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Welcome to the World of Pulitzer Prize Winning Political Cartoonist Michael P. Ramirez |
Root of Evil
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Reaping the mental illness sown by a culture gone mad
FLORIDA SHOOTING My heart breaks for those who have been killed and wounded in this tragic event. There are no words to comfort those who have lost a loved one, are praying for the recovery of a loved one, or the multitude of others who have been physically or psychologically wounded from this incomprehensible act. I think everyone feels the frustration, the feeling of helplessness to find answers to resolve these cruel, senseless acts of violence. The emotional outcry that is being heard is understandable. In times like these, we should turn to those things that bind us as a community, a shared sense of humanity, the love we feel for our fellow human beings. We endure because our compass leads us towards sympathy, compassion for our fellow man, charity, understanding, mercy, mutual respect, common decency, morality and love. Those are the things that make up the fabric of our nation. Why do children kill children? How can a human being so callously kill another human being? Our villain in this crime was no child. Where did the innocence of childhood go? Why do these acts of barbarism keep happening? Those questions may never be answered. There will be time to debate the causes and remedies of this savage crime. For now, let us pray for those souls whose lives were prematurely extinguished and for all of those who are dealing with the consequences of this tragedy. Hug your loved ones, reach out to your neighbors, love your fellow man. It is perhaps, a small, but important step towards finding the answers. May God bless those who are joined in His loving embrace and give grace, comfort and healing to those who have been left behind -m |
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Our friend Dave Sussman and his conversation with Victor Davis Hanson:
POSTED ON FEBRUARY 15, 2018 BY JOHN HINDERAKER POWERLINE
PREMATURE OBSERVATIONS ON THE PARKLAND SCHOOL SHOOTINGS As Steve said this morning, it is pretty much pointless to comment on mass shooting events before the facts are known. But that hasn’t stopped liberals from going into full hysteria mode, as they always do. And perhaps the dust has settled enough to allow some preliminary observations. Here are mine: 1. The facts, to the extent they have been reported, are very weird. The murderer, Nikolas Cruz, packed up a semiautomatic rifle, a gas mask and plenty of ammunition and took an Uber to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Apparently the Uber driver saw nothing amiss. Cruz shot some people outside the school; I take it that he did this before entering. He went into the school and reportedly pulled a fire alarm, then killed fourteen or so students who poured into the halls. Having done so, he put down his rifle and left the school as if he were an ordinary student, apparently without anyone being the wiser. He proceeded to a Subway, and from there to a McDonalds, where he was arrested without incident well after the murders were over. If these really are the facts, it is hard to understand why Cruz encountered so little opposition. 2. Liberals, naturally, are braying about “common sense gun legislation.” Barack Obama is one among many. Of course, they never can tell us what those “common sense” reforms might be. To the extent that it isn’t sheer political calculation, their hysteria represents a childish wish that firearms didn’t exist. I actually might agree with them on that, but for firearms to disappear you would have to erase 500 years of history. You might as well try to ban knives. But liberalism isn’t about practical solutions, it is about expressing emotion while trying to garner votes. 3. Mass school shootings are, thankfully, rare. The liberal talking point, endlessly repeated today, that this is the 18th school shooting of 2018 is simply false. (Don’t hold your breath waiting for corrections from the Democratic Party media, however.) But what, practically, can we do to prevent them? In recent years, just about every school district in America has hired an army of administrators of various sorts. If I were the principal of a school, the first thing I would do is terminate one of those administrator positions and replace it with an armed guard. The high school that my children all attended had a guard on the premises at all times, and while he didn’t display a weapon, my kids assumed he was armed. That should be true in every school. In some high schools, multiple armed police officers are present. It has been reported that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had a guard–whether armed or not is not clear–but he “didn’t encounter” Cruz during his murder spree. It has also been reported that Cruz ranged between the first and third floors of the high school as he shot students. So the absence of an “encounter” is hard to understand. My opinion: if one armed guard isn’t enough, hire two. And teachers with carry permits are a useful backup. 4. As seems to be the case in all mass shooting incidents, Nikolas Cruz was nutty as a fruitcake. Fellow students immediately assumed that he was the “shooter.” The fundamental problem here relates to mental health. Having emptied its insane asylums in a misguided attempt at “liberation,” the U.S. is virtually without a mental health system. President Trump, despite the derision of the Democratic Party media, is absolutely right to emphasize this aspect of the problem. The question, obviously, is what to do about it. One thing I don’t know: are there a million fruitcakes like Nikolas Cruz, Seung-Hui Cho, Adam Lanza and James Holmes, so that it is impossible to predict which of them will prove dangerous, while the large majority are harmless? Or are there just a few such potential perpetrators? If the latter, it would seem that far greater efforts could be made to identify and preemptively deal with potential mass murderers. Although how to do so within legal constraints is, of course, a serious question. 5. Along those lines, Nikolas Cruz was reported to the FBI after he commented on a YouTube video by saying that he was going to be a school shooter. To his credit, the guy who produced the video saw Cruz’s comment and contacted the FBI. The FBI interviewed him, but did nothing, reportedly because they weren’t able to find Nikolas Cruz, even though he used his real name in the comment. This probably isn’t the time for snark, but it is hard to resist observing that the FBI should spend less time trying to bring down a president who is not of the same party as the Bureau’s political leadership, and more time trying to prevent mass murder. 6. In my opinion, people on the scene of a mass shooting incident are consistently given bad advice. Hiding and waiting for the murderer to find you is, generally, a poor strategy. In the best case, it won’t stop others from being killed. If three or four able-bodied men rush a single murderer from different directions, they will almost certainly be able to disable him. This is especially true if he is armed with a rifle, which is effective at a distance but not intended for close combat. Rushing a shooter takes courage and a certain degree of coordination, but it likely will work, as in the incident dramatized in The 15:17 To Paris. read more at Powerline blog Mental health care, not gun regulation, is key to ending mass shootings, Joni Ernst says
Jason Noble, jnoble2@dmreg.com DES MOINES REGISTER Published 2:43 p.m. CT Feb. 15, 2018 | Updated 3:10 p.m. CT Feb. 15, 2018 Gun violence like Wednesday’s mass shooting at a Florida high school is a social problem that cannot be addressed by additional federal gun regulations, U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst said Thursday. Rather, communities, local governments and the federal government must do a better job ensuring access to mental health services and intervening to prevent mentally ill people from committing mass murder, Ernst told Iowa reporters in a conference call Thursday. “We need to look at legislation, of course, and I’m sure we’ll see some things that come up,” she said. “But we want to protect our Second Amendment right.” Any federal action, Ernst said, should “focus on the root cause of the problem.” “The root cause is not that we have the Second Amendment,” she said, referring to the constitutional right to own firearms. “It is that we’re not adequately addressing mental illness across the United States. We need to focus on that, and we need to focus on substance abuse.” When pressed, Ernst declined to specify any new mental health policies or funding priorities that Congress should take up in response to the country’s frequent mass-murder incidents. “This is a societal problem,” she said. “This is not going to be an issue the federal government solves just by sending a few bucks to a community. We have to engage at all levels and have really good discussions about this.” read more |
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