Liberals are incredibly ignorant imbeciles that will believe anything their leaders tell them to believe. If we are not armed, the anti-American socialists infesting our US government will be able to easily subdue the general population and implement their ridiculous form of socialism. Liberals do not possess the logic or analytical abilities to see this happening.

This is the marijuana generation. They can make themselves believe anything, no matter how nonsensical.

Once again, the brilliant, concise Dr. Sowell.

In Arizona and Colorado the killers were recognized as becoming more and more violent.

The solution was for the colleges to kick the students out of school and decide that it was no longer their problem.

It became our problem when these two young men went on a killing rampage.

In CO there was even an offer to confine Holmes for 72 hrs. The college declined.

This latest murder spree by a disturbed young man is another example of the failure of our society to deal with severe mental illness.

It´s not the guns. It is intellectually dishonest to pretend these are not mental health issues.

#4 is right. The underlying common thread is mental health disorders with the perpetrators.
But the Libs will never recognize or accept this. After all, they have mental disorders of their own that prevent them from doing so.
Liberalism is a mental disease. It is also a religion. Facts, reality, logic and results do not matter. Only emotions, good intentions, "fairness" (in their minds), quick solutions, and canned talking points matter.

Dr. Sowell, if you are talking about the street violence in Chicago, I would agree with you 100%. The people doing that would steal to get guns, would think out a plan to get guns.

But when you are talking about people with serious mental illness, you are wrong. A delusional person doesn´t make plans to break into the home of a stranger to look for guns. A delusional person goes for guns they already know about - in the home of a relative, perhaps in the home of a close friend, or purchases the gun. Teach family and friends with mentally ill loved ones to keep guns out of their homes (or at least, locked away out of sight where the mentally ill person doesn´t know they are there...and hide the key outside of the home). Change rules for purchasing guns so it is difficult for a delusional person to buy them - add in waiting periods, require others to vouch for them, permit families to put their names on a ´no gun sale´ list that is shared nationally.

We do not have to limit guns for everyone in order to restrict gun access to this very small segment of the population. Those supporting guns would be wise to recognize this and encourage law changes that address the problem. If you won´t, the backlash is going to restrict them for everyone. We tried it your way; it didn´t work to keep guns out of the hands of the delusional mentally ill population. Quit being naysayers and come up with some workable options.

This generation of boomer kids and grandkids are pot/smoking/america/hating/emotional junkies. They live on someone else´s dime and cry about nothing.....

The shooting was a nightmare for every parent and grandparent. Leave it alone and let them mourn...

LZK

#7, don´t fool yourself. This issue has nothing to do with pot smoking, nothing to do with America hating. Liberals and conservatives get mental illness. Devout Christians get mental illness. It can happen in the best, most caring of families. If you haven´t personally experienced a family member with serious mental illness, count your blessings - but don´t think that your lifestyle somehow avoided this curse.

The longer we treat people with serious mental illness like ´the other´, the longer it will take to truly address the problems of the mentally ill. And when a delusional person gets a weapon, it becomes everyone´s problem.

Re #8 - It seems that when someone is alive and has some serious mental health issues, we don´t consider that person as having serious mental helath issues - he/she just needs some counseling on how to cope, maybe a little Dr. Phil. It´s only after this person commits a crime like what took place in Newtown do society start talking about serious mental health issues.

Gun control will work as well as marijuana control, cocaine control, meth control, and heroin control. Any and all of these drugs are available in virtually any town in the USA. Oh, and don´t forget how well poverty control has worked in this ´Great Society´.

As Mark Levin pointed out yesterday there was tight gun control at Fort Hood but a massacre occurred there. The President and the MSM never seem to talk about Fort Hood in their anti-gun rants.

Given what has thus far been made public about the mother of the shooter, it would be extremely surprising if she had not obtained good, or at least expensive, mental health care for her son. It would be wise to suspend judgment before attributing this massacre to failure to provide such care.

Thomas Sowell is one of the very best expositors of economic and social issues I know. I never fail to learn something from his writing. But in this instance, I must beg to differ slightly. For the ignorance of gun control cultists is better understood, not as invincible, but as vincible. Here the term invincible is a technical theological term that refers to ignorance that is avoidable and thus culpable. Vincible ignorance, being unavoidable, is not blameworthy. As Dr. Sowell´s column demonstrates, the ignorance of gun control zealots is easily avoidable, but they refuse to correct it. It is therefore vincible.

But since the Democrats represent the masses, and the masses think -if that is the word- with their emotions and not with their reason- there can be no doubt that more gun control is on the way. It is the slipperiest of slippery slopes. It won´t stop with "banning" so-called assault weapons. That is merely symbolic and the first step.

I continue to believe that the Colorado and Connecticut killers were active participants in a real-life video game. These loners live in another world. The problem comes when they enter our world and "play" their video game by mowing down precious first graders.

The problem, #6 and #8, may well have to do with mental illness. And then again, there may be other issues involved, as well.

We have had prayer, and any mention of God, Christ, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments removed from our schools, our city squares, and our government assemblies. We have marijuana use in our high schools, largely due to our poorly thought out drug laws. We have significant restrictions on firearms that make it difficult for the law-abiding to protect themselves, while generating a black market of illegal guns.

We have video games, a youth culture, and a growing underclass culture that glorifies violence. A culture of death that is supported by movies, television, and filthy contemporary music. And rap stars who declare it would be a good thing to shoot cops.

You have made your point about mental illness (and it is a point well taken). However, in over three dozen posts, you have insisted that mental illness is the only issue and the rest of us are deluded. Please, there are some among us who may disagree.

#12, i.e. me:

I just realized that I got those confusing Scholastic theological terms backward. Invincible means here means the opposite of its conventional meaning. Actually it means something else entirely.

Invincible = not easily avoidable, hence not culpable;

Vincible = easily avoidable, hence blamable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincible_ignorance

OMG #6 you want me to lock up my guns and store the key outside of the house? I have had 3 home burglaries in my neighborhood in the past year. So if it should happen to me what do I do to protect myself and family? Tell the burglars to wait a minute while I go fetch the key to my gun safe? A dumb idea in the max.

Re: Reply 16: You also have to have trigger locks on your weapons too.

It turns my stomach to see conservatives buying into all this "gun control" babble.

TRUTH, and it should be the ONLY answer to every call for gun control: Anyone who says they want gun control to stop violence is lying. They have one historic purpose in taking guns away from the populance: You cannot control a population who is armed.

Take the guns, the slaughter of the opposition and the weak starts.

How stupid we all are.

There is a video going around: A "Tribute" to Socialism. Lots of dead people in that video. The Killing Fields, the Ukraine... The only way for a population to defend itself against evil is to have the power of weapons.

Anyone who tries to take that right away is aiming for CONTROL. Don´t be fooled, fools.

The left’s overwhelming hypocrisy is fantastic. They scream for gun control or worse out of one side of their mouths, while calling for death to all gun supporters out of the other. What’s fascinating is that it must be their arses talking because their mouths should know better. http://www.amazon.com/Two-Wolves-Mr-Hugh-Darby/dp/1478133422/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341952344&sr=1-6&keywords=hugh+darby

The answer is to legislate a gun free zone in Washington DC. No guns anywhere in Washington DC; security personnel and police are to be issued pepper spray and mace only. No guns, especially for anyone for any reason any where near the white house or congress.

There, it will be fixed. Now all people in congress and in the white house will be safe.

I just don´t want Marxist government healthcare bureaucrats deciding what a mental health disorder is. Think about it!

OK, sarcasm off.
The problem is no honoring of GOD as a nation by our government. Our constitution was written and based on a God fearing and honoring people. When government specifically and people in general disrespect and no longer honor Christian values, and seek to wipe them out, society changes, and for the worse.

May you all keep CHRIST in Christmas!!

No Jesus, No Peace.
Know Jesus, Know Peace.

Denial of reality. That´s our problem.

Is the Department of Homeland Security’s purpose to protect the American people from foreign terrorists, or to protect the central government from the American people?

In light of all that hullabaloo several months ago about the purchase of 1.4 billion rounds of ammo, the above is still a viable question, is it not?

Red Queen territory ... a word means what I what it to mean ...

Tsk,tsk,tsk #2 and #7. Don´t you know by now that pot has NOTHING to do with anti-social and aberrant behavior? Don´t you know that ALCOHOL and ASPIRIN are more dangerous? Sarcasm

If they weren´t killing with guns they´d be killing with machetes.

Chicago has strict gun control laws and people get killed with guns there constantly.

Wake up, sheeple. Start thinking and stop emoting.

I´m religious, but not a Bible-Thumper. Our anti-God´ers have worked tirelessly for years to get God, and thus goodness out of our lives. When goodness leaves, evil moves in. We need to get God back into our lives.

Also, the data shows that the more gun laws restrict the right to own weapons, the more gun violence there is. Look at police stations. They are full of guns, but no gun violence. Now, look at gun free zones. The last two gun massacres took place in gun free zones. Maybe we should ban gun free zones!

No. 22´s point is well taken. Somehow, God isn´t good enough relevant enough, or even existent enough to warrant awe, respect, and worship in our hearts, minds, or schools. But now that we have a need of Him in profound sorrow, why, the weasels appear and the victims are "in our hearts and prayers."

Mark Levin had an excellent program on the gun control debate. He pointed out that Fort Hood had as much control as you will ever get but it was PC to ignore a danger everybody saw coming because the perp was a muslim and we should all stick to the belief that Islam is peace. He also pointed out that the government cannot control the people in prisons. You could turn the whole nation into a giant prison and still not solve the problem. This is a problem of evil and mankind has struggled with this throughout all history. The solution to evil is known but rejected by the builders of the utopian state! If you give up your freedom for security you will have neither one.

...the majority of these murdering devils are "brilliant", privileged, mentally ill LOSERS who cannot be committed because the Democrats and ACLU won´t allow it. they are "treated" with mind altering drugs. they are raised in godless homes where abortion is a womans right anf there is NO value for life. there is no right or wrong and because the Democrats have given the mentally ill "rights" we never know what their secret, evil, murdering, medicated thoughts are until they act.

..how do we deal with mental illness when at least half the country ( dems) has it and doesn´t care/know????

As Dr, Sowell so concisely points out, the liberals can not push their gun control wishes with facts or common sense.

Look for a campaign from the obama administration to take our weapons away using lies, slanted studies, bully tactics and dictatorship methods. In other words, business as usual. We must win this one.

Lots of people are saying we should not let "mentally ill" people obtain guns. a statement that on the surface is hard to disagree with, the potential for abuse in practice is huge. Who gets to define mentally ill? Obamacare bureacrats? Ever been given a prescription for an anti-depressant? Maybe just for a little while after a spouse dies or something - NO 2nd Ammendment rights for you!. Got diagnosed with ADD when you were in fifth grade (along with half the class) - NO 2nd Ammendment rights for you! And it will all be there in the electronic medical records databases required by Obamacare.

The soviets classifed anyone who did not support the state as mentally ill. Liberals have written entire books on how conservatism is a mental illness.

You see the problem?

All the points about society´s deterioration and the possible contributing factors are valid .
However, the perpetrators of the mass killings and the less publicized " troubled son kills parents " are almost always the same type.
Teens or early twenty males , with a history of disturbing and antisocial behavior ,
often described as loners or odd.
The development of psychotropic drugs enabled patients to be treated at home.
But, they often they stop taking their medication for various reasons.
The movement to deinstitutionalize psychiatric patients has resulted in many unstable people roaming free.
However , not every troubled male becomes a mass murderer.
Not every male who watches violent Hollywood movies or plays bloody video games becomes a mass murderer.
Not every male raised in a broken home or without religion becomes a mass murderer.
Not every young male with access to guns becomes a mass murderer.
The possibility that there is a common genetic defect should be investigated.
Biology may play a more important role than is presently understood.

Remember there are a lot of mentally ill people out there and that mentally ill people can vote. You can bet that of all the mentally ill people in this country, the vast majority of them vote for the liberal Democrats because of their expansive social programs.

The liberal Democrats know that, and in keeping with liberal Democrat identity politics the mentally ill are lumped in the disabled group. That´s why the liberal Democrats will never blame an individual mentally ill person who commits very serious criminal offenses, and will always seek to push off the blame on something else like a gun, or some statement that a conservative Republican made sometime in the past that the liberal Democrats deliberately take out of context and use as a basis for their demagoguery.

As you can see the liberal Democrats, their anti-gun advocates, and the liberal media are in full swing now exploiting the raw emotions of a lot of people to push quick overriding gun control measures.

While the liberal Democrats should be making it much harder for the seriously mentally ill to get their hands on guns, instead they are pushing banning almost all semi-automatic firearms.

They used to talk about banning "assault rifles" but now want to ban "assault weapons" that they define as any semi-automatic handgun or rifle that could possible accept a clip or magazine containing over 10 rounds of ammunition. Such an expansive definition of an "assault weapon" would end up banning the sale, or future possession of just about all modern semi-automatic firearms by law abiding Americans.

#6- Sorry. But, your generalization about "crazy people" is completely off base. Not all crazy people are drooling idiots with simple reactions to mental impulses at a whim. I have worked in depth with "nuts" in mental institutions and on the streets- they are, for the most part, indistinguishable from everyone else- leaving some validity to the premise, "We´re all crazy to some degree." People who do this kind of horrible crime can be extremely clever, and conniving to get what they want and to achieve their insane goals- look at the Norway shooter: He had a very complex plan to carry out his insane desire to instigate a "holy war" against Muslims. To him, his plan is totally acceptable and accurate- He is a super hero, sacrificing himself for the great good of his idea of a perfect society. The lunatic who climbed the tower in Austin and sniped so many innocent people out of existence, was suffering from something he knew but did not know what- He just decided one day to kill as many people as possible in order to reach a point, in his own mind, where he could either get help or otherwise, violently end his pain. He achieved his goal through a very complex, and even difficult to carry out plan.

I think #35 has a point. I have a nephew with Aspergers. He has been that way since birth. Some people just come genetically wired wrong.

Throw in the other factors...a morally declining nation, violent movies and games, anti-psychotic drugs and, yes, firearms readily at hand and you can see where it leads.

Normal people are not going to commit mass murder because they saw a violent movie but to someone unstable it could be the tipping point.

This is copy cat behavior induced by excessive coverage from the State run feral propaganda commisars.

All those who are inclined to trust the medical establishment and the marketers of psychotropic drugs should see the film Marketing of Madness - subtitles Are We all insane? and there is no money in "normal". Every odd behaviou is given an important sounding diagnosis with some drug prescribed as the cure. It is not long until almost everyone is said to need one of these drugs. It gives new meaning to #37 statement - We´re all crazy to some degree. If this is really the case then who is going to administer the laws passed to solve the problem of irrational violence?

EXACTLY #34... who gets to define "mentally ill?" We have seen that the folks in charge of the DSM can´t be trusted to do so as EVERYTHING is now a mental illness. So little Johnny is put on ADD/ADHD meds in elementary school and thus labeled for life as "mentally ill."

The folks on this forum who have never been labeled, never seen the stigma, never realized that even as it is now the label of "mentally ill" can be a lifelong burden that bars you from some parts of life need to buy a clue. And if the person, say a selfish and abusive mother, who makes the accusation and gets her child carted off by the cops for the mandatory 72 hour involuntary commitment in a metal hospital and thus that is placed on his record for life.... explain to me how THAT is just. Now add in 2nd Amendment rights??? No!! I don´t want to give the government THAT kind of control. (and yes, I know someone that this happened to, a fine Christian man who is in no way mentally ill whose mother did this to him as a teen. I witnessed this and I know from him the stigma is horrendous.)

The entire incident is sickening. The poor man was insane. Hatred has no place here. Sorrow and horror. The hate should be directed against the Darkness that dwells in the heart of mankind. Something Wrong is going on.

#26, alcohol IS more dangerous than pot. It is actually one of the worst drugs available (besides meth and PCP). Alcohol causes more family breakups, more violence, more brain and organ damage, etc. than most street drugs. It is only legal (and the others are illegal) because the powerful alcohol lobby started pushing government to regulate and control all other substances in the early 20th Century.

Big problem for the gun control crowd: >300 million guns in the United States and 43-55 million gun owners, the overwhelming majority of whom are law-abiding citizens; thus the question: how do you disarm a huge portion of the American people without lots of resistance/problems? Liberals are going to push this issue without one iota of thought as to the problems with their emotionally enacted gun control laws (e.g., outlandish taxes on ammo/guns, heavy licensing fees, ultimately federal crime to possess, etc.), and, just like Obamacare, we are headed for a legislative and law enforcement mess if they are successful. I HATE politicians.

They are legalizing the Pot that has a high % of THC. IT is not the tinker-toy pot of the Sixties. This new generation of Pot is very strong. If there is going to be legal pot it should be the low-grade pot.
Everyone poo-poos the addictive entity of pot -but every one is different. Unfortunaely we will never know whether this mudering scum ever used pot. The story is fixed and controlled to fit the lefty agenda. It may not have been pot at all.He may have been crazy.
The police should check the cold-cases tho. I bet this scum had been free-lancing on homeless and/or torturing pets for sometime.
Remeber that Dennis Prager says "being left means never having to say you are
sorry´.You just blink and move on when your lefty plan fails.

#22´s post on DHS purchase of 1.4 billion rounds of ammunition, (plus ammunition purchases by other government agencies) highlight the reason our Founding Fathers drafted the Second Amendment -- so that citizens could protect themselves against government and other tyranny.

Before liberals speak one word about "gun control", their leaders, Mr. Obama, Mr. Holder and/or Mrs. Clinton should answer for their roles in enabling the Fort Hood massacre, the Fast and Furious shootings and the Benghazi attack. Liberals are the last people to advise American citizens on protection against tyranny. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Didn´t read all the posts, but I would hope that if you declare an area a gun free zone, you would understand you are offering protection to those who enter your area and follow your rules. You don´t really think criminals care about signs, do you? Starting today, I would strongly suggest to every school, post office, hospital and airport, if you don´t have a trained offensive threat present, you arm SOMEONE at those places with either a taser for 15 feet and closer work or a 12 gauge shotgun with low recoil bean bag ammo. The mere sight of a 12 gauge will change the dynamics and the enforcer can fire somewhat at will without worrying about collateral damage. Haven´t heard anyone offer this alternative, because it is the usual ignorant frenzy.

All we have to do is look at Mexico to see what a ban would do. Liberals always do this. Ban this and ban that with little thought as to consequences. Today´s liberal reminds me of a young child who is incapable of using critical thought. It must be too many years of using drugs.

Gun control will certainly work as good as Prohibition. There will be a thriving black market for guns.

Give the family of the deceased children and the school staff some space. Afterwards, if you really believe things are wrong and are sick and tired of Obie and the gun control advocates, don´t vote dim next time, or in many cases, at least just vote next time for a pubbie.

#11 - oh, no, the MSM has soft-peddled the Ft. Hood massacre for one big reason: the shooter was/is a Muslim - and we can´t say ´bad´ things about Muslims. After all, by his own admission, twice, has revealed that he is, in fact, a Muslim, himself. Lucky us.

I´m a bit concerned to even mention this, but could it even be possible that considering how bad the White House with its fellow travelers want to grab up all the guns, that...these horrific shootings could have been set up to give public pressure against guns a giant push?

If the pilots had guns, there would never hae been a 9/11. Only a dozen or so dead muslims.