“…Like it or not, the folks spraying our cities with bullets are not NRA members or legal gun owners. And despite the tendency to tie it all together, they have nothing to do with the Adam Lanzas of the world.” – LZ Granderson in Gun control is not the answer [at cnn.com]

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55 COMMENTS

  3. LZ Granderson usually makes me want to punch my monitor, but when I read this the other day I was quite pleased with CNN’s token gay black man. Somehow I always end up reading his stuff whether I like it or not, so it was really quite a pleasant surprise to hear him address this because he is generally quite objective but sticks to liberal issues.

    I guess being gay and black you eventually have to rationalize that someone might want to kill you… now if white women and venture capitalists could just figure this out…

    • Some progressives would absolutely love it if it were NRA members shooting the place up. It would make their wet dreams come true.

      • Many of them already tell themselves this is what is going on. It is like Wayne LaPierre is Emmanuel Goldstein to these people. They can’t accept that there are rational, civil people who like to go shooting and keep weapons for defense. Complete and total lambs of the state.

    • Very few people like to change their minds or ditch their preconceptions.

      Consequently, those who’ve bought the Bloomie Party spiel about the NRA “enabling” mass shooters wouldn’t like to shift their paradigm, even if they double clutch.

        • Russ, Cosa Nostra means “our thing.” It refers to the organization, not the members. According to your construction, cosa nostri would mean “our things,” so what you wrote is “all of our things are Italian, but not all Italians are our things.” Which is pretty hilarious.

        • True, but the order is reversed — Latin, y’know.

          As Mafiosi, it’s close enough. The plural of one to whom it “his thing.” More stuff than thing, by the way.

          Our stuff v ours stuff, ours meaning more than one to say our.

          Latinis regulae iterum.

          Further, that’s how at least some of them say it.

          Neener.

  5. CNN? I hope this gentleman still has a job tomorrow. It was a thoughtful and well written piece, totally unexpected from what I am used to at CNN.

  6. Interesting read, but his use of weasel words and related invective still gives him away. Just remember, leopards don’t change their spots.

    Tom

  7. There is also a fairly evenhanded editorial by Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post in this morning’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

    Astonishing!

    Have we finally made our case often enough and clearly enough to get through to at least SOME media types?

    Nah – gotta be a fluke.

    • That’s what I was going to ask: have we (the law-abiding gun owners of the USA) finally gotten through? Had Colorado not just happened, there would be Toomey-Manchin (or worse) on the table right now.

      I’ll just come out and say it, and I won’t use the word “sheeple.” Your rank and file citizen is a follower. For all the talk of the “moral imperative” of legalizing gay marriage, until five or six years ago, very few people outside of the Castro or Greenwich Village would even say the words. Solidly liberal friends of mine looked at gay sex as “icky.” Now they sheepishly (almost said it) put up marriage equality avatars when the occasion arises. They don’t “want to be on the wrong side.” And they joined the Obama-Biden-Feinstein chorus of gun control after Newtown.

      We can play that game, too. Like gay people, we’re icky for a period of time while we’re standing up for our moral imperative. And we don’t have the help of NBC and the CW and the Times. Maybe the rebellions in New York and Colorado convinced the sheeple (damn, I said it) that the “wrong side” was the side they were blindly following — if not with facts, at least with passion.

      We’re here. Get used to it.

      • It’s because high school never ends and most people want to be popular – to be on the winning team – to be seen as progressive and wise.

        The best way anymore to make anything acceptable is to make a reality TV show about it and edit it to make the activity/people look good.

    • @LeadBelly,

      Yes, excellent piece by Kathleen Parker

      http://tinyurl.com/qeojna4

      My favorite part

      In other words, the reflex to make tougher laws may be missing more important points. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t consider imposing restrictions on who owns guns, but as my guy in Starke suggested, there’s little comfort in forcing law-abiding citizens to submit to tighter controls knowing that criminals will not.

      As for the crazies who go on killing sprees, rules rarely apply.

      Thus, what we’re really fighting about in our national debate about guns is how to stop mentally ill people from wreaking havoc on society. And what are the causes that lead to the breakdowns that lead to the slaughter

    • Here is the gold nugget…

      Much more difficult to process and “fix” are the multitude of factors that lead a sick person to seek company in death. What we know about such people is that they tend to be loners and narcissists (low self-esteem, lacking in empathy, quick to take offense and blame others) who act impulsively and seek attention (and revenge) in dramatic and public ways.

      That we have more such characters than we used to — or that they seem more inclined to act on their impulses — may have less to do with guns than with underlying cultural causes

      Now which political party is the “party of grievance”? Which party thinks very highly of themselves and gets all belligerent when things don’t go their way? Which party acts like spoiled little brats? Which party believes it’s a great idea in dismantling religious institutions that instilled the belief that there would be ultimate justice for your actions? Which party’s ideology has overtaken the university system which extols and indulges itself in emotional and impulsive decisions?

      So the left always says they want an “honest conversation” about the causes for spree killings…. but of coarse they don’t because I make the supposition that leftist policies and practices are at the root of any perceived or actual increase in spree killings.

  8. May be the best article I read all day. I especially liked this line “Because like it or not, the folks spraying our cities with bullets are not NRA members or legal gun owners. And despite the tendency to tie it all together, they have nothing to do with the Adam Lanzas of the world.”

  9. This is the important bit of the article:

    But the fact that there is still so much we don’t know about Alexis — or the motive behind the shootings — won’t detour gun-control advocates from lumping his story in with that of Adam Lanza, the man police say is responsible for the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, along with the victims from gang- and drug-related shootings.

    This is why after the tears have dried and the blood washes away, little, if anything, will change.

    And because gun-control advocates so often try to cobble together every distinct narrative involving guns into a one-size-fits-all conversation, they are as much to blame for this merry-go-round as the gun lobbyists against whom they fight.

    Before the blood had washed away and any facts had been known, the local news here reported that the Newtown Action Committee had flown to DC to lobby congress. It was just a knee-jerk don’t let a good crises go to waste moment — just like a moth to a flame, they could not resist.

    This is also why we cannot compromise, because these people do not act from a logical basis.

    10 months after Newtown, we have ZERO mental health legislation although time and time again, we see (and here again) that we have a mental health issue in this country and no way for people to get help. Only after a tragedy like this, we ask why and play Monday morning quarterback! Wonderful! and we yet again to solve the real problems. As Chicago and Oakland reach new levels of Gang related violence, we yet again, do nothing. There is much that can be done, and none of if involves gun control.

    Continuing to focus on the wrong issues and expecting different results is simply insane!

    I suspect that much of the civilian disarmament industry is either mentally traumatized and therefore unable to put the real facts together to solve their problem, or simply use the tragedy to make them self important and also try to make money off of it too. Otherwise, the true facts would be simply to see and that gun control is not the answers to the questions they have.

    • Don’t worry about the Newtown Action Alliance. In honor of the 9-month anniversary of the Sandy Hook tragedy, the Alliance decided to put members on a bus to Washington to lobby Congress. What was once 10 buses is now down to under a single bus, mostly senior citizens. As time moves us further away from that awful day, their ability to mobilize support is waning.

  10. Oh my gosh! Sanity on CNN? Common sense on the Communist News Network?! Everyone mark their calendar on this day!

    • Why?

      There was Illinois yesterday. There was Colorado before that.

      It’s early 1990 in Ost-Berlin and CCCP; no one a year ago saw it coming, and a year hence the landscape will be unrecognizable.

      We are witnessing the Fall of the Wall, people. This CNN piece is just one hammer blow of many, and they’ll come with increasing rapidity and force.

      The hundredth monkey just Learned.

      • I fervently hope you are right. If Brown vetos the gun bills on his desk, I will agree that the wall is, indeed, being broken rather than us experiencing a Prague Spring.

        • Prague Spring; oofdah. I must admit that hadn’t occurred to me. Whoddathunk I was an optimist?

          I fervently hope that I’m right as well.

  12. So it seems a confluence of resources and events have caused a few rays of light to penetrate the darkness. Huge step forward in Illinois, huge step backwards looming in California (depending on what Gov. Brown signs into law) and now two articles in the MSM stating an acceptable version of the truth people here have been talking about for a few years. Not to forget many other voices who have been hammering away at the basic message.
    Now, if the NRA would get some spokespeople who don’t look and sound like tired old men to further articulate the message of rationality’s predominance across the Citizen gun owners of America, we might see some real progress in securing our Second Amendment Right.
    Maybe not a day to “dance in the streets”, but a day to enjoy a sense of optimism…for a bit, at least.

  14. I was thinking about this latest incident last night and it occurred to me that it may end up:
    1) hurting the gun control movement more than help. The response has been even more predictable and outrageous than in the past. Not to mention that it is showcasing that all their “solutions” don’t work.
    2) Gives gun-control advocates the opportunity to move the conversation where it belongs: gang violence and mental health. Articles like what is being reported here is pointing the way.

  15. I saw him as a panelist on some guy’s program on CNN about addressing the root cause of violence in America while sitting in an airport several weeks ago. I was shocked at the idea of TWO seeming liberals, one the host and another his guest, plus some others, actually having an intelligent conversation about what causes young men to be violent. Of course later he interviewed some hip hop guy who blamed lack of arts education…yeah, kids shoot each other because they didn’t have access to music and pottery classes. Right.

    • Well, if li’l Schiklgruber hadn’t been rejected by every art school in Vienna, perhaps he’d not have gone off on an odd tangent.

      When I was nine, I my mom sold art at Corey’s Art Gallery in Honolulu. A very old, gentle coworker of hers blamed herself for the War, as she’d been the last instructor [of whom she was aware] to refuse him as a pupil — just after WWI.

      One never knows…

    • Actually, music education, band and such are well known to foster camaraderie, decent citizenship and good attendance.

      Perhaps Mr. Hip hop dude was speaking from personal experience.

      One never knows.

  16. It’s funny how anti-gun types love to scream about how evil AR-15s are, but they don’t do a jack to address the real evil: mental illness and how it’s (not) treated in our country. Every shooter for the past 2 years has had serious mental/social issues… and we, as a society, keep failing to address the problem.

    As TTAG grimly put: the massacres will continue. It’s not a question of if, just a question of when…

    • And if they wish to examine a massacre happening quietly under their very noses, all they need do is discover the veteran suicide “epidemic” of late. And the associated, complete absence of mental health treatment for these folks.

  17. There’s nothing new happening here. The Alexis massacre is the wrong vehicle for antigun agitprop because (i) he used a shotgun and the demon of the moment is the AR-15, and (ii) he’s black, and no Democrat will risk looking anti-black. They will wait for the next white nut case to really get jiggy with it.

    MAIG is a different animal. MAIG is Bloomberg’s monument to his own enormous ego. And Bloomberg sure as hell doesn’t mind being seen as anti-black.

    • You’re right. He is already seen as widely anti-minority with NYPD’s “stop and frisk” program. He is the classic narcissist that thinks the world revolves around him and his opinions. I think he’s in for a pretty big shock (in his own mind) when he finds out nobody wants him as POTUS.

  18. I don’t buy it completely. Yes, it is a nice article and seems to have a bit of rational thought interjected which is mostly lacking from other pieces by LZ. Especially after Newtown when he called gun owners “crazy” and did the typical “when is enough going to be enough” mantra.

    see: http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/04/opinion/granderson-obama-skeet-shooting/index.html

    and: http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/31/opinion/granderson-guns-waiting/index.html

    Being that CNN is generally a bought and paid for mouth piece (see: Amber Lyon) for whoever pays them (I’m guessing those in ideological lockstep get a discount), is it too far of a stretch to think this is a DNC shift? That since Colorado, the DNC (through people like LZ) is trying to get their base to not push gun control in 2014/2016 because they are afraid of a slaughter in purple states? To think a guy like LZ has all of a sudden come to the realization that Gun Control isn’t the answer would take an enormous change in thinking on his behalf (especially right after another mass shooting). After rampant selective reporting from everything from the NSA scandal to the more recent “pro-war” “pro anything Obama wants to do” stance on outlets like CNN, I have little doubt on who influences their narrative.

  19. i thought this was also quote worthy:

    “And it will keep continue to happen until the advocates accept that ridding the country of guns is a hopeless — and unconstitutional mission — and that the real goal should be addressing the factors that lead to the various forms of gun violence: factors such as poverty, mental health and failing schools.”

  20. Too bad I never visit CNN… I wouldn’t see anything like this if you didn’t bring it to my attention.

  21. Do you know how to spot the difference between gun-snatching shitheads and bright people like this guy?

    Look into their eyes. Our society tries to program out eye-looking out of our paradigm. People who cannot look others in the eye foster a pestilence of covert humans.

    My friends, LOOK EVERYONE in the eye! This is how Nature designed us.

  23. In an elevator, stand with your back to the door and intone clearly:

    “I suppose your all wondering why I’ve gathered you here today.”

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