Indiana police find 47 guns in arrest over threat to elementary school
Source: The Guardian UK
Authorities have said that an Indiana man who had 47 guns and ammunition in his home has been arrested, after allegedly threatening to kill people at an elementary school near his home in Cedar Lake, about 45 miles southeast of Chicago.
Cedar Lake police were called to the home of 60-year-old Von I Meyer early Friday, after he allegedly threatened to set his wife on fire. A police statement said Meyer had also said that he would enter Jane Ball Elementary School and "kill as many people as he could".
Authorities found 47 guns and ammunition worth more than $100,000. Prosecutors filed felony intimidation charges against Meyer on Saturday, one day after the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. He is being held without bond.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/16/indiana-47-guns-arrest-elementary-school
Guns are obviously a big part of the problem but I believe the USA is suffering from a nationwide mental illness that also needs to be addressed. We are too militaristic, too aggressive, too angry. Our culture lacks education in arts and humanities and all the things that are beautiful in life. Faux news and the right wing noise machine are the head of the hydra that encourages people like this guy in the article and the mother of the Connecticut school shooter to gather their guns for an impending armageddon that isn't coming. It is delusion that is being wrapped in fear and paranoia and sold to the gullible American public. We need a sea change toward enlightenment. We need more money for education and the arts and less money for our ridiculously overgrown MIC. It's time to look deeper.
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valerief
(53,235 posts)
hatrack
(59,583 posts).
heaven05
(18,124 posts)
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)when this guy buys 47 of them.
Angleae
(4,482 posts)0-2 years would have but over 10-20 years would just mark him as a collector.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)The Guardian comes through for us. Has our news media deemed this news too sensitive for us...like they know whats better for us than we do? Fuck that. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S FUCKING GOING ON IN MY COUNTRY, Thank you.
Frustratedlady
(16,254 posts)Also, al Jazeera seems to come up with more news than we've heard about.
Why are we hearing our news from foreign countries?
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)are bought and sold to our Representatives and Senators.
I have often relied on foreign, and non-mainstream media sources for my news.
I suggest you do so as well, if you REALLY want to find out what's going on.
Ineeda
(3,626 posts)the more scared and cowardly they get. Ironic, isn't it.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)
ileus
(15,396 posts)Isn't that the truth...
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)The very idea that these things are "extras" and unimportant, just for children (and then you grow out of it) and not worth spending money on because, well some artist might create something you don't like....
So sophomoric and empty....
Turbineguy
(37,319 posts)
Myrina
(12,296 posts)Thank you for bringing it to the forefront.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)47 million people who voted for Nimrod Romney; Hells Bells....I don't know how many NRA gun-owning members; untold f-ing millions who need mental health care who aren't getting it.
Guns + ignorance + no mental health care =
zeemike
(18,998 posts)We need to look deeper,
We have to stop pretending that we are not teaching our children to be violent and giving them all kinds of signals that violence is the answer to problems...and like it or not that is what we teach them on the majority of TV shows they watch for hours a day.
But the easy way is to not change ourselves and think we have done something by passing a law....the law will not solve the basic problem...just lessen the damage.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)When I was a kid back in the sixties, my brothers and I, our friends, and all the neighborhood kids played cowboys and indians, cops and robbers, and assorted mock war games-with toy guns, sticks, and our imagination. Only a couple of the kids bought guns as adults, and none of us ended up a violent threat to society. What we did probably wasn't much different than video games, although we were outside and had to use our imagination more...no graphic detail on a screen. But we did see plenty of horror flix at the movies.
I'm not sure that much has changed, but it seems the kids now are ending up troubled as they reach adulthood.
RC
(25,592 posts)We used out imaginations. We roll played. Broken tree branches became everything from guns to baseball bats or hockey sticks. The same abandon building was anything from a outlaw hideout to a knight's castle, complete with throne room.
Now? We walk around in public, totally oblivious to everyone else, listing to music and playing games on our smart phone or tablets. All to often, our friends are electronic, not real flesh and blood.
Other people become as real as the pixels moving on the touch screen. It is no wonder the Newtown's are becoming regular occurrences.
This in no way diminishes the obscene numbers of easily obtained guns floating around in this country, that makes mass shootings as easy as pushing the trigger button on your iPad, or whatever.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)One big difference is we were all interacting face to face, and the group nature discouraged antisocial behavior...if you didn't play well with others, you weren't welcomed to play with the others. Now, with interaction via USB cord, there is little penalty for antisocial behavior.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts).... there was also a zeitgeist of peace, love and tie-dye. There was an emphasis on communal sharing, ecology, and also science was the coolest....going to the moon and stuff!
Then came the 80's with Reagan and the "greed is good" meme and the insertion of fundamentalist religion into mainstream politics. So the zeitgeist is now "I got mine and need to protect it from a government that cannot do anything". Add the Bush years of out in the open criminality gone unpunished, sprinkle on "science is just an opinion" memes and voila! You have today's guns, god and more guns mentality.
You didn't grow up a gun nut because it wasn't OK to be one when you were growing up. Nowadays, it's a badge of honor... like ignoring science is.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)I grew up in the 50s and every kid practically in my home town had a gun...I got my first one for Christmas when I was 10...a Winchester pump 22....I was so proud of that gun....and guns were everywhere in a small town in Montana.
But violence was not...in the movies the hero shot the gun out of the hand of the bad buy and took him into custody...compare that now to present day...there is no shooting the gun out of his hand...you blow them away literally...and if you play the video game you get all the blood and guts spilling out like it was real...see that a thousand times and it WILL have some effect on a kid...
Not only that but the sheer volume of it is very different than it was...ask yourself how many times a day do you see a murder on TV?....back then it was seldom...today you can find some sort of extreme violence at any time with a click of the remote...and if that is the kind of stimulation you like you can stimulate yourself from morning to night if you like....and in the process desensitize yourself to it.
I think that is the biggest problem we have...how to ween people off of the violence as a stimulus.
MyNameGoesHere
(7,638 posts)A gun killed these people and a gun will kill more. Deflecting the problem to pretty ponies and faux movie violence won't do a thing. A roll of celluloid didn't kill 20 children. It was, and still is a gun, and I will not allow the truth to be deflected.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)The twisted mind that held that gun did...and that twisted mind was formed by that media from childhood.
And the truth of THAT is being deflected...probably because some have become so used to violence as entertainment that they don;t want to think the things they love might be at fault...just as the gun lovers don't want to think what they love might be at fault.
Don't think for a minute that pretend violence does no harm.
The root cause of violence is the mind not the guns...without a nut case to operate them the guns just sit there and do nothing.
MyNameGoesHere
(7,638 posts)No deflections allowed anymore. It was a gun.
world wide wally
(21,740 posts)
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)The pioneers killed the wildlife for survival and they "needed" guns to deal with the people whose land they were occupying. There is a tie in with the conquest of Mexico and of border territories of Canada. 54'40" or fight! Remember the Alamo!! That kind of stuff.
The Wild West never really ended in this country.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)The fantasy wild west of Hollywood and gun-culture also never really EXISTED.
RC
(25,592 posts)"Doc" Holliday, and the Shootout at the O.K. Corral, never really EXISTED? Who knew?
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)C'mon! Of course they did. But it ain't a movie (did ya miss the Hollywood reference?). And things in real time and history don't ever go like the "legend". I doubt anyone living today would want to go back there and live that 19th century frontier town life.
Also... Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Judge Roy Bean, Wyatt Earp, "Doc" Holliday, and the Shootout at the O.K. Corral....is not the norm. They were extraordinary people in extraordinary situations.
Jesus 
CanonRay
(14,101 posts)AAO
(3,300 posts)
humbled_opinion
(4,423 posts)for his freeper handle...
oldbanjo
(690 posts)That has to be mental illness.
geomon666
(7,512 posts)We are not responsible enough as a society to handle them.
indepat
(20,899 posts)fiber of the national soul. 
They_Live
(3,231 posts)of batshit crazy...everywhere.
Oh yeah, and what's in our food? Water? Air? We don't need to know.
pasto76
(1,589 posts)few of us have real control in our lives. we typically are in debt to our ears, in jobs that suck with no better future in sight.
At least the half of americans (roughly) who voted for romney or support assclowns like these are simply big babies. Man babies. Their ideology hasnt changed since early teens because they've barely left the farm or twon in which they were born. They havent gone and experienced anything that really rocked them to the core. In 9th grade, I described myself as "old guard". funny how many of us dont even know what the labels we give ourselves mean. But it sounded cool.
when people act like clowns on jersey shore dont laugh at them. They are the problem. It has become societal norm to be like the people on TV.
We arent aggressive enough. Aggression doesnt sit idly by and let nothing change after these massacres. We as a country are mostly apathetic. the last ten years and the apathy for the plight of my soldiers leaves few other conclusions. Aggressive? No way. if you get even forceful in most workplace settings you are labeled a nutjob. As a country we're really just a bunch of chickenshits.
sheshe2
(83,746 posts)O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck et all.....many of their guests too.We have Coulter, Huckabee and so many more. They spew fear, hate and loathing.
Then there is Rush pouring out crap on the airways.
Lest we forget we also have the religious right.Enough said!
These people are the triggers!
YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)I think there is an explosive combination between mental health and the easy availability to buy guns. It's not either or .. anyone who plans to go into a public area and take out as many people as possible, has a mental problem .. no doubt. What is interesting is most of these shootings are undertaken by white males .. angry white males. Have you ever heard of a woman going into a shopping mall and start firing at the crowd? Nope. So this is a white male thing wouldn't you say? Perhaps white males see their dominance in society shrinking and this is their only way to prove their machismo, their last hurrah so to speak. It's a systemic problem that has to be nipped in the bud.
EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION !!
Eugene
(61,872 posts)Source: Associated Press
By By RICK CALLAHAN Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS December 16, 2012 (AP)
A northern Indiana police chief said Sunday he believes a man arrested after allegedly threatening to "kill as many people as he could" at a school was just bluffing when he made the ominous remark during a heated argument with his wife.
Interim Cedar Lake Police Chief Jerry Smith said Von I. Meyer, 60, was arguing early Friday morning with his wife and initially threatened to set her on fire while she was sleeping at their home.
Meyer, who was arrested Saturday on seven felony charges, then told his wife he would kill her "at the school" and "would kill as many people as he could before police could stop him police," Smith said.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Although police found 47 guns and ammunition hidden throughout Meyer's two-story home after they arrested him, Smith said most of those weapons were antique collector guns and he believes Meyer was not serious about his school threat.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ind-man-47-guns-arrested-school-threat-17991470
AllyCat
(16,177 posts)Why do we scrap all our freedoms in the airport to travel, but don't want to do anything that might be perceived as a threat to our freedom to own a stockpile of guns meant to kill human beings?
samsingh
(17,595 posts)i hope the NRA doesn't demand this monster gets his guns back.
AllyCat
(16,177 posts)We have wellness visits every year with our docs. Why not have mental wellness visits too? Screenings and then guidance towards additional resources, evaluations, and treatment? Of course, that would mean the corporate insurance racket would need to stop capping mental health coverage differently than the rest of health care. We need to fund treatment and train NNPs, PAs, and other health professionals in specialties related to mental health. Everyone could be assessed. It would take away quite a bit of stigma too if all were having regular check-ups. Our minds are part of our bodies. It doesn't make sense to treat mental health care separately.
northoftheborder
(7,572 posts)They are trying to recover the data, and are getting info from his service providers. Perhaps that will give some insight into his mental state.
skeewee08
(1,983 posts)WTH is going on 47 guns please keep him locked up..
Maineman
(854 posts)Maineman
(854 posts)Computer games are used to teach math and other subjects. Videos are used to illustrate how to do math and other skills. Children learn how to do math from watching videos and playing computer games. Are we to believe that violent computer games, videos, and movies do not teach violence? Are we to believe that children decide to learn math from computer games, but turn off learning when the game involves shooting people? Are we to believe that children and young adults with mental health problems make this type of distinction? In other words, are we fools and idots? Will we continue to brainlessly accept the marketing spin of video and computer game profiteers when they assure us that violent games and videos do not affect behavior?
Oh, you say the people involved have a right to earn a living? Our Constitution is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not life, liberty, and the pursuit of money. Violence training materials are certainly as big a public nuisance as organized crime. Stop violence education now!
Possession of movies, videos, and computer games that teach, illustrate, or depict gun violence should be banned. Possession of such should be totally illegal including existing products. In 1933, and for forty years thereafter, personal possession of gold was banned, and citizens were required to trade it in, especially gold coins. We can certainly do the same with violence training materials.
