Newflash: Don't Give Guns to an Aspergers Kid!

As a cub scout in 1954 Milwaukee - it helped to reduce my Aspergers' tendencies.

Back in 1954, there was no such thing as "Aspergers syndrome" and indeed most of the conditions that now appear in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (the 'bible' of the psychiatric profession) didn't exist back then.  Nevertheless, it was pretty evident that looking back now using the Aspergers' diagnostic I at least displayed plenty of tendencies.

One could say I was "wrapped up in my own world" literally. By age 7 I had created an entire imaginary planet and - after plumbing through maps in 'The Book of Knowledge'- mapped out this planet, continent by imaginary continent, from the north pole to the south. Not content with mere maps, I then began using wooden blocks to replicate the cities on the maps including using small toy soldiers and other plastic creatures to populate them. Finally, by age 8 I'd created a 24- page illustrated book detailing the creatures there - mostly brutal predators and aliens that had no use for humans. Some of the gorier drawings I'd produced appalled my mother - who if she were driven by today's memes - would likely think a serial killer was being raised.

I was also fascinated by guns, and began depicting them in the book. I also began collecting them: Colt .45s, derringers, you name it. No, not literal real guns, but rather ordered from the back of Kellogg's cereal boxes:

Enter my Aunt Lil to whom Mom showed my book and assorted 'guns'. Lil informed her:  "that boy needs to get out of that shell and the sooner the better".  To that end, and bear in mind this was the 1950s so there was no coddling of kids or giving them any final says - she enrolled me in Pack 124 of the Cub Scouts under Mrs. Sage, the Den Mother. Within a week I was out of the house going to "den meetings" with 15 or so of my peers from St. Sebastian School. She then went further, asking my 3rd grade teacher to please put me in the school play, 'King Arthur's Court'. 

Oh yeah, I pitched a fit all right! Cub Scouts was one thing but to have to be on public display in a play, that was a whole other scene. Literally! (Fortunately, the only part left was a minor one, a page - so I had some relative degree of obscurity.)

I recall all this especially after the report issued yesterday concerning Adam Lanza, the Newtown mass killer. According to an article appearing in today's Denver Post (p. 13A) Lanza "wrote a book in fifth grade that included tales of children being slaughtered and a son shooting his mother in the head". Of course, in view of last year's massacre we now know Lanza (an Aspergers sufferer) carried it out.

The Post report goes on to observe that in the years following his book,  Lanza - as opposed to being forced out of his solipsistic world- was allowed to wallow in it:  given dozens of violent video games, while also allowed to collect articles, photos, books, footage from previous school massacres especially Columbine. The mistake made by his mother - a serious one- was further feeding this obsession by actually giving him real weapons.

Look, if a kid (especially with the self- absorbed tendencies of Aspergers),   is already locked in a world of violent massacres,  the last freakin' thing you do is give him real guns to translate his phantasmagorias into reality.  You do not give guns to a kid obsessed with Columbine, Paducah, Ky, Jonesboro, AK or any other school killings.  And btw, you shouldn't be letting him post hundreds of clippings about them all over his black-draped walls.

What Lanza's mother ought to have been working on is getting the kid out of his room (all cloaked with black drapes) and out into the real world. Get him signed up into something constructive - like I was- so he couldn't wallow in his mini-cosmos of violent massacres..

According to my sister-in-law, Krimhlde, an Eckist, see e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/08/continued-conversation-with-krimhilde.html

whatever is one's focus becomes one's reality. If a person focuses on hate and violence, these are what his life will reflect. If he instead seeks enlightenment, or at least aspires to hold and focus on enlightened thoughts - as opposed to debased ones- then these will be embodied in his or her outer life.

Severe mental disability or adverse conditions can, of course, impair one's ability to see beyond his self-absorption to make choices. This is why an external helping hand is essential to bring the afflicted person to the stage he can see choices and,  if necessary, make those choices for him. Lanza's mother ought to have made those choices for him early - like my aunt did for me. She didn't, and 26 people paid the price.

Lanza's world, unstable as it was, needed only the tinder of his violent imaginings to be ignited by the availability of real weapons - and his mother provided them.  What he ought to have received instead is her interest, affection and care to steer him towards the potential of emerging from his self-confected hell.

Had he so emerged, those Sandy Hook 20 kids and five teachers might be alive today, along with Lanza's mother.

Gun Kook Wayne La Pierre's "Solution" = A Moronic JOKE!

Even while Caleb Medley, victim of the July Aurora mass shooting is recovering from his head wounds - and facing massive medical costs - the Newtown, CT massacre erupted with 20 first graders mowed down and 6 adults who taught at the school.

Within a week of that we beheld the spectacle of NRA honcho Wayne LaPierre (yesterday) proposing his own solutions to massacres like Newtown: "Bring in more guns!" as in "Let's have 'good guys' with guns instead of 'bad guys'"! Or at least many more. He wants "armed cops" at every single school in the nation, which number about 100,000 according to a Denver Post Editorial today which also tosses the NRA solution into the dumpster. Is he serious? According to cost estimates cited last night on ABC, a minimum of $6.7 billion would be needed to effect such a plan. Where the HELL is the money going to come from when a penny-pinching GOP House won't even fully fund the recovery of the Sandy storm victims and this same House has: a) defunded state programs across the nation, causing police numbers to be whittled down, and b) defunded Embassy budgets - including security, which led directly to the Benghazi episode, though they want to now blame the State Dept. Don't buy it!

Next, even if a cop could be posted at all 100,000 schools in the nation, that wouldn't make a dime's worth of difference! Everyone except those of us here in Colo. seems to forget that Columbine High in Littleton, CO had a number of armed police on the day that Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold opened up on students and teachers. All Harris and Kliebold did is stake out the police comings and goings by time before they made their move, including moving explosives into the school. Any other would-be shooters with half a brain would do the same ....ANYWHERE!  Besides, for a 1-2 acre typical H.S. campus and all the buildings you'd need (practically) something like 20 cops per school not just one! And they'd have to be on moving patrol ALL the time.   That would launch the cost into the stratosphere, at over $135 billion a year!

Oh, Wayne assures us if the police solution is too much, maybe the schools could have "volunteers". Oh, you mean like maybe having 100,000 George Zimmermans - the guy that took out Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL? I don't think so, Wayne!

Wayne then goes on to blame the "violent video games" and that mentally unstable people who watch them will be affected and besides they contribute to a culture of violence. He named several, including 'Grand Theft Auto'. I do agree these games are violent and hence may trigger aggressive impulses, but the fact that millions of people play them and aren't affected shows that Wayne's solution of banning or regulating them is as whacky as his cop solution.  Besides, if you're going to do that, then the next thing is getting rid of all the violent TV movies. Have you seen some of them, including one that features a kid donning a SWAT helmet, uniform and kevlar vest while sporting ten automatic weapons (and multiple clip magazines)  who shoots up a town killing about 60 people?

Lastly, Wayne advocates for launching a "national database for the mentally ill". While this sounds reasonable at first blush, actual statistics for all past mass shooters disclose it wouldn't work. While the Virginia Tech shooter Seung -Hui Cho, and  Aurora shooter James Eagan Holmes might have been picked up, neither Eric Harris, Dylan Kliebold, or most of the others would have. The reason is that most of the killers were visibly normal kids or adults who didn't configure to any Diagnostic and Statistical Manual criteria. It was only immediately near the time of the killings that they suddenly experienced a stress melt down precipitating their actions. Only by the most persistent observation would any anomalies have been detected, as Dylan Kliebold's mother noted after Columbine. The only way to detect these guys then, would have been via suddenly out of character actions as disclosed by a constant monitoring database - say as used by the National Counter-Terrorism Center (see below) or the private monitor "Life Linear".

The true source of the problem, however, isn't violent video games or TV videos, but rather the proliferation of powerful automatic and semi-automatic weapons along with muliple clip magazines. This morning on MSNBC a tally was done of recent mass shootings. The data showed 68 mass shooters used semi-automatic weapons, 35 used automatic weapons. The remaining 26 used revolvers or ordinary single shot rifles. Thus, the need to control the automatic and semi-automatic weapons is clear, if we truly wish to see an end to these massacres.

Someone asked me yesterday if I believed it would all finally stop, and our legislators would act if someone went into a nursery and killed all the infants there, like Lanza did the 1st graders at Sandy Hook. I said I didn't believe so, because the gun culture is so entrenched in this country and has become so irrational that the abnormal has been adopted as the new normal. Every clown, jackass and Johnny Reb Obama-hater now believes that he has a right to own as many Bushmaster .223s or other AR-15s as he wants, as well as the mega-clip magazines to go with them. These whackos will cite "Second amendment" rights despite the fact the Second days NOTHING about owning such weapons. As well, the Second historically has been in the context of being a member of a state MILITIA,  not individual ownership, but judicial mutation has widely expanded the original meaning.

In a worthwhile book entitled 'Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right To Bear Arms in America', a professor of constitutional law at UCLA - Adam Winkler- has masterfully documented how guns were regulated from the earliest days of our Republic. As an example: laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813, in Indiana in 1820 and in Tennessee and Virginia in 1838. Similar laws were later also passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. The then governor of Texas in 1893 was heard to proclaim:

The mission of the concealed weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law abiding man".


WOW! How times have changed! Now, thanks to NRA pressure on spineless lawmakers, concealed weapons can be carried into National Parks and Colorado allows them to be carried into university classrooms! Anyone know how to spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E?

Meanwhile, Winkler showed that congress passed the first set of laws regulating, licensing and taxing guns in 1934. Though the law was challenged and wound up in the Supreme Court, in 1939, the crazies lost. FDR's Solicitor General framed the argument correctly to the Court:


"The Second Amendment grants people a right that is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only exists where the arms are borne in a militia or some other military organization provided by law and intended for protection of the State."

The SC decision was unanimous. The decision remains settled law. While this sane and sober take prevailed for several more decades, it started to unravel by the 1970s as various Right wing (wouldn't you know?) groups coalesced to challenge gun control based on spurious "private gun ownership" interpretations, and successively overturned laws in state legislatures - much like the abortion opponents are now doing (as in Virginia, where its AG Cuchinelli 'read the riot act' to state health clinic adminsitrators ordering them to cooperate with a new state edict to limit safe abortions, "or else"). But we need to know this is how these vipers succeed.


Undissuaded by the gun crazies' arguments, especially that the 2nd amendment granted every man the right to keep and bear arms on his own, Chief Justice Warren Burger responded that this interpretation was "one of the greatest pieces of fraud on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

Well, it's good Justice Burger didn't live so long as to see the arrival of automatic weapons and the claim that the 2nd amendment provided for the ownership of those too!


So WHAT can be done that can stop this nonsense in the shortest time? I believe the only clear solution, also incidentally the boldest, is an Executive Order! No, this Executive Order would emphatically not take away anyone's guns or rifles - even automatic or semi-automatic. The Executive Order would instead mandate simply that  "No multiple clip magazines are allowed for anyone who is not serving in a combat area in the active military".

The Exec. Order would apply to ALL gun -ammo sellers, including online. It would be enforced by the full strength and power of the Security government arm we already know exists.

The most likely one would be the National Counter-Terror Center (cf. 'U.S. Terror Agency to Tap Citizen Files', The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 13, p. A1). As the article notes:

“The rules  now allow the little known National Counter-Terrorism Center to examine the Government files of all U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them…….The NCTC can copy entire government databases – flight records, casino employee lists, names of Americans hosting foreign exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze suspicions patterns of  behavior”

Of course, such “suspicious patterns of behavior” would include – in the wake of an executive order such as I noted – anyone trying to sell or purchase multiple clip magazines for weapons! Then – if detected – as this agency would surely do- the full hammer would be brought down on the violators.

Some may question whether an Executive Order can go this far. I say it can, and I can even cite an historical example:   Executive Order 11,110,  issued on June 4, 1963 by John Fitzgerald Kennedy, to issue U.S. Notes outside the Federal Reserve (see e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/07/yes-those-us-notes-were-real.html)  JFK at the time believed the Fed went too far and the actual money-creation powers rested with the Treasury not an outside private concern. He knew he couldn't issue an order to "repeal" the Fed or limit its money creation powers directly, so he did it in an incremental fashion by releasing $4.2 billion of such notes, about equal to $30 billion in today's dollars.

This would be analogous say, for Obama issuing an executive order limiting access to multiple clip magazines. Let's get straight on this that Lanza was using clips with 30 rounds in each! It was because of these multiple -loaded clips he was able to pump up to 11 high velocity bullets into each child so they didn't stand a chance. Removing the high capacity clips, therefore is the solution, but I do admit (as in the case of JFK with his release of U.S. notes outside the Fed) it would require titanium balls.  The President would have to have them to not only go up against the NRA minions, but all the freakazoids, mainly in the South, who are convinced their automatics and mega-clips are as sacred as their bibles. They will yelp about "infringing their 2nd amendment rights" but again, Obama wouldn't be doing anything of the sort. They could keep all the guns they want, even automatics-- they'd just not be able to have high capacity clips too. If a court challenge is forthcoming let it come.

Originally, I had considered the solution might be stock or mutual fund disinvestment, say such as California teachers threatened Cerberus Capital Management with (threatening to pull out $750b in pension funds) and Cerberus then ceasing ownership in Bushmaster. But then I realized this could only work if all other teachers' pension funds acted too, and they clearly aren't.

We need to also dispel the fairy tale that more guns is the answer to getting more security. None of the other OECD nations have this, and they all show 2-4 times fewer gun deaths. The REAL un-Americans are those who have twisted the meaning of the 2nd Amendment to their own ends, with the result that the fallout has created a never-ending sea of maimed, crippled and murdered gun victims. It is time now to stop this insanity, but I am afraid it will take enormous courage on the part of Obama to do so.

Relying on congress is a non-starter, especially when the Reepos won't even allow an agency head for the ATF. Nor will they ever vote to limit high capacity clips. The ball then is in Obama's court as per issuing an executive order such as I noted. He can do so, and moreover, he has the NCTC to back him up in detecting any flouters! Make no mistake the NCTC is here to stay. It is far better to employ them full time to catch and nail violators of an Executive Order such as I described, than to merely be on endless "fishing expeditions" of innocent citizens.

God-Mongers Blame "Godlessness" for Newtown: Are You Kidding Me?

By now, after seeing the depths to which so-called Christians will go, I am neither surprised nor stunned by anything the Right Wing God mongers and Bible thumpers say after any atrocity. We saw it, for example, in the wake of 9/11 when rampant "godlessness" in the country was cited as the reason for the attacks. So we ought not be surprised now that the Newtown massacre is blamed on the same. So who else are you going to hang the scapegoat sign on other than your next door Atheist?

Two of the most abhorrent, vile observations about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut came from Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor, and Fox Television Channel "news" hack, and Joel Rosenberg, the best-selling author of apocalyptic novels. (Well if it's an apocalyptic novel, you know the guy doesn't have his head screwed on straight!).

The very day of the Newtown massacre, ol' Affable Uncle Mike responded to the mass killings by saying that the incident was "no surprise because we have systematically removed God" from public schools. WTF does that have to do with anything you pea-brained, knuckle-dragging asshole? Here's the better question you ought to have addressed: How come an omnipotent "God" - present "everywhere", couldn't stop one lone nut killer from murdering 20 innocent kids?  Why not at least cause his automatic rife to lock up, or at least prevent him from getting through the security windows?  Oh wait, let's remind ourselves here, God plays his favorites and chooses who he wants to spare or not....as on 9/11.

But these are the fierce questions that the Christianoid creeps avoid. They will make constant excuses and always drag in the "godless" but we aren't the ones who ever claimed there was an all powerful force protecting everyone all the time.

In more detail, Huckabee's remarks are as follows:

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News.

The fool went on to say:

"Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage? Because we've made it a place where we don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability -- that we're not just going to have be accountable to the police if they catch us, but one day we stand before, you know, a holy God in judgment. If we don't believe that, then we don't fear that."

Holy God in judgment? Of WHAT? Surely not the NRA and its minions! Surely not those like El Rushbo who actually said to his 20 million listeners three days ago - get this - "There is NO such thing as an automatic weapon, friends! It still fires ONE bullet at one time, just a shorter time!"  The swine then went on to say the term "automatic weapon" was "invented" buy anti-gun liberals and freedom haters merely as a ruse to take away guns!

Give me an effin' break already! And, btw, does Limbaugh not know that the rifles he dismisses as "automatic"  fire bullets with 3 times the velocity of hunting rifles, like the Remington 30.06?  Does he not know that such velocities are designed to shatter targets even if hollow point bullets aren't used? (But more on this in a future blog on a way to remove automatic rifles from the gun inventories).

Huckabee, please note, was regugitating his stance following the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shootings in July. At that time, Huckabee said that "We don't have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem. And since we've ordered god out of our schools, and communities, the military and public conversations, you know we really shouldn't act so surprised... when all hell breaks loose."

Again, logic escapes the nitwit. For if God is indeed truly OMNI-present, then he's everywhere - ALL the time, so no one can "order him out" from anyplace: schools, military, school auditoriums, or even High school fototball games. Seems to me ol' former Pastor Mike doesn't know his own god, like another pastor I know.

Meanwhile, moron Rosenberg maintained that:  "The demons of violence and lawlessness are on the loose all across America ... . [and] the further we turn away from God in our nation -- the further we drive Him out of our society, our of our schools and courts, and out of our media and out of our homes, or the more we give mere lip service to religion, the more men are "holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power" (2 Timothy 3:5) -- the worse things are getting."

What these knotheads really should have done, before their god-mongering and senseless accusations, is to check out and investigate the automatic rifle culture already present in Newtown, that homesy little Connecticut town, long before Adam Lanza exposed all the hypocrisy. As The New York Times reported on Monday:

"The place that witnessed one of the worst mass killings in United States history on Friday, leaving 20 schoolchildren and 8 adults dead, is a bucolic New England town comfortable with its firearms, and not an obvious arena for the nation’s debate over gun control. But the legislative battle right here shows how even the slightest attempts to impose restrictions on guns can run into withering resistance, made all the more pointed by the escalation in firepower."

The Times reported a number of dustups in town, especially after sane neighbors in the area reported assorted whackos using automatic rifles to fire at fully-laden propane gas tanks to cause explosions. As The Times piece puts it:

"Much of the gunfire and the explosions reported by residents to the police in recent months came from a spot less than three miles from their (Lanza's)  house. Police logs identified the spot as one of the town’s many unlicensed gun ranges, where the familiar noise of hunting rifles has grown to include automatic gunfire and explosions that have shaken houses."

Defending these ranges, and of course automatic weapons possession, "the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which has made Newtown its home".  Joel T. Faxon, a hunter and a member of the town’s police commission, who championed an ordinance for shooting restrictions bemoaned that the ordinance was voted down, saying:

“These are not normal guns, that people need. These are guns for an arsenal, and you get lunatics like this guy who goes into a school fully armed and protected to take return fire. We live in a town, not in a war.”

Hmmmmmmm.......we live in a TOWN, not a "war".....Funny how neither Huckabee, Rosenberg or the other god-thumping yahoos have processed that! But hey, maybe they are employing the "godless" meme as a neat strawman to hide those they seek to protect: the automatic weapons manufacturers and their investor lackeys!

Other interesting takeaways from The Times article that might be of interest before assorted pastors, God-humpers, bible thumpers and others lay the blame on the "godless":

-The town had a 20-year-old ordinance aimed at hunters that included a ban on shooting within 500 feet of occupied dwellings, but the chief complained that the way the law was written had left him powerless to enforce the rules or otherwise crack down on the riskiest shooting

- The Newtown police department logged more than 50 gunfire complaints this year through July, double the number for all of 2011, records show.

-Gun enthusiasts here, as elsewhere in the country, have taken to loading their targets with an explosive called Tannerite, which detonates when bullets strike it, sending shock waves afield. A mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder, Tannerite is legal in Connecticut, but safety concerns led Maryland this year to ban it.

- This was no "liberal putsch", in trying to get the Newtown ordinance passed; three of the five commission members are Republicans, and two members are police officers. The vote was 3-2 against the law, now figure out yourselves who voted which way.

- Newtown residents conceded that many of the ranges in the area have long waiting lists of people eager to join, which has led to the profusion of informal ranges.

Methinks that Huckabee, Rosenberg and other god-mongering meatheads need to look at the gun culture in assorted burgs like Newtown, before they start blaming atheists, secularists and other "godlessness" for the nation's massacres!

Bravo! To 'Anonymous' Hacker Collective for Shutting Down the Westboro Haters

If there's one thing more revolting than a child-killing psycho it's a filthy, disgusting, fundy hell -mongering type that pickets an innocent child's funeral with Hell threats! But these vermin, namely the Westboro (KS) Baptist freaks have been at it even longer than "Pastor" Mike. They have picketed troops' funerals with their disgusting Hell signs until the families of the troops themselves came together to cordon off the sites with their own - preventing "pastor" Fred Phelps and his Kansas detritus from fouling the grounds.

News has now come through that Anonymous- a dedicated hacker collective - has shut down the Westboro Baptist website (Godhatesfags.com) with a denial of service attack (DDOS). This was after the hate group/"church" announced its plans to picket victims of Sandy Hook’s funerals. Evidently they are suspicious that one or more of these little kids (one a devout Jew) are "hell bound" as well as the teachers killed. Where do these demented jackals come from and where do they get these insane ideas? How can any sane human remotely contemplate an eternal hellfire fate for a kid brutally murdered while merely in a 1st grade class?

It beggars the imagination, but then in my own family I've witnessed what screwed up religiosity and whacked out literal translations of bibles can do to a brain. I've seen first hand how the mind virus of biblical bunkum can send a brain careening toward phantasms, overt hell mongering and even burning dozens of people (figuratively) using moving blog imagery with flames. This is sick, though granted, not quite as sick as picketing the funerals of innocent kids murdered by a whacko.  But fortunately, 'Anonymous' got word of it and exacted its own brand of rough justice. As Salon’s Natasha Lennard wrote on Sunday:
"Hacker collective Anonymous was swift to respond, releasing private information of Westboro members including email addresses, phone numbers and home addresses. This video, decrying the church for spreading “seeds of hatred,” was also released. It warns, “We will destroy you. We are coming.”

By all tokens of reason and common sense, Phelps and his miscreants ought to be far more worried over Anonymous than their fantasy Hell myths. Meanwhile, according to a report at salon.com today, an Anonymous source has said it intends to keep the website offline throughout the day, with plans to take it over completely and deface it. The message reported was: "We will continuously DDOS until they are forced to put their inbred church tithes to use to pay for bandwidth."

Meanwhile, a popular Anonymous Twitter account went one further: “The message is simple: Dont fuck with little kids. Especially their funerals.”  Ouch!  Although ordinarily I am not ok with vigilantism of any kind, I do think exceptions can be made when free speech is taken too far, such as abusing families at their kids funerals. In that case, all I can say is "Go for it!". The fuckers deserve as much or more as any other hell monger, including the bitch I wrote about that threatened my friend (who has only months to live) with "hell" if he didn't repent before he died.

As I've said before, "free speech" is only free up to a point. One ought not be free to spew hatred at any one's funeral, I don't care what religious umbrella you try to use. I don't care if you put "pastor" before your name.

The thing that always amazes about these hell -mongering,  holier than thou nitwits, is how they never ever place the mirror in front of themselves and take a good look. If they did, they'd see that by threatening hell at child funerals they're no better than the butcher that killed those kids in the first place. Maybe worse, because they hide their hate behind a false god. That's just my opinion, and readers are free to take it for what it's worth.