-Of course, the Leftists can’t resist declaring what happened last Friday in Newtown is a symptom of a great crisis.

Of course, they then have to take the next step and insist that a ‘national conversation’ has to take place [even though they already know what they plan to do].

Of course, instead of talking about how we as a Society handle the mentally ill, they demand this ‘national conversation’ be about an issue that has nothing directly to do with the situation.

Of course, the Left pretends that all of the evidence is on their side, even though the exact opposite is true.

And of course, because of all of the mealy-mouthed ‘leaders’ of the GOP, the Left will get something they want out of this in the legislative sense, while, of course, Obama issues un-Constitutional orders.

We’ve seen this maudlin movie before…on Lifetime.

-Of course, Barack Hussein Obama had to put himself in the middle of the grieving families of Newtown and, of course, he could not resist not letting this grief go to waste:

This is our first task — caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.

And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm? Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return? Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change.

Since I’ve been President, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by a mass shooting. The fourth time we’ve hugged survivors. The fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and big cities all across America — victims whose — much of the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law — no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.

But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that — then surely we have an obligation to try.

In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens — from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators — in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

While I retch, let see what some of my Friends In The Ether have been saying…

-Jeff Goldstein:

My first contribution to that [national] conversation is this: why is it that lawmakers looking for cheap grace have been allowed to pass laws that not only leave children unprotected in schools, but they proudly advertise the fact that that’s what they do?

We’re to entrust our children to school teachers — and yet those same teachers can’t be trusted, even with the proper training, to carry a concealed firearm. Meanwhile, we’re to trust that criminals, who by definition are willing to break the law, will somehow be cautioned away from unspeakable acts because legislators like to attach their names to feel-good — and yet demonstrably unworkable — gun bans.

There. There’s a start, liberal fascists. Now let’s hear your defense of what are essentially “sitting duck” laws.

-eCurmudgeon:

…I was wondering if Obama may decide to do an end-run around the “overhead” of attempting to pass new gun-control legislation by simply issuing an Executive Order placing handguns and semi-automatics under NFA status or some other dubious legal chicanery.

-Palaeomerus:

What I’m terrified of is an onerous ammo tax. Y’know, 70%. Then they’ll come up with bullet safety regulations to bump the price up even more. Like they did with fuel and cigarettes. The Dread Chief Justice Roberts has already determined that ANYTHING is possible under taxing authority. And just imagine how much revenue it can bring in to help victims of gun crimes! HAW HAW HAW. Then they can make owning a gun make it much harder to get in to see your doctor and raise the cost of your mandatory health insurance policy.

-Palaeo again:

Teachers : smart enough to educate your kids, deserve much higher pay, are far too important to the future of our country to have their performance measured by standardized tests, but still too dumb to carry a gun. Unlike security guards, body guards, (and anyone who works for a Federal agency).

-LBascom brings the [justified] snark:

You know who would be mad if teachers started packing? That kid that got suspended for pretending a chicken finger was a gun.

Too bad though, that’s the kinda policy that works!

I needed that laugh. The Left are so damn earnest and insufferable in their Narcissism…kind of like, oh, I don’t know…people who go and shoot unarmed innocents.

-Palaeo responds to the calls by both some Republicans and Democrats for ‘sensible gun control’:

The call for sensible gun control is like the call for sensible censorship. There have at times been calls for sensible conquest, sensible, slavery, and sensible genocide. No one would be happy to find out that the mafia is only whacking people the sensible way. We are like monkeys who never seem to learn the old tricks used against is. Sensible is a frosting designed to hide a sinister cake of oppression, corruption, or aggression. You can’t do something bad in a sensible way that takes away its badness.

-Stacy McCain:

What we are dealing with here — amidst the chaotic cacophony of frenzied liberal noise — is another one of those “do something” episodes that occasionally afflict the media/politics nexus. The follies that result from the “do something” impulse, as politicians react to the latest headline and try to reassure voters that government can fix whatever problem concerns them, has resulted in some of the most awful stupidity in history, including Republican stupidity: Terrorists strike New York? Create a new government agency for airport security! Give the feds more wiretapping authority! Invade some foreign countries! And . . . how’d that work out for ya?

-Regarding the way the media has handled this story, Stacy has a few choice words:

…TV news today is full of somber seriousness, and it’s driving me nuts:

“Special coverage of Our Nation’s Tragedy will continue, right after these advertisements for laxatives and car insurance.”

Networks pay millions of dollars a year for the services of news anchors who can pretend that what they’re doing is anything other than a carnival sideshow to sell the advertiser’s product. News for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Read — these lucrative televised spectacles inspire less cynical scoffing than they deserve. Nothing like a national tragedy to boost ratings, after all, and you know full well that the correspondent now peering grimly into the camera will be chuckling merrily with his colleagues as soon as the Breaking News Update is over. And why shouldn’t he chuckle? He’s getting paid handsomely to report this tragedy, and charges his travel expenses on the company AmEx card.

People who say they hate “the media” usually mean they hate TV news, a hatred shared by those of us whose medium is the written word….

Well put, Stacy, except: we hate the print media as well.  As TOM commentator slp wrote in your Comments section:

Stacy,

TV and newspapers are the same. The purpose of the news stories is to lure readers to buy the newspapers that are filled with paid advertisements. As a newspaperman, your job was to fill the “news hole.”

‘We’re both part of the same hypocrisy, Senator….’

-GatorDoug:

…Leftists also hate guns, but for a different reason. They see guns as the ultimate symbol of the thing they hate most, Individualism. Anything that makes people more independent is evil to a Leftist. And make no mistake. Leftists KNOW that bringing back the idiotic “assault weapons” ban will not do a single thing to curb any mass shootings….

Bingo.  This is ultimately about gaining Power And Control.

-Donald Douglas:

As you can see, the gun control fanatics are having an orgiastic outburst of gun confiscation fervor. I’ve been posting on freaks such as MSNBC’s Ed Schultz and the stupid faux conservative David Frum. And Sunday’s “Face the Nation” was a veritable who’s who of fanatical anti-gun zealots.

Their program has the imprimatur of the man at the top of the left’s political hierarchy, and the sick exploitation lobby goes down from the MSNBC journalists spouting editorial points while purportedly reporting the news, to the academic grandstanders among the left’s professoriate, to the Democrats in Congress hot off the news pushing for new legislation, to the left’s ghouls on Twitter trying to silence reasonable comments on the right to bear arms, and to the ASFL fever-swamp bloggers pathetically pushing the left’s disgusting talking points.

This is a truly depraved time in this country. The threat to liberty and goodness is on the left. The country needs to mourn after these tragedies. And we need to think about how mental health services intertwine with the right to bear arms. But blanket calls to ban guns and strip Second Amendment rights from law-abiding Americans is pure political extremism, sick and reprehensible left-wing political extremism.

If we want to tackle the problem of how we deal with the mentally ill in this country, we have to first speak the truth no one really wants to hear: Leftism is a mental illness.

NOTE: From now on I will be adopting The Stacy McCain Standard for referring to murderers like this punk: ‘News organizations keep trying to bestow post-massacre fame on the creepy little weirdo. I’ve decided to stop cooperating with that agenda’.  An example from Stacy’s latest post:

…[The creepy little weirdo], targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the school “more than she loved him,” said Joshua Flashman, 25….

The time for making such deranged people famous is over.