From TPM Reader SS …
I’m a pretty left-of-center liberal. Read TPM regularly. Donated nearly $1,000 to BHO’s re-election campaign. But I was raised with guns. More to the point, my childhood was steeped in gun lore: I learned to hand-load ammunition when I was 10 and 11, and – by the time I was 14 – my dad was trusting me to prepare my own handloads. I could (and to some extent, still can) recite chapter and verse of firearms arcana, from muzzle velocities – a product of the type of gunpowder used in one’s handloads; of the weight (in grains) of a projectile; of the length of a gun’s barrel (the longer, the faster); of the temperature and elevation at which one is shooting – to impact energy (measured in footpounds), to trajectories (flatter for heavier bullets; some calibers have an innate advantage over others), and so on.
I bring this up to establish my bona-fides.
Connecticut State Police are about to hold a press conference on the Newtown shooting. The names of the victims are expected to be made public today.
A short while ago in the post below, I flagged the Journal’s suggestion that Nancy Lanza, the mother and apparent first victim of Adam Lanza, was not in fact a teacher at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. I subsequently added a number of updates from other publications — some (Times, WaPo and even the Courant) still saying she was a teach at the school, others (including the AP) agreeing with the Journal.
Needless to say, this leaves it a bit unclear what the truth is. My very tentative take from reading all of the accounts is that the ones questioning the teacher story appear to be more specific and recent, as though the teacher story were perhaps a shard of misinformation still tossing about in a sea of rewrites, notwithstanding more detailed and recent information. But the big picture is that you have contending accounts from major news organizations.
If you find additional accounts, please send them to me. Read More
There have been a lot of factual errors in the chaotic rush to get details about today’s shooting in Connecticut. But one fact that seemed established across the board was that victim Nancy Lanza, the mother of alleged shooter Adam Lanza, was a teacher at the Sandy Hook Elementary School — specifically that it was her class that Adam Lanza massacred.
But this story just out in the Journal suggests that’s not true. Read More
From TPM Reader BC …
I’m a lefty from a gun-owning family, so maybe I can offer some useful input here. In terms of taking this from “do something about guns!” to actionable policy, I think the place to start is a focus on the justification for legal ownership of certain types of firearms and magazines.
Among the moments today when I had to stop and gather myself, the state trooper putting his oversized coat on a grade school boy at the 1:07 mark here.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee blames Connecticut shooting on lack of prayer in school.
We’ve gotten a lot of great, powerful emails this afternoon in response to the shooting in Connecticut. I’ll be printing some of them this afternoon and this evening. The opponents of gun control argue that the gun control regulations on offer wouldn’t prevent these tragedies. And in most of the cases they’re right, at least in the narrow sense. Most of these people bought legally, didn’t have a history of mental illness, didn’t buy at a gunshow etc.
They’re both right and not right — in part because what we generally mean by ‘gun control’ only operates on the very fringes of the problem. The key is grasping this is that there’s a culture of violence, particularly a culture of gun violence that pervades American society. It’s particularly rooted in the South. But it’s worth noting that most of the recent mass shootings have happened outside the South. We know this. Our lax gun laws are rooted in this. They didn’t create it, though they exist in a mutually reinforcing, symbiotic relationship. Read More
A teary-eyed President Obama addressed the Connecticut grade school shooting from the White House briefing room: Read More