On November 12, 2017,
in Uncategorized,
by magoo1310
It’s Friday, November 10th, 2011…which demands we take a moment to salute America’s veterans with these two thoughts:
We encourage you to make it a point to actually seek some veterans out and express your appreciation for their sacrifice…as well as that of their families. So here’s to Major Jon McKee…
…Lieutenant Jack Wilson…
…and their lovely wives Liz and Michelle: thanks for your service!
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, it appears law enforcement authorities recently used a drone to locate a confused elderly woman lost in a cornfield:
Reports the target of the search was Nancy “Stretch” Pelosi, the increasingly-addled House Minority Leader…
We know that the Texas church shooter should not have been able to own or obtain a gun under federal law.He had a long history of mental illness and criminal behavior: He escaped from a mental institution in 2012, threatened his superior officers and attempted to smuggle weapons onto a military base to carry out those threats, cracked the skull of his infant stepson, beat his wife, abused a dog. He was convicted of domestic violence and did twelve months in the brig and was busted down in rank to E-1. The Air Force failed to inform the FBI, and so the shooter successfully bought four weapons in four years.
This isn’t unique.The racist Charleston church-massacre perpetrator obtained his gun despite pending felony charges; the FBI screwed up. The Orlando nightclub shooter had been investigated twice by the FBI, but they didn’t charge him with a crime. The Sandy Hook shooter obtained his weapons illegally. The FBI simply missed the San Bernardino terrorists, despite years of open talk about carrying out a terror attack.
And yet the Left continues to maintain that government action should be the chief methodology for stopping mass shootings.In particular, it insists that we pass new gun-control laws. There has been no significant call to make government agencies more efficient or staff them more appropriately; in fact, the Left has repeatedly shied away from blaming the government generally. Instead, we’re told that a few more words on a few more pieces of paper should ensure that babies aren’t shot in church pews.
…None of this is a case for apathy or antipathy toward all government action. But it is a case for caution. Government will always be limited in its ability to protect us. Bad guys will always slip through the cracks. That’s precisely why the Founders enshrined the Second Amendment: so that Americans could preserve their own lives when government falls short. It’s also why we should be far more eager to call for accountability inside the government before handing more power over to that government.“
It’s evident from the mass murderers Shapiro mentions such crimes are committed for different reasons, as we’ll shortly discuss. Still, facts and common sense will never prevent Progressives from uttering the most insane suggestions…
…for purely political purposes.
In a related item, writing just over a year ago at the Detroit Free Press, Brian Dickerson offers this amazingly reasoned (“amazing” because he’s almost undoubtedly a Liberal) article asking whether, when it comes to…
“The modern era of mass shootings began 50 years ago this month when 25-year-old Charles Whitman opened fire atop the University of Texas Tower in Austin, killing 14 people and wounding 32 others before he was shot dead by police.
In a suicide note penned the night before the massacre, Whitman confessed that he was “unable to pinpoint any rational reason” for his impending murder spree (which he began by stabbing both his mother and wife to death). But he added that he had been plagued by “some tremendous headaches” as well as “many unusual and irrational thoughts.” “After my death,” he wrote, “I wish that an autopsy would be performed on me to see if there is any visible physical disorder.”
Whitman got his final wish, and his hunch proved prescient: Pathologists who autopsied the deceased killer discovered that a walnut-sized tumor had sprouted in a region of his brain associated with emotional regulation and aggression.
A panel of medical experts convened by Texas Gov. John Connolly later that year said the autopsy results suggested cautiously that Whitman’s tumor, called a glioblastoma, “could have contributed to his inability to control his actions and emotions.” Neurological research conducted in the half century since has largely buttressed their hypothesis.
I first read about Whitman’s tumor in “The Brain on Trial,” a 2011 essay in which neuroscientist David Eagleman marshaled the accumulating evidence that similar neurological deficits may be implicated in a wide range of violent attacks and sexual crimes.
Earlier this summer, after the shootings that left five Dallas police officers and 10 times as many Orlando nightclub patrons dead, I called Eagleman to ask if brain deficits or deformities might not be the common denominator in those and other mass murders popularly attributed to terrorist organizations or the proliferation of assault weapons.
Eagleman answered that he’s been wondering the same thing. But he added that neither he nor others interested in the subject have been able to test their suspicions that the brains of many mass shooters harbor detectable anatomical anomalies similar to Whitman’s. “It is probably the case, more often than not, that there is something really wrong with these people’s brains,” Eagleman said. “We just don’t have the data.”
How is that possible? In an age when researchers have long since confirmed the links between certain neurological conditions and sudden eruptions of violence that are otherwise difficult to explain, why has there been no systematic effort to discover (or rule out) the presence of such conditions in known mass murderers?
One explanation is at once grisly and simple: Mass shootings often end in the shooter’s own violent death, and brain tissue that might yield important clues about the shooter’s deficits is often destroyed in the process.
…That we should be pursuing such advances with the same urgency we devote to developing new surveillance and counter-terrorism technology seems obvious. If some neurological conditions are like time bombs waiting to go off, shouldn’t we be searching for them as zealously as we search for actual explosives?
Distilling what we currently call “evil” into a more concrete rubric of identifiable pathologies won’t relieve us of the obligation to quarantine carriers. People whose biology makes them dangerous will have to be contained and managed no less than those we currently label monsters, even if our understanding of their culpability evolves.
But we should be systematic in addressing the threat. And it is long past time we began scrutinizing the biology of mass murderers as energetically as we scrutinize their religious ties and access to firearms.“
…prevent Progressives from now considering thisassociated problem in an impartial manner.
In the meantime, while it’s indeed unfortunate the surviving perpetrators of these horrific crimes aren’t as willing to offer their grey matter to science as Louis Tully…
…we for one would enthusiastically support legislation which required them to do so…immediately following their speedy trial and swift execution.
Then there’s this amazing example of ignorance, courtesy of Matt Vespa writing at Townhall.com, which indicates The Left is just making sh*t up as it goes along:
Look—I get it. When it comes to the liberal media, firearms, and gun control, it’s not about the truth. It’s all about following the playbook. It’s about keeping the narrative alive, even when it’s a drooling vegetable. In this case, the playbook had someone drop acid because we’re off to Pluto with this latest AR-15 video from USA Today.
Apparently, “chainsaw bayonets” are a thing to attach to an AR-15 rifle. I’ll say that again—chainsaw bayonets. Look, Gears of War is a great game, but it’s not reality.
A Mr. Jeff Dobbs offered an attachment even more sinister than USA Today‘s mythical chainsaw bayonet:
Were Progressives to actually take the time to understand the facts surrounding an issue prior to offering unreasoned, emotional responses based on nothing better than bigger and bigger government, we might be more inclined to lend weight to their opinions.
Since we’re on the subject of bigger and bigger government as the preferred Progressive panacea to any problem, as this forward from ABC News via Bill Meisen relates…
In recent undercover tests of multiple airport security checkpoints by the Department of Homeland Security, inspectors said screeners, their equipment or their procedures failed more than half of the time, according to a source familiar with the classified report. When ABC News asked the source familiar with the report if the failure rate was 80 percent, the response was, “You are in the ballpark.”
In a public hearing following a private, classified briefing to the House Committee on Homeland Security, members of Congress called the failures by the Transportation Security Administration “disturbing.” Rep. Mike Rogers went as far as to tell TSA Administrator David Pekoske, “This agency that you run is broken badly and it needs your attention.”
This didn’t stop Massachusetts Dimocrat Bill Keating from seeking to blame the TSA’s continued poor performance on the supposed diversion of funds for Trump’s border wall. Unfortunately for Mr. Keating, the TSA scored even worse on a previous test:
“…The news of the failure comes two years afterABC News reportedthat secret teams from DHS found that TSA failed 95 percent of the time to stop inspectors from covertly smuggling weapons or explosive materials through screening…”
Sorry, but the only compensation Bergdahl’s owed is 55 grains of copper-jacketed lead…right behind his ear. Here’s hoping someone gives him his due.
On The Lighter Side…
Finally, we’ll call it a week with two particularly noteworthy items, the former from the Dan Rather Memorial The Story Was True Even If The Facts Were Inaccurate segment…
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