico."
With the election over, it's clear many branches of the government have been saving up regulations for release (to avoid inconvenient electoral exposure), I'd suspect that Obama will do something rather "strong" and reactionary that will be tied up in litigation for years, while it's effects pervade our society.
At the moment, without kindergarten murders, kindergarteners die at 720 per year. This is so small as to be unnoticed, just everyday life and risks.
If it were doubled, 1440 a year, it would probably still be unnoticed. It would then be the normal death rate for 15 year olds, which isn't much cause for alarm in the population.
So that would mean that 36 massacres a year would still go unnoticed, as far as kindergartener safety is concerned, in a nation the size of the US.
So here's a one-off, a blip on a tiny death rate, that's a big problem requiring executive action.
All because you need to be entertained.
The one piece information they need to provide, they don't provide. Namely fitting it into the existing level of risks that everybody lives happily with.
gun threads: where whoresoftheinternet and Palladian sound exactly alike.
A society that doesn't respond to an event like this is not a society appeals to all Americans. Just saying, "kids die," and "let's ignore it, otherwise we're rubbernecking. Which conveniently allows us to ignore undertaking any policy responses to the issue." That's not enough for many people.
Also I appealing is standing on the sidelines (or commenting in a rightie blog) "Your solutions are dumb. Won't work. I hate Obama because he hates my freedom." But more centrist people in the US will disagree and find being an obstructive jerk unpalatable. So I think the right would do well to do something other than snivel.
I don't think it's an entertainment element, rh, unless you consider the horror that resides in our guts for two or three days after the massacre as entertainment.
It may have been a form of entertainment at the time, but it is mortality and the fragility of life that concusses in these instances.
It is also the utter helplessness and the stupidity of witnessing an mentally incapacitated killer take charge of so many lives, dead or not.
I just saw Obama's sobbing press statement. What is happening to him? Who is his acting coach? Is this some kind of preemptive strike for what we might learn about Benghazi -- kind of like he is so soft he would never have let that happen, poor, poor Obama, Nobel peace winning humane human?
I don't think it's an entertainment element, rh, unless you consider the horror that resides in our guts for two or three days after the massacre as entertainment.
Exactly. It is.
Women are glued to the TV.
The MSM is mostly cynical bastards employing morons.
All because you need to be entertained.
They dont even care to change the names of the characters...
Sandy Hook, Hurricane Sandy, Sandy Koufax?
;)
That's when Fast and Furious was running, and the DOJ may have had them all drawn up already, to cash in on public outrage over all those American guns which 'just somehow' crossed the border and wreaked havoc.
rh is onto "something"... (has been for years) but the politically incorrectness arc of the "something" is so steep... If I get on it, I dont know if I'm going to enjoy the ride or pass out.
Entertainment is brutal.
So I think the right would do well to do something other than snivel
Ahhh....something.. Fine, unless it's just something to make us all feel better. Dumb ideas ought to be called dumb.
Is this another conflict point between state and federal law with respect to drug legalization?
Instead, it focused on ways to bolster the database the F.B.I. uses for background checks on gun purchasers using information on file at other federal agencies. Certain people are barred from buying guns, including felons, drug users, people adjudicated to be mentally “defective,” illegal immigrants and people convicted of misdemeanor offenses related to domestic violence.
For example, the study recommended that all agencies that give out benefits, like the Social Security Administration, tell the F.B.I. background-check system whenever they have made arrangements to send a check to a trustee for a person deemed mentally incompetent to handle his own finances, or when federal employees or job applicants fail a drug test. It also proposed setting up a system to appeal such determinations.
Sad, isn't it-
After the reactionaries cry out, and the intellectuals write and lecture, they finally realize that all that can be done is to bury the dead, and weep.
Palladian-
"DO SOMETHING!" is a natural,instinctive, and necessary reaction. It shouldn't be mocked, or belittled. Beyond that.....well, you get it.
And NONE of those 'ideas' was to institutionalize insane people!
Thing is, 50K+ people die on the roads each year but nothing is banned. Drunks kill thousands each year but alcohol is not banned (well you DO remember what happened the LAST time it was!)
So how come the government want's to crack down on LEGAL gun owners but not car drivers?
See we do crack down on drunks who drive but not crazy people to murder others.
A society that doesn't respond to an event like this is not a society appeals to all Americans
Let's ban travel between New Jersey and Connecticut, and make it illegal for single mothers to own firearms.
Several-fold more people die in this country every year from alcohol than firearms (as per the CDC). Firearms have legitimate constructive uses, moreso than alcohol. If we're all about something needing to be done, then it only makes sense (if any of this comment does, which it shouldn't, which is my point) to first set our sights on repealing the 21st Amendment before we mess with the 2nd. Larry Mahoney killed as many people (mostly children) because of alcohol, and yet no one (that I can recall) proposed making alcohol illegal, or even more difficult to obtain.
If you think the issue here is firearms, and the solution involves changing access, do you feel the same way about alcohol? If so, then I'll take your arguments seriously. If not, then I won't (nor should anyone else). The numbers don't lie.
It strikes me that almost all modern expressions of political morality devolve to the fantasy of stuffing genies back into bottles.
Or stuffing original sin back into that damned serpent.
Excellent comment Crimso
the dunblane school massacre - it happened in scotland, with very strict gun control policies in place.
the gutenberg school massacre in germany - strictest gun control, the murder weapon was illegal.
it was all done by disturbed men who were going after a soft target. the terrible thing is that you cannot stop those people by law. they don't mind. the law.
perhaps it's not laws lacking, but a closer community, that minds the first signs of disturbance.
what troubles me most in all those cases is that apparently nobody saw it coming. or if they did, as at virginia tech, nobody had a clue what to do about it.
Troubled Voter: "A society that doesn't respond to an event like this is not a society appeals to all Americans."
Consider that a bunch of opportunist politicians and nanny-state control freaks dancing in the blood of victims to push their political views doesn't appeal to all Americans.
Gun control groups had fundraising letters going out within, what , twelve hours? Some politicians were saying "We must do something, and NOW!!" within an hour of the news. And media whores were pushing for all they were worth immediately; you think all that appeals?
And it came out, years later, that the Brit government had laws already drafted to ban handguns and add more restrictions to everything else, and were just waiting for something to happen so they could use the emotions of the moment to shove it through; Obama & Co. may hate the Brits, but he doesn't seem to mind learning from them.
No relation to Mario Lanza... as far as I know.
Work with a girl named Maria Lanza.
Can't sing worth a lick.
Now it turns out the mother of the nutjob BOUGHT THE GUNS he used to kill her and the others. And she also took him to the gun range! He had known mental illnesses and she did that.
He was rejected when he tried to buy his own guns. So how is 'gun control' gonna stop that?
We need nut control, not gun control.
leslyn said...
After the Tucson massacre, the Justice Department drew up gun control ideas and let them drop.
So--aren't we all happy now?
Why still complaining? Why the grumpy face?
Sorry. I'm not getting what you're gloating about.
The Tucson massacre served its purpose by getting people stirred up emotionally in favor of banning guns. Actual implementation of gun bans/more controls at that time would not have been politically expedient.
Women are glued to the TV.
not me...unless it's world's dumbest on trutv
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