November 2, 2015 at 2:59 p.m.
It's time to ban automobiles
It's time to ban automobiles
In her latest rant, for instance, Barack Obama III - aka Hillary Clinton - thinks there should be gun confiscation, which she politely calls mandatory government buy-backs. It's classic Clintonese.
We're not sure what these radicals would like to accomplish, except for even more shootings. If you think gun-free zones are really nothing more than slaughterhouses where insane criminals with guns know they can safely kill unarmed people, just wait until the entire country is a gun-free zone, a Democratic utopia where only the insane and the criminals will be armed.
As we - and others - have pointed out before, when it comes to mass violence, the problem is not the method mentally ill people choose to carry out their attacks but the mentally ill people themselves. They need help, and increasing numbers aren't getting it.
These days it's not just that sick people are falling through cracks in the floor of the mental-health system; it's that the mental-health system doesn't have a floor at all.
All too often, people who were once institutionalized, and many who still should be, are now roaming the streets. Releasing them into the community may or may not be the best thing for them, but it has made our streets and public places less safe.
In mental health and hospital facilities, security guards are routinely hired to control violent outbreaks, and the number of security guards is on the rise as attacks against facility personnel are growing.
A 2011 survey of hospitals found that 23 percent of hospitals were reporting an overall increase in attacks and assaults, while 34 percent reported a rise in patient and family violence against emergency department and other staff.
Because of those numbers, even financially strapped hospitals are increasing security budgets, according to the survey. Nearly half increased their security budgets in 2011 and almost 70 percent said their hospital's security strategic plan had been updated.
Here's how one security official reacted to the study: "It's a different society out there than we've seen, and security has to be there so our clinicians and employees have the ability to provide care in a safe and secure environment. I'm encouraged that close to 70 percent of the hospitals are increasing their security budgets or keeping them level. That's positive."
Unfortunately, as more and more mentally ill people are released onto the streets or remain there, or otherwise fail to receive the treatments they need and deserve, the public is not as safe. A hospital or mental-health facility is a confined environment that can be controlled; our streets and public buildings are not, not should they be. Security is minimal, and people don't expect or see an attack until it is way too late.
But instead of trying to address the problem - instead of looking at the mental-health system itself, instead of making sure people can arm and defend themselves and their families - the liberal politicians ignore the threat and politicize the crisis so they can complete their anti-gun agenda.
Meanwhile public attacks escalate, and non-gun attacks are especially increasing.
Just last month, a woman purposely evaded a security barrier and plowed her car into the Oklahoma State homecoming parade, killing four people and injuring 47. After the crash, she told police she was suicidal, gave an attorney inappropriate answers, and appeared vacant and flat.
It was mass murder, again by someone not mentally well, so why aren't liberals calling for cars to be banned, just like guns? Isn't it the same logic?
It should be, for the latest incident is just the latest in a string of vehicular mass murders. There's the case of Robert Kabolowsky of Long Island, for example, who was suicidal after losing his job at an automotive repair job. Lacking a gun, he argued with his father, smashed his head against a plate-glass window, and then drove off, crashing deliberately into another car and then driving through a concession stand full of people. Before it was over he had killed three and injured 20.
The list goes on. There was Priscilla Joyce Ford, a schizophrenic who was sentenced to death for murdering six people and injuring 23 by driving down a Reno sidewalk, mowing down people as she went, on Thanksgiving Day in 1980.
It's even worse in countries where the government has confiscated guns or prohibits them. In China, where the private ownership of guns is generally prohibited, Li Xianliang went on a tractor rampage - yes, a tractor rampage - in 2010, crushing cars, buses and other vehicles, as well as people, killing 17 and injuring 20.
Why aren't tractors banned?
It's not just vehicles. In this country, machetes are becoming a very popular way for the mentally ill to kill unarmed citizens. In September, according to the AP, a man with a machete injured two people during an attack in a wooded area of the University of Arkansas campus. Just last month, a 25-year-old man went on a tear in Oakland with a machete, attacking cars and cursing drivers.
In 2013, a Chinese immigrant, upset by his lack of progress in America, went to his more successful cousin's home and killed his wife and four children - with a machete.
Why no calls to ban machetes?
Last month, a former college football player attacked and killed an innocent jogger in Texas with a machete - for no reason other than the player had lost his housing and was upset. The jogger's wife said she was lost without him. She killed herself two days ago.
Still no calls from Obama/Clinton to ban machetes or for rigid machete control.
Indeed, just Google machete and knife attacks and you'll find that they are just as common, if not more so, than gun attacks. But the only weapons the liberals want banned are guns.
Everywhere in America mass violence is escalating. It's much worse than the media portrays because the media chooses to sensationalize and politicize just one type of mass murder. But the statistics are horrifying and getting worse.
The liberals are right on one point, though, there is a common denominator to all this violence. But it isn't guns. It's not cars or tractors or machetes or knives or bombs, either.
It's mental illness.
And yet few politicians are stepping up to the plate to deal with this cause of so many senseless killings.
It's irresponsbile not to do so. It's irresponsible to focus on the method of execution rather than address the cause of so much death. It's irresponsible to advocate and implement policies that leave Americans defenseless.
Ban guns and cars, machetes and knives? Better to ban the irresponsible politicians.
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