In the latest shooting to rock the U.S. two volunteer firefighters have been shot and killed and two others injured after they rushed to battle a house fire which had broken out in the upstate New York town of West Webster.
The two injured me were taken to hospital in the nearby town of Strong, and were reportedly talking to emergency workers ast they were transported for treatment.
Initial reports from the scene suggested that the men were fired on by an unknown man brandishing an assault rifle and that he has not been apprehended yet.
Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputies say there is not an active search for a shooter right now.
Besides Rush Limbaugh, this other guy is a total basket case.
He is the same one who said that bringing more guns on school grounds would reduce the amount of kids murdered. He is also the same guy who said today on Meet The Press that reducing the amount of clips in a gun would do nothing to reduce the amount of damage presently done by high-capacity clips.
By now you’ve all heard about the insanity that took place yesterday on a podium and then transmitted nationwide, possibly worldwide for all to behold. You watched in utter amazement as the NRA’s CEO called for more guns in schools to stop school children from being murdered. And you’ve shared your feelings on this issue with those close to you and even on social media with people you haven’t even met.
It’s understandable. You’re shocked. You simply cannot believe or accept the fact that in one incident, twenty innocent lives between the ages of six and seven were violently slaughtered, and you looked for solutions. The NRA promised that solution would come at that podium and when you listened to what they had to say, you walked away more bewildered and angered than ever before.
Well have no fear, you are not alone.
Please allow me to suggest this video. It is sure to bring you some level of comfort knowing that there are still some sensible, levelheaded people out there, and it is sure to give you hope for the future.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC’s The Last Word, says all the things you wanted to say or all the things you’ve probably said, but he does it in a more… dramatic way.
The 11-year-old boy allegedly told other students his parents encouraged him to bring a gun to school for protection following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday.
The boy reportedly pulled the gun, a .22-caliber pistol, out of his backpack during recess Monday morning.
“At recess, he pointed a gun to my head and said he was going to kill me,” said Isabel Rios, one of the boy’s fellow 6th grade students.
Granite School District officials say students didn’t notify teachers about the weapon until 3 p.m.
“Once the teacher knew there was a weapon in the classroom, the student was apprehended in 30 to 45 seconds and immediately brought down to the office and the police were on site within five to 10 minutes,” said Granite School District Spokesman Ben Horsley.
Granite School District sent a pre-recorded message via telephone to the parents of West Kearns Elementary students at 5:30 p.m. By then, some of those parents had already heard about the incident from their children.
“There was no lockdown. No one was called. Nothing was done. And then we had to hear it from our kids,” said John Klaus, the father of a student at West Kearns Elementary.
School administrators said they didn’t lock the school down because the gun was taken into possession quickly and they felt a lockdown would have scared the students.
Why are we still having this conversation? Why are we still debating whether we should regulate assault and military style (whatever that is) weapons and limit large purchases of ammunition? Why are we still beholden to an organization that believes that the United States Constitution guarantees an unlimited, unfettered, absolute right to a gun, despite a giant clause at the beginning of the Second Amendment that clearly refers to militias? Do we have absolute free speech rights? Religious rights? Rights to assembly? No. These are all regulated activities. We need to regulate guns.
I’ve read the arguments about how a weapons ban or more regulation would not have stopped this horrific shooting. I’ve listened and watched as talking head after talking head drones on about how politically difficult it is for a Democratic president to pursue controls on weapons because it would be political death.
I’ve had conversations in person and on social media with people for whom their weapon seems to be their most cherished possession.
“If they come for my gun I’ll give them the bullets first!”
“Over my dead body!”
“From my cold dead hands!”
“First it’s my gun, then they’ll come for my house and my family!”
“What we need is for every teacher and principal to be trained in how to use a gun and to be issued one for their classroom.”
Clearly I don’t understand the mania, the attachment, the fear, the anger, and the entitlement that many people have with their guns. I’m not advocating taking anyone’s gun away who can’t prove that they’re responsible enough to carry one. I’m questioning the idea that we don’t have to ask more questions, or do more background checks or limit what kind of gun people can buy and how much ammunition they can get at one time. There are responsible ways to do this. We regulate so many things in our society from marriage to driver’s to pet licenses, from who can be a teacher and a police officer to how fresh the meat and dairy has to be in our food stores.
But guns? Weapons that can destroy lives? Kill children? Apparently not more than the way we regulate them now, despite the fact that the system doesn’t work. When a system doesn’t work and results in people’s deaths, you fix it. That’s what we need now.
Are there ways around these proposals? You bet. And people will find them. But the point is to put them in place and see how they work because what we have now has led to one of the bloodiest, tragic, heartbreaking years this country has seen in quite a while. Gun deaths are preventable. Let’s prevent them.
President Obama met with the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting today, and broke some news during his speech telling the audience that it was time for the nation to come together and do what was necessary to protect our children.
The President hinted that there will be new legislation in the coming months geared towards guns. “This is our first task,” Mr. Obama said, “caring for our children. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how as a society we would be judge.”
The President goes on to say that “we’re not doing enough” to stop gun violence, “and we would have to change.”
And in his most direct sentence signaling change, the president said, “in the coming weeks I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators in an effort to prevent more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have?”
A heartbreaking story of a 6 year old girl. She was in one of the classrooms when the shooter Adam Lanza, entered and began shooting. The little girl laid among her classmates as they were being killed. She pretended to be dead herself and after it was all over, she ran out of the building covered in her classmates blood.
When she got to her waiting mother she said, “Mommy, I’m okay, but all my friends are dead.”
Her story was retold by a pastor, who offered grief counseling the little girl’s mother after the incident. The other 15 students in her class were all killed.
This afternoon I spoke with Governor Malloy and FBI Director Mueller. I offered Governor Malloy my condolences on behalf of the nation and made it clear he will have every single resource that he needs to investigate this heinous crime, care for the victims, counsel (for ?) their families.
We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years, and each time I learn the news, I react the not as a president but as anybody would, as a parent. And that was especially true today. I know there’s not a parent in America who doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do.
The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. (Pause.) They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own. (Pause.)
Among the fallen were also teachers, men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams.
So our hearts are broken today — for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these little children, and for the families of the adults who were lost.
Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for, as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children’s innocence has been torn away from them too early, and there are no words that will ease their pain.
As a country, we have been through this too many times, whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown or a shopping mall in Oregon or a temple in Wisconsin or a movie theater in Aurora or a street corner in Chicago. These neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children, and we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.
This evening, Michelle and I will do what I know every parent in America will do, which is hug our children a little tighter, and we’ll tell them that we love them, and we’ll remind each other how deeply we love one another. But there are families in Connecticut who cannot do that tonight, and they need all of us right now.
In the hard days to come, that community needs us to be at our best as Americans, and I will do everything in my power as president to help, because while nothing can fill the space of a lost child or a loved one, all of us can extend a hand to those in need to remind them that we are there for them, that we are praying for them, that the love they felt for those they lost endures not just in their memories but also in ours.
May God bless the memory of the victims and, in the words of Scripture, heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds.
Graphic footage of a police officer shooting a man eleven times outside a suburban home – killing him – has been released a day after the officer was cleared of wrongdoing.
Attorneys for Ernesto Duenez Jr., 34, showed the video, which was recorded by a camera in the cop’s patrol car on June 8, 2011, at a press conference in Oakland, California on Wednesday.
It shows police waiting for Duenez, who was wanted in connection with a domestic violence incident that day, to arrive at a friend’s home. They swoop on the home once he arrives in a pickup truck.
Duenez, a passenger in the truck, can be seen climbing across the seats and opening a door as Manteca police officer James Moody runs towards the vehicle with his gun pointed.
Police have claimed the officer saw a knife in the man’s right hand and feared he might throw it or charge at him in the frantic, fast-paced exchange. Duenez’s family’s attorney says he was unarmed.
On the video, Moody is heard shouting: ‘Drop the knife now!’ and ‘Hands up! Hands up, Ernie! Don’t you move, Ernie, don’t you move or I’ll shoot you!’
The officer is seen firing 13 bullets in 4.2 seconds as Duenez moves to get out of the car.
He was shot 11 times – once in the head, eight times in the body and twice in the extremities – and four were while he was on the ground. He died of gunshot wounds to his chest and abdomen.
I have a proposition for anyone who thinks that our state and national gun laws make sense and/or adhere to the legal intent of the Second Amendment. Wake up Thomas Jefferson, John (and Sam if you’d like) Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, George Washington and any other member of the founding class not named Aaron Burr. Give them a week or so to acclimate themselves to the modern-day United States, and then ask them if this is what they had in mind when they debated and wrote the Constitution:
Unhindered by federal background checks or government oversight, the 24-year-old man accused of killing a dozen people inside a Colorado movie theater was able to build what the police called a 6,000-round arsenal legally and easily over the Internet, exploiting what critics call a virtual absence of any laws regulating ammunition sales.
With a few keystrokes, the suspect, James E. Holmes, ordered 3,000 rounds of handgun ammunition, 3,000 rounds for an assault rifle and 350 shells for a 12-gauge shotgun — an amount of firepower that costs roughly $3,000 at the online sites — in the four months before the shooting, according to the police. It was pretty much as easy as ordering a book from Amazon.
He also bought bulletproof vests and other tactical gear, and a high-capacity “drum magazine” large enough to hold 100 rounds and capable of firing 50 or 60 rounds per minute — a purchase that would have been restricted under proposed legislation that has been stalled in Washington for more than a year.
I didn’t think so either
With all due respect to the current Supreme Court, which ruled in the case, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al. v. HELLER, (No. 07-290) 478 F. 3d 370, affirmed, that possessing a handgun is an individual right (and in the process overturned two centuries of precedent), the framers could not have seen this development. They were rational, reasonable men. They knew that freedom and liberty were just and correct goals, but that they had limits.
Tell that to the NRA.
I support the NRA’s existence and even most of its goals. We do have a right to a well-regulated (there’s a dormant phrase) militia and people do have a right to hunt and protect themselves. But what James Holmes amassed was not meant for hunting, protection or self-defense. He planned and carried out a massacre of innocent people at a time when they were relaxed and vulnerable. There are clearly lots of things wrong with him that society can’t anticipate or cure. He had a fairly clear record and was a brilliant student. Ominous music didn’t play when he entered a room. But did he have the right to those guns? Is that what the Second Amendment protects? I think not.
Anyone hunting for a political debate on this issue will go hungry until at least November 7 because gun rights advocates are already suspicious of President Obama, and Mitt Romney doesn’t want to say anything provocative or alienate his base. Meanwhile, gun control politicians such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York continue to press the issue. Honestly, I’d feel safer in a midtown Manhattan movie theater than in a multiplex in a state with fewer gun laws. Call me crazy.
But back to the framers.
I understand that they feared a tyrannical national government that would encroach on people’s liberties, so they included an amendment that left to the states the right to have its citizen’s armed. I get that. What they didn’t intend was that citizens would have free reign to arm themselves to the teeth with weapons that threatened the public order. They would have drawn a line at Holmes’s arsenal because it’s detached from the intent of the amendment.
We have limits on speech, religion and state’s rights. It’s only logical that we look at the totality of our gun laws and ask ourselves if they adequately protect us from people who seek to do us harm. At this moment, the answer is no.
On Tuesday, Republican Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) demanded that Attorney General Eric Holder, a member of the Obama Administration, resign. “So, Mr. Attorney General, it’s more with sorrow than anger that I would say you leave me with no alternative but to join those who call upon you to resign your office,” Cornyn said.
The Republican Senator is calling on Mr. Holder to resign because of a program that started in 2007 under the Bush Administration called The Fast an Furious. The object of the program was to allow traceable guns to be smuggled into Mexico with the intention of pinpointing their locations and capturing some very bad people associated with the drug cartels . Unfortunately, an American Border Patrol Agant Brian Terry, was killed in December 2010 by a criminal using one of these guns and now Mr. Holder is in the hot seat.
Cornyn continued;
“You still resist coming clean about what you knew and when you knew it with regard to Operation Fast and Furious,” Cornyn charged. “You won’t cooperate with a legitimate congressional investigation, and you won’t hold anyone, including yourself, accountable. Your department blocks states from implementing attempts to combat voter fraud. In short, you’ve violated the public trust, in my view, by failing and refusing to perform the duties of your office.”
“So, Mr. Attorney General, it’s more with sorrow than anger that I would say you leave me with no alternative but to join those who call upon you to resign your office,” Cornyn said.
Calling Cornyn’s performance a political stunt, Holder replied that he is not resigning;
“With all due respect, senator, there is so much that’s factually wrong with the premises that you started your statement with, it’s almost breathtaking in its inaccuracy, but I will simply leave it at that.”
“… I don’t have any intention of resigning. I heard the White House press officer say yesterday that the President has absolute confidence in me. I don’t have any reason to believe that that, in fact, is not the case.”
And in reference to the documents Republicans are demanding, reports claim that Tuesday’s appearance marked the ninth time [Holder] has testified before Congress on Operation Fast and Furious. Holder said he was the one who ended “the misguided tactics” in that operation and who tapped an inspector general to investigate any wrongdoing. His staff has also provided Congress with more than 7,600 documents, in 46 separate installments, relating to the issue.
Last year when the so-called grassroots Teaparty started, multiple videos of them making threats against Liberals and Democrats began popping up online. The Teaparty however, tried unsuccessfully to maintain their civility towards the other side of the Political aisle, but the videos kept coming.
Well that was then. Today, The Teaparty is not even concerned about appearing violent. They openly praise Texas governor Rick Perry when he bragged about executing the most people in our nation’s history, and they applauded and called for the death of a person who has no health care insurance, but need extensive medical care.
And then this. Andrew Breitbart, a favorite Teaparty conservative media personality, addressed a Teaparty crowd and shared his innermost feelings towards Liberals and unions. Breitbart is heard saying, “we outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns.” After the audience began laughing, Breitbart exclaimed, “I’m not kidding!”
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