Filibuster: Vainglorius or Victorius? - Page 1

CT Democrats vowed not to be silent any longer following the fact of the recent Orlando shooting involving the AR-15, the same weapon used in the Sandy Hook elementary school murders.

The finale came after 15 hours and was a tear jerker.

Mr. Murphy, whose personal outrage at gun violence was heightened by the murder of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, claimed victory shortly before 2 a.m. on Thursday when he announced an agreement between Mr. McConnell and the Democratic leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, to hold votes on two gun control amendments.

“It is our understanding that the Republican leader and the Democratic leader have spoken and that we have been given a commitment on a path forward to get votes on the floor of the Senate,” Mr. Murphy said as he prepared to finally wrap up.

“Now we still have to get from here to there,” he added. “But we did not have that commitment when we started today. And we have that understanding at the end of the day.”

But while Mr. Murphy made a long and often eloquent case for tightening the nation’s gun laws, Democrats almost certainly would have gotten their votes, anyway — without the more than 15 hours of speeches by him and by at least 40 other senators who helped sustain his effort by asking him to yield time for questions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/us/politics/senate-filibuster-gun-control.html

And then there was Jim Hines who wasn't going to sit through another perfunctory and ineffective respose to the bloodletting with only a "moment of silence". 

Not me. Not anymore.

If the House of Representatives had a solitary moral fiber, even a wisp of human empathy, we would spend moments not in silence, but screaming at painful volume the names of the 49 whose bodies were ripped apart in Orlando, and the previous victims and the ones before them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/14/why-i-walked-out-of-the-houses-moment-of-silence-for-orlando/

Is anyone really listening? Or, are they just brave fools?

 

 

People on terrorist watch lists should not be allowed to purchase ANY weapon as long as they are on the list.  Simple.  

That said, what I find telling is the media has said nothing about a very significant event in the history of school violence.  When it comes to school shootings like Columbine or Sandy Hook, or when it comes to mass shootings like The Pulse, not one media outlet has ever talked about the Bath School Disaster.....

1927 Andrew Kehoe killed 38 Bath Elementary School children and 6 adults in a mass school killing (44 total) and wounded 58, mostly children.   He never fired a shot, instead he used dynamite to make bombs (as in multiple hidden around the school).  Only one detonated and it was a partial detonation at that.  If they all went off as he had planned, many many more would have died.  Until The Pulse Nightclub, it was the largest mass school massacre, yet why is it never counted or mentioned?  Could it be because no guns were used??????  

I think if Andrew had access to an AR-15 he would have used one.

Beetree, he had plenty of guns, for some reason he believed his farm animals and children should die in a fire.  He did shoot his wife.  There are other instances of mass murderers using poison, explosions, and other various methods of destruction.  The only methods and events that make it into the news are those with guns, unless of course the perpetrator was stopped by someone with a legal handgun or rifle........

He did not have an automatic firing, military grade weapon. He was criminally disturbed and used the methods of mass carnage available to him. A rifle wouldn't be that choice, as an AR-15 would.

I read up on him, so I have that perspective understood. He had a grudge against the school board that did not elect him to his previously appointed post. His wife was dying from TB. He was a distracted farmer and was about to default on his mortgage.

None of these circumstances begin to relate to a Columbine motive or a Sandy Hook motive, not even a Timothy McVeigh motive.

No mass shooters had "automatic firing."  Besides automatic firing weapons, bullets continue to fire as long as the trigger is pulled, have been outlawed since shortly after prohibition. Semi-auto is one bullet for one trigger pull.  Kehoe did have weapons, quite a few as a matter of fact, he shot his wife but felt animals and kids needed to burn or blow up.  He tied the legs of his horses and brought all the other animals into the barn before he set it on fire with them alive in it.

So what was Kehoe's motive compared to Timothy, Columbine, or Sandy Hook?  They all wanted mass carnage and notoriety. 

So, because there are other methods we should just look the other way because it is a gun? wow, deep!

He left his message, "why", painted on a wood sign: Criminals are made not born.

Not sure I agree with that statement, 100 %, either. I think some people are born evil. He could be one of those.

You are the psychologist, what do you call a man who tortures animals, abuses his wife, and blames everyone else for his failures? And will kill with impunity out of a grudge, even as part of his own suicide? Oh, and I almost forgot--- watches his step mom burn from oil in a stove explosion for a few minutes before throwing water on her, which made her burn worse?

Also, I really don't think farmers use dynamite anymore to clear tree stumps these days. Must be a reason for that? Are you trying to make a point that the AR-15's are not superior to any firearm Andrew owned? I just don't believe you. That weapon has a fantastic, superior kill rate and that is why the military use it.

The school being destroyed was Andrew getting back at the whole town because he was losing his farm and blamed the taxes levied to pay for the school. He burned his wife's body beyond recognition after bludgeoning her in the head (probably with a shovel) shortly after she left the hospital. Her body was found in a wheelbarrow. Her bills apparently, he also resented. That was a personal statement, if there ever was one.

Burning his barn and making sure the animals died surely was his grudge making sure no one profited from his death in any way.

None of this really matters because the fact is this psychopathic, workplace massacre just happened to be raged against the school building. He had the access and he wanted the building destroyed, the people killed were secondary, more as welcomed collateral damage to the murderous mind of Andrew. That is a main reason to use dynamite. His nature too, would be to use what he had, being the tinkering sort of man he was, he made his truck a bomb for his suicide, and that is the explosion he wanted to make sure certain other people would also die with him.

Modern mass shooters don't all plan to suicide, that is often their plan B.

The shooters of today are going for the infamy caused by taking the most lives they can in enclosed spaces driven by their own particular demons. The AR-15 makes mass murder easy and satisfyingly personal with each pop making a death, some innocent's reality.

Look to the success of Australia for the proof that gun control measures save lives.

Lets imagine this guy had 2 handguns. How many times would he have to stop and reload to kill 49? How many times did he reload with the AR-15? For shits and giggles lets assume every shot is a head shot. This weapon was invented as a weapon of war, there is no refuting this, it is established fact.

If anyone here thinks Trump will protect your gun rights you better think again.

 

Should there be a ban on assault weapons?

Yes, then no.
Back in 2000, Trump, in his book "The America We Deserve," said he supported the 1994 federal assault weapons ban. (The law expired in 2004 and was not renewed by Congress.)
"I generally oppose gun control," he wrote then, "but I support the ban on assault weapons and I support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun. With today's internet technology we should be able to tell within 72 hours if a potential gun owner has a record."
But in a policy paper released in September 2015, a little more than three months into his campaign, Trump offered a very different take.
"Gun and magazine bans are a total failure," he said. "That's been proven every time it's been tried. Opponents of gun rights try to come up with scary sounding phrases like 'assault weapons', 'military-style weapons' and 'high capacity magazines' to confuse people. What they're really talking about are popular semi-automatic rifles and standard magazines that are owned by tens of millions of Americans."
PolitiFact rated Trump's reversal a "full flop."