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Saturday, July 21, 2012

Gun Control

Okay, my mind cannot stop processing all this insanity of the shootings in Aurora, Colorado.  I should be working on my freelance projects. Earning money. And don't need to spend today researching stuff I do not know on this subject. Which would be a lot.

Maybe writing them down will calm my frustrations.

Somewhat.

If I mention something below that is already in operation, okay. Good to know. But obviously it ain't working and needs fixing.

I hope someone else out there--who also shares my shame, my stupor, my sense of rage at how something like this could happen in our United States--has the answers.

Or the wherewithal to get these matters addressed.

President Obama, senators, representatives, are you listening?

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, I beg you to use both your monies and your influence to start and fund private agencies, working in tandem with whatever governmental ones.

If you have already, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But hire more people. Begin with a Colorado office. You can have as much of the eighty-one cents in my one and only checking account as you desire.

These are knee-jerk questions. I know they deal only with "authorized" purchases and not the illegal buys. Gotta start somewhere. My rational mind has shut down. My core emotions are coming through.
  1. Isn't there a federal gun registration center? There should be. How many mass murders need to happen in Colorado before this takes effect? Ten more? Fifty total? Three-hundred-ninety-one?
  2. Does no agency (ATF?) study/profile gun-buying patterns? They need to. There are plenty of unemployed people who, given a computer and an internet connection and working electricity, could help research this for various agencies while earning something for themselves, their families. Provide an office and the tools for those without said items. Plus I'm a freelancer in need of money to pay my bills. Add me to that list. I could work from home and provide at least one hour daily even with three other projects all under deadline. This issue means that much to me.
  3. Seems to me one person buying four guns in a couple months would ping on a radar somewhere. Each sales invoice or daily batches of them need to be faxed/emailed to a clearinghouse and/or directly to ATF. Need that data to be required, shared and gathered on city, state and federal levels. That way, hopefully, if there is a failure in the process, another double check kicks in to cover it.
  4. Seems to me also that one person suddenly buying guns--at four different locales, no less--is screaming into the ether "I'm hiding something and about to commit a heinous act." If not mandated to by some government agency on some level, do the vendors, on an informal basis, scope out the buyers for red flags? Do they converse with other vendors about a "strange guy"? Or equally valid, a "plain-vanilla guy maybe with no social skills"? Just wondering . . .
  5. Add all that to someone who has no social media (SM) presence whatsoever, who may be indeed termed a "loner," would ring a dozen bells. Is no one in his life paying attention? Again, use freelancers whose only job is to take each gun purchaser and match them to some SM so we can check them off as "not a loner." Far from perfect, I admit.  But a helluva lot better than what's not working now.
  6. How did he even gain access to the theater without passing someone? The government should hire unemployed people as freelance security there and elsewhere and pay them what unemployment would have otherwise. We get a twofer--the same government funds, but a great service is done too. Additionally these businesses could kick in supplemental contract wages. They get more for less. Being "contract," these theaters and such do not have to pay them minimum wage--just extra to go along with their government earnings. Win-win-win on all three sides.
  7. Do we need to install metal detectors at movie theaters? As an avid moviegoer, I vote yes.
  8. Yes, he was "an adult," but does the college notify the parents when a student drops out? Seems to be a good double check, a monitoring of college students, since dropping out can be a sign of depression, not being able to cope.
  9. Even as a parent, I cannot fathom the despair his parents must feel. I have nothing but pride for my wonderful and gifted son. Still, as perfect as he is, we are not identical. His actions are a result of his choices. I know I would not want to be held responsible for the actions of everyone related to me by blood--sharing a basic genetic soup does not mean every relative of mine entails the same conscience or morals or tenets. That's where the input from the school would have been helpful. The notice from the four gun shops that informed some agency and/or some family member, as a double check again, that hey, he purchased a firearm from us.  And us over here, too.  Plus this third and fourth vendor.
  10. Maybe set up gun vendors somehow queued to the GPS in the buyers' cars, cells and computers to link to some enforcement agency and give notice of each purchase--whereas multiple purchases would cause the lights to blink red and the sirens to blow. Whatever it takes to get someone to notice.
  11. None of the above is to be taken as everybody else is to blame for this one guy's actions. In my mind, he knew exactly what he was doing and had a premeditated plan. Not only that, he warned the authorities of the bomb set up in his apartment. He didn't want to add the (capital) deaths of any officers and agents to his kill tally. That is not the action of a crazy person, but someone protecting himself from the very thing he caused to so many others--death.
  12. I'd much rather Big Brother watch over all of us a little more than to ever have to read about this happening again.
Oh, dear God.  Help us.

Denise Barker

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