Gord's Notebook : Midnite Movie Massacre Shooter in Battle Gear and " UnAmerican " Mitt Romney 's Losing GOP Enthusiasm And His Sarah Palin Problem

"Fire arm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation."

Quote by urbanologist Richard Florida America's Gun Violence Map by Noah Kristula-Green at Daily Beast,July 20, 2012

and update Romney

Mitt still hasn’t invited Sarah to the GOP’s nomination assembly in Tampa, and the Tea Party is livid. Peter J. Boyer on how the snub could sabotage Romney’s tenuous ties to the grassroots—and why Palin is keeping the week open, just in case.

Noah Kristula-Green illustrates by use of stats and maps which establish a link between gun control legislation and murders and mass murders committed in America . It appears that states with the least gun control regulations also tend to have a much higher murder rate than those which have tougher gun control legislation.

above quote from : Romney’s Palin Problem: Where’s Her Convention Invite? by peter J. Boyer Newsweek Magazine via Daily Beast July 16, 2012

Former Arizona state Senator ultraconservative with connections to white supremacists Russell Pearce uses the Batman Midnite Movie Massacre as an occasion to defend abolishing gun control laws and to question the courage of those in the theatre for not taking action against the shooter.

Being a conservative and therefore fact-challenged Pearce ignores the fact that the shooter was in full battle gear and tossed tear-gas into the crowd of people in a darkened theatre.

But in reality if some patrons were armed and fired back in a smoky darkened theatre with a crowd of panicking people would they hit the shooter or someone else. Would another armed individual or the police be able to distinguish who is the "bad guy". The result most likely more wounded and dead.

as one veteran Gil Bagnell who actually fought in a war commented about the article that people like Pearce don't know what they are talking about as Bagnell soberly points out :

Gil Bagnell
Another hypocritical comment by a chicken-hawk who ducked Viet Nam by joining the national guard (which didn't have to fight back then). Speaking as a vet who was drafted, when guns start going off the noise and commotion makes it hard even for trained soldiers to think, and even in crack units a large proportion do not fire or do not fire meaningfully. In the dark it is worse. I recall sitting along a bunker line and watching a three way firefight break out, with tracers going between two locations in the paddies and then in and out of a bunker down the line. Turned out all three were on the same side. To think that untrained people packing guns in a surprise attack in a darkened movie theater could accomplish anything other than more slaughter is a total fantasy.

Russell Pearce Blames Aurora Victims, Then Blames Gun Control, For Massacre by Sahil Kapur at Talking Points Memo ,July 22, 2012

Former Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce wrote a missive Saturday highlighting the collective failure of the victims of the Aurora, Colo. massacre to stop the shooter who left 12 people dead and nearly 60 wounded in a movie theater.

The outspoken conservative — known for his ardent pro-gun and anti-illegal-immigration views — later sought to clarify that he was merely blaming gun control laws.

Early Saturday morning, the former Republican lawmaker took to Facebook to mourn the victims. He then wondered why none were “[b]rave” enough to stop the atrocity.

“Where were the men of flight 93???? Someone should have stopped this man,” he wrote. “…All that was needed is one Courages/Brave man prepared mentally or otherwise to stop this it could have been done.”

And of course Sen. John McCain had to step into the fray claiming that gun control has nothing to do with this mass murder or any other killing by someone using a semi-automatic military style rifle which has a clip of a hundred rounds. Yeah this guy or any other citizen needs such armour and weapons just in case they are attacked in a theatre or a bar or bank or mall or a school or playground or in a mall church especially I guess in one those one stop spiritual shopping Mega-Churches.

One can imagine the innocent blood spilled in a mall by someone defending themselves by spraying the crowded mall with a hundred rounds from a semi-automatic.

Of course the next thing to wait for are for the ultraright spokespersons such as Limbaugh or Beck to claim the shooter in their world view was of course a liberal or progressive or someone on the left at least. The public reactions of those who are pro-gun and anti-liberal and anti-Obama are all too easy to predict.

McCain: Not ‘Proved’ That Tougher Gun Laws Would Prevent Shootings at TPM,July 22, 2012

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Sunday downplayed the relevance of gun laws to the Aurora, Colo. massacre that left a dozen people dead and at least 58 wounded.

“Everything should be looked at, but to think that somehow gun control is – or increased gun control is – the answer, in my view that would have to be proved,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The senator said gun-rights advocates “would be glad to have a conversation.” But “to somehow lead to the conclusion that this was somehow caused by the fact that we don’t have more gun control legislation – I don’t think it’s been proved.”

America's Gun Violence Map by Noah Kristula-Green at Daily Beast,Jul 20, 2012

After the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in January of last year, urbanologist Richard Florida compiled several maps to plot the correlations between gun violence, gun laws, and other social indicators. They make for urgent reading after this latest mass-casualty shooting.

So what are the factors that are associated with firearm deaths at the state level?

Poverty is one. The correlation between death by gun and poverty at the state level is .59.

An economy dominated by working class jobs is another. Having a high percentage of working class jobs is closely associated with firearm deaths (.55).

And, not surprisingly, firearm-related deaths are positively correlated with the rates of high school students that carry weapons on school property (.54).

and : "Fire arm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation."

Update: Mitt Romney

"Michael Tomasky on Romney: the Un-American in the Presidential Race" by Michael Tomasky Jul 19, 2012

Republicans have questioned the patriotism of Democrats for nearly a hundred years. But now, at long last, Barack Obama is turning the tables on the GOP.

John Sununu opened the “American” door the other day, and now the Romney campaign is barging through it, plotting attacks on Barack Obama’s “biography,” which will inevitably include veiled accusations about his alleged alien cast, his lack of American-ness.

So now that it’s open, let’s stroll through it ourselves. What’s taking place in the room on the other side of that door?

Republicans and conservatives are bouncing off the walls because they face a serious risk for the first time in a generation that their definitions of patriotism and Americanism are losing. And not just losing—losing to, of all people, Barack Hussein Obama!

Then comes Obama. I don’t have to rehearse for you all the things that were said in 2008. More salient is the fact that the Republicans are still saying them now, after the man has been president for three-and-a-half years and after he executed Osama bin Laden. Obama apologizes for America. If we give this man four more years, Romney has warned repeatedly, the America we’ve come to know and love will no longer exist.

Health care, higher taxes at the top of the income ladder—these aren’t just bad ideas. They’re un-American and threaten the very body and blood of Uncle Sam.

Romney said just two days ago in Pennsylvania: “The course we’re on right now is foreign to us. It changes America.”

Romney's Palin Problem

Romney’s Palin Problem: Where’s Her Convention Invite? by peter J. Boyer Newsweek Magazine via Daily Beast July 16, 2012

Mitt still hasn’t invited Sarah to the GOP’s nomination assembly in Tampa, and the Tea Party is livid. Peter J. Boyer on how the snub could sabotage Romney’s tenuous ties to the grassroots—and why Palin is keeping the week open, just in case.

On the day that Mitt Romney formally announced his run for the presidency last year, he found himself competing with a stiff New Hampshire wind, which stood his hair on end and played havoc with his microphones. What blew in later was even more distracting: the red, white, and blue bus bearing Sarah Palin on her “One Nation” tour. Palin stole the headlines, and Romney’s buzz, that day (“Coincidence,” she said), and beyond. Through much of the summer, she hovered at the edge of the Republican primary campaign as a shadow candidate, once predicting that she could not only beat Romney, but President Obama, too, before finally declaring herself out of the race last fall.

But Palin continued to vex Romney’s candidacy, questioning his conservatism, encouraging the non-Romneys still in the race, and publicly cheering for the prospect of an open convention. Even after Romney clinched the race in late spring, Palin remained pointedly hesitant about the presumed Republican nominee. She has not yet extended to Romney her full endorsement, and, while she speaks animatedly of the urgency of defeating President Obama in November, her support for Romney derives from the fact that Romney meets Palin’s threshold qualification—as “anybody but Obama.”

In that regard, Palin reflects the abiding unease that many conservatives, especially the grassroots activists associated with the Tea Party movement, still feel about Romney. A poll published by The Washington Post last week showed Romney dead even with the president, but it also revealed that Obama holds a startling enthusiasm advantage over Romney. More than half of Obama’s backers, 51 percent, said they’ll vote for him “very enthusiastically,” compared with just 38 percent of Romney’s supporters expressing similar eagerness. Republican energy and enthusiasm resides within the Tea Party, which delivered the House of Representatives to the GOP in 2010, and this year defeated six-term Republican Sen. Richard Lugar in a primary and helped save Gov. Scott Walker’s job in Wisconsin. Romney has failed, so far, to connect with that energy. “Quite honestly, we have been focused on the Senate races, rather than the presidential race,” says Amy Kremer, chair of the Tea Party Express, “and that is what I’ve seen from everybody across the country.”

And even disenchanted Neoconservative David Frum chimes in: Why is the Romney Campaign Talking So Crazy? by David Frum at Daily Beast.com,Jul 18, 2012

...It's probably hopeless by now to try to excite the GOP's conservative base about Romney, not only because of ideology, but even more because of sociology. Romney's life, career, and manner all combine to remind the white working class why their parents and grandparents voted Democratic.

But what can be done is to rev up fear and dislike of the president. Which is what is happening.

Last month's pundit wisdom was that it was President Obama who had no choice but to go negative: Like George W. Bush in 2004, Obama has a weak re-elect narrative, and must therefore define his opponent as unacceptable.

All true.

But his opponent has exactly the same problem!

Which is why the race is heading straight to the mud … and why an election that partisans describe (as they always do) as the "most important of our lifetimes" is being conducted as mindlessly as if it were the least important.