Tag Archives: Sandy Hook

News

New testimony from another ex-employee of the Kermit Gosnell abortion clinic

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Dina sent me the latest on this story, from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

A medical school graduate has given a graphic account of working at a Philadelphia abortion clinic and how he routinely saw babies born alive and then killed with scissors

Stephen Massof, 50, of Pittsburgh, was giving evidence at the trial of his former boss Kermit Gosnell on Thursday.

Gosnell, 72, is accused of killing seven live babies at the Philadelphia Women’s Medical Society clinic and a woman who was administered too much anesthesia.

[…]Massof, who is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to the murder of two newborns at the clinic, revealed Thursday that he witnessed an abortion at 26 weeks – two weeks beyond the 24-week limit in the state.

He also claimed he saw about 100 babies born alive and then ‘snipped’ with surgical scissors in the back of the neck, to ensure their ‘demise’.

He also spoke of the gruesome scenes at the clinic which was allegedly found dirty and rundown with rusting surgical instruments.

‘It would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place. It is literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body,’ he told NBC.

He also alleges the clinic’s ultrasound machine was manipulated to make fetuses appear smaller and therefore younger.

[…]Prosecutors allege Gosnell took more than $1 million a year at the clinic where women were charged up to $3,000 for an abortion.

David Freddoso has a column in the Washington Examiner on the media coverage of the Gosnell trial, which has been very different from the media’s coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting.

Excerpt:

Whatever one’s position on gun control, the appropriately heavy coverage of the Sandy Hook massacre at least served a public purpose by starting a discussion about mass shootings.

At its most thoughtful, the debate considered what measures might have prevented the massacre and which could be squared with Americans’ constitutional rights.

At its worst, the debate suffered from media cheerleading for panic gun control legislation — as in, “pass something, anything!” — including but not limited to such left-leaning figures as CNN’s Piers Morgan.

In stark contrast, television coverage of Gosnell’s trial has been “hard to find,” as the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan put it very charitably last Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

In fact, not counting Noonan’s allusion, Gosnell’s case has not been mentioned even once on any of the three major networks in the last month (his trial began March 18).

It has received only seven mentions on cable television since it began, one on CNN and six on Fox News. In print, Gosnell’s case has been largely ignored outside of local media outlets in Pennsylvania and Delaware.

It’s not as though there isn’t an obvious connection between the Gosnell case and public policy. Legislators in some states (including Pennsylvania and now Alabama) have acted since Gosnell’s arrest to crack down on the next abortion quack.

The media have collectively and perhaps deliberately failed to draw the obvious connection between the two stories.

I think that the differences in the levels of coverage is useful to show that media bias is not always done by biased reporting. It can also be just the decision of what to report on. You can read my previous post on the peer-reviewed studies that document left-wing media bias.

News

Armed guard stops school shooting in Atlanta

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A report from The Blaze.

Excerpt:

A student opened fire at his middle school Thursday afternoon, wounding a 14-year-old in the neck before an armed officer working at the school was able to get the gun away, police said.

[…]The armed resource officer who took the gun away was off-duty and at the school, but police didn’t release details on him or whether he is regularly at Price. Since 20 children and six adults were shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December, calls for armed officers in every school have resonated across the country.

Although it’s very clear what actually works to prevent/contain school shootings, you won’t hear the media or the Democrats (but I repeat myself) calling for what works.

In fact, Obama’s daughters go to a school with 11 armed security guards. When Obama says that guns don’t make anyone safer, he is a liar. And he knows he is lying, because in real life, he does the complete opposite of what he reads off the teleprompter in speeches.

Here’s another case from just yesterday where guns were used to stop a crime.

A home invasion suspect was arrested at a hospital after a mother shot him during the crime at a Montgomery County home, deputies said Wednesday.

Erin, who asked to be identified only by her first name, told Local 2 she was putting her 6-year-old son to bed when she heard a loud noise coming from her bedroom on Mink Lake Drive Friday night…

Erin said she turned around and saw three masked men, pointing a gun right at her…

“Somehow the way it happened, as they were going down the hallway, I told them sometimes I keep money under the mattress, which is not true. But I needed to get to where my gun was,” she said.

The men followed her to her bedroom.

“I was pretending to move the mattress. It’s really heavy, so I was trying to move their attention to the mattress because they wouldn’t take their eyes off of me. I needed a split second for them to take their eyes off of me. I said, ‘It might be under here.’ They started talking to each other in Spanish and then a roll of duct tape came out,” said Erin…

“They all turned around and looked. I grabbed my gun, cocked it, I turned and shot him right in the stomach,” said Erin.

But have no fear, the Department of Homeland Security has a better idea than armed guards.

Look:

The federal government recommends you bring scissors to a gunfight.

The Department of Homeland Security offers Americans tips on how to survive an attack by an “active shooter,” including “throw[ing] items” and grabbing a pair of scissors.

DHS recommends Americans either “evacuate” the building or “hide out” depending on the situation, according to a 2008 handbook and “pocket card.”

But the third option, “take action,” is considered a “last resort” by the government.

One can “attempt to incapacitate the shooter” by “act[ing] with physical aggression and throw[ing] items at the active shooter,” suggests DHS.

A web video released by DHS in January says, “you might consider trying to overpower the shooter” as a last resort, “with whatever means are available.”

The clip shows an office worker grabbing a pair of scissors for the purpose of “trying to overpower the shooter.”

Surprise! People on the left care as much about born children as they do about unborn children. That’s the truth. That’s the truth.

News

Sandy Hook CT school shooting shows need for tougher fatherlessness laws

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If we were really serious about stopping gun crime, then we should go after the root cause of gun crime. So what is that root cause? The answer might surprise you.

Here is Dr. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation to explain:

Census data and the Fragile Families survey show that marriage can be extremely effective in reducing child poverty. But the positive effects of married fathers are not limited to income alone. Children raised by married parents have substantially better life outcomes compared to similar children raised in single-parent homes.

When compared to children in intact married homes, children raised by single parents are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems; be physically abused; smoke, drink, and use drugs; be aggressive; engage in violent, delinquent, and criminal behavior; have poor school performance; be expelled from school; and drop out of high school.[19] Many of these negative outcomes are associated with the higher poverty rates of single mothers. In many cases, however, the improvements in child well-being that are associated with marriage persist even after adjusting for differences in family income. This indicates that the father brings more to his home than just a paycheck.

The effect of married fathers on child outcomes can be quite pronounced. For example, examination of families with the same race and same parental education shows that, when compared to intact married families, children from single-parent homes are:

  • More than twice as likely to be arrested for a juvenile crime;[20]
  • Twice as likely to be treated for emotional and behavioral problems;[21]
  • Roughly twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school;[22] and
  • A third more likely to drop out before completing high school.[23]

The effects of being raised in a single-parent home continue into adulthood. Comparing families of the same race and similar incomes, children from broken and single-parent homes are three times more likely to end up in jail by the time they reach age 30 than are children raised in intact married families. [24] Compared to girls raised in similar married families, girls from single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to have a child without being married, thereby repeating the negative cycle for another generation.[25]

Finally, the decline of marriage generates poverty in future generations. Children living in single-parent homes are 50 percent more likely to experience poverty as adults when compared to children from intact married homes. This intergenerational poverty effect persists even after adjusting for the original differences in family income and poverty during childhood.[26]

People on the left claim that poverty causes crime, but they don’t look for the root cause of poverty. The root cause of poverty is the decline of marriage. But people on the left favor that, so they can’t admit the truth.

Dr. Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute explains one of the causes of fatherlessness in his testimony to Congress:

Welfare contributes to crime in several ways. First, children from single-parent families are more likely to become involved in criminal activity. According to one study, children raised in single-parent families are one-third more likely to exhibit anti-social behavior.(3) Moreover, O’Neill found that, holding other variables constant, black children from single- parent households are twice as likely to commit crimes as black children from a family where the father is present. Nearly 70 percent of juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes, as do 43 percent of prison inmates.(4) Research indicates a direct correlation between crime rates and the number of single-parent families in a neighborhood.(5)

As Barbara Dafoe Whitehead noted in her seminal article for The Atlantic Monthly:

The relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation’s mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime.(6)

At the same time, the evidence of a link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is overwhelming. There have been 13 major studies of the relationship between the availability of welfare benefits and out-of-wedlock birth. Of these, 11 found a statistically significant correlation. Among the best of these studies is the work done by June O’Neill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Holding constant a wide range of variables, including income, education, and urban vs. suburban setting, the study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.(7) Likewise, research by Shelley Lundberg and Robert Plotnick of the University of Washington showed that an increase in welfare benefits of $200 per month per family increased the rate of out-of-wedlock births among teenagers by 150 percent.(8)

The same results can be seen from welfare systems in other countries. For example, a recent study of the impact of Canada’s social-welfare system on family structure concluded that “providing additional benefits to single parents encourages births of children to unwed women.”(9)

The poverty that everyone complains about is not the root cause of crime. The poverty is caused by fatherlessness. The fatherlessness is caused by welfare. Fatherlessness is also caused by laws and policies that make it easier for people to divorce, e.g. – no-fault divorce laws. Again, it’s people on the left who push for no-fault divorce laws. So the left is pushing two policies, welfare and no-fault divorce, which cause crime.

What happened in Sandy Hook

The Connecticut shooter came from a broken home (H/T Tom) and had not spoken to his father in two years (H/T Dina). If we are serious about stopping school shootings, then we need to go after the source.

How do we stop this? We go after the laws and policies that promote fatherlessness. No-fault divorce laws make it easy to get out of a marriage, which means that people rely on “chemistry” and peer-approval to decide who to marry instead of choosing the right person for the actual duties of the job. The divorce court system rewards the person who files for divorce first, which is the women in about 70% of the cases. The incentives all favor fatherlessness.

If we were serious about fixing fatherlessness, we should reform divorce laws to make people take marriage more seriously. Instead of giving alternatives to marriage  the same benefits as marriage, we should give benefits to people who are able to get married, stay married and produce productive, law-abiding children.