Armored backpacks and a rush on guns after Conn.
December 19, 2012 at 4:15 pm in Grand Forks Herald
The reaction to the deadly Connecticut school shooting can be seen at gun stores and self-defense retailers across the nation, with anxious parents buying armored backpacks for children and firearms enthusiasts stocking up on assault weapons in anticipation of tighter gun control measures. Continue Reading
What does a run on assault rifles say about the mentality of our citizens? What are they going to use them for? High capacity assault rifles have no use do they? Do the buyers think they are totally immune to the their weapon being used by someone to perpetrate another mass shooting? Do we think that the mother of the Newtown shooter thought her son would ever do what he did with the assault guns she bought? Are we all going to turn into “preppers” as apparently she was? It looks like the mother of the Newtown shooter ended up creating a world of unintended consequences.
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I guess it says that people inherently know that those in power will exploit every tragedy to seize more power and control of their fellow man. Barely 6 weeks after 9/11 we had the behemoth Patriot Act shoved down our throats with barely a debate. It happened so fast it makes me think they have these laws authored already, waiting for the right time to spring them on us. I wonder if they sometimes get impatient and give things a little push from time to time? Eventually the gun owners such as myself, will lose this debate and we will go the way of most other nations and become an unarmed rabble, left only with rocks and Molotov cocktails to fight off a malevolent state. We already are entering a soft tyranny in this country, once we are unarmed and the state has the internet kill switch to shut down public debate, we’ll be on that road to serfdom.
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It makes me sad to see the market responding to an obvious need to armor plate our kids when in the custody of the state. Little pink and blue bullet proof backpacks, all caused by our government concentrating our kids in inadequately secured and undefended shooting galleries. It’s time to have a “grownup” discussion about government’s incompetence and outright negligence. It’s time to harden our schools. And for those of you who will claim added security will cost too much, I would ask why we need to fund Iraq’s government, subsidize Israel, and shoot missiles into Libya when we’re not taking care of things here at home.
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‘government’s incompetence and outright negligence’?????……that in itself is not a grownup statement. If that were the case we should ‘harden’ our movie theaters, our temples/churches, grocery store parking lots and any other place where people gather. We, the people, ARE the government, and it is up to us to make sure that the lawmakers in D.C. start reacting to these mass killings with laws that will address the problem. We must demand that and not let it fade into the background what with Christmas and the coming New Year. And it needs to be done quickly. This is a huge and complex problem that involves interest groups like the NRA and the gun industry. There needs to be a national discussion that carries on for years about how we can better protect ourselves and our children.
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The school in Newton was hardened & he shot his way in possibly because his paranoid mother steeped him the philosophy of her “preppers” belief in hardening everything including her home.
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The spike in gun sales is not that surprising, but these sales have little to do with personal protection. Whether it’s cabbage patch kids or beany babies, we are hoarders. The personal armor, though, is a different story. There’s some false sense of security from an almost nonexistent risk. Statistically, our children are at much higher risk from falls, accidents, drunk drivers and countless other things. We need to mourn these deaths, but what about the 600 homicides in L.A. County this year? You can’t legislate and protect down to zero casualties. Our Homeland security budget is somewhere north of $60 Billion. In my view, it should be less than $6 Billion. Same kind of overreaction.
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Well said.
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