By Matt Agorist
Stephen Paddock, Omar Mateen, Gavin Long, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, James Holmes, and now, Nikolas Cruz all have one thing in common other than the mass murders they carried out. They were all reportedly taking prescription drugs which alter one’s state of mind and carry a host of negative side effects ranging from aggression and suicide to homicidal ideation.
Suicide, birth defects, heart problems, hostility, violence, aggression, hallucinations, self-harm, delusional thinking, homicidal ideation, and death are just a few of the side effects caused by the medication taken by the monsters named above, some of which are known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), or antidepressants.
There have been 150 studies in 17 countries on antidepressant-induced side effects. There have been 134 drug regulatory agency warnings from 11 countries and the EU warning about the dangerous side effects of antidepressants.
Despite this deadly laundry list of potential reactions to these medications, their use has skyrocketed by 400% since 1988. Coincidentally, as antidepressant use went up, so did mass shootings.
The website SSRIstories.org has been documenting the link between selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and violence. On the website is a collection of over 6,000 stories that have appeared in local media (newspapers, TV, scientific journals) in which prescription drugs were mentioned and in which the drugs may be linked to a variety of adverse outcomes including most of the mass shootings which have taken place on US soil.
As the Citizens Commission on Human Rights notes, before the late nineteen-eighties, mass shootings and acts of senseless violence were relatively unheard of. Prozac, the most well known SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressant, was not yet on the market. When Prozac did arrive, it was marketed as a panacea for depression which resulted in huge profits for its manufacturer Eli Lilly. Of course other drug companies had to create their own cash cow and followed suit by marketing their own SSRI antidepressants.
Subsequently, mass shootings and other violent incidents started to be reported. More often than not, the common denominator was that the shooters were on an antidepressant, or withdrawing from one. This is not about an isolated incident or two but numerous shootings.
The issue of psychotropic medication playing a role in mass shootings is not some conspiracy theory. It is very real and the drug manufacturers list these potentially deadly side effects on the very inserts of every one of these drugs. But the mainstream media and the government continue to ignore or suppress this information. Why is that?
In a clear example of how beholden mainstream media is to the pharmaceutical industries who manufacture and market these drugs, FOX News’ Sean Hannity was recorded this week, blatantly cutting off a reporter who dared mention Nikolas Cruz’s reported association with antidepressants.
In a news segment this week, Hannity was interviewing radio talk show host, Gina Loudon who tried to bring up Cruz’s association with SSRIs.
“I think we have to take a hard look at one thing we’re not talking about yet too, Sean, and that is psychotropic drugs,” Loudon says.
“My guess is, we’ll find out like most of these shooters…..” she says, just before Hannity jumps in to silence her.
Hannity then shuts up Loudon and moves to the doctor next to her. Just like that, all talk which was implicating big pharma in their role in mass shootings was effectively silenced.
It is no secret that the pharmaceutical industry wields immense control over the government and the media. It is their control which keeps any negative press about their dangerous products from airing. However, most people likely do not know the scope of this control.
As Mike Papantonio, attorney and host of the international television show America’s Lawyer, explains, with the exception of CBS, every major media outlet in the United States shares at least one board member with at least one pharmaceutical company. To put that into perspective: These board members wake up, go to a meeting at Merck or Pfizer, then they have their driver take them over to a meeting with NBC to decide what kind of programming that network is going to air.
In the report below, Papantonio explains how the billions of dollars big pharma gives to mainstream media outlets every year is used to keep them subservient and complicit in covering up the slew of deadly side effects from their products.
How much longer will we allow these billion-dollar drug companies to control the narrative and not let this conversation take place? How many more mass shootings will take place before Americans wake up to this reality?
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project, where this article first appeared. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Facebook.
You will NEVER hear the truth about drugs on mainstream media. Too much of their ads come from Big pharma. One of the largest media moguls,Rupurt Murdoch owns interest in CSL vaccine company in Australia and his son was a CEO at GSK vaccine company. All of the major drug manufacturers have paid BILLIONS in fines for after market deaths & false marketing & deception but none have gone to jail. Very hard to get compensation because they have deep pockets to fight you. Also the revolving door from private sector to FDA ,CDA, and Government is well established.
Hit the nail on the head here CAWS. I concur.
The reaction of that Hannity humanoid was really no big surprise, I’m afraid.
Already in the nineties, we knew that these new miracle drugs didn’t work, especially the SSRI drugs. The active placebo trials, preventing “unblinding,” proved this beyond doubt.
Also known to the pharmaceutical companies at the time was the fact that in a subset of patients, these SSRI drugs effected suicidal/homicidal behaviour. This knowledge was buried, only to resurface recently, even in the MMS. These companies have blood on their hands, and their media lackeys still provide cover for them.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Richard
They destroy a persons empathy chip.
Dr. Ron Paul pointed this out years ago…time to heavily regulate usage or take them off the market !
Breitbart brought all of this up many years ago. He even published a list of killers and what they were “allegedly” on. (almost impossible to find now) Then he “died”.
Not died..Murdered because he outed Pedophile John Podesta.
Pizzagate, where Democrat had sex with children in a basement that doesn’t exist?
Psych Drugs are the common thread. Also having an armed presence deters violence. No gun zones are Free Fire zones for the insane and criminals. These school shootings are initiated and conducted using psych drugs and advanced mind control to eliminate the Constitutionally armed citizenry of the US.
We need to respond on both subjects, psych drugs and government created tyranny.
Doctors prescribe Lithium..aka..speed for Attention deficit syndrome when all they need is a healthy low sugar diet. Big Pharma and Big Med are force feeding kids and adults all these dangerous, psychotropic drugs for Big $$$ Gina was right…and shame on Sean for not allowing the truth.
A kind of meth is made from lithium strips from batteries. I don’t doctors are prescribing battery strips.
Big Pharma is crooked but such assertions poison the well.
I am suspicious these drugs are part of the problem but there are other ways to view it: correlation, as we are all taught, is not causation because there can be other factors C which are correlated with B, which is correlated with A. In this case, it occurs to me that what mass shooters, unlike the 99% of gun murders, where only 1 or 2% are seriously mentally ill, frequently have in common on are two factors, both of which must be considered as enabling their eruptions of violence: mental illness and access to assault weapons.
Almost all mass shootings (I can think of no exceptions) involved guns originally designed as combat weapons and they are, without doubt, the weapon of choice of mass murderers. So there is one variable that is nearly 100% present and without which, indisputably, the lethality of mass shootings would be reduced.
The second factor is mental illness…and so instead of automatically assuming that it is the drug treating the illness, we might investigate whether it is the illness itself that is the trigger, perhaps pushed over the edge by something like being fire or suspended. The treatment, which is currently being blamed, may well be the trigger but without the assault weapon, the outburst would be less violent, and there is the possibility that the treatment is not to blame but the illness it seeks to mitigate.
I do not know the answers and so am suggesting we should be investigating and having serious studies of these issues and NOT jumping to conclusions based on associated corollaries of mental illness. With that leap, we might find that seeing a mental health professional is associated with violence instead of seeing that there are a number of corollaries that may or may not be part of the cause.
We do not know the answers because the NRA has bought politicians to ban government studies of gun violence and its causes. So we can begin by rejecting the NRA ban on government studies and then we can ban assault weapons…as we being to study the mental health connection to gun violence. Gun violence as two parts: the weapon and the cause. We can reduce gun lethality by banning weapons intended for mass killing, and we can vote out politicians who trade legalized bribes from the NRA for help in blocking both research into gun violence by the government and legislation proved in all other 34 advanced nations to reduce gun violence.
I welcome constructive and civil discussion but will ignore trolls.
” Gun violence as two parts: the weapon and the cause.” Lets use the Socratic method and extrapolate your logic into other areas, shall we, and see if it makes sense or if it does NOT make sense…
“Assault has two parts, the fists and the cause.” Would we blame hands for someone beating up someone else? No, we would not. The logic fails here.
“Vehicular manslaughter has two parts, the car and the cause.” Would we ban certain cars that are more often used in vehicular manslaughter? No, we would not. The logic fails here.
The problem is your logic fails every single test it is put to. There is one and ONLY one commonality with these shootings – a person who more often than not is on psychotropic medications.
Extrapolating the logic outward, we can arrive at some potential solutions. Ideally, we would do away with the rabid protection mechanisms the drug companies have built around themselves, and hold them accountable when someone taking their substances they claim to be SAFE prove not to be.
Continuing to extrapolate the logic outward, we can see that banning certain types of hands (?) or cars (just as dumb) would do as much to curb violence as banning guns of any certain type. That is to say, nothing at all.
So I’ve shown you that your logic fails with a very well constructed scenario. Guns are tools. A tool is only as dangerous as the user. Guns have a reason for existence, and that would be to protect the citizens from their government. This is implicit in the 2nd Amendment as well as in the Declaration of Independence. You would do well to learn this.
Sorry you missed the point. Where in the Constitution do you find the text that supports the idea that guns are to protect citizens from the government? All I can find is the part where Congress has the power to draft you, organize you, arm you, discipline you and make you bear arms to put down invasions and rebellions against the government. I await the missing text.
Sorry, maybe by pointing to 2 separate documents as a reference was too confusing for you, apparently I have to spell it out. Ok, I can spell.
I stated the following: “Guns have a reason for existence, and that would be to protect the citizens from their government. This is implicit in the 2nd Amendment
as well as in the Declaration of Independence.” So lets take it one step at a time, shall we?
First, the 2nd Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.” Ok, so lets explain it simply. Often, the simple minded among us confuse “militia” with “army”, when the two are only related by the fact they have guns. A “well regulated militia” literally means “every ordinary citizen should be armed”. Militias are you and me, not guys in army fatigues. “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That means NO LAW SHALL BE PASSED THAT DISARMS THE CITIZENRY.
Now, follow the bouncing ball here. The 2nd Amendment was adopted in 1791. The Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, SO, we the educated masses (please, God, let them be educated) have the most simple understanding that the writers of the 2nd Amendment already had the Declaration of Independence on hand to refer to when they wrote it. What does the DOI say?
” But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Try to follow along here. Because it’s only been complicated through your lack of education and understanding, it is in actuality an EXTREMELY simple concept. IT IS THEIR RIGHT, IT IS THEIR DUTY, TO THROW OFF SUCH GOVERNMENT. RIGHT. DUTY. Words hopefully you have a familiarity with. To THROW OFF such government. THROW OFF. What was that again? Vote out? Ask kindly? Or was it…THROW OFF? Very very VERY simply, the 2nd Amendment works symbiotically with the DOI to provide the scope for governmental abolishment and the maintaining of the tools with which to do so. Also known as GUNS.
So this is how we have been instructed by our forefathers to act. Ask government. Petition government. Vote and lobby your government. But if government has become too “despotic”, to use the parlance of the times, or “tyrannical” to use our own, you pick up your gun when the time to ask nicely has past, and you FORCE your government to disband, through threat of or actual use of violence, and institute new protections.
For the love of Christ why does this stuff have to be explained to supposedly educated people?
Wrong! Article 1 Section 8 clearly defines how the militia operates: Congress calls it forth to repel invasions or put down rebellions, organizes, arms, and disciplines it.
The 2nd Amendment was added as an after thought but it presents the reason for the “right to keep and bear arms” to be the need for citizens to draft in the absence of a standing army. That argument hold up until we have a standing army..oh wait, we have had one over 200 years! LOL
No one has advocated disarming the citizenry but rather of limiting the kinds of weapons and requiring background checks, etc, all of which the courts have upheld. The disarmament argument is a straw man invented by the NRA.
Hitler, I may remind you, did not, as the NRA states, disarm the Germans; he expanded, liberalize, and deregulated rifles and ammo for 99% of the German population. He wanted an armed Aryan nation, much as the NRA does.
I cannot read on with your post as you are so misguided. I stand with the 94% of gunowners who support universal background checks and with the majority of Americans who want to ban assault weapons and establish other rational and proven regulations to reduce gun violence. I have heard all the anti-regulation bullshit for the last 5 years I have studied this subject.
I ask you once again: where in the Constitution do you find any text about the right of the people to take up arms against the government? It does not exist. But what does exist is the duty of able-bodied males to take up arms to put down rebellions against the government under the control of Congress. That text will be found in Article 1, Section 8. The right of revolution invoked in the Declaration of Independence was rejected by the very different group of Founding Fathers, some of whom had opposed the Revolution, and instead, they took power over the militia from the states and anchored in Congress with the express purpose of enforcing the law and putting down invasions and insurrections. This was a counter-revolution to the principles of our founding document. A class book on the subject is Jensen’s New Nation.
Excellent debate. The distinction as you note is not there, just insinuated by those whom created these ‘documents’, and the first US kakistocracy.
lol, Right on. Spelled out just nicely letmepicyou.
Hi Dale,
Like your comment, but you’re mistaken about the science of psychotropic drugs and the decades long debate that should have been settled long ago, had the pharmaceutical companies not corrupted/diluted/hindered/buried the research.
Now don’t get me wrong, but what you propose:
…is exactly the line of reasoning used by the pharmaceutical companies that buried all the irrefutable evidence that in a subset of patients (adolescents and even younger) these drugs caused violent ideation and behaviour (suicide/homicide). Remember that the brain is still developing around that age.
The problem has been further exacerbated by the decades long pressure on physicians to prescribe these drugs to increasingly younger patient groups. Over here in the Netherlands we have more and more children at an early age who are on psychotropic drugs, predominantly SSRI’s. Their brains still developing and already messed up by these chemicals.
So the companies knew about the dangers from their own research and they kept it from the public. They should be brought to justice.
As I wrote straight off I think the drugs themselves ARE a problem but the issue I was addressing is that the NRA and others who want to shift focus from rational gun laws use the drug issue as a distaction. In 99% of gun murders, these drugs are NOT involved….so using them to redirect attention is useful for those who want to block legislation to deal with the issue in almost all mass murders, the accessibility of assault weapons
I tried to make clear that I am calling for studies which the NRA has blocked by buying off politicians who have defunded goverrnment research on gun violence. I think we have to resume the research, ban assault weapons (there is no need to study whether they are used in mass murders) an create a national healthcare program (Medicare for All) that pays for mental health AND pass universal background checks with a well-funded data base.
Yes Dale, I know what you wrote in your first sentence, but that sounded more like a disclaimer before you moved on to the actual point you were making. And you were very specific about mental illness in mass shooters being itself the trigger, and you proposed to investigate that, instead of assuming.. etc.
Most mass shootings with adolescents as perpetrators involve SSRI or similar psychotropic drugs (anticonvulsant pharmaceuticals). I won’t repeat what I said about these drugs, other than the known fact – among professionals, that these drugs cause the same violent behaviour in healthy volunteers. Did you know that? Of course you didn’t.
Again, in healthy adolescent volunteers, these pharmaceuticals cause the very same violent behaviour we see in mass shooters and a subset of depressed patients. Same behaviour (suicidal/aggressive towards others) is observed when migraine sufferers have been prescribed anticonvulsant mood stabilizers, at the same rate, similar to that in bipolar disorder trials.
So regardless of indication, these pharmaceuticals cause the same type of behaviour. Your point about 99% “gun murders” is beside the issue, which is mass shootings.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Richard
“And you were very specific about mental illness in mass shooters being itself the trigger, and you proposed to investigate that, instead of assuming.. etc.
I did NOT say mental illness was the trigger but that we should not assume that, in the case of killers, it could be and that therefore that should be studied. If I had said it WAS the trigger, why would it be necessary to study if it was?
As for drugs, my comment was clear: “I am suspicious these drugs are part of the problem……” How can that be a “disclaimer,”which is defined as “a statement that denies something?”
I suspect you are looking for ways, by distorting my very clear post, to deny the valid claims I have made.
Since mass shooting/murders are less than 1% of the total in the US, it is critical not to ignore the 99% that are committed by people of whom only 1 or 2 have serious mental illnesses. Most of the mentally ill are less violent than the average citizen…so this is a critical fact to factor into the Big Picture concerning how to reduce gun violence. It starts with reducing guns in the hands of violent people. In the US today, in 41 states, anyone can buy any number of assault weapons from anyone if the sale is”private” and since there are no records, no monitoring, no enforcement, and no background checks, anyone can make such sales and anyone can purchase guns thru gunshows or online ad hookups at sites like armslist….which uses the honor system and advertise classified “private” sales of AR-15s and other weapons designed for mass killing.
I wrote my post because the less than 1% of gun murders caused by those using psychotropic drugs is being used to redirect attention from the FACT that 99%
of these mass shootings are using guns banned in all other 34 advanced nations, including your own. One of the most effective means of propaganda is to use a real fact, presented out of context, to change the direction of concern or outrage.
We can reduce the lethal scale of all mass shootings by banning assault weapons, like all the other developed nations which do not have such episodes on a regular basis. That is step 1. Step 2 is universal background checks for all gun sales or transfers, with a well-funded and coordinated data base system.
And step 3 is to resume government studies of gun violence and its causes, including mental illness, access to guns, and drugs including alcohol, which is involved in many more gun murders than prescribed drugs.
Where is the outrage about alcohol and murder? Here is what alcoholrehabguide.org reports on this much more serious corollary of gun murders:
“On average, roughly 40 percent of inmates who are incarcerated for violent offenses were under the influence of alcohol during the time of their crime. Many of these criminals had an estimated blood alcohol content (BAC) level of more than three times the legal limit at the time of their arrest……
Alcohol is involved in more homicides across the United States compared to other substances, like heroin and cocaine. In fact, about 40 percent of convicted murderers had used alcohol before or during the crime. Excessive drinking can lead to more severe forms of violence that can quickly escalate to extremely dangerous situations. The short- and long-term effects of alcohol blur a person’s mental state, contributing to an increased risk of committing violent crimes.”
Where is the call for banning those with a record of alcohol abuse from owing guns, which is over 40 times more common than the very real problem of prescribed drugs used in homicides?
If you want to reduce all gun violence, it starts with taking away assault weapons, a universal system to filter out dangerous individuals, and then perhaps regulations that ban those using certain drugs, including alcohol.
Oh boy..
One last time.
[dixit Dale]:
If you knew anything about psychotropic drugs, you wouldn’t come up with such a redundant proposal, that only serves to display your ignorance. We know that these pharmaceuticals cause these violent behaviours regardless of indication. You don’t address that. Perhaps you’re wise in that respect because if you’re not careful, you might actually learn something 😉
Your other points may be valid, I didn’t deny that. Just beside the issue, is all.
I’ll leave you with your big picture. Good luck.
Take care.
A mega-study of drugs that are linked to violence concludes: “In light of this finding, the many past shootings at school campuses and other public venues should perhaps be investigated anew by government officials, with an eye toward ascertaining whether psychotropic use may have, in the manner of an adverse event, triggered that violence.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mad-in-america/201101/psychiatric-drugs-and-violence-review-fda-data-finds-link
That is exactly my point. Will you join us in opposing the NRA funding to buy politicians to defund government studies such as this?
The NRA has blocked gun violence research for 20 years. Let’s end its …
http://www.latimes.com/…/la-fi-hiltzik-gun-research-funding-20160614-snap-story.html
Oct 2, 2017 – A 22-year-old rule is still stimying government funding for research on gun violence. . newsweek.com
Lift the federal ban on gun violence research. | New Republic
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/147095/lift-federal-ban-gun-violence-research
4 days ago – By March 23, Congress will have to pass a bill to fund the government. In doing so, Republicans and Democrats can reverse the maddening policy that has essentially shut down research on gun violence for the last 22 years. This is the easiest, least controversial step Congress can take.
The issue about research should not divide us: would you agree that the government needs to resume research on the causes of gun violence, including the role of drugs?
As for the underlying illness,, there is also evidence that points to the issue of violence associated with certain diseases such as autism (I taught special ed for 15 yrs).
See, for instance: http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/03/the-dark-side-of-autism-violence-assault-police-interaction.html
So if a youth, like Cruz, who is autistic, is given drugs and then commits a violent act, we cannot automatically assume it was the drug and not the underlying chemical imbalance or disease that triggered the violence. In Cruz’s case, we must also take into consideration his love of guns and the claim by white nationalists that they trained him along with the bigotry (against Jews: the school was 40% Jews) he exhibited, according to classmates. So we have many possible triggers: a chemical imbalance or disease, an eruption of racist hatred, drugs, and of course, the carnage would have much less if he this seriously disturbed and learning impaired young man had not had access to an Ar-15.
Oh that’s right, blame an inanimate object instead of laying 100% of the blame on the human that did it…
I have been in rooms packed with thousands of auto and semi auto firearms and not once did one jump down and start shooting anyone….If an individual (s) are determined to kill, there are many inanimate objects they can and do use to accomplish their mission.
Shall we ban cars? Machetes, knives, water pipe, etc?
It is the evil human stupid!
They are no longer taught the sanctity of human life. Or personal responsibility. Rather they are taught to blame everything and everyone else for their actions and shortcomings.
To murder, it takes both a motive (rational or irrational) and a means: with over 70% of murders using guns and 99% of mass murders using assault weapons, the means has to be considered. Do you argue that if assault weapons were banned, that the lethal scale of mass murders (49 and 58 in recent cases in Orlando and Las Vegas) would not be less?
We do not ban cars but we regulate how they are built, with safety features (the SC in Heller held that safety locks on guns are “unconstitutional”), background checks, tests, rechecks, and insurance required. In 41 states, you can buy an assault rifle with no tests, no background checks, no nothing except cash.
There will always be violent people (tho it is correlated with poverty, so we can reduce violence by reducing poverty) but the difference between an angry man punching you and shooting you is life and death.
Your use of the intentionally distractive, inflammatory, SCARY, not based in Reality, fabricated terms “assault weapons” and “assault rifle” renders your screed invalid; and reveals an underlying agenda of second and third level manipulation and misinformation.
Go, now, your Safe Space, curl up and snivel as you try to develop yet more lies and bullshit.
My safe space is the entire world which I have lived in, unafraid and unarmed for 76 years. I do not snivel…I enjoy life, and I do not engage in lies and bullshit since I do not need to.
To quibble about names is a distraction from the issue…it doesn’t matter what call weapons designed originally for combat and which can kill dozens in a minute. “AR-15-style weapons are fed with box magazines that can be swapped out quickly. The standard magazine holds 30 rounds. Equipped in this way, a gunman can fire more than a hundred rounds in minutes.”
What matters is getting rid of guns which are designed for mass killings, and those who would reduce the argument to a debate about the politically correct name serve the terrorists,, who exist because we allow them to have guns of mass murder.
I use the common term but you can call it any
name you like. “Assault weapon is a term used in the United States to define some types of firearms. The definition varies among regulating jurisdictions, but usually includes semi-automatic firearms with a detachable magazine and a pistol grip, and sometimes other features such as a flash suppressor or barrel shroud.”
I use the term as define by law: “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB)—officially, the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act—is a subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a United States federal law that included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms.”
I won’t waste time with folks who want to argue semantics.
Don’t wish to tackle my reply on the 2nd Amendment or DoI, nor my request for you to cite where you got this “99%” statistic, eh?
Isn’t that telling. And lets be clear. Any law that limits the type of firearms the public can purchase is unconstitutional and is not an enforceable law.
No one blames the gun: that is bullshit. The blame is on those from the gun makers,, the NRA, and the mostly Republicans who are funded by the NRA, including Trump, who refuse to act to ban the kinds of guns used in all mass murders. The latest incident again involved a semi-automatic, banned in all other 34 advanced natioins: “CBS affiliate KENS-TV reported that a semi-automatic handgun was used (in the murder of 4 including a 6 yr old).”
One thing we know: assault weapons, designed for mass killings, are involved in 99% of mass murders. It’s not the gun; it’s allowing anyone who lives in or can drive to the 41 states that allow unregulated, unrecorded sales of assault weapons by anyone to anyone in “private” sales, thru gun shows, online ads and websites like armslist.
The claim that the gun is being blamed is idiocy; it is allowing violent people who have guns designed for combat; it is allowing assault weapons to be purchased legally by an 18 yr old; it is the profits of the gun makers put above public safety.
“While Florida has a three-day waiting period for handgun purchases, anyone with a clean record can buy military-style semiautomatic rifles in a matter of .(minutes).. as home-defense and marksmanship weapons, and their sales have been a major driver of profits for gun manufacturers over the past two decades.
Equally important for a gunman looking to do a lot of damage in a hurry: AR-15-style weapons are fed with box magazines that can be swapped out quickly. The standard magazine holds 30 rounds. Equipped in this way, a gunman can fire more than a hundred rounds in minutes.
Under federal law, you also must be 21 to buy a handgun from a firearms dealer. But 18-year-olds can buy semiautomatic rifles.
The AR-15 rifle used in the attack was purchased legally, at Sunrise Tactical Supply in Florida, according to a federal law enforcement official. “No laws were violated in the procurement of this weapon,” said Peter J. Forcelli, the special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Miami.”
I blame not the gun, which should not be allowed for civilians, but the laws which allow and enable mass murder;and the laws (or lack of them) are the responsibility of the gun makers (whose main profit now is from assault weapons), who fund the N
RA, which funds the Republicans who keep popular gun law reform from coming to a vote. So the ultimate guilty party is not the gun (no one blamed the atomic bomb for dropping itself on civilians in Japan) but those who profit, corporations and shills and politicians, from the lack of rational gun laws which the vast majority of Americans support. In the end, it is those who prevent democracy from enacting the will of the People who are to blame……and that includes those of you who defend these terrorists and try to run interference for their lies and excuses.
One thing we know: assault weapons, designed for mass killings, are involved in 99% of mass murders.
Your statement requires a citation. And I demand one.
I will remind you that the nuclear bombs that killed 200 million in a few days was also “an inanimate object” and that a pill containing a drug is also an “inanimate object.” But trying pulling off a mass murder by gun on the scale we have seen recently–49 in Orlando, 58 in Las Vegas without an the inanimate weapons the law calls an assault weapon. You say guns don’t kill, parroting the NRA propaganda organ of the gun makrs, but in fact they are the weapon of choice in over 70% of the 10,000 murders a year in the US, and assault weapons are the weapon of choice of mass murderers.
Guns don’t kill and neither do drugs. It takes human agency to commit a crime, but if we put weapons of mass destruction in the hands of an 18 yr old like Nikolas Cruz, who was too young to buy a beer or rent a car, we are promoting mass murder through the very agency that , along with the means, is the deciding factor in human carnage.
I say let’s tell the NRA to fuck off, vote out eveyrone who takes money from them, and do some serious studies on drugs and mental illness, meanwhile banning assault weapons which are designed precisely to kill a large number in a very short time.
I also say we lock everyone who stand in the way of proven methods (the other 34 nations have reduced gun murder by 85-99.9%) being used to reduce the violence as accessories to the crime. And we lock up the NRA leadership for terrorism, promoting lies and buying politicians who put private profits over public safety. And if you disagree with me, well…there is always the 2nd Amendment remedy….LOL
Word.
The AMA, and APA were created by the same individuals who started petro/chemical companies that morphed into the health ‘care’ sector, becoming big PHARMA. Great comment Richard_Ran.
All part of the nwo crowd to put down 6billion of us bipeds or make us as sick as possible.
Parents stop vaccinating and stop the ssri crapola.
Of course they did. Can’t hurt that bottom line! Did the same thing with the Columbine incident. It’s too obvious for me to go into this any further.