{"id":6308,"date":"2018-03-12T21:09:41","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T04:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=6308"},"modified":"2018-03-16T12:32:51","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T19:32:51","slug":"theres-plenty-we-could-do-about-mass-shootings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=6308","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s plenty we could do about mass shootings"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There was a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Feb. 14. (Former?) student Nikolas de Jesus Cruz (who was reportedly a subject of bullying there) used a .223-caliber, one-shot-per-trigger-pull rifle (not an \u201cautomatic weapon\u201d as claimed by Democratic Florida Sen. Bill Nelson.) Young de Jesus Cruz left 17 dead, dozens more injured.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, even though teachers there were warned last year not to let this kid into school with a backpack, even though the FBI was warned as long ago as September that Cruz left a comment on YouTube site warning \u201cI\u2019m going to be a professional school shooter,\u201d few of the usual suspects in the media waited for any further data before shrieking (yet again) that the NRA and every Republican in Washington have \u201cblood on their hands,\u201d etc.<\/p>\n

CNN \u201cnews\u201d host Chris Cuomo immediately stated the U.S. is the \u201cscourge of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president has the hashtag MAGA, Make America Great Again. He is supposed to be a change agent,\u201d Mr. Cuomo stormed. \u201cWe are the scourge of the world when it comes to these. Nobody is worse than we are. How does that not make the MAGA agenda?\u201d<\/p>\n

CNN\u2019s Don Lemon declared that people who didn\u2019t want to talk about gun control in the wake of the shooting need to \u201cshut up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, you can save it — people who are saying, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s not the time to talk about guns\u2019 or whatever. Yes, it is. Shut up,\u201d Lemon said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to hear it. It absolutely is.\u201d <\/p>\n

OK, let\u2019s talk about gun control \u2013- by which these characters obviously mean \u201cbanning guns outright for everyone but cops,\u201d since America\u2019s current 40,000 interlocking and overlapping \u201cgun control\u201d laws obviously aren\u2019t enough for them.<\/p>\n

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Consulting the 2002 \u201cGenocide chart\u201d of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership at http:\/\/jpfo.org\/filegen-a-m\/deathgc.htm<\/a>, labeled \u201cThe Human Cost of \u2018Gun Control,\u2019\u201d we find that in the years 1915-1917 Armenian Christians living in the Ottoman Empire were effectively barred from the private ownership of guns for self-defense (just the kind of \u201cgun control\u201d favored by these squealing TV hosts, who of course live in gated communities and work in fancy studios protected by armed guards) -\u2013 making it much easier for the Armenians\u2019 own government to murder more than a million of them.<\/p>\n

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We find residents of the Soviet Union, including political opponents and millions of Ukrainian farmers -\u2013 farmers! -\u2013 were effectively barred from the private ownership of guns for self-defense from 1929 to 1945, facilitating the murder by their own government, often by purposeful starvation, of 20 million of them.<\/p>\n

Political opponents, Jews, Gypsies, etc., were effectively barred from the private ownership of guns for self-defense in Germany from 1933 to 1945, facilitating the systematic, assembly-line murder by their own government (not talking about residents of other nations killed in aggressive warfare, mind you) of 20 million of THEM.<\/p>\n

What was the result of \u201cgun control\u201d in Red China from 1949 to 1976, when possession of firearms by, or supplying firearms to, \u201ccounter-revolutionary criminals\u201d (basically anyone resisting any government program) was punishable by death? (And boy, wouldn\u2019t our \u201cgun regulators\u201d love to have THAT power, today)? Another 20 million to 35 million dead, JPFO reports.<\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t remember the Nazis or the Communists exempting schoolchildren.<\/p>\n

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But just because they\u2019re currently between genocides (the NATIONALIST Chinese killed 10 million of their own disarmed citizens between 1927 and 1949, after all, BEFORE Mao\u2019s enlightened Commies took over. And let\u2019s not forget the JAPANESE killed an estimated 300,000 unarmed civilians in the Chinese capital of Nanking -\u2013 literally using many of them for bayonet practice -\u2013 in a mere six weeks from December of 1937 to January, 1938), does this explain why our pals on the Leftist, anti-Trump, anti-freedom networks today decline to call Turkey or Russia or Germany or China \u201cthe scourge of the world\u201d?<\/p>\n

Of course not.<\/p>\n

Unlike in Israel, where such attacks have virtually disappeared since teachers and parent chaperones started going armed, American teachers and administrators are barred from going armed to protect their charges. Mass shootings in America occur almost entirely in \u201cgun-free zones\u201d \u2013 sometimes \u201cno-guns-allowed\u201d theaters and shopping malls, but especially in our gun-free, coercion-based \u201cpublic schools.”<\/p>\n

These crimes are indeed terrible and deserving of far more realistic analysis, free of fear about offending a teachers’ union or the drug companies . . . though I don\u2019t think our \u201cscourge\u201d of a country is anywhere near our first 10,000 casualties, let alone our first million, as we struggle to record even a \u201cdrop in the bucket\u201d in mass murders compared to the 20th Century death toll attributable to \u201cgun control,\u201d world-wide.<\/p>\n

ASK ABOUT THE CRAZY DRUGS<\/strong><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the solution? And could the press help?<\/p>\n

Yes, possibly.<\/p>\n

I spent more than 40 years in the news business. In a number of newsrooms where I worked, reporters covering fatal car crashes were instructed to ask police \u201cWas the victim wearing his\/her seat belt?\u201d The idea was to use that news story to nag drivers to fasten their seat belts, by reporting \u201cThe deceased was not wearing his seat belt.\u201d<\/p>\n

This little bit of \u201ceditorializing\u201d was fine as far as it went, I suppose -\u2013 certainly \u201cwell-intentioned\u201d -\u2013 though I always wondered, if a rogue police officer were to risk a reprimand by saying \u201cActually, the only survivor lived because she was thrown free of the crash, since as it happens she was NOT strapped in,\u201d whether my comrades on the police beat would have put that in their story, and whether our do-good editors would have allowed it to run.<\/p>\n

Similarly, instead of shrieking \u201cClearly we need GUN CONTROL!\u201d, when are the reporters covering multiple-victim shootings going to start asking -\u2013 and reporting the answers to -\u2013 a few questions that might actually help up identify and focus on the real problems?<\/p>\n

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1) Was the shooter using -\u2013 or had he recently stopped using -\u2013 psychoactive drugs, especially prescription Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors or benzodiazapines like Prozac, Luvox, etc?<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve written before, In 1985, Hoffmann-La Roche\u2019s patent on the widely used tranquilizer Valium expired, clearing the way for other outfits to begin manufacturing the drug on a generic basis. Since then, prescriptions of these \u201cMothers\u2019 Little Helpers\u201d for troublesome boys and young men have skyrocketed.<\/p>\n

A Finnish study published in “World Psychiatry” in 2015 examined people convicted of homicide and found their odds of killing were a substantial 45 percent higher while they were on benzodiazepines.<\/p>\n

While the vast majority of people taking these drugs of course do no harm, Eric Harris of the high-profile Columbine school shooting tried to join the Marines, but was turned down because he was on prescription Zoloft and Luvox.<\/p>\n

Sixteen-year-old Jeff Weise was taking a high dose of Prozac in 2005 when he shot family members and students at his school in Red Lake, Minnesota, before turning the gun on himself.<\/p>\n

A high-school classmate told Fox News last year\u2019s Sutherland Springs, Texas, church murderer Devin Kelley had a history of mental illness, and had been on heavy doses of psychiatric meds.<\/p>\n

The Web site of the Florida Citizens Commission on Human Rights notes: \u201cBefore the late nineteen eighties, mass shootings and acts of senseless violence were relatively unheard of. Prozac, the most well known SSRI antidepressant, was not yet on the market. When Prozac did arrive, it was marketed as a panacea for depression which resulted in huge profits. . . . Of course other drug companies had to create their own cash cow and followed suit. . . .<\/p>\n

\u201cSubsequently, mass shootings and other violent incidents started to be reported. More often than not, the common denominator was that the shooters were on an antidepressant, or withdrawing from one. . . .<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Virginia Tech shooter killed 32 people and he was on an antidepressant. While withdrawing from Prozac, Kip Kinkel murdered his mother and stepfather. He then shot 22 classmates and killed two. . . . In a study of thirty-one drugs that are disproportionately linked to reports of violence toward others, five of the top ten are antidepressants,\u201d the Florida based Web site continues. \u201cThese are Prozac, Paxil, Luvox, Effexor and Pristiq. Two other drugs that are for treating ADHD are also in the top ten. . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

At www.ammoland.com, Dan Roberts reported back in 2013: \u201cNearly every mass shooting incident in the last 20 years \u2014 and multiple other instances of suicide and isolated shootings \u2014 all share one thing in common. . . .<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overwhelming evidence points to the single largest common factor in all of these incidents being the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Question No. 2) Did the shooting occur in a \u201cgun-free zone\u201d? (Plenty of guns are \u201creadily available\u201d at police stations, but we rarely see mass shootings in THOSE government buildings, so the \u201cready availability of guns\u201d doesn\u2019t seem a very likely suspect. But \u201cNo Guns Allowed\u201d signs seem to draw these creeps like manure draws flies.)<\/p>\n

3) Was the gun stolen, as at Sandy Hook in Connecticut, and in the Kate Steinle murder in San Francisco? In lots of cases they were -\u2013 though this simple statistic proves almost impossible to locate. (\u201cBackground checks\u201d and \u201cwaiting periods\u201d aren\u2019t doing any good if many murder weapons are stolen. Furthermore, in many other cases the killers bought their weapons legally, passing a background check with flying colors . . . so why do we bother?)<\/p>\n

INMATES BULLIED TILL THEY SNAP?<\/strong><\/p>\n

4) Home schoolers and those attending private classes or academies where attendance is optional and voluntary seldom seem to engage in these homicidal activities. What is it about our mandatory government youth propaganda camps (\u201cpublic schools\u201d) — where the young inmates are locked in under penalty of law \u2013 that seems to trigger these behaviors?<\/p>\n

Has anyone else noticed that the shooters seldom seem to be big, strong, healthy, athletic types? Are the small, pale, skinny kids getting bullied till they snap? If the youth propaganda camps breed this kind of violence, why doesn\u2019t anyone suggest simply disbanding them?<\/p>\n

Despite the fact this giant unionized \u201cjobs-and-day-care\u201d program for the otherwise largely unemployable now costs a hundred times more per student than the schools of a century ago (which turned non-English-speaking immigrant kids into the physicists who built the atomic bomb), they certainly aren\u2019t producing many graduates today who can count change, do long division, find Paris on a map, speak a foreign Language, or explain if their lives depended on it the difference between \u201cthere,\u201d \u201ctheir,\u201d and \u201cthey\u2019re.\u201d<\/p>\n

But they sure can march in a “gun control” parade, organized and authorized by their unionized socialist teachers! Unless, of course, they try to carry a sign that SUPPORTS that Second Amendment. Can’t have any of THAT, as the little stooges are bused around at taxpayer expense: http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/big-government\/2018\/03\/15\/watch-principal-removes-student-walk-participants-pro-gun-sign\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n

See also: http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/2nd-amendment\/2018\/03\/16\/student-allegedly-suspended-refusing-leave-class-gun-control-walk\/<\/a> , . . . and . . . http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/2nd-amendment\/2018\/03\/16\/teacher-placed-on-paid-leave-for-questioning-walkout-for-gun-control\/<\/a> . . . . It’s all about Leftist indoctrination baby, not letting students voice divergent political views. <\/p>\n

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5) And we ARE going to check the immigration status of all shooters and stabbers now, aren\u2019t we, gentlefolk? You guys aren\u2019t going to try and cover up that little detail, like they now do in Germany and England and Sweden . . . are you? Does it really make sense to limit the ability of American citizens in Vermont or Montana or Alabama to buy, keep, and bear arms, if the culprits in more and more of our killing sprees (or would-be killing sprees) are deranged recent arrivals from Middle Eastern or Latin American hellholes?<\/p>\n

(If you\u2019re not seeing frequent reports of rapes, murders, and vehicular homicides caused \/committed by \u201cDreamers\u201d and other illegal aliens, spend a few days checking Web sites like Breitbart and Daily Caller \u2013 you may find your favorite cable channel isn\u2019t giving you \u201call the news that\u2019s fit,\u201d at all.)<\/p>\n

Until the press starts doing its job \u2013 the REAL job of helping us understand what factors are contributing to this new phenomenon \u2013 I\u2019m done \u201cplaying defense\u201d against those who would like to see the American populace disarmed . . . very much like the Jewish and Romany and gay and handicapped residents of Germany in the 1930s, precisely like the victims of Soviet genocide in the \u201930s and \u201940s . . .<\/p>\n

If they won\u2019t so much as acknowledge opposing arguments and evidence -\u2013 let alone attempt to respond with logic and evidence of their own -\u2013 this isn\u2019t really a \u201cdebate\u201d at all . . . is it?<\/p>\n

They might as well be screeching \u201cWhen, WHEN will you agree It\u2019s time to throw more virgins into the volcano to placate Xiuhticuhtli, the God of Fire?!\u201d<\/p>\n

It would probably do about as much good.<\/p>\n

A version of this column appears in a current edition of “Firearms News,” formerly “Shotgun News.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Feb. 14. (Former?) student Nikolas de Jesus Cruz (who was reportedly a subject of bullying there) used a .223-caliber, one-shot-per-trigger-pull rifle (not an \u201cautomatic weapon\u201d as claimed by Democratic Florida Sen. Bill Nelson.) Young de Jesus Cruz left 17 dead, dozens more injured. Needless to say, even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[89,8,52,43,15,78,46,22,20,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-election","category-2nd-amendment","category-crime","category-government-unions","category-immigration","category-individual-liberty","category-law-enforcement","category-media","category-medicine","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-1DK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6308"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6340,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6308\/revisions\/6340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}