'Close to 20' dead in Connecticut school shooting,

[Clarke]

Can he move anything ? Thats the question. Does he have the intent ? Frankly he is a disappointment. This is last term. There is nothing to lose. He has to upset the applecart.

I'm guessing he'll give it a shot & it will not pass through house with its con-servative majority. It'll still be his fault though, he's after all an emperor with unlimited powers who can get anything done.

[Nova]

Clarke and his party should be blamed for the gun laws. Obama can't do much against the powerful and conservative gun lobby :headshake:

[ravishingravi]

I'm guessing he'll give it a shot & it will not pass through house with its con-servative majority. It'll still be his fault though' date=' he's after all an emperor with unlimited powers who can get anything done.[/quote'] Success is not merely in terms of results. But also in terms of case you make. The fight that you put up.

[punjabi_khota]

There is no truth to that data. It's made up. The reality is that we do not really know the percentage. It is a high number' date=' but no..the majority households in the US do not have a gun.[/quote'] Majority don't have guns, but the ones who do, have way more than one (average is 4). Hence the per capita is high and close to .8.

[Clarke]

Success is not merely in terms of results. But also in terms of case you make. The fight that you put up.

Not really, success is pretty much what you accomplish. What you're indicating is one's devotion to principles/objectives. Jimmy Carter seemed committed to fixing the energy issues of his time but was not at all successful.

[Laaloo]

I'm guessing he'll give it a shot & it will not pass through house with its con-servative majority. It'll still be his fault though' date=' he's after all an emperor with unlimited powers who can get anything done.[/quote'] ++ Even if he does something regarding gun control, it will not go through. Majority of the americans or at least close to majority believe that they should be able to hold guns for "protection". What needs to be done is to reopen the mental hospitals and make those laws stricter. Someone like Ryan Lanza should have never been in her mom's custody for that long. his mom was crazy too. How the eff can you take someone who's mentally disturbed to freaking shooting ranges? :mad: :((

[Crookbond]

New Calls for Gun Limits http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324677204578183781498008140.html?mod=e2fb

Mr. Obama, on Sunday evening in Newtown, Conn., said that the nation as a whole is failing in its duty to protect its children and that "we will have to change," without specifying what changes are needed. He said that no law can prevent all violence, but "that can't be an excuse for inaction." The White House is looking at various options, and the scope and details of the president's approach aren't clear. One possibility likely to be considered is a ban on high-capacity magazines, the devices attached to firearms that store large numbers of bullets and reload them rapidly.

[Lurker]

++ Even if he does something regarding gun control, it will not go through. Majority of the americans or at least close to majority believe that they should be able to hold guns for "protection". What needs to be done is to reopen the mental hospitals and make those laws stricter. Someone like Ryan Lanza should have never been in her mom's custody for that long. his mom was crazy too. How the eff can you take someone who's mentally disturbed to freaking shooting ranges? :mad: :((

Who are going to pay for that? The same set of people who have been completely against Obamacare, or Socialist Medicine as they called it, now wants Society to open up Hospitals and start paying for mentally deranged people? Where is that money going to come from? If anything his exposes the hypocracy of right wing Republicans. On one hand they want no Obamacare, and let go for Cops, Firefighters, Teachers to cut costs AND also open mental hospitals, get nurses, Doctors etc??? How does that work out? :hmmm:

[Laaloo]

Who are going to pay for that? The same set of people who have been completely against Obamacare, or Socialist Medicine as they called it, now wants Society to open up Hospitals and start paying for mentally deranged people? Where is that money going to come from? If anything his exposes the hypocracy of right wing Republicans. On one hand they want no Obamacare, and let go for Cops, Firefighters, Teachers to cut costs AND also open mental hospitals, get nurses, Doctors etc??? How does that work out? :hmmm:

Firstly, the americans need to stop funding Pakistan and use all that money for their own sake. P.S. I voted for Obama. Anyways the whole system is corrupt. If you thought India was corrupt, America is on a whole other level. Everything from food industries to healthcare. The deeper you get into all of this just makes you realize that America is not as good as it is made out to be.

[Brainfade]

Clarke and his party should be blamed for the gun laws. Obama can't do much against the powerful and conservative gun lobby :headshake:

Not sure he really wants to. But he sure knows how to make it sound like he does. I remember from one of the debates how wishy-washy he was.

[gs]

Firstly, the americans need to stop funding Pakistan and use all that money for their own sake. P.S. I voted for Obama. Anyways the whole system is corrupt. If you thought India was corrupt, America is on a whole other level. Everything from food industries to healthcare. The deeper you get into all of this just makes you realize that America is not as good as it is made out to be.

It may not be perfect, but its still far better than some of the third world medieval sh.tholes in south Asia.

[Laaloo]

It may not be perfect' date=' but its still far better than some of the third world medieval sh.tholes in south Asia.[/quote'] True but it's getting worse in the US especially since unemployment keeps rising. America may not be a safe place to live anymore in say 10 years or so especially for Desis.

[Nova]

True but it's getting worse in the US especially since unemployment keeps rising. America may not be a safe place to live anymore in say 10 years or so especially for Desis.

:haha: Khuch bhi? You better get out soon.... NJ will be the first target!

[Laaloo]

:haha: Khuch bhi? You better get out soon.... NJ will be the first target!

Dude you don't realize this now but there's just too many desis in NJ now. I've generally seen resentment increasing against desis recently. And it ain't gonna get better any time soon.

[Clarke]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) vowed Sunday to introduce legislation to ban assault weapons at the start of the next Congress. ŪÃÎ going to introduce in the Senate and the same bill will be introduced in the House, a bill to ban assault weapons. It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession. Not retroactively but prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets. So there will be a bill. WeÃ×e been working on it now for a year, Feinstein said on NBCÃÔ Å®eet The Press during a discussion about guns following FridayÃÔ deadly mass shooting as a Connecticut school. Feinstein said she was confident such a measure could pass. In a separate interview on Sunday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he too was was optimistic about the prospect of passing a gun control measure. Ū think we can get something done, said Schumer on CBSÃÔ Å§ace The Nation. Schumer advocated focusing on three areas: Banning assault weapons, limiting the size of clips, and making it harder for ÅÎentally unstable individuals to obtain firearms.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/12/16/feinstein-will-introduce-assault-weapons-ban-in-senate/ Lets see who supports what in the bill.

[Brainfade]

NYT article on the mom's fascination with guns http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/friends-of-gunmans-mother-his-first-victim-recall-her-as-generous.html?_r=0

The New York Times December 15, 2012 A Mother, a Gun Enthusiast and the First Victim By MATT FLEGENHEIMER and RAVI SOMAIYA NEWTOWN, Conn. — Nancy Lanza loved guns, and often took her sons to one of the shooting ranges here in the suburbs northeast of New York City, where there is an active community of gun enthusiasts, her friends said. At a local bar, she sometimes talked about her gun collection. It was one of her guns that was apparently used to take her life on Friday. Her killer was her son Adam Lanza, 20, who then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he killed 26 more people, 20 of them small children, before shooting himself, the authorities said. Ms. Lanza’s fascination with guns became an important focus of attention on Saturday as investigators tried to determine what caused Mr. Lanza to carry out one of the worst massacres in the nation’s history. Investigators have linked Ms. Lanza to five weapons: two powerful handguns, two traditional hunting rifles and a semiautomatic rifle that is similar to weapons used by troops in Afghanistan. Her son took the two handguns and the semiautomatic rifle to the school. Law enforcement officials said they believed the guns were acquired legally and were registered. Ms. Lanza, 52, had gone through a divorce in 2008 and was described by friends as social and generous to strangers, but also high-strung, as if she were holding herself together. She lived in a large Colonial home here with Adam Lanza, and had struggled to help him cope with a developmental disorder that often left him reserved and withdrawn, according to relatives, friends and former classmates. At some point, he had dropped out of the Newtown school system. An older son, Ryan, did not live with Ms. Lanza. In a statement on Saturday night, her ex-husband, Peter Lanza, an executive at General Electric, said he was cooperating with investigators. “We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can,” he said. “We, too, are asking why.” He added: “Like so many of you, we are saddened but struggling to make sense of what has transpired.” Ms. Lanza’s brother James Champion, a former police officer who lives in Kingston, N.H., said on Saturday that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation had questioned family members on Friday night. Mr. Champion would not discuss whether Adam Lanza had a developmental disorder or mental illness. “On behalf of Nancy’s mother and siblings, we reach out to the community of Newtown to express our heartfelt sorrow for the incomprehensible loss of innocence that has affected so many,” Mr. Champion said in a statement. He said Ms. Lanza had grown up and lived in Kingston with her husband and sons before they left in 1998. He said he had not seen Adam Lanza in eight years. Ms. Lanza’s sister-in-law Marsha Lanza, who lives in Illinois, said Adam Lanza had been home-schooled for a time because his mother was not “satisfied with the school.” Former classmates here described him as nervous, with a flat affect. “He was always different — keeping to himself, fidgeting and very quiet,” said a classmate, Alex Israel. “But I could always tell he was a supersmart kid, maybe just socially awkward, something just off about him. The same went for when I went to his house. His mother was always nice to me; she was a kind, typical suburban mom as far as I remember. As time went on, he continued to keep to himself and I branched out more, so not much contact with him after middle school. “By the time high school came around, he did sort of disappear,” she added. “I’d see him in the halls walking quickly with his briefcase he carried, but I never had a class with him and never saw him with friends. I was yearbook editor and I remember he declined to be photographed or give us a senior quote or baby picture.” Some former classmates said they had been told that Mr. Lanza had Asperger’s syndrome, which is considered a high-functioning form of autism. News reports on Friday suggested that Ms. Lanza had worked at the elementary school where the shooting occurred, but on Saturday the school superintendent said there was no evidence that she had ever worked there. The authorities said it was not clear why Mr. Lanza had gone to the school. Ms. Lanza was a slender woman with blond shoulder-length hair who enjoyed craft beers, jazz and landscaping. She often went to a local restaurant and music spot, My Place, where at beer tastings on Tuesday evenings, she sometimes talked about her gun collection, recalled an acquaintance, Dan Holmes, the owner of a landscaping company in Newtown. “She had several different guns,” Mr. Holmes said. “I don’t know how many. She would go target shooting with her kids.” Many of those who knew Ms. Lanza in Newtown were at a loss to describe what she did for a living. Her brother in New Hampshire said she had not been working, but had once been a stockbroker. Louise Tambascio, owner of My Place, said Ms. Lanza volunteered occasionally. “She stayed with Adam,” Ms. Tambascio said, adding that, as a younger child, he “couldn’t get along with the kids in school.” Ms. Lanza spoke often of her landscaping, Mr. Holmes recalled, and later hired him to do work on her home. He recently dispatched a team to put up Christmas decorations at her house — garlands on the front columns and white lights atop the shrubbery. After the work was complete, Ms. Lanza sent Mr. Holmes a text: “That went REALLY well!” Jim Leff, a musician, often sat next to her at the bar and made small talk, he said in an interview on Saturday. On one occasion, Mr. Leff said, he had gone to Newtown to discuss lending money to a friend. As the two men negotiated the loan, Ms. Lanza overheard and offered to write the man a check. “She was really kind and warm,” Mr. Leff said, “but she always seemed a little bit high-strung.” He declined to elaborate, but in a post on his personal Web site, he said he felt a distance from her that was explained when he heard, after the shootings, “how difficult her troubled son,” Adam, “was making things for her.” She was “handling a very difficult situation with uncommon grace,” he wrote. She was “a big, big gun fan,” he added on his Web site. There are many gun enthusiasts in this area, residents said. When some people who live near the elementary school heard the shots fired by Mr. Lanza on Friday, they said they were not surprised. “I really didn’t think anything of it,” said a resident, Ray Rinaldi. “You hear gun shots around here all the time.” Neighbors recalled Ms. Lanza as a regular at Labor Day picnics and “ladies’ nights out” for a dice game called bunco. “We would rotate houses,” said Rhonda Cullens, 52. “I don’t remember Nancy ever having it at her house.” Ms. Cullens said Ms. Lanza spoke often about gardening — exchanging the sorts of questions typical of the neighborhood: Is maintenance worth the trouble for a house like the Lanzas’, scarcely visible from the street? But for many of those on Yogananda Street, where the Lanzas lived, the recollections about Ms. Lanza were incomplete. “Who were they?” said Len Strocchia, 46, standing beside his daughter as camera crews came through the neighborhood. “I’m sure we rang their door bell on Halloween.” He looked down the block, then turned back to his daughter. “I’m sure of it,” he said. Ms. Lanza’s sister-in-law Marsha Lanza also struggled to make sense of events. “I just don’t have an answer,” she said, starting to cry. “I wish I had an answer for you. I wish somebody had saw it coming.” Matt Flegenheimer reported from Newtown, Conn., and Ravi Somaiya from New York. Reporting was also contributed by Susan Beachy, Thomas Kaplan, Elizabeth Maker, Marina Villeneuve and Steven Yaccino. More in N.Y. / Region (1 of 28 articles) ‘These Tragedies Must End,’ Obama Says Read More »

I have a number of questions: (1) The mother: Yes, she is dead. But doesn't bear a huge responsilibity for this incident? Where were her parental responsibilitis? She knew Adam was mentally ill, but she took him to the shooting range and gave him access to her guns. She should have kept the guns in a location that only she could access. (2) The guns: The article says that all the weapons he used were legally purchased by his mother and kept in her house. What? The Bushmaster .223 is not legal in Connecticut - based on their Justice Dept website. Something's not right. (3) Cold-hard statistics: Ignoring Ram's advice to not reduce this incident to cold-hard statistics, one has to do so to make rational decisions. First, mass-killings of this nature are very rare. Shouldn't we focus on the 3000 kids who are killed each year by guns in the US? The ones you don't hear about because they don't die in suburban middle-class/affluent neighborhoods. They are kids in drug-war infested inner-cities like Chicago and NYC killing one another or getting caught in the cross-fire. If the deaths are sad, our apathy to them is appalling! Here is the conundrum - Chicago and NYC have the most stringent gun-control laws. But the rate of shooting-deaths in these cities is higher than most places. Why is that so? It is because street-criminals and the mentally-ill (like Lanza) brazenly don't give a damn. Where is the ENFORCEMENT? The only solution is to get the military and police to disarm everyone who is not police or military. And then review everyone's need for a weapon, and mental and physical ability to wield one. And then enforce gun laws strictly. Anyone caught with an illegal weapon goes to prison for at least 5 years. Anyone who allows their legal weapon get into their child's hands go to prison for at least 5 years. No questions asked. Any other measure is half-assed and will not work. Can it be done? PS: I am very serious. This is where I part from the Republican-view on gun-control. I am also vehemently against the lip-service gun-control laws that Democrats want to pass.

[Lurker]

The only solution is to get the military and police to disarm everyone who is not police or military. And then review everyone's need for a weapon, and mental and physical ability to wield one. And then enforce gun laws strictly. Anyone caught with an illegal weapon goes to prison for at least 5 years. Anyone who allows their legal weapon get into their child's hands go to prison for at least 5 years. No questions asked. Any other measure is half-assed and will not work. Can it be done? PS: I am very serious.

Who is going to support that? Republicans? :giggle:

[Lurker]

Firstly, the americans need to stop funding Pakistan and use all that money for their own sake. P.S. I voted for Obama. Anyways the whole system is corrupt. If you thought India was corrupt, America is on a whole other level. Everything from food industries to healthcare. The deeper you get into all of this just makes you realize that America is not as good as it is made out to be.

US is at the crossroads today. Thanks to bad economy, huge debt, slowly but surely moving away of key Industries etc...it is becoming a nation where people are slowly turning against each other. It is really going to test how strong US roots are.

[Brainfade]

Who is going to support that? Republicans? :giggle:

Is Obama?

[Lurker]

Is Obama?

He won't. Democrats are as screwed up as Republicans. Its not the point though. The stumbling block for all things gun control is NOT DNC but Republicans. I am sure you know that