- BitsBlog - https://bitsblog.com -

Newtown

Adam Lanze killed a reported twenty-seven people, himself include, in Newtown  Connecticut.   The hoplophobes are predictably calling for yet more gun control, as if gun control has somehow made Chicago safe.

Points:

First, the ever popular so-called “Gun Free Safety Zone” is neither gun free nor safe, from Glenn Reynolds, Useless Toady [1]:

One of the interesting characteristics of mass shootings is that they generally occur in places where firearms are banned: malls, schools, etc. That was the finding of a famous 1999 study by John Lott of the University of Maryland and William Landes of the University of Chicago, and it appears to have been borne out by experience since then as well.

Gun laws do not deter people intent on breaking the law.

Second,  Lanza had issues, fromAce, Ace of Spades [2]:

Adam Lansa Was Autistic, Had Asperger’s, and Had a Personality Disorder:So says his surviving brother.

[…]

This is a very sticky question for any society. What we have here, it seems, was a Strange Young Man.

What do you do about Strange Young Men? The state can attempt an intervention, but that’s a nice, euphemistic way to say “interfere with their lives for no better reason than the fact that they act oddly.” Most people who act oddly or are socially inept are perfectly nice and law-abiding. (I’m one of them.)

On the other hand, you can strictly observe their freedom to be odd ducks, and suffer the occasional calamity when it turns out that this particular odd duck was the one you should have checked on.

Third, Lanz was over dosed on the culture of self esteem, where is more important to feel than it is to be good    I call Mike Huckabee the Dope from Hope, but heck even dopes have their day. The Dopesterr has one Igor Volsky’s knickers in a twist, from Stink Progres [3]:

HUCKABEE: Well, you know, it’s an interesting thing. We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage because we’ve made it a palce where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability? That we’re not just going to have to be accountable to the police, if they catch us. But one day, we will stand before a Holy God in judgment. If we don’t believe that, then we don’t fear that.

Lanza would not have gon one his murder spree had known of and obeyed the Golden Rule: Do onto other as you would have do onto you.