Sunday Afternoon

Some more factoids on the Newtwon massacre. First, the mother owned the guns legally and was a gun enthusiast. Changing the rules on background checks would only have flagged her if the revised rules barred sales to people living with a (non-adjudicated) mentally ill person.

This description of the ammunition from the Times gets us thinking:

The bullets Mr. Lanza used were “designed in such a fashion the energy is deposited in the tissue so the bullet stays in,” resulting in deep damage, Dr. Carver said.

High fragmentation is low over-penetration - it sounds like the mother (assuming she bought the ammo) had made a plausible home-defense choice of ammo for her .223.

Finally, if this tragedy kicks off a real gun control debate I think high capacity magazines are going to be deeply contentious. From the Times:

Adam Lanza still had hundreds of rounds left when he ended his rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School by killing himself, the Connecticut state police said. Connecticut’s governor had said Sunday morning that Mr. Vance shot himself as the police were closing in, indicating that he may have intended to take more lives had he not been interrupted.

Lt. J. Paul Vance of the state police said that investigators found “multiple high-capacity magazines,” holding about 30 rounds each, for both the rifle that Mr. Lanza used to kill 26 people at the school and for the handguns he brought along, one of which he used to kill himself.

Lieutenant Vance would not say how many rounds Mr. Lanza fired, though he did acknowledge that “numerous magazines were emptied.’

Well, he could have swapped out magazines even if each only held, e.g., ten bullets. Let me just steal this from the comments of the home defense piece:

20 or 30 rounds for home defense? Who the heck do you have invading? Zombies? Oh! Wait! This is G&A! Of course!

Well, now we are talking about the relative risk/return trade-offs in two incredibly improbable scenarios - a school invasion, and a home invasion where ten rounds in the clip (and a magazine swap) would be insufficient but thirty would be enough. And of course we are talking about some grand societal risk/return trade-off; a guy in a remote home in Idaho may really think he needs thirty in the clip and doesn't want to put himself at risk just to improve the odds of schoolkids in Connecticut (or movie-goers in Colorado).

I will add that lots of folks will argue for the classic pump shotgun as the favored weapon for home defense, and my off-hand guess is they hold six to eight shells. That means a lot of people feel safe, or at least "safe enough", with a lot less than thirty.

Comments

[Chubby]

((Al Jazeera just did a very fair story on Obama's comments...))

it seems that almost every comment from liberals that I've heard about this dreadful massacre includes a requisite statement of how wonderful, caring, compassionate, etc. etc. etc. Obama's response was. I can practically hear the unspoken sentiment that President Bush never would have been as caring and compassionate.

[anonamom]

Daddy, Obama was basically abandoned by his parents, which may be why we don't find any there there.
Defensive mechanism on his part--
he closed down long ago to avoid any more pain from rejection.
(IMHO)

[Gus]

Fast and furious???? Do MEXICAN LIVES only count, when they are here and Obama wants them to vote??

[boatbuilder]

When Obama spoke in Tucson after the Giffords shooting, there was a divisive political controversy which it was incumbent upon and appropriate for the president to address, and, stupid tee shirts and pep rally atmosphere notwithstanding, that is what he did. In Newtown he chose to deliberately insert himself into a situation of horrific grief where it was incumbent upon him to offer, at a maximum, quiet words of consolation. Instead he made a policical speech, and made it about himself.

[Gus]

Drones. They kill children.
Waterboarding. Doesn't kill children.

[anonamom]

You nailed it boatbuilder.

[Gus]

Obama WATCHED Benghazi. He watched it.

[Walter]

Beautiful, Agent J!

Bowers v Hardwick and Lawrence v Texas. Right result, but made mock of starry decisions.

[bgates]

In the first case you are asking people driven by emotion to make a rational decision.

I'd be asking people who have personal knowledge of someone judged to be a proper subject of involuntary institutionalization whether that judgment should be overturned. This wouldn't be much different than the decision rational adults with knowledge of a potentially dangerous mentally ill person already face in deciding what to do about him.

[cathyf]

If there is even 1 step we can take that will save even 1 child's life we must take it.

Hey, how about we stop teaching our children that any time something goes wrong for them it is someone else's fault. That they are victims of racism and rich people and the 1% and that their failures are never their own faults.

How about the president doesn't say that after the election he and his allies are going to get revenge on their enemies.

...perhaps Adam Lanza took that promise to heart, and went to Sandy Hook School to do his part of the president's plan?

[Gus]

They bring a knife. we bring a knife.

Sound familiar???

It's coming folks. For those who haven't noticed. Obama is a Marxist.

[bgates]

If there is even 1 step we can take that will save even 1 child's life we must take it.

Except voucher programs to get kids out of dangerous public schools. Any one step that would save even one child's life without making the unions look bad, he means.

Not arming school staff, obviously. Any one step that doesn't involve vouchers or weapons.

But if there is anything else, anything at all that basically fits in the parameters of what the Democratic Party has always wanted to do, then it's of paramount importance that it be done right away, immediately, no later than Obama's fifth year in office.

[Annoying Old Guy]

She couldn't understand why we needed "assault weapons"

I had a FB experience in this vein as well. I challenged them to define "assault weapon" but mostly they wouldn't, until one linked to Wikipedia which starts with "assault weapon is a political term ..." and they were OK with that. A bit more pressing and I got "an assault weapon is anything you can assault a human with". I pointed out this would remove almost all physical possessions but apparently I was the crazy one for thinking that was a bit excessive.

[bgates]

We know we are always doing right when we are teaching them.

So long as we are teaching them that anthropogenic global warming is real beyond dispute and the greatest threat to civilization which can be solved only through the seizure of greater power by governments, and free market capitalism is the source of the greed through which white people have impoverished most of the globe, and whatever the modern Democratic catechism on sex is, and essentially whatever the modern Democratic catechism on everything else is, yes, we know we are doing right when we teach our children.

[Extraneus]

"If there is even 1 step we can take that will save even 1 child's life we must take it."

Texas school where teachers carry guns prepared to protect students

Besides special locks and security cameras, an undisclosed number of staff members and teachers carry concealed handguns.

Thweatt said the "guardian plan," which drew international attention when it was implemented in 2008, definitely enhances student safety.

"Is that 100 percent? No," Thweatt said Friday in a telephone interview. "Nothing is 100 percent. But what we do know is that we've done all we can to protect our children."

[SD Harms]

When are we going to call out the like of Joe Lieberman for what he is? He is not old, wise and sage, he is just old. Bloomberg too. Both living off the largesse of blue collar workers. What Am I going to do about mass shooters? Buy guns and ammo.

[Ralph Gizzip]

Here's the thing. Mr. Lanza committed 41 felonies on Friday all the way from obtaining, transporting, and using firearms illegally up to murder. How much more "illegal" could it be to prevent him from doing what he did?

The people calling for gun bans don't seem to grasp that the reason we need "assault weapons". It is because the police have them. As long as the police have access to full auto M-16's then I want to be able to get one, too. The 2nd Amendment to the Bill of Rights wasn't put in so we could defend ourselves from each other. It was put in so we could defend ourselves from the government.

If politicians want to ban ownership of these types of weapons they should do so. Just make sure they start with the police.

[gajeeper]

Obama and the gun-banners tears would be more believable if they shed even a single tear for the child victims of late-term, partial-birth abortion.