"What I learned from my gun show tour"

[Dcdrac]

people fed a constant diet of lunatic lies and having access to military level weapons....not good....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/18/what-max-blumenthal-learned-from-gun-show-tour

"What I learned from my gun show tour"

Gun shows are a popular part of American life, but they are also home to a frightening fringe of weapon-obsessed survivalists"

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What I learned from my gun show tour

Gun shows are a popular part of American life, but they are also home to a frightening fringe of weapon-obsessed survivalists

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Max Blumenthal
Max Blumenthal
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 December 2012 13.30 GMT
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Adam Lanza, the killer of 26 people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, was raised by a woman, Nancy Lanza, who, her sister-in-law told reporters, was obsessed with guns and "prepared for the worst". With fears of an imminent economic collapse on her mind, Nancy Lanza is said to have stockpiled weapons and had an affinity with the "prepper" movement, an informally organized network of Americans convinced that looming disasters, ranging from the death of a family member to a Biblical apocalypse, require total self-sufficiency.

Lanza's paranoia and mistrust of authority may have contributed to her pulling her troubled son out of school, home-schooling him in a cloistered environment. On Friday, he murdered her with one of the assault rifles she owned.

In April 2009, at the dawn of the Obama era, I toured a series of gun shows in the American west. There, I encountered a subculture that closely reflected the survivalist mentality embodied by Nancy Lanza. Heavily armed and tightly organized through one of the most powerful political lobbies in the country, many of the gun show attendees I met had been incited into a paranoid frenzy by rightwing talk radio."

 

[Puppycow]

Lanza's paranoia and mistrust of authority may have contributed to her pulling her troubled son out of school, home-schooling him in a cloistered environment. On Friday, he murdered her with one of the assault rifles she owned.

Lanza was home-schooled?

Ironic because, well here's what the good people at Tea Party Nation are saying is the solution to school shootings:

Popular culture has made murder, rape, mayhem, hatred, and violence “cool”. Rebellion has become the noblest of acts. All this with the blessings of people like William Ayers, who has been very influential in modern education. We are creating monsters in our schools.

If people are serious about stopping this sort of thing they will take a number of steps:

1. Homeschool. Take away the power of the radicals in the classrooms. Makes your kids safer, too.

. . .

6.Work to devolve power back to the parents, the local officials, and the communities. A society that is top-down will inevitably lead to alienation of the sort we have seen here. This young man was twenty years old, and his actions were neither spurious nor random. As an FBI profiler said on television last night, he undoubtedly felt powerless and sought to remedy that. Why does a twenty year old feel powerless? He could leave his mother’s home at any time at his age. He feels powerless because he has lived in an over-bureaucratized society, one run ultimately from a far-away central location. He sees his life as at the mercy of others, and sees himself as having no real input or control. He has been coddled all his life, given free rein to indulge his senses but not to face the responsibilities that freedom necessitates. He was an eternal juvenile, a child who was not allowed to grow up. He lived in a world of the Progressives making, not in reality.

According to wiki the home-schooling began in high school

Janet Robinson, superintendent of Newtown Public Schools, said Adam Lanza had attended Sandy Hook Elementary, though she could not remember the year.[117] For middle school, he attended St. Rose Catholic School in Newtown.[118] He then attended Newtown High School, where he was an honors student.[119] An aunt of his, Marsha Lanza, said Adam's mother had removed him from the Newtown public school system because she was unhappy with the school district's plans for her son.[120] Lanza subsequently was home-schooled by his mother and earned a GED. Adam Lanza attended Western Connecticut State University in 2008 and 2009.[121] He did not have a criminal record.[8][122][123]

So he was both home-schooled and sent to Catholic school for middle school. He also did attend public schools. I don't think the answer though lies in what sort of schools he attended. I wonder what "plans" the school district had for her son that caused her to pull him out of school. I think the real answer lies in his state of mental health and the access he had to guns. It may also lie in his mother's world view to some extent. Did she not understand that he had a mental health problem? Did she not seek treatment for him? Is that why she pulled him out of school and home-schooled him?

 

[Sam.I.Am]

What exactly are military level weapons? The military has batons so are they included in this list of yours?

The author seemed to be complaining about having to pay a fee to enter a show and that it came with an NRA membership. I'm pretty sure that he could have declined the membership. He also seems to have a problem with making a rifle less noticeable while transporting it (by breaking it down, not mentioning that in doing so it is rendered useless as anything more than a club). The reason that people want it less noticeable is that a regular gun case is not only bulky to tote around but also can attract thieves while a backpack does not have the same allure. The same goes for other luggage obviously intended to carry expensive stuff like laptops.

The guy clearly has a thing against guns and gun owners and that's his right but as with all articles such as this be aware that that bias will certainly taint his writing in how he presents things (just like a pro-gun publication will, which he also managed to try and put in as bad of a light as possible).

 

[Polaris]

What exactly are military level weapons? The military has batons so are they included in this list of yours?

The author seemed to be complaining about having to pay a fee to enter a show and that it came with an NRA membership. I'm pretty sure that he could have declined the membership. He also seems to have a problem with making a rifle less noticeable while transporting it (by breaking it down, not mentioning that in doing so it is rendered useless as anything more than a club). The reason that people want it less noticeable is that a regular gun case is not only bulky to tote around but also can attract thieves while a backpack does not have the same allure. The same goes for other luggage obviously intended to carry expensive stuff like laptops.

The guy clearly has a thing against guns and gun owners and that's his right but as with all articles such as this be aware that that bias will certainly taint his writing in how he presents things (just like a pro-gun publication will, which he also managed to try and put in as bad of a light as possible).

Any weapon someone doesn't like and wants to ban based on phobia.

 

[NoahFence]

Nancy Lanza is said to have stockpiled weapons and had an affinity with the "prepper" movement, an informally organized network of Americans convinced that looming disasters, ranging from the death of a family member to a Biblical apocalypse, require total self-sufficiency.

Well, I'm sure glad that nobody is glorifying these psychopaths.

Oh wait.