Lately there has been a rash of incidents where people have been acting out violent fantasies. Until the Colorado movie theater carnage the blame was placed on violent extremely realistic video which let people live out a fantasy without stopping at shock with the first sight of blood, or an unexpected scream. Something about James Holmes made many uneasy about blaming violent video. Holmes spent his free hours with his friends, besides going to the movies, playing Guitar Hero, on a silent electric guitar, he almost always got louder cheers then his closest friend who struggled to keep up with him. Why should one exception, a man who usually played rock star, not Batman villain, change this country’s focus on what’s to blame. Since he never was in the army he had to have some gun practice at least at the arcade level. Much of the county is now blaming rapid firing guns, and the NRA blaming gun free zones without noting most areas with crowds not moving are gun free?

The most highly noted incident blamed on video was not in crowded area, or with a fast gun, but the Capitol Beltway sniper attacks. The Washington DC area a decade ago was terrorized by two snipers, Lee Boyd Malvo the teenager was once a sweet easy going orphan. During the trial, the endless violent video he was pressured to watch and the lectures he was given by the ex-special forces sniper who befriended him was said to have made him a brainwashed zombie.

The attacker of the Norwegian youth camp and the Norwegian president’s office complex spent six months day and night on the computer then he moved to the county to prepare bombs and practice with guns. His friends had been happy that he moved away from his mother and endless hours on the computer, but he refused to let his friends visit him. They weren’t loners they were all sociable, (of course Malvo was cornered and an exception) who but always tended to be at the edge of things. They were always last in conversations but they were first with the friends on the computer, and there on-line successes increased as their personal life was falling apart, Adam Lanza was going to be locked up because his mother was starting to get multiple sclerosis. The others, all bright, were suddenly failing college. Jared Loughner who attacked Rep Gifford, received no on-line praise for his conspiracy theories; as for the others their on-line successes were cheered by a few fans. I think it’s important to note that Jared Loughner like the rest had friends they weren’t close to, most as out of it as Loughner only had caregivers and relatives to associate with.

If Adam Lanza’s rampage, after spending a week straight on the computer in his basement, then attacking his mother and the kids his mother, at times, volunteered with at the elementary school had happened before James Homes’ movie theater attack, it would have led be a campaign to ban violent video similar to the efforts to try to stop on-line child pornography .


To speculate a moment, on-line became real and getting up, eating and taking a shower became make-believe. Most, where the off-line world became an illusion, never killed anyone. Most whose necessities of life were disrupted by the computer just fall apart. Tyler Rigsby collapsed from dehydration after four days and nights on the computer, Chuang after 40 hours of "Diablo 3", Chen Rong-yu after 23 hours straight, a mother arrested for starving her dogs and her kids eating cold beans from a can three days straight. Chris Staniforth died during a 12 paid study for computer game design, without anyone even suggesting automatic breaks for commercials, with a warning of blood clots if one programs the commercials away. Why are so many anxious to try to sue gun manufactures but not computer design companies?


America has decided to choose between blaming guns or the NRA claim that it gun free zones. No one want to blame the computer any more then they would want to blame civilization or God. My guess that, as with prohibition, banning guns as the rampages continue to get worse will be tried for a while and that the NRA excuse gun free areas are to blame will get unpopular due to a future carnage. I hope they try to blame the computer now as they would after such a future carnage. PS I hope posting the names allows for googling pertinent links. I haven’t yet learned how to highlight links instead of posting a viable distracting visible links. By the way a computer whiz gave the same warning in High Tech Heretic a decade years ago,
http://www.amazon.com/High-Tech-Heretic-Reflections-Contrarian/dp/product-description/0385489757/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

I think I’d best change subject instead of getting more and more readers upset. There are simple ways technology can solve some of our problems, that technology caused, both the problems society has chosen to half tolerate such as driving while on the phone and is determined to try not to tolerate, such as people acting out their computer-enhanced violent fantasies. Chairs can be set to vibrate if a person sits too long without getting up for a moment. There will be false alarms if someone puts a gallon of water on the chair. Remember in the old days the kids had recess together instead of everyone working at their own pace. Vibrator alarms needed on chairs, in libraries, in schools, and with the help of insurance companys at the large offices as well. In cars. an alarm going off if the steering wheel pattern, or the brakes and accelerator pattern changes. New cell phones can have a dollar or two dollar a minute tax on a car that moving. Remember when people avoiding long distance calls, why not with a cellphone turned on in a car as well? An automatic emergency switch when the car is moving with the message, 'Phone is on emergency mode leave message, or for emergency access talk for 20 seconds and my car phone will ring'. If people like to keep the emergency switch on, being sued after a traffic accident will keep the telemarketers away. When the car is still it's time for a tax free call, and a report to avoid the movement tax, 'Sorry I forgot to turn off the phone when the traffic began moving more than two miles an hour', or that call I considered a personal emergency because . . (please refund the tax). Oversight avoided unless pages upon pages of written excuses that would trouble any insurable company. Several times I talked to people on the phone only in the middle of the conversation was told 'I am on the phone'.

Back to guns: Insurance companies won’t insure banks, cruse ships or chain store businesses if employees are allowed to be armed including private schools. If the government really wants to throw money at schools for school security, then allow them, for instance, to purchase a 2/3 Federal subsidized insurance policy, and let the insurance companies figure out how to make schools safer, instead of fueling the school-to-prison pipeline which the Advancement Project, NAACP and ACLU is crying about.

Incidentally guns locked up are safer. An addict desperate for a fix usually doesn’t want to shoot anyone except fears being in a situation where he would be shot unless he has a real gun to shoot first thus commits crimes with guns even though there is much less punishment if he doesn’t own one. However he would keep his gun locked up in a duffel bag, when safe to do so such as robbing old ladies, if the punishment was far less than if he was caught with the gun not locked up, there would be far less spur of the moment killings. Police officers could have fingerprint locking holsters when in close-contact crowd control and in getting between arguing couples to prevent any ideas of someone trying to steal the officer's gun. The police know that it could provoke trouble, during a routine traffic stop if their gun is pointing at the car. Why not the first officer on the scene be known or published to routinely have his gun in a fingerprint locked holster, even if the officers at a distance have their gun pointed.

Once there was a war against booze, then a Cold War against communism, then a war against drugs, then terror that ironically an incendiary religious insult movie, was so provocative that those hysterical about Muslims seem to be causing trouble rather than prevent it. So now it’s finally time for a ceasefire after generations of hysteric unless a new war against gun crime fuels the Prison-Industrial-Complex keeping America the most locked-up country in the world.

Does the Second Amendment preserve our freedom. The answer no one wants to look at is that the scientific evidence is far from clear. But the placebo effect of the US and the Swiss believing in freedom and that guns protect it, unlike British folklore, means more Americans are worried about child porn internet arrests limiting internet freedom, and worry about Anwar al-Awlaki’s freedom of hate speech being infringed upon by a cruie missile, and of the lack of freedom to preach hate of a religious insult movie of a man who started out in the movie as a lanky boy, suddenly sprouting a closely cropped, immaculately manicured beard that grows and suddenly becomes wild and blood spattered in the last scene. How dare the west be self-righteous about some Muslims screaming blood and not be as mad at a cruse missile silencing the Muslim hate preacher Anwar al-Awalki’s equally incendiary hate sermons. To make a long story short cornering those who believe that guns protect our freedom is silencing some of the hardest workers at preserving our freedoms.

To qualify my remarks, backing up a little, two campaigns have had some real success, the effort to limit methamphetamine or speed, especial in Wyoming, and to limit lung cancer from smoking tobacco. There is an intense education campaign against meth, but also arrests. With smoking there is some banning kids from smoking and arresting adults who buy them cigarettes. Though maybe making smoking an adult thing actually encourages lung cancer as kids want to be adult. But a lot of no-smoking areas together with intense education certainly has cut lung cancer. However banning crack without education actually spreads the crack epidemic as it is with limiting who can have a gun, and slowly limiting the kinds of guns one can legally buy.

Where is, at least, the proposals to buy back and give a brand new non semi-automatic gun with a finger print holster and gun bag while banning them, and dwelling on incidents where good people were killed along with the bad guys as the result of spraying bullets, even referring to spraying bullets in war. If someone turns in and signs that they won’t try to get another one they could be offered free med alert buttons and other free top access to expensive personal and property monitoring systems, for the same 10 million Obama wants to spend on what will b ackfire. This is not what I think best but may be workable. Again just banning some guns and crack spreads their use. Even if one get graphic or anthropomorphic and claim gun violence and crack are cancers destroying a community it is important to remember that doctors avoid surgery in favor of chemo, laser light or any way to get at cancer besides the knife because surgery often spreads cancer cells..

More info at,
http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/419-gun-control-/15985-liberals-and-progressives-against-gun-control-hysteria
http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/419-gun-control-/15985-liberals-and-progressives-against-gun-control-hysteria
Rebuttal was posted as two comments at,
http://my.firedoglake.com/richardkanepa/