Wonkette
So here is one of those stories where the initial impression — “Maybe-crazy teacher was toting around an AR-15 just like the one used in the Newtown massacre!” — sounds like perfect Wonketfodder, and then you start looking at it more and finally you kind of throw your hands up in the air and wish you’d gone back to re-reading Scud: The Disposable Assassin, where it’s clear who the bad guys are. In keeping with Wonkette Policy, we will not be making fun of possibly-mentally-ill high school teacher Steven Davis, “a beloved science and math teacher at Mount Anthony Union High School” in Bennington, Vermont. Davis surrendered a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to police and was hospitalized for observation last week after neighbors spotted him carrying the weapon to his car; he also had posted several rambling, maybe-threatening videos to YouTube and his wife had taken their children from their home and gotten a protection order against him. Judges don’t grant those on a whim.
So yes, scary guy, but also probably not in his right mind, at least at the time he was posting those videos (which have since been removed by YouTube). But also “beloved teacher” who was apparently well-liked and functional before whatever breakdown sent him around the bend, so Wayne LaPierre’s awesome idea for a national registry of mentally ill people would have done absolutely nothing when Davis bought that gun in 2009. (One of the few brightly lit zones of moral clarity here: Wayne LaPierre sucks ass.)
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Gun Rights Increase Suicides
The Arizona Republic
One of the things they're worried about is that people with minor psychological problems will also be restricted if we try to do something about this. In successfully striving to prevent that, they are responsible for cases like this.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
Pain radiated through the phone when Kristi Stadler called the crisis hotline in the wee hours one May morning.This sad story is a good illustration of how guns assist suicides. The biased pro-gun folks will say anything to defend and protect their beloved guns, but the obvious fact is gun availability makes suicide attempts more likely to succeed.
"I would like to kill myself," she told Luis, the voice at the other end of the line. "I know that life is an option for me, but I know it's been an option for the past 12 years, and it hasn't gotten any better, and when it does, it always gets bad again."
Terry Stadler tears up as he talks about his daughter's 12-year battle with mental illness. She fought it with everything she had, he says. With repeated hospitalizations, with medication and an electrical implant designed to help with her deep depression. With crisis counseling and years of work with psychiatrists. She fought hard, her father says, right up until that day in May 2009 when the Phoenix Police Department handed her a loaded gun. Fifteen hours later, Kristi Lee Stadler was dead.
Knowing that she had a history of mental illness.
Knowing that she had threatened suicide two months earlier.
Instead, police did the requisite "Brady check," verifying that Kristi had never been ordered by a judge into treatment, and proceeded to track her down to let her know she could come get her gun.
Kristi picked up her gun and bullets on May 7, 2009.
She died just after 4 a.m. on May 8.
One of the things they're worried about is that people with minor psychological problems will also be restricted if we try to do something about this. In successfully striving to prevent that, they are responsible for cases like this.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Annabel Park Interviews a Gun-Rights Activist
The Coffee Party USA
Dear friends who can't tolerate anyone bringing up gun control: You're not going to intimidate me with your !!!!s, ????s, WORDS IN ALL CAPS, namecalling, and threats to unfriend.
I am going to speak my mind regardless of your protestations. I just wish you loved the First Amendment as much as your reading of the Second Amendment. Instead trying to bully people into submission, let us speak freely.
Most people aren't calling for a ban on guns contrary to your knee-jerk reactions. We want better regulations on something that is already regulated. We just want improvements. To quote my friend Jim Sanches, there's a difference between regulating and banning. Respect that America needs to talk about this massacre considering many factors including gun control. So, stop making wild accusations, calling people morons, and trying to shut down discussion.
Dear friends who can't tolerate anyone bringing up gun control: You're not going to intimidate me with your !!!!s, ????s, WORDS IN ALL CAPS, namecalling, and threats to unfriend.
I am going to speak my mind regardless of your protestations. I just wish you loved the First Amendment as much as your reading of the Second Amendment. Instead trying to bully people into submission, let us speak freely.
Most people aren't calling for a ban on guns contrary to your knee-jerk reactions. We want better regulations on something that is already regulated. We just want improvements. To quote my friend Jim Sanches, there's a difference between regulating and banning. Respect that America needs to talk about this massacre considering many factors including gun control. So, stop making wild accusations, calling people morons, and trying to shut down discussion.
Toy Guns in Mexico
In a fight to bring down the crime rate in Mexico’s capital city, police have destroyed thousands of toy guns to stop them from becoming a real threat on the streets.You know what I say about these realistic-looking toys, don't you?
Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera announced that officials estimate at least three of every 10 violent crimes in Mexico City are carried out with a real-looking toy gun. He said this was enough justification to destroy the seven thousand replica weapons.
Shops bore the brunt of the government's decision as toy items were seized by the police in the capital and the surrounding state. Sunday is Three Kings Day, when Mexican children receive holiday gifts.
Mexico has strict laws on gun ownership that require toy weapons be made of transparent or colored plastic.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
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