It has been almost a week since a man came through the door of a classroom on a college campus in Oregon, killing 9 and wounding more than a dozen others. In the aftermath of the attack, the mainstream media has covered everything about the guman from who he was, to where he lived, from his parents, to his blog posts. Not one stone about this man has been left unturned. He has received what he set out to get… recognition and “fame”.
From his blog that he kept and updated as recently as the day before his attack at the Oregon College:
“I have noticed that so many people like [Flanagan - South Carolina media killer] are alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are. A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems like the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”
What did he obviously want? Attention and recognition. What did he get? Exactly what he wanted. I wonder if a day will come when the media stops giving these people the exact fame they want? But that wouldn’t get them the high ratings would it? You never hear about the good events, the things that keep this from happening, all you hear about on the MSM is the bad events, the ones that get them the viewers and the ratings. (Notice, I have not and will not mention his name.)
The President was so quick to jump to the podium and stand on the graves of these 9 people who died to push his political agenda, but he has been painfully silent on the motive behind the shooter’s actions. One of the victims who was injured last week recounted the events to her family before she was taken to surgery. She told them that the gunman asked people to stand up and state their religion and if they said Christian, he shot them in the head. She also recounted that if they said something other than Christian, or no religion, he shot them in the leg. How is this being ignored by the POTUS? Obama has started and continued a war against the Freedom of Religion in this country and this is just another example of it. The silence on this matter from the White House is deafening.
Obama and the left-wing liberals are using this tragedy to make another push for gun control. They want "commonsense" regulations that they say would prevent things like this. But I ask you... what "commonsense" regulations would have prevented this man from doing what he did? He purchased his weapons legally... meaning he underwent background checks and passed them all for each gun he owned. So, these "universal background checks" everyone is crying for would have done nothing. What else? No one has any proposals that would have stopped the Oregon college shooting, or the Newton shooting, or almost all of the other mass shootings. Obama touts that this never happens in other industrialized countries... while I guess ignoring the Charlie Hebdo shootings in France, or the train attacks, etc.
It's ironic to me that the man who has pushed the button on thousands of drone strikes to kill countless people on the other side of the globe is trying to lecture us on gun control and gun violence.
What I want to see in the MSM and in Washington is a serious discussion on mental health in this country. I have touched on this subject before in another blog (Thoughts On The Connecticut Tragedy And How To Prevent Them). When you take a look at mass shootings from the last 10 years, there is one glaring fact that comes out in many of these events... the perpetrator almost always had a mental illness and was currently under the care of a psychiatrist. It is so taboo in our country to discuss mental health and for what reason? Now, don't get me wrong, the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are non-violent and would never do such a thing as this mad man in Oregon, but why can we not at least have a dialogue? I am not suggesting that everyone who receives a Rx for Prozac needs an ankle bracelet to be tracked, but there are ways to assess someones tendency towards violence and those tendencies can be reported to the proper channels. The Affordable Care Act should have helped give mental health coverage to most of America, so the backbone should be set for this type of intervention.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I know that the current discussions on gun control have been ongoing for decades with new legislation passing and doing nothing. New York and Chicago have the strictest gun control laws in the nation; they also have the highest murder rate. That approach isn't working. People want change, but they don't know what the right change should be. I think this is a good start.
One final thought before I finish this up. In 2015, there have been 156 people killed to date in a Mass Shooting (as of Oct. 4 statistics). This number is terrible. I wish it were 0, but the fact is, there is another number for murders that makes this look like a 6 ft tall man in the shadow of the Empire State building (or worse). That number is 898 deaths per day, or approx. 248,746 people killed in 2015. This number is the number of babies that Planned Parenthood has murdered since January 1. (Taken from 2013-2014 PP Annual report: Planned Parenthood Annual report) Where is the outcry from the left-wing liberals over this? There is none. There is actually support and praise. There have been 1,600X more deaths due to Planned Parenthood than due to mass shootings. But I digress...
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