By Sari Horwitz, Published: December 15

Adam Lanza forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School carrying a Glock, a SIG Sauer and a Bushmaster rifle, all legally registered to his mother, law enforcement officials said, and all capable of massive killing power.

He chose the rifle over the two handguns to massacre most of his 26 victims in a matter of minutes, inflicting “devastating” multiple wounds, said Connecticut’s chief medical examiner.

The Washington Post
GRAPHIC | Two of the deadliest massacres happened this year, but 11 others also claimed lives.

Police said that they found “dozens and dozens” of shell casings from .223 high-velocity rounds inside the school, the type of spent casings that come from bullets used in the Bushmaster rifle.

The lightweight .223 bullets travel at a velocity of about 3,000 feet per second, and after they enter their target, they explode throughout the tissue. As the medical examiner H. Wayne Carver II put it at a news conference Saturday, the bullets’ “energy stays in the body.”

Brothers in arms, yes, but the US needs to get rid of its guns

Brothers in arms, yes, but the US needs to get rid of its guns
August 1, 2012

John Howard
Australia was right to take a different path to the US and opt for gun control.

EARLY in 2008 Janette and I were guests of the former president, George H. W. Bush or ''41'', as he is affectionately known, at his Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. I spoke to a warm and friendly audience of more than 300 who enthusiastically reacted until, in answer to a request to nominate the proudest actions of the Australian government I had led for almost 12 years, I included the national gun control laws enacted after the Port Arthur massacre in April 1996.

Having applauded my references to the liberation of East Timor, leaving Australia debt free, presiding over a large reduction in unemployment and standing beside the US in the global fight against terrorism, there was an audible gasp of amazement at my expressing pride in what Australia had done to limit the use of guns.

I had been given a sharp reminder that, despite the many things we have in common with our American friends, there is a huge cultural divide when it comes to the free availability of firearms.

Just under two weeks ago, my wife and I were in Dallas, Texas, when the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, took place. The responses of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, his presumed Republican opponent, were as predictable as they were disappointing. While expressing sorrow at such a loss of life, both quickly said that they supported the Second Amendment to the US constitution: long regarded as providing an extensive right for Americans to bear arms.

The Second Amendment, crafted in the immediate post-revolutionary years, is more than 200 years old and was designed to protect the right of local communities to raise and maintain militia for use against external threats (including the newly formed national government!). It bears no relationship at all to the circumstances of everyday life in America today. Yet there is a near religious fervour about protecting the right of Americans to have their guns - and plenty of them.

In this respect it is worth noting that the local police claim that James Holmes, the man now formally charged over the Aurora shootings, had in his possession an AR15 assault rifle (similar to one used by Martin Bryant at Port Arthur), a shotgun and two Glock handguns and 6000 rounds of ammunition. All had been legally obtained.

Obama and Romney are both highly intelligent, decent men who care deeply about the safety of Americans. Yet such is the strength of the pro-gun culture in their country that neither felt able to use the Aurora tragedy as a reason to start a serious debate on gun control.

There is more to this than merely the lobbying strength of the National Rifle Association and the proximity of the November presidential election. It is hard to believe that their reaction would have been any different if the murders in Aurora had taken place immediately after the election of either Obama or Romney. So deeply embedded is the gun culture of the US, that millions of law-abiding, Americans truly believe that it is safer to own a gun, based on the chilling logic that because there are so many guns in circulation, one's own weapon is needed for self-protection. To put it another way, the situation is so far gone there can be no turning back.

The murder rate in the US is roughly four times that in each of Australia, New Zealand, and Britain. Even the most diehard supporter of guns must concede that America's lax firearms laws are a major part of the explanation for such a disparity.

On April 28, 1996, Bryant, using two weapons, killed 35 people in Tasmania. It was, at that time, the largest number of people who had died in a single series of incidents at the hands of one person.

The national gun control laws delivered by the Howard government, following this tragedy received bipartisan support. They, nonetheless, caused internal difficulties for some of my then National Party colleagues. Tim Fischer and John Anderson, then leader and deputy leader of the National Party federally, as well as Rob Borbidge, then National Party premier of Queensland, courageously faced down opponents in their own ranks to support a measure they knew to be in the national interest. Many believed, in the months that followed, that hostility towards these gun laws played a role in the emergence of Pauline Hanson's One Nation cause.

These national gun laws have proven beneficial. Research published in 2010 in the American Journal of Law and Economics found that firearm homicides, in Australia, dropped 59 per cent between 1995 and 2006. There was no offsetting increase in non-firearm-related murders. Researchers at Harvard University in 2011 revealed that in the 18 years prior to the 1996 Australian laws, there were 13 gun massacres (four or more fatalities) in Australia, resulting in 102 deaths. There have been none in that category since the Port Arthur laws.

A key component of the 1996 measure, which banned the sale, importation and possession of all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, was a national buy-back scheme involving the compulsory forfeiture of newly illegal weapons. Between 1996 and 1998 more than 700,000 guns were removed and destroyed. This was one-fifth of Australia's estimated stock of firearms. The equivalent in the US would have been 40 million guns. Australia's action remains one of the largest destructions of civilian firearms.

Australia is a safer country as a result of what was done in 1996. It will be the continuing responsibility of current and future federal and state governments to ensure the effectiveness of those anti-gun laws is never weakened. The US is a country for which I have much affection. There are many American traits which we Australians could well emulate to our great benefit. But when it comes to guns we have been right to take a radically different path.

John Howard was prime minister from 1996 to 2007.



Read more: Brothers in arms, yes, but the US needs to get rid of its guns

Personally, I have no issue with the regulation of guns. Require a background check, a license, some training............I really don't care. If such regulations eliminate the random violence because a legal weapon got into the wrong hands, then I'm all for it.

However, responding to this tragedy with the expectation that regulation is the means to stop similar tragedies in the future is the conclusion of a fool.

People would always like to see "something done about it". However, they don't really have a good understanding of what to do and whether what is done will have any good effect.

Just trying to circumspect/move forward here........pls forgive if my contemplations seem out of place - they're not meant to be, I have been reflecting on the following:

Why the weapons above, registered legally to the murder's dead Mother, were given accessibility to the Son - however remote the possibility?

Why was the Mother not aware that these weapons could possibly be accessed and used by her troubled Son? Did she not know the extent to which the Son was troubled?

Was the Mother not aware of the Son's accumulation of specialized 'storm-trooper' clothing and ammo?

Wasn't the fact that she was a teacher at the school, and apparently well-educated, not a basis to tip her off and make her aware what was potentially possible - given the weapons availabilty to her troubled Son? I'm wondering if it ever crossed her mind the danger in the weapons being available to him.

These are questions that obviously the deceased Mother cannot answer, but my reason for posting these Qs is that there seems to be common signs in the young men that are slaughtering others in recent years.

The Mother was not only the source of the weapons, but she was also intimately involved as a teacher/faculty member where the Son did his murdering.

These terrible, murderous rampages just keep happening. Are there not ppl (family members/parents) that can put the stop to potential future events like Newtown, CT? I think so, if they will just take seriously the behavior in their family members that may be; on-the-edge, or leading in this direction.

That parents are often in denial about their own kids while being hyper-critical about others' is pretty obvious. I remember the parents of one of the Columbine perps... claimed to be completely unaware that he was assembling bombs in their own basement.

I think the answer to this problem would have been to lock up all known crazy nut jobs that are on the loose before they harm somebody.

I remember passing what my dad used to call the Funny Farm...it was a state facility for the mentally insane. Back in the 1970's, for one reason or another, funding either dried up or somebody was locked away that really wasn't crazy, I don't know...anyway, the facility was shut down and became vacant. About that same time, I remember seeing people walking the streets, talking to themselves when we went downtown. Why did we let so many of them loose on the public??

Today, we have more mentally ill people living amongst the public than we did years ago.

Consequently, we stopped out monthly visit to the river downtown, and stayed within the suburbs after seeing the crazies out on the street...dad told us it was no longer safe downtown.

According to news updates his mother had no connection to the school.
As to the other issues. My feeling is that mental illness is not something private individuals are equipped to deal with.

- Peter.

I don't think parents ever want to see the bad in their children. Especially not the bad that would allow a child to commit mass murder.

But we cannot find them all, so why bother?

We cannot infringe on peoples rights (I do not think the COTUS out laws being nuts) so we should not do that.

The arguments used for gun regulations.... why not use them here?

Since 9/11 how many commercial airplanes have been brought down in the United States due to terrorism? None.

Since 9/11 how many mass shootings have we had?

Reactive though it may be, the government seems to be doing something right for airline safety.

It's not legal to concealed carry in a school in CO.

In your world, greatly simplified, everything is black and white. Simply round up all the crazy nut jobs that might kill someone and lock 'em up. Simple solution.

Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

In the case of children who might commit violence, there is really no place to put them. They are shuttled to and from the local hospital until they calm down and are fit to be released to the parents. The parents take them home and hope, against all odds, that another "episode" won't occur again.

This process repeats itself time and time and time again. Even if the parent is concerned that the kid might injure someone, no parent will readily agree that the kid might kill someone, and, even if they did, there is no place to send the kid for a permanent solution.

However, once the kid enter the world of the criminal, due to any violence against a third party, there are plenty of facilities that will incarcerate the kid for an extended period of time...........after the crime has been committed.

It should be. It is in Utah. It will be in TX, specifically for teachers and educators...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,404721,00.html?fb_action_ids=4814923778247&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=timeline_og&act ion_object_map={%224814923778247%22%3A10150146251722783}&action_type_map={%224814923778247%22%3A%22o g.likes%22}&action_ref_map=[]

Two things...

my daughter the pediatrician seems to think the shooter may have had asbergers and spent his days playing shootemup games.

I think I read that his mom was neither a teacher or an employee of the school.

The lack of any terrorist attacks against an aircraft is your answer to the government introducing legislation against mass shootings?



Nice argument.