Chris Rock Was Right

Posted on | December 14, 2012 | 68 Comments

“Liberals talk about banning guns as if it’s the same as banning murder and banning evil.”
— Ace of Spades

“Gun-free zones are premised on a lie: that murderers will follow rules, and that people like my student are a greater danger to those around them than crazed killers. That’s an insult to honest people. Sometimes, it’s a deadly one.”
— Professor Glenn Reynolds

“Who to blame for mass murder? This may sound weird, but my gut hunch is it’s probably the homicidal psychotic’s fault.”
— Robert Stacy McCain

When I got up Friday morning, live-blogging a mass murder was not part of my plan for the day. In fact, at the end of a post Friday morning about labor union violence in Michigan, I promised further developments on that story. As I was researching that, however, the TV kept updating with news about a shooting at a school in Connecticut and I figured this might be a story worth mentioning on the blog.

The original 12:15 p.m. ET post relayed reports that “three people have been wounded or injured and one person, the suspected shooter, is dead,” but added the caution that “early reports on events like this can be often be confusing and/or inaccurate.”

To say the very least.

By the time I added the first update, NBC was already reporting 20 dead and next it was 24, then 26, then 27, and all these changing numbers were coming amid a welter of confusing (and, as it turned out, largely wrong) details about the shooter, about the victims, etc. And this kept going for about six hours. Everything is still pretty sketchy, but we now have the bare-bones facts of the story. The Associated Press:

The 20-year-old killer, carrying two handguns, committed suicide at the school, and another person was found dead at a second scene, bringing the toll to 28, authorities said. Police shed no light on the motive for the attack. The gunman was believed to suffer from a personality disorder and lived with his mother in Connecticut . . .
[Police] gave no details on the victim discovered at another scene, except to say that the person was an adult found dead by police while they were investigating the gunman. A law enforcement official identified the gunman as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, the son of a teacher. A second law enforcement official said his mother, Nancy Lanza, was presumed dead. Adam Lanza’s older brother, 24-year-old Ryan, of Hoboken, N.J., was being questioned . . .
Ryan Lanza told law enforcement he had not been in touch with his brother since about 2010. . . .
The gunman drove to the school in his mother’s car, the second official said. Three guns were found — a Glock and a Sig Sauer, both pistols, inside the school, and a .223-caliber rifle in the back of a car. . . .
Adam Lanza and his mother lived in a well-to-do part of Newtown where neighbors are doctors or hold white-collar positions at companies such as General Electric, Pepsi and IBM.

OK, so the Associated Press description of the gunman as having “a personality disorder” matches what ABC News is reporting:

Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut this morning, was “obviously not well,” a relative told ABC News.
Family friends in Newtown also described the young man as troubled and described his mother Nancy as very rigid. “[Adam] was not connected with the other kids,” said one friend.
Late today, police said Nancy Lanza’s body was found in the family home. According to sources, Lanza shot his mother in the face, then left the house armed with at least two semi-automatic handguns and a semi-automatic rifle.

“Obviously not well.” In other words, Adam Lanza was nuts.

Psycho, loony, bonkers, daft, zany, berserk and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Advocates for the mentally ill discourage such colloquial terms as tending to stigmatize psychiatric patients. But we might ask whether stigma — and the consequent damage to the fragile self-esteem of kooks — is really worse than turning loose a homicidal schizo who kills 27 people.

I saw we might ask that, except that it’s politically incorrect to do so. We have been carefully taught that wackos are victims, and we’re not supposed to talk about the possibility that they might also be dangerous, lest we infringe the “rights” of murderous lunatics.

To quote Dirty Harry, “Well, I’m all broken up over that man’s rights.”

You’ll excuse me if I sound somewhat bitter about it, but this school shooting kind of spoiled my plans for the day. And also, some kids in Newtown, Connecticut, will miss the rest of their lives.

Our culture has lost all sense of perspective, of reasonable balance, so that we are unable to make common-sense judgments about risks. Which is the greater danger: That a schizophrenic might have his feelings hurt, or that a schizophrenic might go off his meds and kill people?

Common sense is quite nearly illegal nowadays and it’s certainly unfashionable in the Obama Age. So the usual liberal dingbats — including the ACLU types who assured us it was “a fearless, independent life style” for a crazy woman to defecate in public on the streets of Manahattan — are telling us we need more gun control.

And I say, no, what we need is more kook control. But no member of Congress in either party would have the guts to introduce “The Dangerous Lunatic Incarceration Act of 2013,” which would put wackjobs like Adam Lanza some place where they couldn’t kill people.

Chris Rock was right: “Whatever happened to ‘crazy’? . . . What? You can’t be crazy no more? Did we eliminate ‘crazy’ from the dictionary?”

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Category: Connecticut, Crime, Culture

Comments

68 Responses to “Chris Rock Was Right”

BruceC
December 14th, 2012 @ 10:55 pm

It is amazing. It took even less time than I thought for the SCOAMF to politicize this tragedy.
princy_lyn
December 14th, 2012 @ 10:58 pm

RT @smitty_one_each: TOM Chris Rock Was Right http://t.co/RyS9ib22 #TCOT
Man Mountain Molehill
December 14th, 2012 @ 11:02 pm

Looks like he killed his parents first. Hippie Marxist mad-bomber weirdo Bill Ayers said “kill your parents”, so, let me be the first to recommend banning hippies.

Hippie control, not gun control.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081008120940AALzgsV
hal
December 15th, 2012 @ 12:01 am

Try this on the libs…http://www.k12academics.com/school-shootings/history-school-shootings-united-states
james lagnese
December 15th, 2012 @ 12:24 am

Right with you on this one: http://www.therightguyshow.com/2012/12/crazy-control.html
Patriot
December 15th, 2012 @ 1:55 am

This is a f*&^ing great blog post. You nailed it.

Do not mistake my enthusiasm for your perspective and wordplay for a lack of extreme sadness for this community and our country.
Dai Alanye
December 15th, 2012 @ 2:07 am

Let’s keep this in mind–there are insane people and insane criminals, somewhat in the same ratio as ordinary citizens and criminal citizens. What is needed is to detect the potentially violent among the schizophrenics, then take steps to treat and, if necessary, isolate them from society. It isn’t impossible to do, but we as a society seem unwilling to act.

The insane who commit crimes should also be categorized into those who understand the difference between right and wrong or legal and illegal, and those who are so delusional they are unaware of the heinousness of their acts. Both must be locked-up, but the former should be punished the same as are sane criminals.
Instapundit » Blog Archive » STACY MCCAIN: Chris Rock Was Right….
December 15th, 2012 @ 7:25 am

[…] STACY MCCAIN: Chris Rock Was Right. […]
cbpelto
December 15th, 2012 @ 7:35 am

When the shooting starts, you are either a combatant or you are a pop-up target. — CBPelto
Floyd R. Turbo
December 15th, 2012 @ 7:54 am

It’s called deinstitutionalization and it was the perfect storm of conservative budget cutting and ACLU “civil liberties” madness. Like a lot of these things it began in California and like the road to Hell it was paved with good intentions.

It was a bipartisan idea championed by (then) Governor Ronald Reagan, other CA Republicans and liberal Democrats ( loves me some Ronald Reagan, but this was one of his mistakes — along with many other folks too).

In this budget age it is a non-starter politically since we spend so much to take care of the mentally and physically fit to not work that the dollars to house the mentally unfit — many of whom are dangerous to self and others) aren’t there.
Matthew W
December 15th, 2012 @ 8:03 am

If just one teacher in that school had been legally carrying…….
Joan Of Argghh!
December 15th, 2012 @ 8:03 am

And then back up our sappy talk about “the children are our future” and start protecting them as thought that were true.
Lee Reynolds
December 15th, 2012 @ 8:35 am

Once upon a time, not so long ago, deranged individuals would be locked up in the state mental hospital.

Then along came a movement which described this as “warehousing people” and called for them to be treated “in the community.” Might be good for people who aren’t dangerous, but the thing about crazy people is that they’re crazy. Figuring out which nutball is harmless and which will be told by the voices in their head to burn down a school one day is a gamble at best.

There are reasonable people in America who don’t hate or dispute the right to keep and bear arms, but they do claim that it is “too easy” for crazy people get guns. They start from a valid premise, but arrive at the wrong conclusion. The problem isn’t the availability of guns, but the fact that demonstrably insane individuals aren’t being locked away in padded rooms.

Gabby Gifford’s assailant was demonstrably insane. In the days and weeks following his murderous rampage the people who knew him were interviewed by the press and they all talked about how crazy he was. Why wasn’t he wearing a straight jacket?

Maybe, just maybe, if we were still locking crazy people up, mass shootings, stabbings, acts of arson, and other forms of murder and mayhem wouldn’t be in the news so often.

Depriving normal law abiding citizens of their fundamental human right to keep and bear arms will do nothing to protect us from crazy and evil individuals. The only thing that can protect us is to identify and isolate the crazy and the evil. We isolate the evil in prisons. We used to isolate the crazy. We need to start doing so again.
America Victorious » A psycho with a gun is no different than a psycho with a machete or a car
December 15th, 2012 @ 8:36 am

[…] Politically incorrect insanity […]
Neo
December 15th, 2012 @ 9:06 am

All yesterday there was the constant drum that this lawlessness required more laws from our government.

Oh yeah. We really need yet another law, but for what ?

Gun control ? Seems the mother bought the guns, besides when you have an ATF and DOJ that illegally allows guns to flow to Mexico to kill reportedly hundreds, who needs gun laws ?

We now have such a myriad of laws that it inspired a book, “Three Felonies a Day”. The author claims that the average American commits, on average, 3 felonies a day. Unknowingly and unwittingly.

But when our POTUS decides to ignore laws, like our immigration laws, why can’t everybody else just ignore a few .. and maybe go shoot up a school or church. Seems “fair” to me.
KingShamus
December 15th, 2012 @ 9:10 am

In the words of Mark Steyn, we’d rather be screwed than rude.

We’ve slowly but surely ceded the best country ever created to the best and brightest mealy mouthed spoiled left-wing thumbsuckers. The progressives insist their way is more compassionate. They scream how they can take care of us better than we can take care of ourselves.

“You can trust socialized medicine to keep you healthy.”

“Our new modern speech codes are better than that old First amendment.”

“Gun-free zones will stop the violence.”

Then, when their government-heavy brains-light policy prescriptions fail, they blame us for the destruction they create.
Neo
December 15th, 2012 @ 9:12 am

“Common sense is quite nearly illegal nowadays”
My son says there is no common sense left. Look to “good sense” to replace it.
Banning Guns Will Not Stop Murder and Evil | ZION'S TRUMPET
December 15th, 2012 @ 10:12 am

[…] Chris Rock Was Right […]
DHStranger
December 15th, 2012 @ 10:13 am

It is incredibly difficult for those suffering from mental illness to receive the treatment they deserve. I have a cousin that suffers from schizophrenia and for the longest time, his parents tried to get him committed to a mental hospital for treatment. But the system resisted their efforts and they had to wade through several months of red tap before my cousin was finally admitted for treatment after they had to prove beyond reasonable doubt he was a danger to himself and to others around him.

If Adam Lanza’s mother was experiencing the same problems, then the fault lies at the feet of our mental health insitutions who resists treating the mentally ill (in part because it doesn’t want to stigmatize someone as mentally ill), not on gun ownership.
Cynthia Richardson
December 15th, 2012 @ 10:13 am

how did he get into the school? In camoflauge?
Da Tech Guy's Blog » Blog Archive The Victims change but the Media Meme stays the same » Da Tech Guy's Blog
December 15th, 2012 @ 11:00 am

[…] I doubt that I could do as well as Stacy McCain who coincidentally also invokes Chris Rock. […]
Rob Crawford
December 15th, 2012 @ 11:02 am

Thing is, Floyd, I bet there wasn’t actually any “budget cutting”. Remember that in government-speak, a budget is “cut” if it doesn’t grow as quickly as they’d like.
Hell. Handbasket. In Progress. « Obi's Sister
December 15th, 2012 @ 11:32 am

[…] UP. People, real people, including children, are dead. They deserve the utmost respect, not to be a political prop in your latest personal […]
Mmmmm pizza
December 15th, 2012 @ 11:36 am

Another appropriate Chris Rock bit: “Never go to parties that have a metal detector. ‘Cause nobody in the party has a gun and every ****** outside knows it.”

While deranged, the shooters are nonetheless logistically savvy: they attack soft targets (schools, churches, malls, theater, etc.) with the virtual certainty that there is a high concentration of targets that have little or no ability to defend themselves with equal fire power. You don’t see a deranged shooter walk into a shooting range, sheriff’s department, NRA office, etc. to kill.
Lightwave
December 15th, 2012 @ 11:39 am

What that *really* requires is the realization that there are Americans who don’t deserve these rights, and need to be either permanently incarcerated or otherwise dealt with.

It requires that admission that there are actions you can take and things you can do that require permanently revoking those rights in order to server the rights of the other 315 million of us Americans.

We used to have the will to do this, and it started with the realization that *not all of us are created equal*, and therefore not all of us are worth saving, helping, treating, or enabling.

We used to celebrate the exceptional. We now champion the least among us. As a result, we have become a state of mediocrity and not exceptionalism.

You don’t deserve a trophy for 7th place.
You don’t deserve a medal for participating.
You don’t deserve the right to be violently crazy and kill people.

We used to know that.

Now we’re re-learning that lesson, one dead room full of citizens at a time.
xbradtc
December 15th, 2012 @ 11:49 am

RSM, you talk about crazies going off their meds. Even scarier, we really don’t know the efficacy of many of the meds prescribed to mental patients. Different people react differently to the same therapies. Virtually the only feedback a doctor can get is self-reporting from the patient. But if the patient is a nutjob, how valid can that be?

Even worse, there are any number of people who are “odd” and yet don’t display any real tendency to violence until… well, until they suddenly become violent. We simply have no good means of predicting who will go that route.
Floyd R. Turbo
December 15th, 2012 @ 11:53 am

True that Rob. “Budget cut” like “liberty” is merely a slogan if not used wisely. To give Reagan et al. a break… the law of unintended consequences is a stern teacher, but we’ve quadrupled down on stupid. We need to lock up more severely mentally ill people — for their good as well as ours.
Quartermaster
December 15th, 2012 @ 12:12 pm

Another of Ronnie Raygun’s serious mistakes was “no fault” divorce.
ThePaganTemple
December 15th, 2012 @ 12:19 pm

Here I get off my fucking death bed to see RS McCain promoting a law that would eventually lead to the incarceration of Republicans andconservatives on the grounds of insanity. Where are my fucking sleeping pills?
Garym
December 15th, 2012 @ 12:24 pm

Pagan, long time no see …..
Wombat_socho
December 15th, 2012 @ 12:34 pm

Wow, your autocorrect sure done you wrong, TPT.
Wombat_socho
December 15th, 2012 @ 12:36 pm

The institutions are only following the law; if they didn’t, they’d be sued into oblivion by the trial lawyers…who helped create this problem in the first place.
Wombat_socho
December 15th, 2012 @ 12:37 pm

According to the news, he literally shot his way in – blew away a glass window next to the door handle.
Adam Lanza Described As Ticking Time Bomb, Deeply Disturbed | The Lonely Conservative
December 15th, 2012 @ 12:37 pm

[…] mentally ill take the form of regarding them as socially awkward and weird and leaving them alone?The Other McCain also had some thoughts on the matter.Our culture has lost all sense of perspective, of reasonable […]
robertstacymccain
December 15th, 2012 @ 1:04 pm

Bring back the Smith Act, I say, and apply it very broadly to these Commie subversive types. Hell, there would be at least 100 Democrats in Congress who would be doing hard time in Leavenworth, if I had my druthers, to say nothing of Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein and others on a very long list of crypto-Bolsheviks.
The Looking Spoon
December 15th, 2012 @ 1:09 pm

Any gun violence isn’t prevented by it merely being illegal. The left has been hammering Mike Huckabee for asserting that removing God from the public conscience is at the root of this. The left refuses to recognize that the rise in secularism that has accompanied the rise in depravity on many levels is not a mere coincidence.

The left is missing the point on more than one level. These graphics illustrate that a bit… http://thelookingspoon.com/index.php/december-2012/4271-four-things-guns-would-say-if-they-could-talk
What we SHOULD have been doing years ago to prevent school shootings? « The Daley Gator
December 15th, 2012 @ 1:16 pm

[…] at institutionalizing people with certain mental abnormalities? The Other McCain, whom I respect, raises this topic Psycho, loony, bonkers, daft, zany, berserk and cuckoo for Cocoa […]
JeffS
December 15th, 2012 @ 1:18 pm

According to the NYT (yeah, I know, but they’ve been know to be accurate on rare occasion):

“The principal had buzzed Mr. Lanza in because she recognized him as the son of a colleague. Moments later, she was shot dead when she went to investigate the sound of gunshots. The school psychologist was also among those who died.”

There are so many stupid and wrong about this short paragraph. I won’t go into them, because it’s unconfirmed, but if true, that school wasn’t even trying to be “secure”, let alone “safe”.
Behind_You1
December 15th, 2012 @ 1:29 pm

While we’re talking about Chris Rock, here’s a particularly trenchant quote from one of his routines.

Don’t go to parties with metal detectors. Sure, It feels safe inside, But what about all those n****** waiting outside with guns, They know you ain’t got one.
ThePaganTemple
December 15th, 2012 @ 1:40 pm

Never pay more than 200 dollars for a crappy cell phone when sixty dollars will do and probably cause less fuckery.
lllvlll
December 15th, 2012 @ 1:51 pm

This is the stupidest article you have ever written, Stacy McCain. First, there’s zero indication that Lanza suffered from schizophrenia, so why are you on about schizophrenics? Second, you advocate some sort of incarceration for people with mental illnesses based on what criteria and what standard? (Btw, Aspergers, still not a mental illness. What about Down’s Syndrome kids? Lock ’em up!?) Your “solution” does not comport with the constitutional minimum of the supreme court. It’s not constitutional to incarcerate people for crimes they have not committed. Third, since you’re an investigative journalist, why don’t you investigate whether there’s anything other than your preferred anecdotal evidence to support the idea that if you lock up all the ‘crazies’, suddenly everyone will be safe – i.e. are people with mental illnesses actually violent with any greater frequency than the general population. Fourth, how will you identify those who pose a danger simply because they choose to do evil things? Minority Report? You’re an idiot, Stacy McCain. Why propose a “solution” that will not achieve an end and is based on nothing other than your astounding ignorance?
JeffS
December 15th, 2012 @ 2:31 pm

As for the possibility that he simply blew away a glass window…..that is all too likely, and yet another example of poor security. Unless one installs (fiendishly expensive) bullet resistant glass, glass in any security feature is — at best — a deterrent to honest folks.
JeffS
December 15th, 2012 @ 2:36 pm

Looks like the NYT might be wrong…..again.
Bob Belvedere
December 15th, 2012 @ 2:53 pm

Well put.

While the ball got rolling in California, one cannot forget the role Massachusetts played in this sad saga. During his first term in office in the late 1970’s Michael Dukakis put into place deinstitutionalization plans that became the model for many other states.
Bob Belvedere
December 15th, 2012 @ 2:56 pm

A short time ago, I watched an interview on Fox with a former NYPD Detective who said the only sane solution was to immediately eliminate ‘gun-free zones’. It’s not posted yet, but I hope they do.
Bob Belvedere
December 15th, 2012 @ 3:02 pm

Then along came a movement which described this as “warehousing people” and called for them to be treated “in the community.”…

At the same time, children with mental issues were placed in normal classrooms. This was a disaster for the normal kids who were slowed down in their learning and, more importantly, for the afflicted children who were subject to – all kids being semi-barbarians – taunting and humiliations. It was sold as the ‘humane thing to do’ – it was the exact opposite.
Bob Belvedere
December 15th, 2012 @ 3:04 pm

…by the do-gooder trial lawyers…who helped create this problem in the first place. -TFTFY.
Bob Belvedere
December 15th, 2012 @ 3:07 pm

Missed the cranky SOB.
Bob Belvedere
December 15th, 2012 @ 3:08 pm

Mike Hucksterbee may be right, but he’s a bad messenger.
Bob Belvedere
December 15th, 2012 @ 3:48 pm

Here’s that interview:

http://www.therightscoop.com/nypd-detective-we-need-to-repeal-gun-free-school-zones/

Tip of the fedora to Sdferr…
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=45993#comment-940967