Tag Archives: Roanoke shooting

national news

Confiscate guns? Not going to happen

gunviolence

The conversation has begun.

The shooting deaths this week of two TV journalists in Roanoke, Va., has prompted the call for greater gun regulation in America.

I do not oppose that idea.

But some folks are now looking Down Under, at Australia, where officials years ago confiscated guns throughout the country. The result was a plummeting of violent crimes committed by people using firearms.

OK, will that happen here? Are the feds going into every home in America and start taking guns away from Americans? Not in a gazillion years.

The Constitution says gun ownership shall not be abridged. There will be no amendment to the Constitution that repeals the Second Amendment. Period. End of that discussion.

However, I am not going to accept the argument that stricter laws that keep guns out of the hands of the people who should have them are somehow violating the rights of “law-abiding citizens” to “keep and bear arms.”

Alison Parker and Adam Ward died at the hands of someone who purchased a gun legally in Virginia. He put down his money and walked out with a firearm that he then used to cause untold grief to two people’s families.

I am not certain how a background check on this guy would have detected some mental or emotional distress that could have kept him from owning that firearm. It’s not altogether fitting to look at just one crime and then say, “Well, all we have to do is just enforce existing laws.”

But if we step back and examine all the incidents of gun violence and the backgrounds of all the individuals who have committed these crimes, then it’s fair to ask whether there is some mechanism that could be used to detect the potential for violence if they decide to purchase a firearm.

I don’t want my two rifles taken from me. They’re heirlooms. I’ve had ’em since I was a boy. My dad gave me a .22 when I was about 11; he then gave me a 30.06 — that he had owned for many years previously — when I was in my late teens. They rarely come out of the place where I store them.

A nationwide confiscation isn’t going to happen.

But why can’t we consider some measures that (a) honor the Second Amendment and (b) make it harder for fruitcakes to get their hands on deadly weapons?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/australia-confiscated-650000-guns-murders-and-suicides-plummeted/ar-BBm9eak

 

media news

‘Like members of the family’

alison and adam

A USA Today article spells out a grim truth about the latest tragedy that has gripped the American public.

Alison Parker and Adam Ward, two broadcast journalists who were slain on live TV this week, were like “members of the family.”

That is why their deaths in Roanoke, Va., has body-slammed the community they served.

Think about that.

Television news viewers invite the people who deliver it into their homes. The reporters and camera people who provide the information are in viewers’ homes because the viewers want them there.

Thus, when they’re taken from viewers — particularly in such a graphic fashion — the public reacts perhaps a bit more viscerally than it does to reports of other tragic events.

Do no misunderstand my point. I am not downplaying other tragedies as being less worthy of public grief. The Sandy Hood Elementary School shooting in Connecticut — in which 20 precious children and six educators were gunned down — drove millions of us to tears … and one American in particular, President Barack Obama, couldn’t restrain his own personal grief while commenting on it to the nation.

Yes, there are many other events that affect us deeply.

The deaths of two journalists who were just doing their job on what was supposed to be a “routine story” and who were transmitting their story into people’s homes at the very moment of their death just hits us so very hard.

They hurt us so very deeply.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/journalist-killings-like-deaths-in-the-family-for-viewers/ar-BBm980G

 

national news

This shooting defies all logic

gunviolence

What in the name of all that is holy happened in Roanoke, Va.?

An apparently disgruntled former television station employee opened fire on a broadcast journalist interviewing someone and then on the cameraman who was video recording the event.

Then the shooter fled and later turned the gun on himself. His two victims died on the scene; the gunman died later.

The act went viral on social media. I’ve seen a clip of the event. It sickens me to the core.

Alison Parker was 24. Her cameraman was Adam Ward, 27. The man believed to have shot them was Vester Lee Flanagan, 41.

How in the world does one make sense of this?

There’s an element to this story that needs fleshing out. Someone turned in a fax to the station where Parker and Ward worked that declared Flanagan, an African-American, acted out of revenge over the Charleston, S.C., church massacre a few months ago in which a white man killed nine African-Americans. Flanagan’s victims were white.

As the Washington Post reported: “Why did I do it?” stated the fax, which was received shortly before 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday. “Why did I do it? I put down a deposit for a gun on 6/19/15. The Church shooting in Charleston happened on 6/17/15…” The document goes on to state: “What sent me over the top was the church shooting. And my hollow point bullets have the victims’ initials on them.”

It’s not yet been determined if the fax came from Flanagan.

If it did, then we have a serious hate crime on our hands. Authorities cannot prosecute the shooter, given his death.

I hope with all my heart that someone other than Flanagan submitted the document.

However, even if that’s the case, are we now talking about a major ratcheting up of racial tension — yet again?