Roy Blunt shamefully ignores Sandy Hook's dead children
Yael T. AbouhalkahAmerica’s official gun nuts have been pretty silent since the Newtown massacre Friday, with the National Rifle Association going quite and congressional representatives refusing to appear on the Sunday talk shows.
But on Monday, Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican and NRA-backed politician, came out of the woodwork to spew his thoughts on the matter.
No surprise: The 20 dead children in Newtown don’t matter to him when it comes to changing gun control laws.
“I’m sure I would vote against anything that impacts in a negative way the Second Amendment,” Blunt said.
I give Blunt some props for having the guts to state such insensitive nonsense on the day that the first of the 20 children are being buried in Newtown.
But I also have to be sad that a senator paid with my tax dollars in Missouri has views like that, has views that are so extreme.
No one is talking about gutting the 2nd Amendment. People are talking about how to control the number and kinds of guns, and to reduce the flood of ammunition available to Americans.
That’s what Blunt and others with power in Congress ought to be talking about.
They ought to be sticking up for the rights of children and other Americans to live safer lives - not sticking up for the rights of the NRA to promote the sales of more and more guns to people.
Mark Robertson
5 months agoYou libs are always coniving. Senator Blunt correctly stated that the tragedy in CT. is not the result of gun control laws being laxed. From that though, we get that he doesn’t care about 20 dead children(And 7 adults, but mentioning them doesn’t have the same effect as mentioning just the children. Libs are nearly always propagandizing Libs don’t solve problems, they just use situations to demagogue. It’s all about ideological agenda with them. Thank you. Mark Robertson Independence
Phil Cardarella
5 months agoLet us not lose track: It was then-Congressman Blunt whose Party ended the assault rifle ban — and put this weapon into the hands of this killer, enabling him to be a mass murderer of children. Oh, and the guy in Aurora. And Tucson.
Until Blunt gave her the opportunity, Lanza’s mother could not have legally obtained (so probably would not have obtained) the gun and clips he used.
So, I guess we should not expect anything different from Adam Lanza’s accessory-before-the-fact.
George Hunsucker
Northland
5 months agoYou libs are pretty damm pathetic…
You are using dead children to advance your leftwing cause to disarm Americaq.
How disgusting…….
Matt Henry
5 months ago“Shameful,” says the guy who politicized this tragedy before the bodies were out of the building. And I mean literally. It happened friday morning and YTA’s first political broadside was before noon. Did you have the column already typed and ready to go or did your heart go that callous that quickly?
Look in the mirror, YTA. Have you no decency? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
And the Star board should be suspended or released for allowing such a thing. I used to think that your group, with rare exception, were simply misguided. Now I just think you are exceptionally bad people for using this tragedy in such a way before anyone’s stomach could even settle. Truly awful.
Phil Cardarella
5 months agoAre we supposed to IGNORE the deaths of 20 children at the hands of a psycho with a LEGALLY-OBTAINED weapon of mass destruction? How long? Until the next American Idol takes the collective consciousness from tragedy to farce?
How about this for having no decency: Defending the easy availability of semi-automatic weaponry with massive ammunition clips capable of murdering 20 first-graders in as many seconds. Oh, and six grade-school teachers.
NO ONE wants to “disarm” America. We just want to make mass murder a bit more difficult and, perhaps, keep down the body count.
Chosing to own a firearm is a personal choice — one which I think should be carefully considered, given the dangers inherent to your family. Even smart, sane, successful people can just lose it. (See Belcher, Jovan.) Guns aren’t toys.
But, some things have no legitimate civilian usage: Anti-aircraft missles, tanks and military-grade semis and extended clips. It is a false choice to say we must choose between Constitutional freedom and taking such weaponry from general circulation so that our children can go to schools and movies without being massacred.
Reginald Thornton
5 months agoDoes Yael not know this country’s political line-up, or its historical leanings? Blunt’s single statement is more civically information than a year of Yael’s columns. If only Yael would respond to the reality of Blunt’s comment, then perhaps a dialogue could yield some progress. But, no, Yael exemplifies how liberals stand in the way of a solution by demonizing those with other opinions instead of trying to find common ground.
Reginald Thornton
5 months ago“civic information” ….sorry.
Matt Henry
5 months agoI am perfectly willing to have this discussion, but can we wait ‘til the funerals are over before we turn this into a political ruckus? Nothing is going to get done more slowly because we choose to wait a week to start screaming at each other over gun rights, but it might sure show some respect for those who have suffered such a loss. Heck, it might even give us a chance to learn all the details about what we are dealing with so we don’t jump to conclusions, or do you not remember Gabby Giffords and how much the press mucked that up?
YTA and the board should be ashamed for writing a political column within hours of the event. I’m sticking to that. The state of gun laws in this country have no relevance to that part of the discussion.
Bob Rousseau
5 months agoLook at all the fear based, compassion-less “conservatives” cry about potentially losing their AR15s and their AK47s. If people didn’t have assault weapons, then kids wouldn’t be killing people with them. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to own an assault weapon. You need an AR15 like I need an Abrams tank.
This is no different than George Bush taking away civil liberties in the name of the “Patriot Act” after the 911 event. So all you “disgusted” bible thumping gun clingers should look in the mirror. Nothing has even been done yet. No one would ever take away your pistols and other toys you immoral cowards.
If people were not cowards and ruled by fear, they wouldn’t feel a need to own guns. If guns were not everywhere thanks to the NRA and the conservative cowards, then people wouldnt so easily be able to walk into schools and kill innocent people.
Barry Smith
5 months agoPhil and Rob you both are morons! I applaud the rest of you for not being retarded! Did we do a muslim ban after 911 ? No you idiots. How about keeping your pieholes shut till after the funerals. How about we ban and destroy all aircraft since they killed 3000 plus people in 2001? How about we ban spoons because they make people fat? You people are beyond hope. Objects dont kill people you fools!
David Curry
5 months agoThis is not a gun issue. This is a people issue. Also, lets get a few things straight. They are not called clips, they are called magazines. The AR-15 is hardly an assault rifle. It is nothing more than a semi-automatic (this means one trigger pull, equals one bullet being fired).22 rifle, which is in essence a small caliber rifle. The AR-15 is different than the Army issued M-4 I carried ,which is semi and three round burst capable. In the scheme of things most violent weapons are not committed with fire arms, but rather with baseball bats and blunt objects. So where is the outcry against baseball bats? or against alcohol, abortions, medical malpractice, tobacco,Or the various number of other items that cause far more deaths per year than guns. Also, you anti gun hippies may want to read about a country called Switzerland. A country that has 4.5 million weapons for a population of 7.9 million, yet has 0.3 homicides to 100,000 people, versus 4.2 per 100,000 in America. OH MY GOD…How could this be? HMMMM I think I know….its Culture people!!! Not Guns….so stop demonizing weapons and go hug a tree!
Doug Green
5 months agohttp://www.guncite.com/swissgun-kopel.html Hmmm Just be sure let’s be clear….Switzerland is not America and America is not Switzerland, if it were we would have nationalized HealthCare like Switzerland. Comparing Swiss culture to American culture, the people who have access to guns, is really an invalid comparison and does not hold up as a valid argument if it were then maybe we should allow everyone in America the ability to by military weaponry from the Government.
Jason Hoffmann
5 months agoThe only reason gun nuts want to “hold off the conversation about guns until after the funerals” is because they want the outrage to die down so people forget and they can continue to go around and murder people for no reason.
20 KIDS are dead. 31 (29 of them innocent) Americans died in mass shootings in America…just last week. Over 80 have been killed and nearly 150 injured in mass shootings in America in just 2012.
One guy tries to blow up a plane with his shoe and we all have to take our shoes off at the airport. 16 school shootings (NOT including the movies, grocery stores, public places, malls, etc) since Columbine and nothing has changed, expect the fact that it’s easier than ever to get an automatic rifle and yet somehow these events don’t stop. I thought all these gun lovers said more guns would solve these shootings? Well there are more guns yet our kids and neighbors are still getting shot to death (and no armed civilian has ever stopped one), in what used to be considered safe public places, for no reason.
We spend all this time and billions of dollars trying to “root out terrorism” around the world and yet many of you seem to be more than OK with letting AMERICAN citizens get gunned down in public places across the country, by other American citizens.
Lets not forget about the 4 year old boy gunned down in KC on Saturday night, or the two Topeka police officers gunned down and killed at a supermarket last night, both shot in the head.
For the record: I am not against abolishing the Second Amendment. I don’t interpret it the way many of you do because I have an education and live in 2012, not 1776. I don’t think Obama will be showing up to take your guns, as that hasn’t happened yet. But I do think it needs to be made harder to get guns here and I do think assault weapons should be outlawed. If you can pass a background check (both legal and mental) and don’t have a record, then that person should be allowed to buy a gun. Not an assault rifle, but a hunting rifle or handgun for protection. I personally don’t see what is so unreasonable about this. What logical use does a private citizen have for an assault rifle? NONE.
Oh and David: Do you really expect anyone to believe that baseball bats killed over 20,000 people this year? They didn’t, but guns did. And comparing alcohol and tobacco to guns is just ridiculous.
And how exactly is a nation with 4.5 million people (the size of Los Angeles) even comparable to the United States which has 315 Million people and over 300 million guns.
Greg McFarland
5 months agoYeal, please get some facts. There is little to no evidence that gun control reduces crime. In fact many peer reviewed studies have shown otherwise. How about for starters http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30No2KatesMauseronline.pdf
or
http://www.largo.org/Lott.html
or
http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2003_spr/cook.htm
Not to mention that it is being reported that a CCW holder confronted the gunman at Clackamas which resulted in the gunman committing suicide.
Not to mention that something like 55% of gun deaths are suicides (when guns are removed, the method changes but not the number of deaths). The real number of shooting deaths is around 8000 but most of those are criminals shooting other criminals.
If you want to talk, lets talk facts rather than your uninformed, emotional opinions.
If you want to talk real solutions, how about making the gun buyer hotline (NICS) that licensed dealers must use, open to the public so we can (if we want) call to check on the guy who is buying our private sale gun (all that one can do now is ask for a CCW if your lucky to give you peace of mind). How about longer prison sentences for criminals. Most killers are repeat offenders.
Rush Lemming
5 months ago“There is little to no evidence that gun control reduces crime.” It absolutely reduces the number of deaths by guns…but nice try at a misdirect.
You gun lovers…we’re coming after you. You’re part of the problem.
Greg McFarland
5 months agoNice that you can threaten violence against gun owners. Let us know how that works out. Meanwhile, we will be working on real solutions.
Barron Tide
5 months agoI understand people have this need to do something about this. The root cause is not the weapon of choice, but the sick mind that performed such an evil act. The focus needs to be there.
Gary Sappington
5 months agoAssault weapons, Assault weapons, Assault weapons… Someone with a well equipped shotgun and a couple of semi-auto pistols with extra clips could do the same damage.
Curt A. Hodapp
5 months ago“America’s official gun nuts have been pretty silent since the Newtown massacre Friday,” wow right out of the bat. You start spewing names to people that do not share your point of view. How typical of liberals.
Do you ever think that the “gun nuts” did not say anything out of respect for the families and the community during these difficult times?
Unlike our “Gun Control” friends that spoke up as soon as the news broke. Just goes to show you that liberals only think of themselves and their agenda, over respect for others.
David Curry
5 months agoJason..because the argument that less guns is the answer is invalid. The Switzerland example is able to support that theory. Doug, you mentioned that America is not Switzerland, and vice versa..However, the commonality here is the “access” to a large amount of guns. The difference that needs to be pointed out, is the culture. They dont have our distorted culture that we have, full of violence, money, sex, drugs, etc. At least not on the scale that we have it.Jason…I dont see how comparing guns to alcohol and tobacco is ridiculous. They are detriments to society, they inflict suffering and death to countless thousands of people, yet there is no outcry. That is the problem here people…its called “precedent” At what point will it be enough? Say we make it harder for people to get weapons and the mass shootings still happen…then what? Do we outlaw weapons all together? When will people stop and say that maybe its not the gun, but the people pulling the trigger. Regardless….we should at least let the families bury their children before we engage in this conversation. I agree that something has to change, but I hardly believe it is the issue of gun control. People, culture, the value of life, mental health, well being, THAT needs to change..
Phil Cardarella
5 months agoAustralia used to have a mass murder problem like this. So their CONSERVATIVE government banned these types of weapons — except under highly regulated circumstances — and even “bought back” those in civilian hands.
In the ensuing 14 years, number of mass murder incidents? ZERO!!!!
And not one Aussie cannot hunt, shoot for sport or defend his home from random rabid kangaroos. Just not at 80 rounds per minute.
The fact is, reasonable people can differ on the general desirability of guns in the home or on the person. My thoughts will differ from some gun-nuts — and some anti-gun nuts. But, military-grade semis and massive magazines? Guns that can have no reasonable use anywhere outside Syria? That is a no-brainer.
Mark Robertson
5 months agoSpeaking of Australia, it had a massive gun buyback program there after a gun massacre. It spent a half billion dollars buying back about 600,000 guns, mostly semi-automatic rifles. The results of a lengthly study by two Australians, Jeannie Baker and Samara McPhedran, published in the British Journal of Criminology show no reduction in gun crime, other studies show an actual increase. And it’s not that my main point is to defend guns, although I do, my main point is to point out how the libs all dash directly to more gun control, when there are so many other factors. Could it be that those other factors involve past failed liberal solutions. Thank you. Mark Robertson Independence.
JR Beillenhouser
5 months ago20% increase in armed roberies and 25 increase in home invasion in Australia. You think Phil would do some research before supplying the ammunition. Not a good example Phil.