Manns Medium

Many of us stand glued to our television sets this morning listening to the horrendous story about a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.   Some have already began questioning whether if we had stronger gun control could this and other recent shootings could have been avoided.   My answer is simply “no”. My reasoning for saying this can be easily discerned from those recent events especially when compared in contrast to what recently happened in an elementary school in China.   Imagine a country where no citizen has the right to carry, conceal or bear firearms.   Yet violence does happen and as the example in China where it was a stabbing of several people instead of a shooting, to say that China should now outlaw knives makes no sense.   It is time we begin to place the blame squarely where it belongs and that is on the person or persons committing the acts. Now don’t get me twisted, no “real” hunter needs a 32 clip magazi...

Normally I do not consider myself a conspiracy theorist but the actions of the Colorado Movie Theater shooter, Mr. James Holmes does gives me pause.  No one has to try hard to imagine the cowardice it took to attack unarmed citizens as they embarked on a night of entertainment but try, if you can, to follow my thoughts on why he took those actions and why he may have acted as he did after being captured. Now remember, he was not caught as reported, he surrendered and that alone makes me wonder.  Many who feel justified in their actions and are resolved to give their lives to whatever cause, will not surrender unless they know that they will be released or they have other scenarios that they want to see play out.  Mr. Holmes surrendered peacefully and quietly even offering to warn law enforcement about the booby traps left in his apartment.  Either he is extremely weak or there is something else he wanted to see the results of. Given what we know about his backgro...

The subject is the attack on Democratic Rep. Gilford and her supporters in that mall in Tucson, Arizona.   Much has been made about the lesson lawmakers may be learning about their own security, much is being made about what both parties could do to try and fix this problem.   Much is being made about the rhetoric that is spewed by those who find it easy to get in front of a camera and speak as if they and those who hang on their every word are the only true Americans on this planet but what I think may be missing more than anything else is the influence of parents or parental figures in our society and what they should be doing to also help curb this type of activity. What brought me this thought was an article written by Associated Press’ Justin Pritchard titled Shooting suspect's nihilism rose with isolation .   In that article it mostly spoke about the type of person the alleged shooter appeared to be from the take of his school mates.   It attempted to describe...

Not being an avid gun holder/collector myself, I really had not thought too much about this issue.   The unnecessary shooting in Tucson, Arizona brought this issue to light but to me still wasn’t enough for me to really join the fray until I saw the segment on the Rachel Maddow Show about how many times one individual was able to go to the same place and buy up to twenty assault rifles each time without it raising questions for anyone. I served this country in the United States Marines from Sept 1980 till April 1991 and in that time, learned one important fact about guns.   They are useful and legal but when they are turned into nothing more than a conversation piece or something that is used to force your values on another then they become like any other commodity and needs to be heavily regulated.   When I saw heavily regulated I do not mean that laws need to be legislated to prevent responsible and rational Americans from owing, what I mean is that they show not be so...

How important is it to appease your base than it is to protect the public?   At what point will voters say enough and reclaim their representatives from a group of Americans who’s so focused on division that they are willing to sacrifice their very essence to achieve it.   They are better than that and we all know this but it’s not enough that we know it; they need to recognize it too. Repealing healthcare and calling it a job killer has been proven more times than not to be false.   Saying that repealing healthcare will not have an adverse affect on the deficit has also been found to be false.   The only thing that they got right was when they say this is socialized medicine but so is the healthcare that congress has as well as Medicare.   So if socialized medicine is so bad then Medicare should have wrecked this country many years ago.   But what is most disturbing is that to a person mental issues of Jared Loughner is front and center and with the healt...