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“Ours is a gun culture animated by rugged individualism, dramatized by Hollywood and policed by the National Rifle Association (NRA). Days after Sandy Hook, an NRA spokesman said: ‘The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’ Afterward, state legislatures, most in the South and West, passed laws permitting guns in churches, businesses and schools. Take a moment to ponder that. More guns was the response to 20 murdered 6-year-old schoolchildren. That tells you something. It tells you that gun-control arguments in a gun context lose before they begin. Obama needs to change the context. He can do that by appointing a surgeon general.” – John Stoehr in Obama should deliver on gun control promise [at thehill.com]

 

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80 COMMENTS

  1. I thought the anti-gun SG appointee being a roundabout to gun control palatability was a crazy conspiracy spread by bitter clingers? Now it’s the suggested course of action for gun control proponents.

    I’m sure it will still remain a crazy conspiracy theory though. I love how that happens. They look you right in the eye while stabbing you in the chest and repeat over and over “I’m not stabbing you. You’re just paranoid.”

  2. I thought Barry Soetoro withdrew his nomination? Besides, Harry “Palms” Reid still has control for about 7 or 8 nore legislative days. He can schedule a vote if he wants to try

    • Congressmen (and women) are very hesitant to accept an appointment without weeks or months of time to research them. It’s one of the parts of separation of powers that functions mostly flawlessly.

      There is virtually no chance that the current 113th congress will appoint someone before the new 114th congress succeeds them. We are in a relatively safe position appointment wise (that would also include a new supreme court justice in the event Ginsberg retires)

  3. Murthy’s only qualification is that he founded a branch of the White House’s political org Organizing for Obama, later renamed Organizing for America. It’s political payback. The Surgeon General should base his policies on science, not politics.

    • Science? There are pols sitting on/in charge of various committees that control funding to all of our govs scientific endeavors. Some of them actually believe in a deity, some don’t believe in global warming despite 100 years of data, some actually believe the Judeo-Christian creation myth and that the Earth is 6000 years old.

      They’re free to believe ignorant fairy tales on their own time, but having r-tards like this on a committee that controls scientific funding is beyond insanity. The S-G is only one piece of that puzzle.

      • 100 years of data–when there are millennia of recorded history to work with. And the latest data has led, the last I heard, to the conclusion that global warming has “stalled”, as the headline put it. People who live in glass fairy-tale AGW castles really shouldn’t throw stones.

      • No need for religious bigotry. Many of the greatest scientific discoveries were made by people of faith, even monks. Look an Francis Collins, head of NIH. he’s one of the US’s best scientists and administrators, but people who were bigoted against his religion tried to torpedo his appointment.

        I’m not a church goer, but it’s inaccurate to say that Christians aren’t qualified to do science. Until fairly recently in human history, all universities, including the Ivy League, were founded by religious groups. I learned about evolution at the excellent Episcopal school I attended, which gave me a superior education to the public schools.

        • Also, the Catholic Church is the biggest medical care provider in the world, and the last time I looked, modern medicine involved science. Until fairly recently, all hospitals as well as colleges were founded and run by religious groups. Many still are. Perhaps it’s a mystery to you why so many hospital names include Saint, San or Santa, or Baptist or Methodist or Jewish names.

        • Holy crap. A (non surprising) bunch of completely incorrect propaganda.

          Religion is an assertion without proof, and is thoroughly debunked by anything resembling science. If you want to believe in unicorns, elves, or jeebus, knock yourself out. But don’t expect thinking people to believe you aren’t a effen idiot. Because you are. Just like your flat-earth brothers.

        • @16V That’s it? That’s your response to the well thought-out statements that used facts and succinct analysis?

          No wonder atheists are often viewed in a negative light. The minority of you seem to go out of your way to piss into everyone’s cheerios, but claim you have the monopoly on Science..

      • If you’re actually interested in the science you might bone up a bit yourself. You’d find that we’re not ‘polluting’ the atmosphere with CO2 but restoring the CO2 that has been trapped underground over the last half billion years or so. You’d also learn that plants grow faster and produce more food when there is more CO2 in the atmosphere. And that permanently frozen polar caps have not been a common occurrence on this planet and that we are currently living in an ice age and the glaciers will be coming back to bury New York City and Chicago under a mile thick slab of ice. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation )

        In fact, if you learn a little of the science you’ll come to the same conclusion I did, that most of the people talking about ‘Global Warming’ or ‘Climate Change’ or ‘Global Weirding” or whatever they want to call it now, know about as much about the climate as gun control advocates know about firearms.

        • “the glaciers will be coming back to bury New York City and Chicago under a mile thick slab of ice.”

          Promise?

        • You know Gov, you should stay behind that curtain and come out only to play paddleball poorly on occasion, because you have a 5th grade knowledge of science. Being bad public school generous.

          We know the global CO2 levels for the last 160K years – ice cores and all that. We knew about (and predicted) global warming back in the 1890s and knew what would happen. And it has. Glacier National Park will be gone in our lifetime, but, hey, it’s not our fault?

        • Wow, you really are full of sh*t. Did you eat lead paint chips from the window sills as a kid, or did your mother mix them into your mac&cheese?

        • “Glacier National Park will be gone in our lifetime…”
          I already know global warming is going to end life as we know it, but who knew it was going to cause 1,583 square miles of land in Montana to disappear as well! Where’s Al Gore? He needs to get on this right away!

        • 16V – Why do you think we only have ‘160k years’ of ice cores? Because most of the Greenland Ice Sheet melted in the last interglacial period. They were trying to make a panic out of the GIS loosing 50 cubic miles of ice a year, which sounds big until you realize that the GIS is 680,000 cubic miles! It’s on pace to be gone in 13,600 years! And sea level will be 27 feet higher! Forget that it wasn’t much longer than that in the past that NYC and Chicago were buried and sea level was 390 feet lower than today. I think I’ll keep my property in Florida for a while yet. And do you know what they found at the bottom of those ice cores? DNA from trees and insects. A half a million years ago Greenland was a forest. Which is the ecological disaster? The forest turning to glacier or the glacier turning into forest?

          Anyway, they can determine CO2 levels from rock samples going back billions (yes billions with a B) of years. The earth’s atmosphere has been steadily losing CO2 for the last 650 million years. As plants and animals die and get trapped in anoxic zones the carbon in their bodies is taken out of the carbon cycle and slowly converted to oil and coal. That carbon used to be in the atmosphere and now it’s buried deep in the ground. Meanwhile the earth has been growing colder. About 20 million years ago Antarctica froze over, 2.5 million years ago the Arctic froze, a half a million years ago Greenland froze. Each of the last 4 interglacial periods were significantly warmer than the present one. The earth was dying before we came along and started restoring the carbon in the atmosphere. AGW is not only a mountain out of a mole hill, it’s turning man’s greatest accomplishment into a disaster.

        • And never forget, CO2 is plant food. Want to take more of it out of the atmosphere? You need more NEW GROWTH. Why is that fact always denigrated by environazis and other leftards?

      • Funny thought, supposing a God powerful enough to create a universe; now what stops him from making a universe fully formed? And hey, what is our current theory?, first there was nothing, and then the universe expaned into existence; totally doesn’t sound like God creating things ex-nilo at all. (Besides the bbt violates so many conservation laws already, unless you preload it with some energy and a good way to bias things from antimatter to matter)

        • +1. Also, I have yet to see an adequate explanation as to how the balance of the ecosystem is sustained or even formed initially with evolution. And if you think through evolution’s basic process logically it becomes apparent that any random mutation, whether beneficial or not, spreading throughout a species is extremely unlikely; especially if the mutation causes a noticeable change in the physical structure or appearance of the creature in question. There is also a distinct lack of reasoning to explain the alleged move from the oceans to the land and its accompanying mutations or the development from single-celled organisms to the complex multi-celled organisms that we see today. Therefore, in my opinion at least, religion, specifically the ‘Judeo-Christian Creation Myth’, seems to have the most logical explanation for the world we live in.

        • I can talk to my Golden all day about the laws of thermodynamics, at the end, he will know nothing more than “woof!”.

          Just like you dipsh!ts.

      • There are pols sitting on/in charge of various committees that control funding to all of our govs scientific endeavors.

        Regardless of your views of Christians: where does the Constitution enumerate the authority for the federal Congress to appropriate funds for scientific endeavors? Perhaps the real root cause here is the federal government interfering with “scientific endeavors” in the first place?

      • So Mr. Science 16V…..which non-deity based answer do you hold for the existence of our world?

        1) It’s always been here (forever and ever and ever and it therefore had no beginning)
        or
        2) Something started from nothing

        Part B…please explain why #1 or #2 isn’t completely anti-science and ridiculous.

        • Positing God is just asserting an entity with exactly property #1 and many more magical attributes, but which no one has seen directly. On the other hand, we see the universe all the time, so at least it has that going for it.

        • I see God’s handiwork directly every day… some people just don’t bother to look…. or in an increasing number of cases, told by their professors that to be a proper leftist that you can’t believe in such things…. just like those same professors said 20+ years ago that worldwide communism was inevitable.

          Since science has no scientific logical answer for #1 (and never will) the only logical solution to the problem is the existence of God.

        • doesky2, That the educational system failed you is not my problem. That you don’t understand thermodynamics, evolution, abiogenesis, and the rest of the laws that govern life is not my failure, it it yours.

          Get a F’en education.

        • The “handiwork” you’re seeing is just reality.

          And if you’re pushing God as a solution to these issues, then it’s just special pleading, because what exempts God from those questions? Why is it legitimate to assume a entity that exists forever, uncaused that one has to take on faith, but not legitimate to assume that the universe that we see and live in every day could have existed forever and be uncaused?

      • There is much hate in this one. Good…. good. His journey to the dark side is nearly complete. All of this I have foreseen.

        Seriously though, I don’t know what your religious experience was. It seems clear that it scarred you badly. It made you lash out at it and people you don’t know who have religious beliefs. Life is too short to go through it angry. I hope you forgive and find peace.

      • 16V,

        Science is NOT the proper discipline to explain the origin of the universe and life. Remember, Science tries to explain the natural world with a fairly simple process:
        (1) You form a hypothesis and then test the hypothesis.
        (2) If your hypothesis passes initial testing, you then predict additional phenomena.
        (3) If your hypothesis correctly predicts a wide range of phenomena under a wide range of conditions, you declare it a theory.
        (4) You continue to test your theory and predict more events and verify your theory.
        (5) Other people repeat your tests and confirm your theory.

        In order for Science to explain the origin of the universe and life, you would have to be able to test a hypothesis and others would have to be able to repeat your tests. I shouldn’t have to say it but countless people seem to miss the fact that no one can ever test (much less repeat) the origin of the universe or life. Therefore explanations of the origin of the universe or life are beyond the purview of Science. Rather, the origin of the universe or life is a matter of Philosophy.

  4. So, if this guy roles his eyes a the idea of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun, what does he think will stop a bad guy with a gun? Hug and kisses and nice words and lollipops and rainbows? Or will the cops show up and stop it…..with guns?

    • They actually believe, or have convinced themselves, that if they make it illegal for people to possess guns, eventually there will be enough guns confiscated, that the amount of crime, suicides, and accidents with guns will decrease.

      The fact that the actual number of homicides and suicides has no relation to the number of legal guns in society never enters their mind.

      It really is delusional based on wishful, simplistic, thinking. I call it the “progressive elite model of murder”.

      http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2013/10/two-models-of-modern-murder.html

      • I grew up on the west coast. The liberal regressive actually believe that if they think peaceful and loving thoughts,( while having no guns available) will transform the world into a peaceful and loving world.

        Yep. Really. The other thing is that even if that were a reality, the liberal regressives that I’ve met are some of the most hateful, intolerant and bigoted people I’ve ever met.

        I don’t think they are capable of creating a more kind and loving world being like that.

    • That’s what I was thinking. Huddling in a corner worked so well at Sandy Hook, why would anyone want to mess with something that works? Oh yea, the shooter took his own life when someone with a gun showed up (eventually).

  5. “That tells you something.”

    Yes. Had there been an armed teacher (or other immediate responder) available, we never would have heard of ‘Sandy Hook’ (or Foort Hood or Aurora or Columbine) because it would be a “non-story”.

    Compelled pacifism doesn’t make anyone safer. Except for tyrants, I guess.

    • Yes, and the recent shootings that were stopped by LEOs on the school premises, like the ones in CO and I think Oregon, don’t register at all in their thinking, if you can call it that.

  6. Gun control will become even less popular the longer this business of blocking streets and beating people with hammers continues.

    • Not to mention the police and National Guard standing down while it all happens. So much for disarming yourself because the state will come in and save you and your property.

      • Right. I saw a video of a man in CA (IIRC) who was eloquently berating the police for not keeping the peace during one of these protests, since it insures that the people will have to take the law into our own hands if police won’t do their jobs.

        • People assume I rail against police over reach because I hate police. But the fact of the matter is that man considers an officers life to be worth less than his. By assuming responsibility for ones safety and relegating police to their traditional roles we are affirming the equal value of human life and well being. I would be ashamed to have someone else die because I was a coward.

    • There will still be plenty of the “bad things don’t happen here” idiots who think life can’t touch them.

  7. From the article…
    “according to one study. The annual total of deaths [from guns] will surpass vehicular deaths some time next year.”

    Which study was that pray tell?

    • I’d be more worried about what kind of crazy ass things this supposed study ” “predicts” (or assumes, whatever) are going to happen to even arrive at that outcome? I’m not going to claim I know the exact figures for either, but isn’t there a decent sized gap to cover there? As in, wouldn’t we need a massive increase in firearms related deaths (or similarly massive decrease in vehicle related deaths) to make that happen?

      Either way I love those unfindable, uncited studies that always prove exactly what the author wants. Convenient.

    • Beats me, because I remember a study in 2013 showing firearms doesn’t even rank the top 20 causes of death in America. Heart diseases is the top leading killer, and death by vehicle is pretty high up there too.

  8. “the Second Amendment is inviolate, and the Supreme Court has agreed. The debate is over for now”

    No, Not over for Now… It’s Over. Or rather it should be but yes, you’ll continue bleating away “guns is bad, guns is bad”. Fool. You know WHY it took 200 years before the Supreme Court finally ruled it was an “individual Right”? Because for those 200 years? It was a no-Brainer. Of course “People” means the persons of the United States.

    • Interesting factoid: New York State didn’t include a right to bear arms in its state constitution because they thought there was no need. The right was obvious.

      • Same with Maryland and look how it turned out.

        Not having it just gave credence to state-level anti’s that they could pass gun control with ease. Too bad the writers of these state constitutions did not have any future insight like other state constitutions.

  9. Maybe we should all start asking for Obama to nominate a gun control-centric AG. He seems to do the opposite of what we the populous want anyway, maybe reverse psychology will work on him.

  10. Millions of no gun signs will not make us safer. Of course print them in multiple languages so the bad guy can read them before starting mayhem.

  11. Various thoughts …

    Mr. Stoehr needs to be reminded that whenever there is a spree killer, we call for good guys with guns (police) to come and stop the spree killer. If good guys with guns were much closer to the scene (e.g. teachers, administrative/support staff, etc. in a school) they could stop the spree killer quicker.

    Attacking a symptom (gun use) and not the cause (criminal mindset, substance abuse, etc.) of aggressive behavior does not cure the problem of aggressive behavior. Not only that, but (as we all know) disarming good guys not only doesn’t stop crime – it encourages crime.

    Having more of the population trained and carrying firearms is similar to having more of the population trained and willing to do CPR. Both increase the likelihood that lives can and will be saved.

    • Because the only thing that stops a cardiac arrest is a good guy with a CPR card.

      I’m not kidding when I say that. Your comparison is spot-on.

      Interestingly, a lot of people are scared to do CPR because they’re afraid of making things worse, and they would prefer to wait for the professionals (who are minutes away when seconds count) handle it.

      Sounds a lot like the anti-CCW crowd.

      • Indeed.

        I’m not sure if folks have been hesitant to do CPR because of the “I could make things worse” bit or the “it’s yucky to do mouth-to-mouth on a stranger” bit. It’s also hard to make a person in cardiac arrest worse. I think both issues are factors in resistance to bystander CPR. Another factor IMO is the problem of lawsuits (often unjustified) against folks who are trying to help.

        Hands-Only CPR helps with the former. Good Samaritan laws help with the latter.

        I hadn’t really thought about the parallel between general firearms carry and general CPR knowledge before (which is a bit odd I guess, since I carry when possible and I’m a paramedic). But they are pretty similar. A first-responder to a cardiac arrest who can do CPR dramatically increases the chance of the patient’s survival. A first responder and/or victim who is armed and in a position to stop a crime increases the chance of a failed attempt at crime (and can very much increase the survival of would-be victims).

        IMO, in an ideal world, all high school students would be taught both CPR and firearms safety / handling / use. It would make for a better world.

  12. Okay….
    So this group of 4 despots breaks in your front door, and start up the stairway to your bedroom and your Family as you were sleeping. they have illegal and unrecorded guns, a baseball bat, and rope to tie your family up so they can abuse them after they kill you or beat you senseless so they can make you watch helplessly… like the man a couple of years ago who had this exact experience and then they set his house on fire!
    Do you want to call 911 at 2:00 am and then WAIT for 5 minutes (if you have a good local police response) which will seem like an ETERNITY, or WAIT much longer if the Officers are busy with other crimes or the Dispatcher gets the address wrong…which will be WAY TOO LATE for you and your Family!!
    OR…do you want a Shotgun and a good 15 round handgun where you can easily get to them in your sudden awakening, and have at least a fighting chance to DEFEND YOUR FAMILY..??
    Yes, it to will get reported to the FBI as a “Death by Firearm”…but will it be you and your Family that gets recorded…or the 4 thugs?
    And will ANYONE make notice of the LIVES SAVED by the use of firearms, if you successfully defend your Family…?

    • Just make sure that the ‘4 despots’ are criminals and not a SWAT team with the wrong address before opening fire. If you have a dog you’ll know, if they shoot your dog first they’re SWAT.

  13. Sandy Hook appears to have been a drill presented as reality. Do your own research. There are a lot of anomalies to the story. The whole thing is quite bizarre.

  14. Just another poisonous leftist cog in the indoctrination machine that we call higher education.
    Imagine that parents pay $50K per year to turn their children over to these shameless propagandists.
    Currently, he’s poisoning young minds at Yale:
    Here’s his bio:

    http://politicalscience.yale.edu/people/john-stoehr
    Yale University
    Department of Political Science
    “Home » Publications
    John Stoehr
    Tutor, Writing Center
    Address:
    Ezra Stiles College, Room L04 (use Entrance F)
    203-432-0472
    Email:
    [email protected]

    Bio:
    John Stoehr is the managing editor of The Washington Spectator, a national bulletin of news and public affairs. He has written for The American Prospect, Al Jazeera America, Columbia Journalism Review, the New Statesman, The Guardian, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among many others. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science. From 2009-2012, he was the editor of the New Haven Advocate. He has been selected three times for the NEA’s Arts Journalism Institutes. In 2009, he received one of the Lilly Scholarships in Religion for Journalists. He also helps edit the New Haven Review. He lives with his family in Westville.

  15. I think it’s now a matter that some simply won’t get it. I don’t think that gun grabbers are all evil people: they probably are either stupid people or afraid people who think that removing firearms from the hands of law abiding citizens will save lives. What I’m saying is that it’s time to forget the idea that we might ever be able to convince these people to see reason.

    • And let’s be honest: a lot of them see the way people look and behave, and they don’t like the idea that said people can legally own or carry guns.

      They’ve also been fed a lot of propaganda about gun owners being bitter, paranoid white men who wear only camo and lack teeth. Their only exposure to white middle- or upper-middle class gun owners is on the news after a mass shooting.

      The final conclusion is that only stupid rednecks and psycho sons of the suburbs own guns.

      • And, of course, the reality is completely different.

        Law abiding gun owners have a larger percentage with a higher level of education with a higher level of income than the general population.

        I do believe that most everything a liberal/progressive believes is utterly and completely false about every aspect of what we call reality.

        I believe that that is one definition of insanity.

  16. I don’t really run into these kinds of idiots in my daily life, here in deep East Texas. But if I did, I think I would ask Mr or Ms Progressive Gun-Grabber, “Hey, when a group of Aryan Brothers or KKK arrives at your house with torches at midnight, who are you going to call to protect you? The police, you say? You mean the same guys who you are telling us routinely gun down helpless blacks? Those are the guys you rely on to protect you?” Wonder what the response would be.

  17. Guess what Stoehr, Obama already passed gun control and it was done the only way he could and that was by executive order on imports that started with Reagan.

    The ban on 7n6, cheap affordable surplus 5.45 ammo that has essential killed that market off even though commercial stuff is still available (for now) and still cheaper than 5.56.

    Then there is the ban on Russian guns from being imported except for Mosin’s and Tula-made bolt action rifles but who would buy them when there are already numerous companies stateside building the same gun much cheaper not having to deal with tariffs or spare part issues. At least the Mosin has character, history, and is still the cheapest centerfire bolt action rifle on the market even with its slight price increasing coupled with the cheapest surplus ammo on the market.

    So yea if you bothered to do any research you would know Obama HAS already passed gun control that ironically many gun owners even on this website don’t know about, don’t care, or actively support because it doesn’t affect guns they like.

  18. That more guns are the solution to shootings is actually not in dispute. What do anti-gun people say to do in such situations? Call the police. What do they do? Bring more guns.

    The difference is our side would have the additional guns on site, available with minimal delay, in the hands of regular citizens. The antis would have them available only to agents of the government, arriving only after a delay of several minutes, at best.

    • You just reminded me of a quote, penned by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, in Whitney v. California, regarding countering evil not by restricting speech, but rather by more speech:

      If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

      Now, apply the same principle to countering evil men with guns: the remedy for evil men with guns is more guns (i.e. good men with guns), not enforced gun control/disarmament.

  19. Here is one for the author to ponder :
    The right of free speech is not encumbered by as many laws as the RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.
    In the time since or before Did the criminal(s) have a permit to purchase a hand gun? Did criminal(s) have a FFID card? Is/are the criminal(s) a member of the NRA or any RKBA organization? Did the laws forbidding him to do such things stop him?
    The laws exist against committing murder and yet it still happens through numerous methods stop blaming the gun hold the individuals accountable for their individual actions and stop penalizing everybody else for the action of the very few.

  20. A quick note re: Christianity.

    The Vatican is part owner of an observatory in Arizona.

    Let’s not paint all Christians with the same brush.

    It may be uncomfortable to ponder but give yourself a week.

    Fundamentalalists are the rigid, intolerant folk who present our greatest difficulties. They believe their book allows violence rather than acceptance. They get upset if someone does not respect their God.

    Get ready…they threaten to kill if you draw a picture of Mohammed. They behead journalists. They demonstrate at soldier’s funerals. They burned the Koran when asked not to by the State Dept & the Pentagon because it put our troops at risk. They claim that Katrina hit New Orleans because of the sinners there. The storm missed the French Quarter where the gambling drinking and prostitution is. 🙂 They want to get rid of Halloween because it glorifies the Devil. How powerful is your God that he needs defense against some kids trick or treating for candy in Frozen & Iron Man costumes? Whether they be our fundamentalists or theirs they are extreme.

  21. Oh boo hoo. 80 people die a day from firearms. Well 1200 die each day from tobacco, so kiss my ass!
    Until they do something about tobacco, I don’t believe ANYTHING the gun grabbers say. Nothing. It doesn’t make sense. How can anything in gun control make sense when over 10 times more people die from tobacco?
    Tobacco isn’t mentioned in the constitution, GUNS ARE!

  22. “That tells you something. It tells you that gun-control arguments in a gun context lose before they begin.”

    yu damn right it does.. and further, it tells me people understand the value of human life…

  23. nobody – NOBODY – outside of the beltway echo chamber gives a rat’s ass about the surgeon general. it’s a figurehead appointed on the basis of appeasing political special interests.

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