"There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred" - The adult male on the school premises killed 20 little people/6 teachers with an assault weapon.
F6: What a crock of shit. The Elementary I went to back in the 1950's had No male teachers. They were all female teachers and also great. I remember them all today.
In the 1840s and 50s, abolitionists often spoke of a menace they called "The Slave Power." This pejorative wasn't aimed at Southern slavery, per se. It referred to the vast reach of proslavery money and influence in Washington and beyond. If unchecked, abolitionists warned, the Slave Power would poison every corner of American life and territory. I'm wary of historical analogies. But in the wake of the Newtown massacre, I'm struck by parallels between the Slave Power and a force haunting us today: call it The Gun Power.
For decades we've appeased and abetted this monster, as Americans once did slavery. Now, like then, we may have finally reached a breaking point. I don't mean to equate owning slaves with owning guns. But I do mean to equate the tactics and rhetoric of the NRA with those of proslavery "Fire-Eaters." The NRA casts itself as a champion of the Constitution. So did slaveholders, citing the safeguards accorded owners of human "property." Few Americans questioned slavery's legality, though they debated the Founders' intent, just as we do with the Second Amendment.
But as the nation spread, slaveowners turned the defense of a right into an expansionist crusade. Slavery wasn't just a right that nonslaveholders had to recognize and uphold. It must extend wherever slaveholders traveled and settled. So, too, has the N.R.A. demanded the right to carry guns into every conceivable place, including schools, churches and hospitals. The N.R.A. does so in the name not only of rights but of "safety" and "self-defense." Guns, you see, aren't a danger to be regulated; they're a source of peace and security that everyone should enjoy.
Proslavery zealots had their own version of this. While 18th century slaveowners like Jefferson had treated the institution as a necessary evil, John C. Calhoun lauded slavery as a "positive good," a source of freedom even, because it liberated whites from drudgery and class conflict and blacks from African "savagery." It followed that all should enjoy its benefits. "I would spread the blessings of slavery, like the religion of our Divine Master, to the uttermost ends of the earth,' declared Mississippi Senator Albert Brown.
This wasn't just bluster. Even after the U.S. had enlarged itself by a third at Mexico's expense in the 1840s, Brown and others urged the nation to conquer Central America to provide Southerners with more land to plant and enslave. In the 1850s, Americans invaded Cuba, Baja, and Nicaragua, where a proslavery partisan, William Walker, installed himself as leader and reinstated slavery. His dictatorship won recognition from the administration of President Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire. Northerners like Pierce were derided as "doughfaces"--half-baked and malleable in the hands of Southern leaders.
Complete Explanation: The artist lays on the Democrats the major blame for violence perpetrated against antislavery settlers in Kansas in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Here a bearded "freesoiler" has been bound to the "Democratic Platform" and is restrained by two Lilliputian figures, presidential nominee James Buchanan and Democratic senator Lewis Cass. Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and president Franklin Pierce, also shown as tiny figures, force a black man into the giant's gaping mouth. The freesoiler's head rests on a platform marked "Kansas," "Cuba," and "Central America," probably referring to Democratic ambitions for the extension of slavery. In the background left is a scene of burning and pillage; on the right a dead man hangs from a tree.
shows a miniature Pierce and Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois holding a bound man's hair while two Southern Congressman hoist a black man down the captive's throat. A similar cartoon could be drawn today, featuring the NRA's Wayne LaPierre and legislators with A ratings from the gun lobby, ramming concealed weapons and Stand Your Ground laws through state bodies too cowed to oppose them.
These kinds of tactics can work for a time, a very long time, as they did in the case of slavery. Most mid-19th century Americans, after all, were white supremacists who had little or no care for the plight of blacks. What most Northerners hated and feared wasn't slavery in the South, but the prospect of competing with slave labor and slaveholders' wealth in new territories, putting white freedom and opportunity at risk.
I suspect most Americans today who don't own guns have somewhat the same stance towards gun ownership. So long as guns stay on shooting ranges, or in the hands of hunters, or those who can make a good case that they need protection, few of us will make a stink, however much we disapprove. But forces like the Slave Power and Gun Power know no limits.
Emboldened by success, and imbued with a fanatical and paranoid world-view, they see enemies everywhere and regard any hint of compromise as betrayal. As New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley wrote in 1854, slavery "loves aggression, for when it ceases to be aggressive it stagnates and decays. It is the leper of modern civilization, but a leper whom no cry of 'unclean' will keep from intrusion into uninfected company." Much the same applies to the NRA and its insatiable appetite for new territory to allow arms in, and new ways to allow those guns to be used--such as putting armed guards in our elementary schools, as the NRA today suggested [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/us/nra-calls-for-armed-guards-at-schools.html ].
In the 1850s, slaveholders got their way in Congress (including a hardened Fugitive Slave Act), in the Supreme Court (the Dred Scott decision), and in the White House (occupied by a succession of doughfaces). But proslavery hardliners weren't satisfied. They sought the resumption of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which the Constitution had banned as of 1808. They branded moderates like Abraham Lincoln--who pledged to leave slavery alone in the South--as members of a "Black Republican" conspiracy to overthrow slavery. And they banished former allies such as Stephen Douglas, who lost his A-Rating for straying from the ultra-orthodox line that there must not be any restriction on slavery.
Rather than accede to Douglas's nomination as Democratic candidate in the 1860 presidential election, which he might well have won, Southerners split the party and nominated one of their own, dividing the Democratic vote and paving Lincoln's path to the White House. At which point, the Fire-Eaters led Southern states out of the Union rather than accept a democratically-elected president they opposed.
The NRA shows signs of similar derangement and over-reach. During the election, it demonized a president who had done nothing on gun control, claiming a "massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term." It has alienated staunch allies like Democrat John Dingell who resisted the NRA's mad-dog campaign to hold Eric Holder in contempt over "Fast and Furious." Other supporters who have deviated an inch from the NRA line have been targeted for electoral defeat.
And now, as the NRA's crusade bears fruit in Aurora, in Newtown, in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the nation shows signs of finally rousing from its slumber and acquiescence to whatever the Gun Power demands. The freedom of gun-owners--as interpreted and enforced by the NRA--threatens the freedom and security of every American. This was, in essence, the argument of Northerners who conjured the Slave Power: unstopped, it will enslave us all.
Here's one last link between the Slave Power and Gun Power, albeit ironic. The NRA was founded after the Civil War by Union veterans who felt Yankees had shown a lack of marksmanship in battling Rebels.
The NRA's first president was General Ambrose Burnside, who led Union troops at Antietam, a battle that in turn led Lincoln to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This early NRA appears to have regarded guns and marksmanship as necessary to the maintenance of a well-regulated militia. Today's NRA, of course, resists the "regulated" part of that equation. And militia, in its mind, means massively armed individuals ready to resist the "jack-booted government thugs" of the ATF and other agencies (including the United Nations).
In short, the NRA has become a neo-Confederate movement that sees Federals as foes, and that stokes the paranoia of its followers by claiming, as LaPierre did this year, that Obama's re-election marks "the end of our freedom forever." That's more or less what Fire-Eaters said about Lincoln in 1860.
Nancy Lanza let Adam use guns to “teach him responsibility”
(Credit: AP)
Newtown gunman reportedly hadn't talked to brother or father in two years, relationship with mom was deteriorating
By David Daley Saturday, Dec 22, 2012 10:06 PM CST
Adam Lanza’s days leading up to the Newtown massacre remain shrouded in mystery because he was so cut off from the rest of the world. And according to a new Wall Street Journal report [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324731304578193890846892734.html ], that very isolation is a frustration to investigators trying to determine why he killed his mother, Nancy, and then murdered 26 more people last Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary.
The Journal, in what may be the deepest account yet of the inner workings of the Lanza family reports that:
* Adam Lanza stopped talking with his father, Peter, during summer 2010, which coincided with the time a relationship with Peter Lanza’s now-wife turned serious.
* That Christmas, Lanza stopped communicating with his older brother Ryan.
* Nancy Lanza let Adam use her guns at a local shooting range in order to bond with him and “teach him responsibility.”
The story suggests Adam Lanza’s problems started in first grade, at Sandy Hook (where he attended classes through fourth grade). After a stint of home schooling, he was back in the Newtown system for middle school, but remained shy, socially awkward and isolated from classmates.
As the paper tells it:
As a freshman at Newtown High School, Mr. Lanza’s socially maladroit behavior attracted attention from school officials but he managed to make friends in the Tech Club and through videogames. Mr. Lanza didn’t keep those connections. Later, Gloria Milas asked her son, Josh, why he hadn’t returned a videogame console that belonged to Mr. Lanza. “No one knows where he is,” Ms. Milas said her son told her.
Mr. Lanza’s mother had again taken him out of public schools. He enrolled in classes at Western Connecticut State University. She “wanted him to have college classes,” Marsha Lanza said. In Nancy’s view, “he was brilliant.”
But as one of the youngest people there, he was an outsider. “We tried to say hi to him every so often, and he just seemed nervous,” said Dot Stasny, a classmate in an introductory German course in spring 2009.
The Journal suggests that Nancy Lanza may have been ready to leave Newtown. Friends told the paper she was worried about him, and knew their relationship was “deteriorating.”
In her final days, Ms. Lanza told friends she was preparing to move across the country, to Washington, where there was a school she believed would be the right fit for her son. She told her friend Mark Tambascio she would be selling her beloved Red Sox season tickets. “She was ready to move,” he said.
Jeffrey Gagliardi of California tries out an Aimpoint sight on a rifle at the National Shooting Sports Foundation's 33rd annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in Las Vegas on Jan. 18, 2011. (AP Photo/The Roanoke Times, Matt Gentry)
By Christina Wilkie and Saki Knafo Posted: 12/22/2012 8:51 am EST | Updated: 12/22/2012 11:24 pm EST
NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Three miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School, a white Colonial-style building stands about 50 feet back from the road, an unassuming presence in a town that never got much attention until now. On a recent day, a security guard got out of a parked car at the end of the driveway and said he’d received instructions to turn away anyone who didn’t work in the building. It wasn't hard to see why his employers might have hired him. In what appears to be a bizarre coincidence, the people working inside were among the country's most adamant champions of the kinds of weapons and ammunition that Adam Lanza used to kill 26 children and adults just down the road last week.
The Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, or NSSF, is the nation's premier gun manufacturers trade association, and in recent years the group has concentrated on marketing military-style assault weapons of the kind used by Lanza, James Holmes and other mass murderers. In the last decade, as the national interest in hunting has declined, gun manufacturers have increasingly relied on the sale of high-powered rifles, capable of killing many people in seconds. Behind the scenes, the NSSF has done much of the work of pitching those products to politicians, the media and gun buyers.
Doug Painter, a former NSSF president, delivered a pitch characteristic of the NSSF’s folksy approach in a video released by the group in 2009, a year when many gun-owners were worried that the newly Democratic White House would try to take away their weapons.
Holding up the same kind of rifle that Adam Lanza would eventually use to commit mass murder, Painter asked the camera, “Am I gonna trade in Ol’ Betsy for one of these?” He answered himself, “Maybe not. But there’s a more important point to consider. Anti-gun folks insist on labeling these rifles as ‘bad guns,’ as opposed to more traditional-looking ‘good guns.’ How can any inanimate object be considered ‘good’ or ‘bad’?”
The ad was part of a broad, multi-year effort by the gun industry-backed NSSF "to put a happy face on these military weapons,” said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the gun-control advocacy group the Violence Policy Center. "People would be shocked if they knew that the industry has taken guns that were designed for warfare and marketed them to civilians," said Sugarmann, who happens to be a native of Newtown, Conn.
*
Since the Sandy Hook massacre, the NSSF has stated publicly that it will not respond to media requests, and attempts to reach Steve Sanetti, the president, were unsuccessful. Nor did anyone answer at two publicly listed numbers for Painter, the former president. In a statement posted on its website, the group acknowledged the NSSF's proximity to the school, saying, “there are not many degrees of separation in small communities like Newtown, and so, not surprisingly, we had family, friends and acquaintances that were affected.”
The group later added another statement, claiming that it would “welcome the opportunity” to eventually become part of a “full national conversation” aimed at improving the “protection of our children and our communities.”
As that conversation unfolds, Sanetti, the group’s president since 2008, is likely to emerge as a controversial figure. A former Army captain, Sanetti previously served as president of Sturm & Ruger, a Connecticut-based company that produced the assault weapon used in the Norway massacre of 2011. He helped direct "the successful coordinated response to municipal lawsuits that threatened the firearms industry in the late 1990s,” according to a 2008 press release from the firm.
"I think the world of him," said Russ Thurman, a gun magazine editor and a member of NSSF's board of governors, who has noted in the past that while Sanetti's "long-term involvement in the legal issues has not been pleasant or glamorous," it is "important.”
The NSSF’s efforts to rebrand military-style semi-automatic rifles, or “AR-15 rifles” in industry speak, as consumer-friendly recreational products can be traced back to 2009, when the group launched a national media campaign designed to convince hunters of the benefits of the newer, more expensive assault weapons.
In a newsletter released at the time, Sanetti emphasized how important the guns were to the industry’s bottom line. "The best-selling rifles in America today are those based on the AR-15 platform," he said.
In 2010, the group began working to promote the AR-15 with Guns and Ammo, a major gun magazine that devoted a recent cover story to the best guns for surviving a zombie apocalypse. The group also held combination seminars and shooting sessions where members of the media were lectured on the differences between machine guns and semi-automatic rifles (machines guns are even more dangerous). And yet the group has rarely, if ever, attempted to advance the argument that these weapons are necessary, or even particularly useful. "Why are these guns so popular?" asks a lecturer in a video of one of the NSSF media seminars. "One word: They're fun!"
"These are fun fun guns to shoot," says an unidentified journalist in the same video. "As a mother of three I'd have no problem letting my kids, with the correct supervision and safety gear, you know, try one of these guns."
In order for gun manufacturers to keep growing, Sugarmann said, "they've got to do two things. First, find new markets, which is what they're doing with their womens' and childrens' programs. The other option is to find something new to sell the guys who already have guns. The answer for that is increasingly militarized weapons."
*
Statistically, it's difficult to discern how well these efforts are working. The gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, has a long history of suppressing statistical reports on both gun registrations and gun violence, while simultaneously painting a rosy [ ] picture of industry growth.
What's clear is that the gun industry's growing dependence on AR-15s has made it more vulnerable to any legislation that might limit the sale of ARs or high-capacity magazines. And so in April of 2010, the NSSF launched its first-ever political action committee, called NSSFPAC.
The increased presence on Capitol Hill appears to have paid dividends. In its 2011 report, the NSSF boasted that its annual members' lobbying trip to Washington, D.C. had an "immediate result," the introduction of legislation in both the House and Senate to exempt lead bullets from regulations of toxic substances [ http://www.hunterdefensefund.org/hunting-fishing-shooting-protection ]. And indeed, on April 14, less than a week after the NSSF visited Congress, one member in each house, Montana's Sen. Jon Tester (D) and Florida's Rep. Jeff Miller (R), introduced the legislation.
Asked about the timing of the bill, a spokeswoman for Sen. Tester disputed the NSSF's characterization. Tester, she said, consults his own constituents on Second Amendment issues, and "was getting ready to introduce the bill long before NSSF's fly-in." Miller's office did not respond to questions from HuffPost about the bill.
The group has also helped lead a successful lobbying effort in Connecticut, working with the NRA and other organizations [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-16/ban-on-30-round-gun-magazines-in-connecticut-died-after-pressure.html ] to help defeat a proposed ban on high-capacity ammunition clips -- magazines containing more than 10 bullets. Jake McGuigan, the NSSF's government-relations director, told lawmakers that the bill would take a heavy toll on the state’s $1.3 billion firearms industry.
Adding to the irony of NSSF's proximity to Sandy Hook Elementary, the weapons industry's history in Connecticut stretches back almost to the very founding of the country, earning the state a proud nickname: "the arsenal of democracy."
Eli Whitney began manufacturing pistols in Connecticut in 1797, and Samuel Colt, the inventor of the Colt 45 and one of the architects of the industrial revolution, was born in Hartford and started producing guns there in 1848. The Connecticut River, which stretches from northern New Hampshire to the Long Island Sound, made Connecticut an ideal setting for industry. For more than two centuries, the fate of the state's industrial plants, gun businesses and military bases have been closely intertwined. As NSSF and many other proponents of the latest and most dangerous weapons models are quick to point out, gun makers in America have long looked to the military for inspiration and funding; the Colt 45 was initially designed for soldiers, and the Civil War financed the construction of many stately homes along the Connecticut River.
Last year, Marlin Firearms, a well-regarded manufacturer that had been in business in Connecticut for a century, closed its plant, costing the state hundreds of jobs. Following the Newtown shooting, the NSSF is facing what may be a far more formidable challenge. Legislation to ban assault weapons has gained momentum in Congress, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has vowed to reintroduce the expired 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban on the Senate's first day back in 2013.
One recent evening outside Sandy Hook Elementary School, a local man who'd come by to pay his respects said he owned a semi-automatic rifle and some 30-round magazines -- the same kind of ammunition that Lanza used and that the NSSF promoted.
He said he'd never heard of the NSSF, but he agreed with their message: powerful, military-style guns are fun.
"But big deal," he added. "I wouldn't mind if they banned them at all."
A CNN analysis shows fewer gun owners in the United States own more guns.
Gun ownership declining in U.S.
By Allison Brennan, CNN updated 8:05 PM EDT, Tue July 31, 2012
CNN) -- A decreasing number of [20% of all, see below] American gun owners own two-thirds of the nation's guns and as many as one-third of the guns on the planet -- even though they account for less than 1% of the world's population, according to a CNN analysis of gun ownership data.
The data, collected by the Injury Prevention Journal, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the General Social Survey and population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, found that the number of U.S. households with guns has declined, but current gun owners are gathering more guns.
The United States tends to have better data on gun numbers than other countries, for instance Somalia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which may account for the high percentage, according to Alan Lizotte, dean and professor at the School of Criminal Justice at The University at Albany.
However, within its own borders, the U.S. gun owning population is on the decline and those gun owners are stockpiling more firearms.
Those who own guns, own more guns," said Josh Sugarmann, the executive director and founder of the Violence Policy Center, a Washington-based gun control advocacy group. Last year the organization released an analysis of figures from the General Social Survey, which found that both the number of households owning guns and the number of people owning guns were decreasing.
Politicians from both parties have tip-toed around gun control after the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater massacre to avoid political implications in the upcoming election. However, studies suggest they are bowing to a smaller number of American gun owners.
Those gun owners tend to live in swing states, explained Lizotte.
"You can see where [the gun debate plays out] in the presidential election," said Lizotte. "Where rural states are swing states and urban states are not."
A study published in the Injury Prevention Journal, based on a 2004 National Firearms Survey, found that 20% of the gun owners with the most firearms possessed about 65% of the nation's guns.
A 2007 survey by the U.N's Office on Drugs and Crime found that the United States, which has 5% of the world's population, owns 50% of the world's guns.
The number of households owning guns has declined from almost 50% in 1973 to just over 32% in 2010, according to a 2011 study produced by The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. The number of gun owners has gone down almost 10% over the same period, the report found
The concentration comes, in part, because guns are "marketed by and large to people who already own guns," Lizotte said.
He also said that guns are specialty items, like tools in a tool box, so those who own guns are more likely to buy additional guns for different hunting purposes, for instance.
"If you use a 12-gauge shotgun to shoot a rabbit, the rabbit won't exist after you shoot it," Lizotte said. Therefore a gun owner who is a hunter will use a different gun for different types of hunting, for instance a small-caliber rifle instead of a high-powered shotgun.
Both studies also found that men were more likely to own guns, though the General Social Survey found that male gun ownership is down almost 20% since 1980. The Violence Policy Center's analysis of the General Social Survey data also found that part of the reason the gun owning population is declining is because those weapons are largely owned by white males, a group whose population is aging.
One in 10 women own a gun, the General Social Survey found.
Still, while it is possible to collect accurate data on the number of guns in the United States using manufacturing, import-export and life-cycle data for the guns, the federal government has little idea of who the guns owners are, gun policy experts said.
"The federal government doesn't have good data on anything on guns and that's been done on purpose," said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and senior author of the Injury Prevention Journal study. "The gun lobby has lots of power ... [their] goal is not to have any sort of registration system."
"We asked, 'Where'd the guns go?' The answer -- it looked like the people that had lots of guns were buying more guns," Hemenway said.
The false perception that there are more gun owners has helped bolster a political narrative, emboldened the National Rifle Association and left politicians worried about losing support, gun policy experts say.
"...It gives them more power to say they are representing more gun owners and there are more gun owners," said Hemenway.
Sugarmann agreed. "There is a myth pushed by the gun industry, the NRA and the trade associations for gun makers that gun ownership is up," he said. "[That] there are more gun owners, when the opposite is true, gun ownership is declining."
The NRA did not respond to repeated requests from CNN for comment.
Brownells, World's Largest Firearms Supplier, Sells 3.5 Years Worth Of AR-15 Magazines In 3 Days
Posted: 12/23/2012 3:31 pm EST | Updated: 12/23/2012 9:00 pm EST
Gun and ammunition sales continue to soar in the days following the tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left six adults and 20 children dead.
Brownells, the world's largest supplier of firearm accessories and supplies, released a statement on a forum for gun enthusiasts, apologizing for the delay in fulfilling orders of assault weapon magazines, explaining that the company had experienced "unprecedented" demand for AR-15 ammunition magazines in the last three days.
Brownells' president Pete Brownell wrote on AK15.com [ http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1405403____________Brownells_____please__I_jest_I_jest__don_t_beat_me_.html&page=1#i37260057 ] that the company has sold about 3.5 years worth of magazines in 72 hours, adding that the company is "working like crazy to get these orders to [customers] as quickly as possible." Corpus noted that Brownells' 30- and 20-round magazines are selling quickly, and they've had to order more materials to keep up with the production demand.
In the days following the shooting, gun sales have risen dramatically. Paul Marquardt, owner of ArmsX, a Connecticut-based gun store near Sandy Hook Elementary, told The Huffington Post that the wait-time on the day after the shooting for a background check was nearly an hour [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/17/sandy-hook-shooting-gun-sales_n_2317522.html ] -- the longest wait-time he’s ever seen.
The AR-15 style rifle, a weapon of choice in both the Aurora theater shooting and the most recent shooting in Newtown, accounted for more than 25 percent of ArmsX’s recent sales, he said.
2012 was already a record year for gun sales [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/gun-sales-2012_n_2303513.html ] before the shooting in Newtown on Dec. 14, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who recorded more than 16.8 million background checks for guns purchased this year. And since the FBI does not actually track the number of firearms purchased, the number of weapons sold could be [sic - certainly is] even higher [ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/26/black-friday-gun-sales/1727409/ ] than the number of background-check calls, since customers can purchase multiple guns, according to USA Today.
Smith & Wesson Broke Clinton-Era Gun Safety Pledge To Boost Profits
A firearms retailer examines a Smith & Wesson hand gun at the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade show, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2011 in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
By John Rudolf Posted: 12/21/2012 6:52 pm EST | Updated: 12/23/2012 11:09 am EST
In the early 2000s, Smith & Wesson desperately needed its tough guy mojo back.
The storied gunmaker, which armed Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry character with his signature .44 Magnum, was under boycott from pro-gun groups for breaking ranks with other firearms makers and signing a gun safety agreement with the Clinton administration in exchange for immunity from pending litigation.
In the agreement, Smith & Wesson pledged that any new firearms would not take a magazine holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, and that dealers would be required to more aggressively apply background checks to buyers. The Clinton administration called the deal the beginning of an "unprecedented partnership" between government and the gun industry.
But pro-gun advocates saw the agreement as a rank betrayal, and the National Rifle Association [ http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/fact-sheets/2000/the-smith-wesson-sellout.aspx ] said the company had "run up the white flag of surrender." Under pressure from the boycott, sales fell 40 percent, and Smith & Wesson closed two factories. In 2001, Tompkins PLC, its British owner, sold the company to a U.S. buyer for $15 million, a fraction of the price it had paid for it just a few years earlier.
Yet in just a few years, Smith & Wesson was back on its feet and well on its way to regaining its position at the top of U.S. gun manufacturers. A key element of its strategy was openly repudiating the terms of the Clinton gun safety deal and introducing a new line of high-capacity pistols and its first-ever, assault-style rifle, which became top-sellers for the company. The turnaround was facilitated by the Bush administration, which failed to enforce the terms of the gun-safety deal and aided Smith & Wesson with major new federal contracts, according to Jon Cowan, former president of Americans for Gun Safety.
"The Bush administration was deeply in the pocket of the NRA and decided not to enforce this agreement," said Cowan, who worked on the deal while serving as chief of staff to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo during his tenure as the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. "Frankly, if there had been a Gore administration, this would have been actively and aggressively enforced."
Smith & Wesson and the National Rifle Association did not respond to requests for comment. Alphonso Jackson, a HUD secretary during the George W. Bush administration, who had responsibility for enforcing the gun-safety agreement, did not return a message left at his home requesting comment.
But Smith & Wesson [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB996614184693850497.html ] officials and a Bush administration official at HUD told the Wall Street Journal in 2001 that the Clinton deal was considered non-binding. "HUD is not enforcing it," the official told the Journal. "In fact, HUD is not doing anything with it."
By 2010, the company that had been broadly viewed as "knuckling under" to pressure from the Clinton administration was selling more than 100,000 assault-style rifles a year and earning record revenues and profits.
James Gregory, president of CoreBrand, a marketing consulting firm, worked with Smith & Wesson to resuscitate the company's image. "That boycott was devastating to them," Gregory said. "They were in a downward spiral."
Its new product thoroughly rehabilitated its image among gun owners, said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C. "It was brilliant of them to come out with an assault rifle," Rand said. "That's the hot trend."
But there were consequences. In August 2012, James Holmes, a disturbed graduate student, allegedly opened fire on a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colo., with a Smith & Wesson assault-style rifle, killing 12 and injuring 58. The rifle was fitted with an "ultra-capacity" magazine holding 100 rounds.
Smith & Wesson-made assault weapons are also increasingly fueling drug-related violence south of the border, Rand said. "We started seeing them showing up in seizures in Mexico," she said.
The company, like the rest of the U.S. gun industry, now faces intense scrutiny and an uncertain future in the aftermath of the massacre of 20 children and six adults in an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. last week. To a degree unmatched by any other recent mass shooting, the slaughter in Newtown galvanized political pressure, including from President Barack Obama, to tighten the nation’s gun laws.
Smith & Wesson stock dropped nearly 20 percent in the wake of the shooting, reflecting market fears that new gun controls could eat into the company sales, analysts said. Smith & Wesson, like much of the rest of the gun industry, is highly reliant on the sale of military-style, semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity handguns to drive growth, said Rommel Dionisio, a securities analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities who follows the gun industry.
In a statement earlier this week, Liz Sharp, a spokeswoman for Smith & Wesson said it was "inappropriate" to comment on gun control legislation in the aftermath of Newtown. "Our hearts go out to those impacted by this terrible tragedy," Sharp said.
In a press conference Friday, Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's chief lobbyist, called for armed guards in every school to prevent future school shootings, but did not take any questions or offer new proposals to restrict gun sales.
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," LaPierre said.
In May this year, Smith & Wesson was inducted into the National Rifle Association's "Golden Ring of Freedom," an honor for those who have given the group cash or assets of $1 million or more.
"Smith & Wesson is a valued corporate partner in NRA's fight to preserve the 2nd Amendment," LaPierre said at a press conference announcing the award.
Smith & Wesson response to the latest calls for tightened regulations is unclear. But on the Smith & Wesson Facebook page, fans of the brand urged the company not to buckle under pressure from gun control advocates.
"I hope you will assist the gun community in this fight against tyranny," said one commenter, a young man who held an assault rifle in his Facebook profile photo. "I hope you will stand by your customers."
Child Gun Deaths [killings/murders; not including accidents and not including suicides] Nationwide Number Nearly 6 Newtown Massacres Atlas Tactical co-owner/operator Brooke Stallings handles an assault rifle that is for sale in her shop near Newport, Va. on Tuesday Dec. 18 2012. 12/23/2012 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/child-gun-deaths-newtown_n_2347920.html [with comments]
Texas Republican Suggests Falling TVs Are More Dangerous Than Guns
By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Dec 20, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Following the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, President Obama has named [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/19/1359261/gun-violence-task-force/ ] a White House task force to find “concrete solutions” to address gun violence in the U.S. “If there is even one thing we can do to prevent any of these events, we have a deep obligation — all of us — to try,” Obama said.
But a few Texas Republicans would not support [ http://www.theeagle.com/news/local/article_e9cbaf43-faa8-53fe-a684-c8f878c8086c.html ] adding to existing gun regulations. “I do not feel that additional gun control legislation will have an effect at all,” said state Rep. John Raney (R). And state Rep. Kyle Kacal said he would not even support a proposed measure that would instruct Texas on how to secure their assault weapons. Ping-Pong and falling TVs are bigger problems than guns, he told a local newspaper:
“People know what they need to do to be safe. We don’t need to legislate that — it’s common sense,” he said. “Once everyone’s gun is locked up, then the bad guys know everyone’s gun is locked up.”
Kacal echoed a common nationwide argument that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
“I’ve heard of people being killed playing ping-pong — ping-pongs are more dangerous than guns,” he said. “Flat-screen TVs are injuring more kids today than anything.”
Newtown Charity Scams Crop Up In Wake Of Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting
By CHRISTINA REXRODE and ROBERT RAY 12/19/12 06:25 PM ET EST
NEWTOWN, Conn. -- The family of Noah Pozner was mourning the 6-year-old, killed in the Newtown school massacre, when outrage compounded their sorrow.
Someone they didn't know was soliciting donations in Noah's memory, claiming that they'd send any cards, packages and money collected to his parents and siblings. An official-looking website had been set up, with Noah's name as the address, even including petitions on gun control.
Noah's uncle, Alexis Haller, called on law enforcement authorities to seek out "these despicable people."
"These scammers," he said, "are stealing from the families of victims of this horrible tragedy."
It's a problem as familiar as it is disturbing. Tragedy strikes – be it a natural disaster, a gunman's rampage or a terrorist attack – and scam artists move in.
It happened after 9/11. It happened after Columbine. It happened after Hurricane Katrina. And after this summer's movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo.
Sometimes fraud takes the form of bogus charities asking for donations that never get sent to victims. Natural disasters bring another dimension: Scammers try to get government relief money they're not eligible for.
"It's abominable," said Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator, which evaluates the performance of charities. "It's just the lowest kind of thievery."
Noah Pozner's relatives found out about one bogus solicitation when a friend received an email asking for money for the family. Poorly punctuated, it gave details about Noah, his funeral and his family. It directed people to send donations to an address in the Bronx, one that the Pozners had never heard of.
It listed a New York City phone number to text with questions about how to donate. When a reporter texted that number Wednesday, a reply came advising the donation go to the United Way.
The Pozner family had the noahpozner.com website transferred to its ownership. Victoria Haller, Noah's aunt, emailed the person who had originally registered the name. The person, who went by the name Jason Martin, wrote back that he'd meant "to somehow honor Noah and help promote a safer gun culture. I had no ill intentions I assure you."
Alexis Haller said the experience "should serve as a warning signal to other victims' families. We urge people to watch out for these frauds on social media sites."
Consumer groups, state attorneys general and law enforcement authorities call for caution about unsolicited requests for donations, by phone or email. They tell people to be wary of callers who don't want to answer questions about their organization, who won't take "no" for an answer, or who convey what seems to be an unreasonable sense of urgency.
"This is a time of mourning for the people of Newtown and for our entire state," Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said in a statement this week. "Unfortunately, it's also a time when bad actors may seek to exploit those coping with this tragedy."
But scam artists know that calamity is fertile ground for profit, watered by the goodwill of strangers who want to help and may not be familiar with the cause or the people they're sending money to.
After the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., scammers asked for credit card donations for victims' families. After the 9/11 attacks, the North American Securities Administrators Association warned investors to be wary of Internet postings encouraging them to invest in supposed anti-terrorist technologies.
In 2006, the FBI warned about an email widely circulated after the Sago, W.Va., mine explosion, which claimed to be from a doctor treating one of the survivors and asking for donations to cover medical bills.
"As was learned after the tragic events of 9/11/01, the tsunami disaster, and more recently with Hurricane Katrina, unscrupulous cyber criminals have shown the desire and means to exploit human emotion by attempting to defraud the public when they are perceived to be most vulnerable," the FBI said at the time.
This fall, the police in Aurora, Colo., accused a local woman of trying to profit off the deadly movie theater rampage by a gunman who killed 12 people. The woman told people that she was the caretaker for a little girl named Kadence, whose mother had died in the shooting. The police said the child was made up. The scam unraveled when a donor got a phone call from what seemed to be a woman imitating a child's voice.
When the government doled out disaster aid after Hurricane Katrina, scammers asked for money to rebuild houses they never lived in or to pay benefits for relatives who never existed.
The government later set up the National Center for Disaster Fraud to try to root out such scams in the federal relief programs administered after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. It has since expanded its mandate to other disasters.
The cases brought since then by the Justice Department sketch a colorful picture of fraud:
- A woman who filed for small-business disaster benefits after the 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill, even though she'd sold the business before the accident.
- A judge and a commissioner in Texas who, after Hurricane Ike, were accused of awarding debris removal contracts to a company in return for kickbacks. The judge also commandeered a 155-kilowatt generator meant for the county to power his convenience store, according to the government.
- A pastor who submitted inflated claims to a government-funded program that reimbursed groups sheltering Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
Bob Webster, spokesman for the NASAA, knows the sad pattern.
"We know cons try to cash in on headlines, and any who would even think about stooping to capitalize on the tragedy in Newtown are the lowest of the low," he said.
Rexrode reported from New York. Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner and writer Allen Breed contributed to this report.
Michael Jock, a 52-year-old resident of St. Petersburg, was standing in line behind 49-year-old Randall White at a local Little Caesars on Sunday when Jock grew angry over White’s complaints about the speed of service. The two began to shove one another, prompting Jock to pull out a .38 Taurus Ultralight Special Revolver that had been concealed on his person and fire twice, hitting White both times in the lower torso.
After the shooting, both men went outside and waited for police. Jock told officers the shooting was justified under “stand your ground,” [police spokesman Mike] Puetz said.
“He felt he was in his rights,” Puetz said. “He brought it up specifically and cited it to the officer.”
He told officers he feared for his life. He mentioned that he thought White had an object in his hand, then backed off that when officers pressed him. Florida’s “stand your ground law” says people are not required to retreat before using deadly force.
Police, however, disagreed with Jock’s interpretation of the law and arrested him on charges of aggravated battery and firing a weapon within a building.
The tragic massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, CT on Friday reignited the debate over the solution to America’s gun problem [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/14/1337221/a-timeline-of-mass-shootings-in-the-us-since-columbine/ ]. President Obama announced that Vice President Joe Biden would lead a task force to examine the available evidence and make recommendations for new policies to prevent the next shooting. But thanks to a concerted, 20-year effort by the National Rifle Association, the available evidence is severely lacking.
The amount of money available today for studying the impact of firearms is a fraction of what it was in the mid-1990s, and the number of scientists toiling in the field has dwindled to just a handful as a result, researchers say.
N.R.A. Press Conference: Group Calls for Armed Guards in Schools
Published on Dec 21, 2012
Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association announces the creation of the National School Shield Program and calls on government to put armed security officers in every school in the nation.
Nine days after the massacre in Newtown, Conn., National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre made his first official press appearance, taking questions from NBC's David Gregory on Meet the Press.
Gregory began by asking LaPierre about his Friday press conference in which he blamed mental health issues, Hollywood, the video game industry, and the media, but "never once did you concede that guns could actually be a part of the problem." Gregory pointedly asked whether that approach was a "dodge."
"I said what I thought would make a difference," LaPierre responded before explaining that his suggestion to arm security personnel in schools is ready to go and would make a difference today.
Gregory pushed back that LaPierre seems to refuse to acknowledge guns had any role in the tragedy.
"I know there's a media machine in this country that wants to blame guns every time something happens, I know there's an anti-Second Amendment industry in this country," LaPierre shot back. "I'm telling you what I think will make people safe."
The NBC moderator then confronted LaPierre with several newspaper reactions to the press conference, headlines which called LaPierre "crazy" and a "gun nut." The NRA CEO was unfazed: "If it's crazy to call for putting armed police in our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy," he replied.
"You don't think guns should be a part of the conversation?" Gregory pressed again.
LaPierre responded that you could do what Sen. Dianne Feinstein wishes and ban all high-capacity magazines, but "it's not going to make any kids safer." He also added that he got supportive emails from gun owners saying they went to bed safer knowing they had a gun at their side.
"A feeling is not a fact," Gregory interjected. "That's a reassurance, not evidence."
The two then went head-to-head over LaPierre's proposal to arm security guards in schools, noting that the policy has "failed" in the past, as in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. The NRA head claimed that the Columbine security forces were told not to go into the school, despite exchanging fire — but they waited for SWAT to show up to enter the building.
An unconvinced Gregory asked LaPierre how the program would work and how many officers he envisions on each campus. LaPierre responded that he'd prefer that police forces figure that out, because they already know how to protect politicians, the media, and office buildings.
After pressing LaPierre further on why he is unwilling to concede gun control measures as one part of the potential solution, the NRA leader responded that "you can't legislate morality ... legislation works on the law-abiding, it doesn't work on criminals."
"If it's possible to reduce the loss of life, you're willing to try [gun control]?" Gregory repeatedly asked before holding up a high-capacity magazine of ammunition. "Isn't it possible that if we got rid of these ... isn't it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like New Haven?" Gregory pushed.
"I don't think that's going to make one difference," LaPierre answered. "There are so many ways to evade that." Unconvinced, Gregory hammered LaPierre over his evasiveness on the subject, demanding to know whether he'd be willing to try such restrictions if, by his own logic, it could possibly save more lives.
"I don't buy your argument one bit," LaPierre said. The two then went back-and-forth over whether previous mass shootings give credence to the need for regulating high-capacity magazines.
Asked to name one gun regulation he'd support, LaPierre said he'd want to prosecute drug dealers possessing guns, and go after felons possessing firearms. Gregory shot back that the NRA head was simply calling to prosecute criminals, but he wanted to know if there are any specific gun regulations he'd support. Without directly answering the question, LaPierre's response boiled down to "No."
On Sunday, LaPierre had a contentious interview with David Gregory on "Meet the Press." The two parried for over 20 minutes on LaPierre's call for armed guards in every school and on broader gun control issues, but journalists everywhere pricked their ears up when LaPierre said, "Most of the media -- I know you don't have armed guards here -- but most of the media, when I go around this country, they're protected by armed guards."
LaPierre had already acknowledged that there were no armed guards in the very media building he was sitting in, but it was difficult to find examples of places that were watched over by gun-toting security forces. There is an NYPD presence at the headquarters of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. building in New York, which houses Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, but when cops were spotted outside the building earlier in 2012, other media outlets saw it as odd enough to write articles about it [ http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/politics/2012/09/6536256/nypds-news-corp-detail ].
From around the country, reporters spoke up refuting LaPierre's statement, saying that they were most definitely not protected by armed security:
@zerwekh Rob Zerwekh Wayne LaPierre thinks most of the media is protected by armed guards. It's true. Our secretary wields the deadliest plastic forks in town. December 23, 2012 4:07 pm [ http://twitter.com/zerwekh/status/282880117192151040 ]
@mrosenbergNYT Matthew Rosenberg Did LaPierre really say "most of the media" protected by armed guards? Even in Kabul – yes, Kabul – the NYT has no armed guards. December 23, 2012 2:43 pm [ http://twitter.com/mrosenbergNYT/status/282859102273691648 ]
Right-wing author: Jon Stewart part of the culture that led to shootings
(Credit: AP Photo/Charles Sykes)
According to one right-wing author, the "Daily Show" host has helped "drive [God] out of our society" VIDEO
By Jillian Rayfield Wednesday, Dec 19, 2012 04:01 PM CST
New York Times bestselling author Joel Rosenberg tied Jon Stewart to the shootings in Newtown, Conn., because Stewart is part of “the cultural war against Jesus and Christmas” that helps “drive [God] out of our society, our of our schools and courts.”
In a blog post, Rosenberg cites the ongoing so-called War on Christmas, and how “We are, in many respects, in a moral and spiritual freefall in our country, and we are paying a terrible price.”
The answer is as painful as it is simple: the further we turn away from God in our nation — the further we drive Him out of our society, our of our schools and courts, and out of our media and out of our homes, or the more we give mere lip service to religion, the more men are ”holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” (2 Timothy 3:5) — the worse things are getting. Consider just the cultural war against Jesus and Christmas that has been waged just in the last few days:
“But what are we reaping as a result of a society that increasingly ignores God and hates or dismisses Jesus Christ?” Rosenberg writes. “We are witnessing a horrifying explosion of murder. We are witnessing a gruesome crime wave unprecedented in American history. And there appears to be no end in sight.”
Here’s the two-part “Daily Show” segment in question:
An Indiana man who pleaded guilty yesterday to setting an Ohio mosque on fire told a judge he was motivated by media accounts – specifically those on Fox News – suggesting Muslims were threatening Americans and were in control of parts of the federal government.
Details made public at the plea hearing also revealed that the arsonist, Randolph Linn, was carrying a pistol when he entered the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo on September 30, only minutes after several worshippers had left, and that he had more guns in his car.
Linn, a 52-year-old truck driver from St. Joe, Ind., expressed no remorse when he admitted trying to burn down the third largest mosque in the United States. Under the terms of a plea agreement, prosecutors and Linn’s defense attorney will recommend a prison term of 20 years when he is sentenced early next year.
Accounts of the federal court hearing were provided to Hatewatch by Mahjabeen Islam, president of the mosque, who was present along with 10 other members of the mosque.
When U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary asked Linn about his motivation, he responded that he was spurred on by newspaper, radio and Fox News accounts suggesting Muslims were killing “us” and were in control of the Department of Homeland Security and the White House, Islam recounted.
“When asked if he knew any Muslims or about the Islamic faith, he said he did not; he knew only what he got from Fox News, and he did know that ‘they don’t believe in Jesus Christ as the savior,’” Islam said.
“Randy Linn’s statements clearly incriminate the media,” Islam said. “We call on print, Internet and broadcast media to educate the public about various cultures and religions and promote the strength of diversity, rather than whipping up hatred that leads to such destruction. Fox News, in particular, needs to reset its course and policies very quickly.”
The fire caused an estimated $1 million worth of damages.
“We are grateful that no one was injured or killed when Randy Linn came to the Islamic Center,” Islam said. That kind of tragedy, she said, “was a major possibility” because Linn entered the mosque carrying a gun in his hand and had three other firearms in his car.
“The prospect of Randy Linn finding anyone in the Islamic Center is spine-chilling, and we appeal for attention and action on the easy availability of these deadly weapons,” Islam said.
Court documents say Linn left his Indiana home on Sept. 30 in a red four-door Chevrolet Sonic, stopping at a gas station near Perrysburg, Ohio, to fill three gas cans he had in the vehicle, before driving on to the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo. The mosque in Perrysburg is the third largest in the United States, a 70,000-square-foot landmark, visible for miles, with 3,000 members who celebrated the center’s 32nd anniversary in October.
Linn made numerous efforts to enter the Islamic Center before finally gaining entry, walking through several rooms with a pistol in his left hand before exiting and then returning with a gas can, the court documents disclosed. He entered the mosque’s prayer room on the second floor and poured gasoline on the prayer rug used by worshippers during prayer services. Linn then set fire to the rug and fled. His actions were caught on surveillance cameras, and he was arrested a few days later after the photos received media coverage.
Islam said attending the hearing and seeing Linn left her “numb and overcome.”
“At no point during the hearing did Randy Linn reveal any remorse for what he had done,” she said. “He pled guilty to all three counts but took no responsibility.”
Linn pleaded to intentionally defacing, damaging and destroying religious real property because of the religious character of that property; using fire to commit a felony; and using and carrying a firearm to commit a crime of violence.
“His guilty plea, acceptance of a binding plea agreement with no chance for appeal and a prison sentence of 20 years, sends out a clear message to future criminals that our society will not accept hate and violence,” she said.
Islam’s comments were echoed by U.S. Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach of the Northern District of Ohio, who said, “Religious freedom is at the core of our country, and we will continue to aggressively prosecute such hate crimes whenever and wherever the evidence warrants. This was a true joint effort to seek justice for these victims.”
Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said the freedom to worship in the manner of one’s choosing is one of our most fundamental rights as Americans.
“The Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Division will continue to aggressively prosecute hate-based attacks on houses of worship,” Perez said in a statement. “I commend the cooperative efforts of local and federal law enforcement officials to ensure justice in this case.”
Earlier in the day, Gingrich had suggested that godlessness in society was a root cause of Friday's shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., which claimed the lives of 20 first-graders and six adults [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/sandy-hook-elementary-school-shooting ].
“That’s just an example that Mr. Gingrich will say anything to get attention,” Frank said. “God appears to have been driven out of Mr. Gingrich’s private life, if you look at his marital history. He’s very selective about where he thinks fundamental religious tenets ought to be followed. That is just such nonsense.”
Gingrich made his controversial comments during an appearance on radio station 55KRC, where, reflecting on the tragedy, he pointed to the lack of God in contemporary American society.
"When you have an anti-religious, secular bureaucracy and secular judiciary, seeking to drive God out of public life, something fills the vacuum," he said. "I don’t know that going from communion to playing war games, in which you practice killing people is necessarily an improvement."
Pope Benedict Takes Anti-Gay Marriage To New Level In Christmas Speech On Family Values
By NICOLE WINFIELD 12/21/12 06:10 PM ET EST
VATICAN CITY — The pope pressed his opposition to gay marriage Friday, denouncing what he described as people eschewing their God-given gender identities to suit their sexual choices – and destroying the very "essence of the human creature" in the process.
Benedict XVI made the comments in his annual Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, one of his most important speeches of the year. He dedicated it this year to promoting traditional family values in the face of gains by same-sex marriage proponents in the U.S. and Europe and efforts to legalize gay marriage in places like France and Britain.
In his remarks, Benedict quoted the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, in saying the campaign for granting gays the right to marry and adopt children was an "attack" on the traditional family made up of a father, mother and children.
"People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being," he said. "They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves."
"The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man's fundamental choice where he himself is concerned," he said.
It was the second time in a week that Benedict has taken on the question of gay marriage, which is currently dividing France, and which scored big electoral wins in the United States last month. In his recently released annual peace message, Benedict said gay marriage, like abortion and euthanasia, was a threat to world peace. The Vatican went on a similar anti-gay marriage media blitz last month after three U.S. states approved gay marriage by popular vote.
After the peace message was released last week, gay activists staged a small protest in St. Peter's Square. On Friday, gay activists sharply criticized the pope's take on gender theory and insisted that where gay marriage has been legalized, families are no worse off.
Italy's main gay rights group Arcigay called the pope's comments "absurd, dangerous and totally out of synch with reality." And a coalition of four U.S. Catholic organizations representing gay, lesbian and transgender people said the pope had an "outmoded" view of what it means to be man and woman.
"Increasingly Catholics in the United States and around the world see what we see. Catholics, following their own well-formed consciences, are voting to support equal rights for LGBT people because in their churches and communities they see a far healthier, godly and realistic vision of the human family than the one offered by the pope," according to a statement from the groups Call To Action, DignityUSA, Fortunate Families, and New Ways Ministry.
Church teaching holds that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered," though it stresses that gays should be treated with compassion and dignity. As pope and as head of the Vatican's orthodoxy watchdog before that, Benedict has been a strong enforcer of that teaching: One of the first major documents released during his pontificate said men with "deep-seated" homosexual tendencies shouldn't be ordained priests.
For the Vatican, though, the gay marriage issue goes beyond questions of homosexuality, threatening what the church considers to be the bedrock of society: a family based on a man, woman and their children.
In his speech, the pope cited Bernheim as lamenting how a new philosophy of sexuality has taken hold, whereby sex and gender are "no longer a given element of nature that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society."
He said God had created man and woman as a specific "duality" – "an essential aspect of what being human is all about."
Now, though, "Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his own nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will."
The Vatican's opposition to gay marriage has been falling largely on deaf ears. In addition to the U.S. election gains, the Constitutional Court in largely Roman Catholic Spain upheld the law legalizing gay marriage last month. Earlier this month, the British government announced it will introduce a bill next year legalizing gay marriage, though it would ban the Church of England from conducting same-sex ceremonies.
In France, President Francois Hollande has said he would enact his "marriage for everyone" plan within a year of taking office last May. The text will go to parliament next month. But the country has been divided by vocal opposition from religious leaders, prime among them Bernheim, as well as some politicians and parts of rural France.
The Socialist government's plan also envisions legalizing same-sex adoptions. Benedict quoted Bernheim as denouncing the plan, saying that it would mean a child would essentially be considered an object people have a right to obtain.
"When freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God," Benedict said.
Westboro Baptist Church Newtown Funeral Protest Thwarted By Good Samaritans
By Cavan Sieczkowski Posted: 12/19/2012 2:45 pm EST | Updated: 12/19/2012 7:03 pm EST
Members of the quasi-religious group, Westboro Baptist Church, planned to gather in Connecticut to protest the funeral of Newtown, Conn., shooting victim Principal Dawn Hochsprung. However, Good Samaritans were already there to thwart any possible protest with a human wall.
The Westboro Baptist Church announced plans to picket Hochsprung's funeral on Wednesday in Woodbury, Conn., and "sing praise to God [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/westboro-baptist-church-picket-connecticut-school-shooting_n_2312186.html ] for the glory of his work in executing his judgment." The group has blamed the mass shooting on Connecticut's same-sex marriage legislation. On Dec. 14, 26 people were shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School, 20 of those victims included children ages 6 and 7.
“I can't put you through to those rooms,” a desk clerk at the motel allegedly told Examiner. “I wish those people weren't staying here. I hate them and what they stand for.”
On the FDNY-oriented website The Bravest [ http://www.thebravest.com/standthewall.html ],* a posting asked firefighters and police officers to go to Newtown in plain clothes and block any protesters from the victims' families and friends during the funeral processions.
UPDATE: Newtown Patch reports that those offering to block any Westboro Baptist Church protesters from the victims' families are leaving because the group has allegedly left the area.
Newtown Patch told HuffPost that Westboro members had allegedly contacted area hotels and were reportedly spotted in the town.
Clarification: The website The Bravest is not the official FDNY website. The official website for the FDNY is www.nyc.gov/fdny [ http://www.nyc.gov/fdny ].
On Friday, after a week of hiding, the National Rifle Association will attempt to explain why it has spent more than two decades trying to ensure that weapons of mass murder are accessible to madmen. They will probably make pious remarks about the children slaughtered one week ago, divert attention to the moral rot of Hollywood and secular society, and throw out other distractions as part of their promised “contribution” to solving a uniquely American pathology.
Don’t expect any concessions on their most illogical claim: that arming kindergarten teachers, movie-theater ushers and shopping-mall Santas will make us all safer. But whatever they say, let’s be clear about what’s happening in the early days of a possible holiday miracle: The all-powerful gun lobby is in retreat, its ideas exposed, by events, as fraudulent constructs.
At the same time, the N.R.A.’s partner in political obstruction, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, is on the run as well. (Norquist, who famously said he wants to drown government in the bathtub, is also on the N.R.A.’s board.) After getting nearly every Republican politician to make a pledge to him to never raise taxes, Norquist this week waved it off — with a flimsy excuse that a tax increase, but only on millionaires, would be O.K. After all the sermons on virtue, you can be half-pregnant!
When the Berlin Wall fell 23 years ago, what started with a couple of hammer swings against an irrational barrier quickly became an irresistible force. At such moments in history, the impossible is self-evident.
So it is in the first cracks in the two most formidable obstacles to progress on guns and taxes. Every valid poll shows that a majority of Americans favor bans on high-capacity ammunition clips and military-style assault weapons. A huge majority — 74 percent in a recent Washington Post/ABC News survey — also say it is “acceptable” to raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year. Yet the will of the people has been consistently thwarted. Why? Because, for a representative democracy, we’ve ceded an inordinate amount of power to a pair of unelected lobbies.
By threat and force, the gun and anti-tax extremists have been able to stop every sensible plea for reform. And by sensible, I mean a tax increase that is still less than the one Bill Clinton put through to great prosperity, and gun restrictions favored by presidents like Ronald Reagan.
Bullying is the favorite tactic of these political thugs in K Street suits, but as the last week has shown, they are also cowards. Wayne LaPierre of the N.R.A. was quick to rush to the airwaves a few weeks ago after a pro football player shot his girlfriend and himself.
“The American public is disgusted,” he said. “The American public has had their fill of what happened last night.” The violence? No. He was condemning the sportscaster Bob Costas for daring to suggest that we have a conversation about what it means to live and die in the most armed society in history.
If only, he said, gun victims had weapons of their own. Sadly, Nancy Lanza was armed to the teeth, but it couldn’t save her from her own son. The Greek tragedy of Ms. Lanza’s supplying the weapon for her murder proved once again what all the empirical evidence shows: that if you have a gun at home it’s most likely to be used on a family member or someone you know.
The N.R.A. went dark in the week after the school massacre not out of some respect for the dead children, but because it could not make, with a straight face, the absurd argument that if only little kids had been armed they could have saved themselves.
It was left to the politicians owned by the gun lobby to have us view the carnage as the price of freedom. “There’s nothing you’re going to do to prevent evil from occurring,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican of North Carolina.
So the first things to go in the crumbling of these two special-interest titans are their core arguments. Newtown is wretched proof of the utter vacuity of the gun lobby’s excuses, but every comparison to other industrial nations makes the case as well.
On the tax side, it couldn’t be more perfect that Grover Norquist ended up making the argument against himself. For a quarter-century he’s latched the Republican Party to an iron-clad pledge that any tax increase is bad. And then, in a last-minute bit of theater on behalf of the chronically inept House speaker, John A. Boehner, on Wednesday, Norquist caved — and said Republicans who voted to let taxes rise on millionaires could do so without consequence.
The second thing to fall — and it’s coming down as quickly as the policy foundations — is the myth of the reach and power of the gun and anti-tax lobbies. In the last election, the N.R.A.’s return on investment was almost as bad as Karl Rove’s, losing six of seven Senate races where they spent more than $100,000.
Norquist has faced significant deserters among a small number of Republicans, most notably Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who said, “I’m not going to be beholden to any third party.”
But should other politicians remain beholden to these spent forces, they would do so at their peril. A fresh CNN/ORC poll finds that, for the first time, a majority of Americans view the Republican party as “too extreme.”
The party leaders can follow their captors to the edge of irrelevancy, or make a fresh break. Either way, they should not look back, as Satchel Paige said, because something might be gaining on them — the future.
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