Opinion
USA –-(Ammoland.com)- Yesterday’s massacre at a movie theater in Aurora Colorado bears numerous and striking similarities to the Columbine High School Massacre in 1999, thirteen years ago.
While copycat killers generally act within a very short time frame in emulating the original criminal, it is, in my opinion, impossible to ignore the possibility that the Columbine Massacre in someway large or small, inspired, or at the very least provided a template for Aurora Colorado Shooter James Holmes.
A captive collection of easy, unarmed targets in a “Gun Free Zone”, the use of shrapnel filled homemade bombs, the use of multiple weapons, deranged shooter(s), police physically on the scene when the carnage began, but still unable to do anything to intercede in time to save any of the victims. The unanswerable question of “why“?
The demonetization of near-ubiquitous semi-automatic modern rifles with the fabricated term “assault weapons” and the revolting and near-immediate calls for “more gun control”, specifically from the likes of CNN host Piers Morgan and ego maniacal N.Y City King Michael Bloomberg.
First to Emperor Bloomberg and his acolytes in the media and assorted Gun Control Groups. The meme of the so-called “easy availability of guns ” is ludicrous and a lie. Up until the Kennedy Assassination in 1963, citizens could purchase firearms through the mail, without background checks, magazine capacity limits, or all of the other restrictions now in place or proposed, across the Country.
The term “assault weapons”, is yet another lie, openly admitted to by Josh Sugarmann, the head of one of the most virulent Anti-Gun Groups, the Violence Policy Center, during an interview in 1988 in which he said, “The semi-automatic weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons — anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun — can only increase that chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”
Read that quote again. The head of an Anti Gun Group the mainstream media routinely turns to for a soundbite or comment is openly admitting to intentionally taking advantage of the general public’s ignorance in order to further an agenda, and the media not only bought it, but they have also continued to propagate this myth even today.
The Obama Administration, via incompetent and treasonous Attorney General Eric Holder, already acknowledged at the beginning of their term that they desired a re institution of the now-expired “Assault Weapons Ban” that was Federal Law from 1994 to 2004. A ban that incidentally, despite what we hear in the media and from gun control groups DID NOT ban so-called “large-capacity magazines“, merely restricted the manufacture of new ones. I personally purchased and owned a Bushmaster AR Style Rifle, a WASR 10 Semi-Auto AK Style Rifle, and numerous 30 round magazines for both rifles that I legally purchased directly off the shelf of a large gun shop in the Central Florida Area, with the “Assault Weapons Ban” Federal Law in full effect in 2003.
Numerous studies of the effects (or lack thereof), including ones commissioned and performed by the Dept of Justice, showed conclusively that the “Assault Weapons Ban” had NO statistically significant effect or impact on violent crime rates, criminal misuse, or mass shooting incidents.
Clamors for “more Gun Control” is merely an easy target, nothing more, its a cheap and tawdry political ploy.
There will be few, if any calls for restrictions or bans on hyper-violent movies, primarily marketed to teens and young adults (like the Aurora Dark Night Shooter James Holmes), in spite of the fact that highly regarded, now retired US Army West Point Psychologist Lt Col Dave Grossman, in his study “On Killing” makes a convincing case that desensitization is far more likely to be a significant factor in these types of incidents then the availability of the types of firearms and their accessories on the market.
“Make these films entertaining as well as violent and then simultaneously provide the viewers with candy, soft drinks, group companionship and the often intimate physical contact of a boyfriend or girlfriend. Then understand that these viewers are learning to associate these rewards with what they are watching”.
Put more simply, this is a classic Pavlovian Response.
Col Grossman went even further in his study, next addressing video games. In “On Killing”, Col Grossman demonstrated how improved training, which includes the use of video game-style simulations raised the proportion of infantrymen who fired their weapons in combat from fifteen to twenty percent in Word War II to ninety to ninety-five percent by Vietnam. The big difference between military training and what teens and young adults get in the video games/simulations is that soldiers are trained to never fire until ordered to by a superior, the game players have no such restriction indoctrinated into them.
The father of Columbine victim Rachel Scott previously refused to vilify “the easy availability of guns” or “assault weapons” when speaking of his daughter’s murder and her killers. He quite bravely and correctly assigned blame where it belonged, squarely on the shoulders of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
It’s a shame the media and our so-called leaders refuse to emulate Mr. Scott’s bravery in the face of immense tragedy and assign blame where it belongs, with the shooter and no one or nothing else.
About Dan Roberts
More articles, commentary and information by D. Roberts available at That Every Man Be Armed.com
