Sandy Hook Elementary School One Year Later

It has been one year since the massacre of 20 children and six teachers and administrators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut,

Just yesterday we had another tragedy, with a student in a high school in Colorado wounding two students before killing himself.

The threat to schools, theaters, shopping malls, churches and all other public places continues, and the country seems paralyzed by inability to do anything about the mounting number of gun deaths, and the reality that many mentally disturbed people have access to guns.

America is the most dangerous nation in the civilized world, and we are looked upon in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan as a nation out of control when it comes to violence.

And every day, President Obama is subjected to rhetorical and real threats to his life, in a nation where the right wing will not stop in its quest to poison the atmosphere with hate and division, and fears that the government is coming to get one’s guns.

The question is what future tragedy will finally move the Congress and the state governments to face the threat to civil order represented by the gun culture, with the sad feeling that nothing will change the national illness we have amidst us!

8 comments on “Sandy Hook Elementary School One Year Later

  1. dave martin December 16, 2013 10:24 pm

    I hold out no hope for a governmental solution from the likes of the liar in chief and his minions. They are the problem. The dear leader as with bamy care would design a solution that is nothing more then another socialist power grab which further decimates the Constitution and our personal freedoms.

  2. Ronald December 16, 2013 10:26 pm

    I will leave it to others to correct you, Dave, as I consider you hopeless! Very sad!

  3. dave martin December 16, 2013 10:46 pm

    The real sadness is watching the liar in chief taking a selfie at a international solumn event, what a pitiful display. Others may attempt correction, I say you and your followers are getting the leadership you deserve.

  4. Maggie December 16, 2013 11:39 pm

    Just wanted to make a comment about something I just read. I picked up a magazine, America’s 1st Freedom. You can likely guess what the subject of the whole thing is. It’s sponsored by the NRA if that tells you. They call it a journal…HA! What it is is pages of RANT RANT RANT about how the government is trying to take their guns away. These people are hellbent on blasting any one who even thinks about gun safety and legislation. They do not want one word from anyone relating to stats of gun deaths, gun violence, injury, sun safety or gun laws. Reading this thing makes me feel dirty as every page is slanted and covered with mostly lies….misinformation and nonsense which they repeat adnauseum.
    My specific gripe on this one is the article they have written about a study conducted by two Pediatricians and presented at the national conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics on October 27, 2013, entitled “United States Gunshot Violence-Disturbing Trends”.
    The NRA author of the article bashes, and mocks the study and lies about the content, questions the study and methodology, and conclusions characterizes the two physicians as completely obtuse, misinformed and know nothing about what they are talking about. The author calls the study “bad science”.
    Having conducted research and having been published myself, that was like waving a red flag in front of me. I know the people reading this NRA magazine are not going to check facts but I did!
    The article author claims that the study was not even published, (it was), and that it is “shrouded in secrecy, (it’s not) and he bashes and even misquotes stats and other statements by the two authors. He even claims the study’s findings, “contradicts empirical evidence regarding gunshot violence statistics’. Of course the author does not explain what evidence the study contradicts and gives no support for his statements. In other words, the NRA author Marshall Lewin is FOS.
    The tudy, titled “United States Gunshot Violence–Disturbing Trends,” was presented on Sunday by researchers at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Fla. The study also found that states with higher numbers of firearm ownership had higher proportions of childhood gunshot wounds.
    “Handguns account for the majority of childhood gunshot wounds and this number appears to be increasing over the last decade,” Arin Madenci, MD, MPH, the author’s lead study, said in a statement issued by the AAP. “Furthermore, states with higher percentages of household firearm ownership also tended to have higher proportions of childhood gunshot wounds, especially those occurring in the home.”
    As part of the study, researchers reviewed records for 36 million pediatric hospital admissions from the years 1997, 2000, 2003, 2006, and 2009.. (Funny the NRA article stated the physicians had no research on which to base their findings.) Huh?
    The researches found that the gunshot wound numbers have gone up. Between 1997 and 2009, hospitalizations from gunshot wounds rose from 4,270 to 7,730, and in-hospital deaths rose from 317 to 503. (And the numbers for both figures, hospitalizations and deaths, were higher in 2006 than 2009.) The author of the NRA article stated this information “is not available to the public for review or examination”. He also stated the opposite of the study’s findings, that gunshot wound numbers have decreased and that the two physicians somehow made it up. Excuse me? Not sure what study Lewin read but he is lying.
    According to the study, the researchers concluded that handguns may be a more “efficacious target” for policy proposals than semi-automatic assault rifles.
    “Policies designed to reduce the number of household firearms, especially handguns, may more effectively reduce the number of gunshot injuries in children,” Madenci said.
    In an interview with NBC News, Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, did not dispute the study’s findings, (gee I wonder why) but argued that guns also save lives!!
    “When you look at the number of people who are alive today or who didn’t have to be hospitalized because they weren’t a victim — and the money saved on that — you have to look at that side of the equation to get good public policy,” Gottlieb said. Seriously folks, he actually said that with a straight face.
    This is the thinking of gun folks. Don’t pay attention to the people killed and wounded by guns, especially children. Public policy should ONLY consider people who did NOT die of or were NOT hurt by gunshots.
    In other words and very disturbing, the NRA, lead by Wayne LaPierre does not want and has spent millions to prevent studies which gather data on gun violence, gun accidents and deaths. For years the CDC was prevented from gathering information because the NRA bullied the republicans into refusing funding for conducting any studies. President Obama has changed some of that and allowed funds released for CDC studies and boy oh boy does that anger the NRA!!! Additionally, many organizations, not yet controlled by the NRA, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, are themselves funding and conducting such studies utilizing a variety of resources such as emergency room records.
    In reading about legislation the NRA is fighting…which is every single piece of legislation even remotely related to gun safety, The NRA advocates (actually writing bills), one of which they are pushing in every state that PREVENTS physicians from educating their patients and families on issues of gun safety! Talk about government getting between you and your Dr.! I thought the GOP was against that? The NRA also fights tooth an nail against allowing hospitals and physicians from reporting gunshot injuries and deaths to local and federal agencies. They have so for years! As this is changing, the gun nut’s heads are exploding!
    In every issue of this NRA journal I have noticed there is always a letter from the Executive VP…guess who? Wayne LaPierre.
    I can pretty much sum up every one of his letters like this:
    President Obama is a vicious, meanie who is determined to take their guns away.
    All people who do not agree with the NRA are not good Americans and pretty much do not deserve to live, and only the NRA members are patriots.
    All gun lovers must fight even to the point of giving their lives for the cause of total and complete freedom to own and carry as many and types of guns anyone wants to and as much ammo as possible.
    And finally….gun lovers…should vote….and that vote should depend solely on one and only one issue…if the candidate agrees with and supports the NRA. Nothing else matters. LaPierre is calling for gun lovers to come out in droves in the 2014 election and vote out all Democratic state and federal congressmen and senators and other legislators so that all gun legislation can be killed.
    One last comment. I read this stupid NRA Journal front to back. Not one word was mentioned about Sandy Hook and the 20 children and 6 teachers.

  5. Maggie December 16, 2013 11:44 pm

    Dave, the Professor considers you hopeless. I feel a little different. I consider you unintelligent, misinformed, and a little creepy. With all the difficulty our country is facing, everything people in the country need, the do nothing republican congress and you are worried about a selfie? Seriously?
    Boy you are some kind of stupid aren’t you?

  6. Ronald December 17, 2013 8:44 am

    Thanks, Maggie, for your exposure of the NRA.

    Dave, is there ANYTHING Obama can say or do that you will NOT criticize? I guess the fact that his wife speaks about nutrition and health is bad, because obese Rush Limbaugh says it is, and I guess even the fact that Obama still is breathing, despite the thousands of death threats against him annually, is a bad thing too, right, Dave? Is there no decency or respect in your body for the person who has the most difficult job in the world, and has hate mongers who wish him harm on a level never seen before? And why is it that you promote such despicable hate in your son, who needs desperately to repudiate your narrow mindedness? Head shaking in disbelief! 🙁

  7. D December 21, 2013 7:28 pm

    dave martin [12.16.2013] wrote, “The real sadness is watching the liar in chief taking a selfie at a international solumn event, what a pitiful display. Others may attempt correction, I say you and your followers are getting the leadership you deserve.”

    This is pathetic. Coming off, no doubt, a George W. Bush apologist; a non-soldier of a cheerleader for the unnecessary and wrong war in Iraq; and perhaps a Sarah Palin devotee to boot.… Your entire post, dave martin, is about your own failures. Very personal ones, no doubt.

  8. Ronald December 22, 2013 12:44 am

    Thanks, D, for giving it to Dave Martin, an excuse for the kind of Know Nothingism represented by the Tea Party.

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