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Syndicated columnist Tracy Grant [via delewareonline.com] reckons Guns are a public health issue; even kids know that. Her dietribe [sic] starts by tugging on the heartstrings. “Keeping our kids safe becomes a decades-long obsession,” she opines, evoking the long lost spirit of Spandau Ballet. “Car seats and baby monitors; helmets and training wheels; stranger danger discussions, driving lessons and alcohol lectures. And yet what scares parents most is what we can’t possibly protect our children from: the random, inexplicable act of fate. Giving them a kiss on the cheek in the morning and not having them come home that night. Columbine. Sandy Hook. Aurora.” So how can we tell little Johnnie not to make a gun-shaped hand gesture and then stop a civilian disarmament advocate from becoming Surgeon General? How indeed.

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55 COMMENTS

    • I believe her point is that zero tolerance toward gun shaped pop tarts is a good thing, and having a gun grabbing surgeon general is also a good thing.

      But I agree, my reading comprehension was strained trying to dig out her point….

    • I think it’s something like: “if our zero tolerance society is so insane as to suspend children from school for pointing their fingers and using the letter ‘L’ then why arent our legislators insane enough to confirm an insane SG who would foster and encourage more zero tolerance insanity.”

      The author is a lunatic.

    • Her point?

      She is one of those adults who uses THE CHILLLLDRUNNNNN to justify anything the adult has to say, however ill-thought-out or nonsensical.

      She is a classic exploiter of children.

      I loathe that type more than I can express.

      Those of us who teach children to master tools, including grown-up ones, know that children are NOT the helpless stupid fluffy muffins that the Tracy Grants of the world want to reduce them to. They are small humans, intelligent, capable of learning and making surprisingly effective and complex judgments. They are also capable of error, and our job as adults is to guide and backstop them as they learn and grow.

      Personally, I think that Tracy Grant’s ilk should be arrested and charged with child endangerment. By asserting that the world is a dangerous place where randomness is constantly trying to obliterate every child, and by highjacking our government process to legislate assumed randomness, they are abrogating their adult responsibilities and crippling children’s ability to become effective, responsible, courageous, tool-using adults in a modern high-tech democratic republic.

      She should stick to commenting on “Pat the Bunny.” I’m guessing this is her real area of authority.

      http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20140204/LIFE12/302040022/

      • I read that and thought that “pat” was a verb, and then got stuck trying to decipher the sexual inuendo.

    • the link is to some small publication but the piece was originally in the Washington Post last week where this NUT is an editor

  1. Kids DON’T know that because every cartoon, tv show and movie shows the good guys using guns to beat the bad guys. Maybe if more shows today were like The A-Team where they shot the hell out of everything but never even hit the bad guys, just being able to win without killing someone, kids would be better off.

    • …exacty one of the things I hate the most about TV Shows like NCIS,CSI…etc….! Do you notice how none of the “good guys” ever get hit with a stray bullet or two…at the end of every show…when the boringly expected end of the show happens…the agents always out-gun and kill their opponents…with pin-point shooting and teamwork…no matter how many machine guns and manpower the other side has….our “good guys” always win…what an effin’ joke…?

      RJ O’Guillory
      Author-
      Webster Groves – The Life of an Insane Family

      • McGee Shot an undercover cop once but it turned out it wasn’t his fault.

        We all know that there is a lot more gun play on most cop shows than there is in real life. Real police work is mostly routine and would be very boring to watch so they have to gin things up a bit. The best shows, cop or otherwise, have good character development and cast interaction. I just suspend disbelief on the over the top stuff. I stopped watching NCIS because with the departure of Cote de Pablo. The chemistry isn’t there. Time for Supervisory Special Agent Gibbs to retire.

        • I stopped watching NCIS because of all the jurisdictional violations and illegalities committed by the “agents.” All the NCIS folks I worked with thought it was a comedy show.

  2. Because human beings are thinking emotionally and not rationally. If you were thinking rationally, you’d realize that an inanimate object is not the cause of the violence problem. Thinking and reacting emotionally is the problem. We all get mad at times. Life doesn’t go our way 100%. Yet most humans control their emotions, deal with them in healthy rational ways. Perhaps if we expected more from our fellow human beings and actually judged (GASP!) them for anti social behavior, we might evolve to a high understanding of nature, instead of de-evolving to Lord of the Flies.

  3. That sentence sucks, but maybe she should just be asking why people can’t go to school who have pretended to have guns.

    Cause I can’t figure that part out.

  4. Guns are a public health issue. One the Federal Government is specifically prohibited from addressing, at least by infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. Same goes for stupid ideas, stupid statements, lack of morals, and myriad other public health issues.

    Our society has forgotten what the prohibitions in the Bill of Rights really were. These were not crazy, extreme actions that every sensible student of government knew were beyond the pale of government. These were common measures which most governments took and for which they had plausible justifications.

    Every government has an interest in telling people what to think, what to believe, what not to say. Every government has an interest in disarming its subjects. Every government has an interest in using, searching, and seizing the property of its subjects, etc. Moreover, they’ve always had (or claimed to have had) good if not noble reasons for this.

    So, yeah, the answer to the author is “Yeah. So?”

  5. We start by teaching children, from an early age, that guns are tools–inanimate objects incapable of thought or action on their own. That it is not the fault of the gun when it is used to hurt someone–it’s the fault of the person who pulled the trigger. A gun can be used to kill, yes–but it can also be used to hunt, for sport, and even for entertainment. Just as I could use a hammer to build a house, I could also use it to bash your head in. That doesn’t make the hammer evil.

    • Thank you for that hammer analogy. I’m embarrassed I’d never thought of that specific argument, before, equating guns to hammers in the sense that they can be used constructively or destructively. That is excellent; thank you.

  6. And in a DIFFERENT matter I just read on Yahoo that the Muslim pos who hacked to death British soldier LEE RIGBY is appealing his 45year sentence. Hard to believe the twilight zone British justice system. We don’t SEEM so stupid.

    • 45 years… unbelievable. Almost as unbelievable as the fact that it took ARMED police 15 minutes to get there while the ones with batons sat around waiting.

    • Oh I can top that…..how’s this for some enlightened European leftist ideology that the US leftists want us to emulate…..

      Anders Breivik who killed 77 kids in Norway received Norways harshest maximum penalty…. 21 years…total.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik

      As Denis Prager notes…..
      The Left wants us to believe that they are more civilized then the evil U.S. with the death penalty.
      With these two examples which country values life more?

      Dennis observed how a parent might answer when questioned about their child….
      “Oh he was murdered in cold blood….the killer got 3 months in jail” (21 years divided by 77 victims)

      • That wasn’t prison, that was psychiatric confinement/treatment. Which means that they can keep him as long as they want if they see fit, and trust me, they are not going let him go.

        21 years is what he must serve before they will review his case.

        I am also against the death penalty for economic and ethical reasons (it is cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than it is to kill them due to legal fees). Say what you will but Europe is more evolved than you in most places. Just look at the Norwegian and Danish crime rate (don’t mention immigrants since we have a bunch of them here too).

        • You’re just hypothesizing that they will be able to keep him in. There will be plenty of leftist psychologists saying he’s “all cured now”.

          it is cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than it is to kill them due to legal fees

          Yes and those legal fees are imposed by leftists trying to impose their twisted theology

          Say what you will but Europe is more evolved than you in most places

          Is this the same Europe that is the birth place of Nazism, Fascism, and Communism which caused the death of 100’s of millions of people? Let’s not forget that there were millions of “evolved Europeans” that praised all three of those death machines in their early days.

          Just look at the Norwegian and Danish crime rate

          Come back to me when there is such a phenomena known as the Norwegian Century or an era of Danish Exceptionalism or when either one of them are the main reason a World War is won by the good guys.

          You may be able to detect that Europe can go suck on it!

        • 86% of Norway’s population are ethnic Norwegians with a common background. 89.6% of Denmark’s population are ethnic Danes with a common background. Neither country has had a recent history of civil rights incidents involving a large minority (blacks) and the resulting social fallout of some of the leaders of that movement continuing to proclaim that they are still victims of the white majority while at the same time turning a blind eye to a culture of violence, excess, and self-destruction prevailing among the very same people they say they want to protect. Denmark does not have freedom of speech to the degree that the US does. Norway is slightly less free in speech than the US. The US has a much larger, more varied population.

          Cultural homogenization is certainly a contributing factor, but one that is rarely touched on in the US due to race being a sore subject in the public eye.

  7. Maybe because zero-tolerance policies in schools are put in place to placate over-protective harpies, but the decision not to confirm a controversial surgeon-general was made by adults.

    • Actually, it was made by fearful Democrat senators from Red and Purple states who don’t want to become unemplyed. But close enough.

  8. Even the fact that the gun is used to kill doesn’t make it evil. Use it to kill innocents, evil. Use it to kill people in the process of killing innocents, good.

  9. A claim that children have some kind of special wisdom in their naivete is a beloved tactic of anti-gun propagandists.

  10. There are a bunch of different pro2A groups holding a counter-rally to MDA’s protest at the NRAAM

    Information on Facebook:
    https://www.facebook.com/events/232314346960306/

    Safety and Self-Protection Showcase
    Sat April 26th
    Convention Center Plaza, Capitol Ave, Indianapolis IN

    Moms With Guns Demand Action(MWGDA), Gun Rights Across America (GRAA), 1 Million Moms Against Gun Control (1MMAGC), American Gun Rights (AGR) and Indiana Moms Against Gun Control (IMAGC) are hosting a Safety and Self-Protection Showcase in Indianapolis, IN on April 26, 2014.

    • And the combined membership of the all groups, around a dozen people (including children), are planning to attend. Unless it rains. Or there’s a soccer game.

  11. From amidst the blither:

    “I can just hear it now.

    “’Mom, why can one part of the government not let me go to school for pretending to have a gun and another part of the government not let a guy have a job for saying that people dying from real guns is a problem?’

    “That’s a fine question. It’s one that all of us adults – who really do just want our kids to be safe – need to be able to answer honestly.”

    Tracy Grant is thus demanding that we all answer the voices in her head.

    Yikes, what a wingnut. I’d say she’s never listened to a real kid asking a real kid question in her life. Classic child exploiter behavior–substituting the adult’s view for the child’s.

    But hey, it isn’t just GUNS doing the killing. It’s also the Internet.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-parenting/post/momspeak-columnist-tracy-grant-is-the-internet-killing-kids-manners/2012/07/13/gJQA0vNAiW_blog.html

    She’s upset because supposedly some kids wrote to her and addressed her as “Dear Tracy” rather than “Dear Ms. Grant.” They have No Respect For Their Elders!!!

    Let’s all toss an organic artisan bran muffin at her, and back away slowly.

  12. It’s amusing because she actually made a really strong argument against insane progressive policy-making.

    “Our schools have really dumb zero-tolerance policies due to emotional and reactionary policy-makers, so we rejected a candidate who has a history of making exactly these sorts of poor decisions.”

  13. She’s a writer who is paid to write. She needs to write, even when she has nothing to write about. When that happens, she writes things that make it obvious she has nothing to write about.

    Columns like this appear every day, in newspapers and blogs everywhere (including TTAG). The desperation dripping off the words is kind of pathetic.

  14. “Mom, why can one part of the government not let me go to school for pretending to have a gun and another part of the government not let a guy have a job for saying that people dying from real guns is a problem?

    Her answer to such a child’s question should trip off the tongue with ease: “Well, dear, once we realized that one part of the government was teaching you that even pretending you had a firearm was bad, we realized public schools had gone off the deep end. Firearms are not bad. Violent people who hurt other law-abiding people with sticks or other weapons are bad. We realized that the administration spokesperson for health issues ought to know that mental illness is the problem, not firearms. Dr. Murthy clearly did not believe that, so we opposed his nomination. This will give Dr. Murthy more time to read the constitution and consider ways to improve the treatment of the mentally ill.”

  15. As a resident of Delaware, I can say that reporters for The News Journal/delawareonline.com are the worst! Their articles are biased (from the reporter), they consistently misquote people they interview, and leave out important facts. The best use for their physical newspaper is for puppies to potty train on! I haven’t read their crappy paper/website for years!

  16. She wants OBama’s nominee for surgeon general to do what he can to stem the gun violence. Even though she uses the pumped up 30k gun deaths per year. gun deaths per year less suicides, Adult on Adult violence and other causes is less that 100 kids per year. that is not even enough for a statistic.

  17. I’ve read it twice now, and the best I can do, for this QotD is….
    “I don’t think there was one.”

  18. The point is the last sentence, about a anti gun surgeon general. The entire rambling preamble to this is based on loose associations of any kind that the author can throw together. Some attempt logical argument, some state facts, others are pure emotional appeal. The loose associations are ALMOST what I would expect from a schizophrenic.

  19. I think my brain is bleeding after reading the full article, plus my only option to comment was via Facebook.

  20. “Giving them a kiss on the cheek in the morning and not having them come home that night. Columbine. Sandy Hook. Aurora. The Second Avenue bus. The pickup truck in Detroit.”

    Fixed it for her. Hide under the bed…

  21. She’s a Washington Post writer. So if she lives in DC, no guns allowed. What’s the problem then?
    “And so we do things like suspend kids for pointing their fingers in the shape of a gun or for bringing Nerf guns to school for a class project.”

    And this level of behavior teaches kids about zero tolerance, not about much else.

  22. I’m bored, so I’m gonna say it again: CREATE A TAX CREDIT FOR THE ONE-TIME PURCHASE OF A UL/DOJ APPROVED GUN SAFE. If the safe comes with a tax credit, it would be cheap if not practically free. If it’s practically free, why not buy one. If you have one, why not use it. If you use it, kids and burglars won’t have access to your guns. QED accidental shootings and stolen guns go down. The government pisses away trillions on dollars on useless bullshit. This might actually make an appreciable difference. More so than the $10K for a friggin hybrid.

  23. She’s not making a logical argument, rather she is trying to evoke images and emotional reactions that will create both fear and loathing thereby steering (controlling) the reader to agree with her “Guns are a public health issue (menace)” opening statement. Once she invokes the image of “Giving them a kiss on the cheek in the morning and not having them come home that night.” she seals the deal with the reference “Columbine. Sandy Hook. Aurora. (Not a School)” counting on “what scares parent most” she already invoked to cause her readers to tear up and agree with her without ever really thinking about it.

    There will come a day, sooner I fear, than later, when Al Qaeda, Hamas, one of their ilk, or some home-grown terrorist(s), like the Tsarnaev brothers, will massacre a large number of children at their school with bombs or guns, or both, and do so without opposition in some unprotected school in a “Blue” state or The District of Columbia where idiots like Tracy Grant have used this fear-speak to convince parents how much better society will be when no guns are allowed anywhere. These terror groups and persons are being emboldened by the weak, spineless Foreign Policy of the US, their knowledge of how to sneak their operatives into the US because Obama and Holder will not enforce our immigration laws and procedures, and their growing understanding that Americans in some parts of the country are willfully choosing to allow their children to be wide open, easy targets. Their hatred of Americans is well established. Look for this kind of thing to happen as soon as we leave Afghanistan. How will we explain to little Johnnie why all his friends and schoolmates were slaughtered in cold blood when we gave up the means to keep them safe in order to make society safer for everyone?

    If the above paragraph made you feel a bit uneasy, then you now know what Tracy Grant’s point is.

    If it did not, then I’ll just chalk that up to the well-developed “BS-dar” of TTAG’s readership. However, I will say that this type of thing genuinely concerns me. I really do not understand how parents/grandparents can be so easily swayed by people like Tracy Grant writing horse cr*p like this. Then, they send little Johnnie each day to his effectively unprotected school. We know our foreign enemies are capable of planning and executing a coordinated attack such as it would take to commit unbelievable slaughter at one of these undefended schools. We know, as well, they bear us sufficient ill-will to eventually do it and are willing to die themselves in the process.

  24. If even kids just “know” that inert pieces of metal have anything at all to do with “health”, that says more about the quality of teaching at “our” public indoctrination institutions, than about anything related either guns or safety.

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