UN to vote on small arms treaty this Friday
If you don't have the right to keep and bear arms, you don't have any of the other rights, either. - a popular saying
It's
never what seens to have happened, but the context of what was
happening at the time the event occurred, that really counts.
If
the record of catclysmic events of the past 50 years are taken as a
guide, the fact that many things just don't add up is nothing unusual
because mainstream media and government types don't expect the public
to apply anything like critical thinking to the things they report.
Start
at the beginning. What happened?
A
man wearing full body armor, a gas mask, and carrying two pistols, an
assault rifle, a tactical shotgun, and plenty of ammunition, is said
to have “kicked in” an emergency egress-exit door at a suburban
Denver-area cinema.
Witnesses
say he tossed canisters of tear gas into the darkened room, then
began blazing away with his rifle, an AR-15 with a 100-round tactical
drum magazine.
As
the bullets tore into members of the panicked audience, 70 of whom
were injured, 20 of them fatally, confusion reigned.
The
.223 caliber bullet is copper jacketed, only one hundredth of an inch
larger than a .22 round, but there all resemblance ends.
The
bullet is sharp-pointed and boat-tailed in its shape, and it's
powered by a huge charge of smokeless military gunpowder – enough
to send it speeding out of the muzzle at a velocity upwards of 3,000
feet per second. That's very fast for a small arm, about one-third
faster than the arms used in wars prior to the Vietnam conflict.
Those weapons were restricted to firing cartridges of a power that
would cause them to penetrate no more than six human bodies through
and through.
When
the sharp point of a .223 Remington round strikes flesh and bone, the
projectile penetrates, then it immediately begins to tumble end over
end because the momentum of the greater mass of the rear of the round
passes up the speed of the suddenly stymied, now flattened tip, which
until the moment of impact was sharply pointed. The copper jacket
separates from the lead; it rips off the core and goes on its way, a
sharp and jagged piece of shrapnel cutting through anything in its
path.
At
that point, the lead core of the bullet begins to explode from the
sudden inertial change cause by the impact. Its mass scatters as it
breaks into very small pieces, which are embedded in a large area
surrounding the initial striking point of the bullet.
The
weapon system is so designed to comply with the strictures of the
Geneva accords, which require military rounds to be fully jacketed
with metal, and of a non-explosive, or expanding design.
Because
of its extremely high muzzle velocity and the structure of the round,
it achieves the same objective as a round of outlawed, or hollow
point – dum dum - design; the weapon causes a massive wound, one
that is very difficult to treat because of the multitude of
hemorrhage points and the extreme damage to tissue at the point of
impact. Caliber .223 Remington rounds rarely pass through and through
a victim; they are purposely designed to tumble, shed their full
metal jacket, then explode, causing massive damage. X-rays of the
resulting wounds appear to have a snow storm in a large area
surrounding the area. Prior to the development of air mobility via
helicopter, a casualty wounded by .223 rounds would have been very
lucky to survive long enough to reach a surgical facility.
To
review what we've been told, compared with what we know:
The
perpetrator of this attack is said to have been outfitted with all
the gear worn by combat troops and SWAT team members, including a
highly bullet resistant helmet, a gas mask, and full body armor. He
had canisters of tear gas and flash bang grenades, which cause a
momentary state of shock and disorientation. Most of this equipment
is unavailable to the public; it's difficult to obtain with any real
ease. The weapons and ammunition are expensive; it takes time to
learn how to use them with skill. Experts have estimated that the
cost of the entire outfit could be as high as $20,000 – maybe more
if one obtained them from an illicit supplier.
He
is furthermore said to have “kicked in” an emergency exit. That
is ludicrous because national buiding codes require all emergency
exits form public buildings such as theaters be steel-framed and to
open outward. Their latches are released by egress bars on the
inside, which will operate even if a person is incapacitated by
shock, or overcome by smoke. The mere application of body weight will
cause the door to swing open.
Somehow,
the latch had been previously released from the inside of the door.
Because
many of the audience members had arrived in costume, they say they
expected the person who burst in the emegency exit sporting
red-painted hair and wearing a mask to be a part of the show. They
were watching a movie about a character named “The Joker,” a bad
actor whose antisocial acts are violent and not at all funny.
They
were to be entertained by an hour and half depiction of terror
wrought by a sociopathic personality with no conscience, one who is
opposed only by a comic book phantom superhero with extraordinary
powers - Batman.
They
will likely find their personalities disordered for the rest of their
lives by the stress of what they experienced, having fled for their
survival from an enemy who was completely equipped and entirely ready
to calmly walk through their midst and cut them down without mercy,
to reload at his leisure, and continue on his deadly path.
He
calmly surrendered to police officers within minutes after he ceased
firing. He is said to be a brilliant but unemployed student of
neuroscience who graduated from the University of California with
honors, a mild-mannered and likable young man who kept to himself
after dropping out of a doctoral program in which he had made certain
strides in neurochemical means of behavioral control.
Are
there parallel experiences in recent memory? Yes, there are, and they
are too numerous to list here.
Let's
start with the Kennedy assassination. The President was killed by
triangulated sniper fire – his wounds likely caused by frangible
bullets much like those used by the theater killer and the D.C.
Snipers. The alleged gunman – a troubled veteran of the Marine
Corps who attempted to defect to the Soviet Union - surrendered a
short time later in a theater, a place of multiple entrances and
exits, following a brief scuffle with police. He was seen shooting a
uniformed patrol officer to death just down the street.
During
his time in the Soviet Union, the Red Army shot down a U2 spy plane
using radar technology on which the alleged assassin had been trained
at a U2 base in Japan. He worked in a radio factory where the Soviet
government manufactured that type of equipment.
Before
the weekend was over, a known gangster and violent actor with ties to
the Chicago mob killed him by gut shooting him from close range. He
is said to have gained entry to the basement of Dallas police
headquarters through an open emergency exit. Both men had extensive
ties to New Orleans mobsters who worked closely with Cuban exiles and
CIA officers involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Only
a short time later, a troubled young veteran of the Marine Corps
murdered
both his mother and his wife before taking his position atop the
University of Texas Tower with a large number of weapons and
ammunitiion. From the sniper's perch, he killed a large number of
people before police cut him down. He was an Eagle Scout who suddenly
found himself unable to conform to the rigors of military life and
academic routine.
What
did these events have in common? President Kennedy had defied CIA
executives in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He issued $4 billion of
silver-backed currency in defiance of the governing board of the
Federal Reserve. A debate over gun control raged at the time the
sniper climbed the tower.
In
both cases, a war from which the nation found it hard to disengage
was in full swing. The rules of engagement were by design devised in
a way that made it difficult to conclude hostilities.
It
was almost as if the United States of America happened to be in the
business of conducting war for the sake of war itself – that is, a
war waged for the sake of the business of war.
In
both cases, the actions of the executive department had taken on the
aspect of the “unitary executive” first described by the Nazi
political scientist and legal scholar, Carl Schmitt.
The
line forms on the right. The nation has seen the removal by bloodless
coups of two sitting Presidents, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon,
the assassinations of key political leaders, the curious accidental
deaths of any who would have asked awkward questions or supplied
salient details out of turn, and a steady erosion of Americans' civil
rights – chief among them those guaranteed by the Second, Fourth,
Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Furthermore,
unilateral targeting of individuals and entire populations throughout
the globe began in earnest with the CIA's Phoenix Program in Vietnam.
For a quick review of that, take a look at the pictures of the people
who were targeted for annihalation at My Lai IV. A current refinement
is to be found in the targeting of individuals by unmanned drone
aircraft by rocket attacks.
