Newtown CT is not the Norman Rockwell painting we keep hearing about from Anderson Cooper

[sasha031]

In Town at Ease With Its Firearms, Tightening Gun Rules Was Resisted

People in the rural, hilly areas around Newtown, Conn., are used to gunfire. In one woodsy stretch, southeast of downtown, the Pequot Fish and Game Club and the Fairfield County Fish and Game Protective Association, where members can fish in ponds and hunt pheasant, lie within a mile of each other, and people who live nearby generally call them good neighbors.

But in the last couple of years, residents began noticing loud, repeated gunfire, and even explosions, coming from new places. Near a trailer park. By a boat launch. Next to well-appointed houses. At 2:20 p.m. on one Wednesday last spring, multiple shots were reported in a wooded area on Cold Spring Road near South Main Street, right across the road from an elementary school.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/nyregion/in-newtown-conn-a-stiff-resistance-to-gun-restrictions.html?ref=nyregion&_r=1&

recommend read
The police department logged more than 50 gunfire complaints this year through July, double the number for all of 2011, records show. Some of the complaints raised another issue. Gun enthusiasts here, as elsewhere in the country, have taken to loading their targets with an explosive called Tannerite, which detonates when bullets strike it, sending shock waves afield. A mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder, Tannerite is legal in Connecticut, but safety concerns led Maryland this year to ban it.

[Permanut]

1. Newtown is also the home of The National Shooting Sports Foundation

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/111148/three-miles-tragic-shooting-bastion-gun-rights#

[slampoet]

4. There are also THREE Arms Factories withint 40 miles of the shooting.

http://www.stagarms.com/

http://www.usfirearms.com/

http://www.coltsmfg.com/

[sasha031]

10. isn't that special

one of them have all the dead children in their thoughts and prayers

[grahamhgreen]

25. OMG

[leveymg]

31. Colt Patent Firearms was founded in Hartford, CT in 1848.

The gun industry and culture are firmly entrenched in the Nutmeg State.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

2. Doesn't surprise me. Is it wrong for me to say killer's mom and first victim

seems like a Stepford Wife type? Or Fembot? I am really curious what the dynamic between her and her son really was. To go shoot your Mom in the face multiple times before breakfast while she sleeps in bed? Who knows if the kid did that as his primary motive and then just thought....hell, I'm dead anyway I might as well go out in a blaze of glory.

We shall see what the complicated nature of this town was.....but I'm sure it wasn't much different than Anywhere, USA.

[DeschutesRiver]

40. She was a former stockbroker in Boston - how is that a Stepford wife type?

Actually, they were all in finance except the mentally ill kid - dad is a financier tax director for GE Finance who earns $8,550+ per week (probably more with bonuses I assume but don't know yet) and gives mom $250,000 per year since the divorce, per the public divorce records; mom was a former stockbroker for John Hancock who now cares for the mentally ill son; and the older brother Ryan is a stockbroker. I'd say they are more the Wall Street types than stepfords...

Don't know what a fembot is.

The kid lived with her, but she and dad shared legal custody (with her having the final say in decisions that needed a tie breaker). So dad was just as involved in the eyes of the law, even though reports say that he chooses not to see his mentally ill son very often.

He has already remarried and didn't take much part in caring for the mentally ill son. I can't square mom taking the kid to the shooting range, while also going to bat for the kid's teacher in his technology group who was having issues with the school district. I think this is much more complicated than it appears.

The town sounds absolutely batshit instead of the "Currier and Ives" description I saw one of the inhabitants give it.

[ellisonz]

3. Not enough for them to jut shoot their targets...

...they have to blow it up. What a bunch of fools...

[Skittles]

5. that is some fucking sick shit

[ellisonz]

9. It's all a game to them

[Downwinder]

11. That is not sport shooting.

That is thrill shooting.

[ellisonz]

19. Like there's a difference...

...they're all getting the same rocks off blasting away with a gun.

For example, this fellow:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/12/alleged-fashion-island-mall-gunman-was-venting-police-say.html

[sasha031]

6. it's always the same line with these people

“Guns are why we’re free in this country, and people lose sight of that when tragedies like this happen,” he said. “A gun didn’t kill all those children, a disturbed man killed all those children.”

I am so sick of these bastards, I am so sick of them taking our rights away.
The town was under siege by these gun nuts, & now we have countless families that will never recover from this tragedy. So many beautiful children & women lost.

[HiPointDem]

12. median household income in newtown is over $100K. it's a pretty affluent community. presumably

if the town wanted to get rid of or harass the shooting ranges it could have.

[uponit7771]

18. +1!

[yewberry]

7. Pretty typical New England, no?

Most New Englanders are accustomed to gunfire seasonally. And new areas of gunfire. Depends on land ownership.

[HiPointDem]

13. only if most NE towns have a median household income of over $100K.

[former-republican]

15. For the sound of gun fire ?

During hunting season in New England most small towns you can hear gun fire going off.

Some are affluent but most are not.

[Chan790]

16. Outside the cities, west of the river?

That's within 20% of average. It's not standout or notable in any case.

CT is a state of two economic realities...west of the CT river or down into Fairfield county in towns like Madison, Newtown, Canton or Farmington...even the "middle class" households like my parents...are in the top third nationally of all households by median income.

East of the river, you're almost certainly skirting the national average.

[HiPointDem]

23. us median household income = $50K. so check your math.

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb12-172.html

and the county in which the town is located is one of the wealthiest in the US.

It is one of the highest-income counties in the United States, which helps to make Connecticut one of the most affluent states in the United States. The area of the county, known as the Gold Coast, includes the entire southern portion of the county as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, Super-Public Use Microdata Area (Super-PUMA) region 09600.[2] The county was also ranked sixth in per-capita personal income by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in 2005.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfield_County,_Connecticut

[Chan790]

27. Actually you misunderstood what I was saying.

That it wasn't out of normal for that area...which is to say "yes, it's pretty typical for western and southwestern CT."

[HiPointDem]

30. actually, i didn't.

[cali]

17. no. It is not. I live in rural VT, grew up in Fairfield County CT.

[leveymg]

33. I don't remember a lot of guns, but Rt 7 north was more rural, a different culture.

Newtown and parts of Rt 7 north of Danbury to Canaan might as well be Loudon County, VA. Rural, woods, old industrial towns, now semi-retired telecommuters. Some affluent, gated, most not really. A lot of half-wild kids.

[yewberry]

37. I grew up in NH, MA & ME. Mostly NH.

Gunfire was really common during hunting season. Now, explosions... not so much.

[Michigan Alum]

28. Anywhere I've lived, that would be a pretty big deal.

[sasha031]

36. NO!!!!

[jsr]

8. “A gun didn’t kill all those children, a disturbed man killed all those children”

saith the NRA.

[kestrel91316]

32. A disturbed man WITH A GUN. The man never touched them.

[hfojvt]

14. and not only that

but there's Bobby Taylor sitting there and seven times he's asked me for a date
and Mrs. Taylor seems to use a lot of ice whenever he's away ...

[pinboy3niner]

20. And yet the residents there are ordinary Americans

Whooda thunk it?

[LeftInTX]

21. This makes me want to cry

“Guns are why we’re free in this country, and people lose sight of that when tragedies like this happen"

How sick. They don't seem to care at all. And its in their own town.
What has happened to our country?

[We People]

24. Me too. It's totally backwards, and guns are NOT why we're free!!

You would think that respect for quality of life ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness&quot would come first. Except for the Gold Rush/ Wild West/ Actual combat situations, the proliferation of private arsenals and guns-for-sport in our society today is something I've never witnessed at this level in all 50+ years of my life.

That statement you quoted makes them sound like Apologists For Mass Shootings. If it doesn't do something to them on the inside when it happens in their own town, they sure as hell don't care what happens anywhere else. How totally selfish, to say the least!

[kestrel91316]

34. SPINES are why we are free in this country, not cowardice.

The gun cowards are all afraid of their own shadows and imagine danger on every corner. Pathetic.

[bora13]

22. From north of Danbury all the way to the MA border, and then some

lies a streak of conservatism comparable to a bible and gun belt.

[graham4anything]

26. Reframe the entire issue as one on terror. BTW Rockwell paintings never were true to life.

[fightthegoodfightnow]

29. From the Article

from the article

Police logs identified the spot as one of the town’s many unlicensed gun ranges, where the familiar noise of hunting rifles has grown to include automatic gunfire and explosions that have shaken houses.

Eh gads.

[frazzled]

35. This is why it was so important (and courageous) for the President ...

to have made that stern and moral speech last night. He knew the room he was in.

This has gone beyond all arguments that appeal to calibers or claims of responsibility or this or that terminology: this is a MORAL imperative. It's about the stopping militarization of American citizens. It's about the false sense of entitlement to unbridled "freedom" with regard to guns and violence in this country. There are no more arguments to be had about this. Not about whether such laws are effective or where the exact limits should be. This is something we must do as a nation in order to start on the road back to a sane, humane society. It's about the kind of culture we want to live in.

Gun culture must be made very unpopular and very ugly in the national consciousness.

[lindysalsagal]

38. I live 30 min west of there, a friend lives there. It is Norman Rockwell, but

I think the point we all keep missing is that guns are part of Norman Rockwell, and we have to admit to ourselves that they're a problem.

People resist the assignment of "bad" to guns. That value has to change if we want this to stop.

Otherwise, we look the other way and play the odds that it won't be our very own kid. It will be someone else's.

[Dawson Leery]

39. As someone who was raised in the area, it is not that nice,

especially if you go back before the 90's. The area is a Peyton Place. Small town gossip is prevalent and has made problems for those who did not fit the mold of the majority in town.
In upper Fairfield County and Litchfield County, guns are quite common, for hunting and otherwise.
The "otherwise" would be those complaints about gun fire outside of the hunting season and at night.