In my inbox this morning was an email purportedly from Erica Lafferty, whose mother, Dawn Hochsprung, was Sandy Hook principal. As we all know, she and 25 others died in the murder spree there six months ago. I say “purportedly” because, as with all correspondence of this kind, the email address it comes from is “info@barackobama.com” — meaning that responding to it is really rather pointless, unless your response reaches a wider audience, and perhaps even the signatory herself in this case. Which is what I hope to accomplish here by posting both the email content and my reply, which I sent, knowing full well it will reach precisely no one with an ounce of intellectual integrity unless it eventually does so by way of a Google search. But so be it. It’s the little battles I have to win each day to keep me going.
Friend --
My mom, Dawn Hochsprung, was the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Six months ago today, she was shot and killed in her school, along with five of her coworkers and 20 of her students.
In the weeks and months after that horrible day, lawmakers from across the country told us, the families of the victims, that they'd take action to make our communities safer. What we found out is that, for some of our members of Congress, those were empty promises.
And in those six months, thousands more people have been killed by guns.
I've been doing everything I can to reach out to members of Congress. But my voice isn't enough. Today, on the six-month anniversary of Newtown, every single person who cares about reducing gun violence in America needs to recommit to this fight.
More than 1.4 million Americans have said they're with us in the fight to reduce gun violence -- add your name today.
In her last minutes, Mom was just as brave and caring as I knew her to be. After telling everyone to hide, she went running into the hallway, saw the gunman, yelled and lunged at him in an effort to protect the school she loved.
I miss her every second of every day. I'm getting married in just a few weeks -- to a guy she was rooting for, in a dress we picked out together -- but because a dangerous man got his hands on a gun, my mom won't be there to see it.
I'm still grieving -- and I'm not alone. On average, 33 Americans are killed by a gun every single day. That's 33 new families a day who mourn like I do.
If a background check saves even one life, and keeps even one family from hurting like this, then this fight will all be worth it. I think my mom would like to know that the tragedy that fell on Newtown meant that another tragedy could be stopped before it even started.
I'm asking you to join me today, six months after that horrible day, to keep this fight going -- take action for my mom, Dawn, and the 25 other people who we lost in December.
Say you're with us today:
http://my.barackobama.com/Six-Months-Since-Newtown
Thanks,
Erica
Erica Lafferty
My reply:
Dear Erica,
Had the killer known people in your mom's school may have been armed, chances are he'd have picked another target.
Your pain does not permit you to infringe on my rights, or my choice for how best to protect my family. I'm sorry if this sounds indelicate, but we're months removed now from the mass murder -- already against the law, and your loss from which I truly am sorry for -- so I'm just going to say this to you as plainly as possible: the very fact that so many people were killed under circumstances you wish to see exacerbated means that, frankly, you are one of the last people those of us who wish to keep our families safe ought to be listening to.
Your mother died a hero, trying to protect children from a murderer preying on a "gun free zone" without recourse to the adequate means to do so. Her having been unarmed and part of a turkey shoot is official policy -- the law in your state, and in most states -- and you wish to see this law expanded.
That's not thinking through the problem. It's being used by the anti-Second Amendment forces because they feel that you are a grieving voice they can put to the tragedy.
Even worse, it's quite possible you are aware of this and have turned your private tragedy into a political crusade that seeks to rob Americans of a natural right, knowing full well that what you wish to see imposed upon us wouldn't have saved your mother.
At which point you become a shill, and you bring shame upon your mother's memory.
Sorry to be so blunt; but your tragedy doesn't have to be mine, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let those who advocate for keeping people at the mercy of those who won't follow laws (in the case of Sandy Hook, against murder, theft of property, trespassing, etc.) unable, by force of government mandate, to protect themselves, their families, or their property.
Guns don't shoot on their own. "Military-style" "assault weapons" are no different than semi-automatic pistols. And it simply isn't up to you, nor some pandering elected official seizing on a political moment, to determine how free people can protect themselves from predators and predation.
If you had any intellectual integrity, you would have already discovered all of this. Which leads me to conclude that you have either been badly used, or else you are an advocate for creating a police state.
Either way, I can do without your counsel.
Sincerely,
Jeff Goldstein
Thank you – you do a good job of showing the flaws and ill consequences of her emotional reaction.
This is worth doing, and it does have an impact.
I’ll keep doing my bit to enlarge your audience, for as long as there’s a chance that the armadillo will dance!
Awesome. If something like what you received somehow comes to my emails, I will be sure to respond like you did. Perhaps if enough of us did so, well, they would not change, but they would at least be set back on their proverbial heels.
Well said Jeff. I’m sick of these turds using the victims of these shootings as props to advance their agendas. Dancing in the blood of the victims demanding laws that would not prevent future shootings but only infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens is despicable.
Nothing like a good verbal “ground and pound” to go with my coffee in the morning.
On average, 33 Americans are killed by a gun every single day. That’s 33 new families a day who mourn like I do.
So much is elided in dishonest pleas like this.
For instance, think of the soulless young thug of 19 who terrorized his own parent-mother (his father was absent to prevent him), who though she surely grieves for her child killed in a gang shootout, nevertheless may say a private word to herself as to how she will no longer suffer the blows of his fist and disregard for her own sacrifices. Her mourning surely isn’t the same as the mourning of a murdered elementary school principle.
Or think, also elided are the lives saved by fire arms, lives which will not have to be mourned, lives continuing to be fully lived productively amidst appreciative loved ones.
TL;DR
Dear stupid bint,
The fact that your friend placed ideology over her own safety is no reason to allow closet totalitarians like yourself into emotionally blackmailing us into giving up fundamental rights. I have a counterproposal for you. How about not allowing any person who displays a complete disregard for the constitutional rights of their fellow Americans not be allowed to have free speech? It works for me.
Or, shorter: I support the First Amendment, but I wish you would shut the fuck up.
Grrrr. Above comment should read:
I have a counterproposal for you. How about not allowing any person who displays a complete disregard for the constitutional rights of their fellow Americans to be allowed free speech? It works for me.
– They do this just to try to infuriate and frustrate anyone who’s not a statist. Fuck ’em.
– They do this just to try to infuriate and frustrate anyone who’s not a statist.
I wonder BBH, in light of the data gathering efforts of the Obazmites which geoffb has frequently reported here, it could be just as much an effort to entice innocent respondents in order to bank their information for use in future election efforts. In other words, killing two birds with one stone, only one of the birds is california condor sized (the data) and the other the size of a wren (the gun control monkeyshine)?
Perfect.
Tweeted.
Also, your e-mail address is on their “still active” list.
Nice little way of lying there, using “killed” which is “homocide” instead of “murdered” which is what you are implying in the lie.
Then if the “murders” are dug into it is found that the vast majority are gang and/or drug deal related not the “killing[s]” that your language twisting is meant to bring a picture of into the minds of those you are trying to fool and make fools of.
Better watch what you Tweet, they are.
You left out suicide, geoff.
I think it’s a part of the same tripe about health care. There’s never any talk of the huge costs to the system from gang-related violence. Apparently, it’s just stupid people falling off ladders who have no insurance.
Isn’t suicide considered a homocide? If not then her numbers get even worse for her. I was following from the 33 x 365 = 12,045 which is close to the 11,078 that CDC has and close enough for progressive math work.
You know, it is. I hadn’t thought about it that way.
I shared it with her. I’m a giver that way.
Uh, suicide is considered a specific class of homicide, not homocide.
You’re such a mensch, Pablo.
You may remember her…
Nobody can be stupid enough to think any of this will get traction, but the Unicorn Prince wants to get attention off his scandals — even if he has to throw every squirrel alive under the bus.
Does anyone even care what His Nibs has to say about anything anymore? He needs some new material it’s always the same old stump speech.
I read he and the fambly are going to spend over $100M on their vacation to Africa. Maybe they’ll go to the interior where Bad Things Happen, Mistuh Kurtz.
I am about 50% convinced that this all part of an organized effort to create Utopia and drag us all there kicking and screaming.
The other 50% just sees the Democrat Party as just a bunch of opportunists hijacking issues and sewing them all together into a crazy quilt that does not really feel all that cozy or keep anyone warm.
It’s scratchy, too.
I can think of an appeal that would not work as well as the above E-mail at disarming America:
My fellow Americans on the right. I know we have had many disagreements in the past. I have heard your concern about the Affordable Care Act but, it is now the law of the land and we have to work together to make it work.
Today I come to you for a different request. Our brothers in Syria need you help. I am asking you to donate all your firearms so that we can help arm the Democratically minded rebels of Syria in their struggle against oppression.
As a thank you gift, everyone who donates will receive a First family portrait (including Bo!) and a raffle ticket to have dinner with Joe Biden. . .
Keep the dinner, I’ll just take the equivalent in booze.
Speaking of guns and suicide: There’s this Local News Story in Philly that you might have heard about. A demolition company was tearing down a 4-story building in Center City, and whilst doing so it fell onto an adjoining 2-story Salvation Army Thrift Shop, killing 6 and injuring 13.
Police quickly arrested the crane (?) operator, who has been smoking MJ and had traces of various painkillers in his system — hopped up on goofballs, as it were. Then the DA went before the press and promised a Grand Jury to find out who else should be indicted over this clusterf*ck.
A few days later, a 52-yr-old building inspector who had signed off on the demolition just a week before the disaster was found dead in an apparent suicide. Given the out-for-blood nature of the DA, that didn’t seem all that odd; I’d do the same if I was facing 10-20 years in prison.
But then I read this:
Yeah, right… a ‘suicide’. Because everyone knows the best way to kill one’s self is a gunshot to the chest, while sitting in a car on a public street. Happens all the time. I’m positive he wasn’t silenced to protect, say, the mob. That would be crazy-talk.
I hope when you said “mob” you did not meant to disparaged any Italian American.
“You’re such a mensch, Pablo.”
Pablo would make a great Marine:
“No greater friend, No worse enemy”
Here here.
Pablo is one sharp customer, to be sure.
Geoffb and JHoward aren’t to be messed with, and I’ve learned a lot–and been proven wrong, or corrected–by the likes Serr’d, NR and too many others.
Of course, at the top is Jeff, whose solo notes like the post above always seem to be what the tune needs at the moment.
Aw, y’all are gonna make me blush.
Wanna stop “gun violence”? Don’t just “crack down” on urban street gangs, crush them.
John Bradley,
What are the odds that the fatal bullet entered the man’s chest from the left side, at a downward angle, leaving little or no gunpowder residue or stippling, and the firearm recovered at the scene has no fingerprints on it?
What Roddy wrote.
I know it’s a minor point, but one that speaks to a basic level of honest in any communication:
You are run over *by* a drunk driver. You are run over *with* a car.
The car didn’t commit the act, it is an implement. Yet it is almost universal for control freaks to use the construction “killed by guns,” which, not accidentally, places the responsibility on the implement.
It is right to suspect the intentions of people who use language to give false impressions.
I mean, apart from the other 214 ways the argument is flawed and the intentions are suspect.
Merovign, Rush has documented many times the use of “The SUV jumped the curb and ran down…, The SUV swerved into the other lane and collided with…”
These of course are also used the Left to demonize a thing as responsible not the poor hapless human who is just another victim of an abusive inanimate object.