Quoted from Libertarian4life

[size=14]In a word, Switzerland, which is awash in guns,

Quoted from bumblethru

6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.

Quoted from Box A Rox

Quoted from Box A Rox

As posted above:

Everyone in Switzerland serves in the army, and the cantons used to let you have the guns at
home.
They've been moving to keeping the guns in depots. That means they’re not in the household,
which makes sense because the literature shows us that if the gun is in the household, the risk goes
up for everyone in the household.[/b]

Quoted from Box A Rox

15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States.

Quoted from CICERO

I'd have to disagree.  The My Lai Massacre killed around 400 unarmed Vietnamese civilians made up of men, women, elderly and infants.  Bodies mutilated and women raped by US soldiers.  And the lieutenant that ordered it served 3 1/2 years in house arrest.  

Nobody can kill indiscriminately quite like the homicidal maniacs paid by the federal government.

Quoted from Henry

Gun control will not work ....

Quoted from Libertarian4life

Oh sure bring government sponsored shootings into it.

Quoted from Box A Rox

A survey by researchers at the Harvard University School of Public Health found strong statistical
support for the idea that, even if you control for poverty levels, more people die from gun homicides
in areas with higher rates of gun ownership. And despite what gun advocates say, countries like
Israel and Switzerland don’t disprove the point.

Quoted from Libertarian4life

So they are moving from a safe and well regulated militia to a more dangerous US style gun control society.

Who wants to bet what will happen next?

Quoted Text

UN Promotes Another Gun-Grabbing Program
Written by  Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
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A United Nations conference aimed at ridding the world of the "scourge" of privately-owned weapons ended recently and the report of the meeting reveals that despite the failure of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), the globalists’ plan to abolish the Second Amendment remains intact in the form of the “Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects” (PoA).

The report said:

In implementing the Programme of Action at the national level, States, where they have not yet done so, undertake: To support the development and implementation of adequate laws, regulations and administrative procedures to prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons in all its aspects, including diversion of small arms and light weapons to unauthorized recipients.

To establish or strengthen, as appropriate, national coordination mechanisms to improve coordination among governmental agencies, in particular among law enforcement, national border and customs control agencies, and arms transfer licensing authorities, to implement the Programme of Action.

The report concluded:

This should include aspects of the illicit manufacture, control, trafficking, circulation, brokering and trade, as well as tracing, finance, collection and destruction of small arms and light weapons.

Particulars of the program are set out on the website of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs. Information on that site reveals that the international government-in-waiting wants to start by taking away weapons from “insurgents, armed gang members, pirates, and terrorists.”

Would this disarmament extend to the American-supplied arms used by the regime-toppling rebels in Libya and Syria? Even President Obama admits that many of the leaders of these “freedom fighters” are members of al-Qaeda or other similar alleged terrorist organizations.

As for the methods that will be employed to carry out this disarmament, the agency’s website reports:

If national law enforcement officials were able to trace small arms back to their last legitimate owner, who might then be held accountable, this would form an effective measure against illicit trade and diversion. For that purpose, it is essential that the weapon be marked upon production and import, and that appropriate records be kept. Existing stocks should also be marked. Although many weapons are marked upon production and import, international cooperation in marking and tracing of small arms is in its infancy.

This is no less than a wholesale national expansion of the “Fast and Furious” operation that bore no fruit and resulted in the death of a U.S. border patrol officer.

Regardless of the ATT’s failure to grant governments the power to seize privately owned weapons, the promotion of the PoA makes it clear that the UN will not stop until the right to bear arms is reduced to a privilege enjoyed only by selected insiders and their armed enforcers.

The executive vice president of the National Association for Gun Rights agrees. In an interview with World Net Daily, Dudley Brown declared, “What’s at stake is the entire fate of firearms in America.”

In order to thwart the UN’s attack on gun rights, Brown considers the consistent opposition of concerned citizens to be the best, last line of defense of the Second Amendment.

“Grassroots activism — led by my organization, the National Association for Gun Rights — derailed the U.N.’s Small Arms Treaty,” Brown said. “But now they’re using a more insidious avenue called the Programme Against Small Arms to push for global gun control. And it just might work, unless we mobilize Americans against it.”

In a report on the efforts of the American delegation at conferences considering the PoA and the ATT, the Heritage Foundation praises the United States’ ability to at least slow the UN’s roll over the Constitution. Heritage writes:

PoA’s backers won a victory by further institutionalizing the Programme and scheduling meetings through 2018, allowing the PoA to continue to thrive on bureaucratic momentum. As with so much at the U.N., the U.S.’s job at the Review Conference was essentially to stop too many bad things from happening. The Conference’s outcome means that, if the U.S. continues to participate in the PoA, it will have to keep on playing that role.

The fight is far from over, however. The Heritage blog post describes how the forces of disarmament will continue their advance toward the eradication of the rights of Americans to own weapons. The blog reads:

Over the coming years, the ISACS [International Small Arms Control Standards] ... will be further elaborated, will move from their current base in Geneva to New York, and will be more closely integrated with the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs. The Conference demonstrated that these standards are appealing both to the European Union and to mischief-makers like North Korea, Iran, and Cuba, which spent a good deal of the Conference yanking the U.S.’s chain by demanding civilian gun control. The dictatorships are not alone in demanding this: As one NGO speaker put it, the PoA is the basis of “U.N. gun control.” The ISACS standards are central to that long-term effort.

As has so often happened, communist nations will manipulate the leadership of the United Nations in order to disarm the United States and to weaken our sovereignty and our people by taking from them their ability to resist those who would demote us to the ranks of the third world.

The United Nations’ plan of action includes the scheduling of meetings through 2018 in order to encourage member nations to voluntarily impose the international organization’s gun-grabbing standards.

Americans must remain vigilant and resist every effort — even seemingly harmless and humanitarian ones — to repeal the Second Amendment and destroy American sovereignty.

Quoted Text

I Am Adam Lanza's Mother
posted by LIZA LONG on SAT, DEC 15, 2012 at 10:51 PM

Michael with a butterfly.
This has been reposted from The Blue Review.

Three days before 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.

“I can wear these pants,” he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.

“They are navy blue,” I told him. “Your school’s dress code says black or khaki pants only.”

“They told me I could wear these,” he insisted. “You’re a stupid b**ch. I can wear whatever pants I want to. This is America. I have rights!”

“You can’t wear whatever pants you want to,” I said, my tone affable, reasonable. “And you definitely cannot call me a stupid b**ch. You’re grounded from electronics for the rest of the day. Now get in the car, and I will take you to school.”

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7- and 9-year-old siblings knew the safety plan—they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn't have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.

We still don’t know what's wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work.

At the start of seventh grade, Michael was accepted to an accelerated program for highly gifted math and science students. His IQ is off the charts. When he's in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who. He's in a good mood most of the time. But when he's not, watch out. And it’s impossible to predict what will set him off.

Several weeks into his new junior high school, Michael began exhibiting increasingly odd and threatening behaviors at school. We decided to transfer him to the district’s most restrictive behavioral program, a contained school environment where children who can’t function in normal classrooms can access their right to free public babysitting from 7:30 a.m.-1:50 p.m. Monday through Friday until they turn 18.

The morning of the pants incident, Michael continued to argue with me on the drive. He would occasionally apologize and seem remorseful. Right before we turned into his school parking lot, he said, "Look, Mom, I'm really sorry. Can I have video games back today?"

"No way," I told him. "You cannot act the way you acted this morning and think you can get your electronic privileges back that quickly."

His face turned cold, and his eyes were full of calculated rage. "Then I'm going to kill myself," he said. "I'm going to jump out of this car right now and kill myself."

That was it. After the knife incident, I had told him that if he ever said those words again, I would take him straight to the mental hospital, no ifs, ands, or buts. I did not respond, except to pull the car into the opposite lane, turning left instead of right.

"Where are you taking me?" he said, suddenly worried. "Where are we going?"

"You know where we are going," I replied.

"No! You can’t do that to me! You’re sending me to hell! You’re sending me straight to hell!"

I pulled up in front of the hospital, frantically waving for one of the clinicians who happened to be standing outside. "Call the police," I said. "Hurry."

Michael was in a full-blown fit by then, screaming and hitting. I hugged him close so he couldn’t escape from the car. He bit me several times and repeatedly jabbed his elbows into my rib cage. I’m still stronger than he is, but I won’t be for much longer.

The police came quickly and carried my son screaming and kicking into the bowels of the hospital. I started to shake, and tears filled my eyes as I filled out the paperwork—"Were there any difficulties with... at what age did your child... were there any problems with.. has your child ever experienced.. does your child have..."

At least we have health insurance now. I recently accepted a position with a local college, giving up my freelance career because when you have a kid like this, you need benefits. You'll do anything for benefits. No individual insurance plan will cover this kind of thing.

For days, my son insisted that I was lying—that I made the whole thing up so that I could get rid of him. The first day, when I called to check up on him, he said, "I hate you. And I'm going to get my revenge as soon as I get out of here."

By day three, he was my calm, sweet boy again, all apologies and promises to get better. I've heard those promises for years. I don't believe them anymore.

On the intake form, under the question, "What are your expectations for treatment?" I wrote, “I need help.”

And I do. This problem is too big for me to handle on my own. Sometimes there are no good options. So you just pray for grace and trust that in hindsight, it will all make sense.

I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza's mother. I am Dylan Klebold's and Eric Harris's mother. I am Jason Holmes's mother. I am Jared Loughner's mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho's mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.

According to Mother Jones, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. Of these, 43 of the killers were white males, and only one was a woman. Mother Jones focused on whether the killers obtained their guns legally (most did). But this highly visible sign of mental illness should lead us to consider how many people in the U.S. live in fear, like I do.

When I asked my son's social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail," he said. "That's the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges."

I don't believe my son belongs in jail. The chaotic environment exacerbates Michael's sensitivity to sensory stimuli and doesn’t deal with the underlying pathology. But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise—in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population.

With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill—Rikers Island, the LA County Jail and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nation’s largest treatment centers in 2011.

No one wants to send a 13-year-old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”

I agree that something must be done. It's time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That's the only way our nation can ever truly heal.

God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.

Liza Long is an author, musician, and erstwhile classicist. She is also a single mother of four bright, loved children, one of whom has special needs. To read more from the Blue Review, click here.