Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Bloody Consequences

It's happening again. It's like clockwork. It goes on and on. And Senator Harry Reid (D) once again had to deliver the predictable bad news today.

.@SenatorReid on gun safety bill: "I would love to bring it back up. But I can't do it until I have the votes."

And he won't have the votes until more politicians on Capitol Hill develop the courage to kick their NRA habit. So what else is new?

Sadly, another shooting is. This time, it was at a mall in Northern New Jersey.



People forced to take cover inside the mall posted to Twitter throughout the night as they waited to be evacuated. One woman, Kathryn Jean Lopez, posted: “Folks are nervous in here please just say a prayer. ... There is screaming.” She posted a dark photo from inside the Nordstrom store showing several people seated on the floor checking their phones.

Jonathan Astacio, a manager at the Brookstone store at the mall, said he heard what sounded like four gunshots near the store around 9:20 p.m. Mr. Astacio said he saw police officers searching the mall.

He and other employees at the store moved into a back stockroom, he said.

Alexa Tom, 28, a sales associate who works at Neiman Marcus in the mall, said that she saw security guards running through the store locking down all the doors after 9 p.m. The store’s security team brought the more than 50 people left in the store to the first-floor shoe department, where they stayed for about an hour.

Fortunately, no one was injured this time... Except for the shooter himself, Richard Shoop. This was his planned suicide. And he apparently wanted a host of witnesses to it.

At least no one else was hurt... This time. But as we know all too well these days, that isn't always the case. Just don't try explaining that to G-O-TEA icon Ron Paul. He thinks this is all about "freedom".

“Jefferson obviously was a clear leader on the principle of nullification,” the former Texas congressman said of the third president. “I’ve been working on the assumption that nullification is going to come. It’s going to be a de facto nullification. It’s ugly, but pretty soon things are going to get so bad that we’re just going to ignore the feds and live our own lives in our own states.” [...]

...He stressed that the constitutional “right to keep and bear arms” was not for hunting, but to allow rebellion against tyrannical governments. “The Second Amendment was not there so you could shoot rabbits,” he said. “Right now today, we have a great threat to our liberties internally.”

Ron Paul said this at a campaign rally for Virginia G-O-TEA Gubernatorial Candidate Ken Cuccinelli... But he might as well have said it on the stage with his ideological soulmate, Sharron Angle. After all, they share the same affinity for "Second Amendment Remedies". And they both fail to see the bloody real world consequences of their dangerous rhetoric and equally dangerous policy prescriptions.

Every so often, Senator Dean Heller (R-NRA) and Rep. Joe Heck (R-NRA) will say something about the need to do something about gun violence. Yet when push comes to shove, they vote the NRA-Sharron Angle-Ron Paul party line. And in turn, Harry Reid doesn't have the votes to pass anything. And we all continue to live with the bloody consequences of inaction.




No comments:

Post a Comment