Tuesday's Number: $696,038

Tuesday is the day my local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, publishes bizX, the weekly business section. In addition to special features, tips from stock experts, budgeting advice and the like, we get the judgment and bankruptcy listings.

As I did for much of last year, I will be tracking health care related filings. I include anything that is clearly a debt owed to a hospital, nursing home, physician or physician group, medical supplier, and so on; I do not include filings by insurance companies, many of which are so diversified it would not be a fair assumption that the filing is related to medical care or health insurance. 

This week, twenty-six people were listed with new judgments totaling $690,291 to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers.  

This week, one person was listed as having satisfied a judgment totaling $5,747 to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers.  

Again this week, there were no health-care related bankruptcies listed; again this week, none of the accounts was for less than $5000.

Shots Fired: Gun Control and Headaches

From around the web and around the neighborhood, here are some recent comments on guns, gun control, and related topics.

First up: Former President Bill Clinton, who spoke to a group of Dems about the dangers of 'misunderestimating' the pro-gun folks (and yes, a shout out to Dubya for that turn of phrase).

Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them.  A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things (gun controls). I know, because I come from this world.

 He also told them about the kind of pressure the NRA can bring to bear on an elected official, and pointed out that the 'different world' pro-gun folks live has multiple causes:

A lot of these people...all they've got is their hunting and their fishing. Or they're living in a place where they don't have much police presence. Or they've been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all.

Does that sound familiar?  I was more than a little bit reminded of then-candidate Obama's comments about angry Rust Belt voters, back in 2008:

They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Locally, The Post-Standard, my hometown newspaper, hosted an on-line chat with Onondaga County District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick, who happens to be a hunting Republican. I'm not generally a huge fan of our DA, but he does have a quick and sometimes sarcastic wit that I appreciate. 

When asked a question about "hammers, clubs and other blunt objects" that kill more people than rifles do, here's how he responded:

Pharmacies kill 10,000 people a year, but we shouldn't ban therapeutic drugs.  Assault weapons account for a very small percentage of homicides in New York state but they appear to be the gun of choice for lunatics attacking our schoolchildren.  I'd like to give Bambi and third-graders at least a fighting chance.

Fitz had another good answer to a question from someone who wondered how people were supposed to defend themselves "when a team of burglars comes after them" if we were to limit the number of rounds of ammunition:

I would expect you to use  every lawful means at your disposal to protect yourself, including dialing 911. I suspect that the burglars may flee after you fire your first shot. Wouldn't you hate to unload an AK-47 on some people at your doorstep and find out later they were Jehovah's Witnesses?

Then there's this, from Veronique Pozner, the mom of Sandy Hook victim Noah Pozner, on the culpability of Adam Lanza's mother:

I think he had a mother who at best was blind; at worst aided and abetted him. Maybe she wanted to compensate for his feeling of inadequacy by letting him handle weapons of mass carnage and taking him to shooting ranges. I think there was gross irresponsibility, and I'd like to think that maybe she was just as unwell as he was, to have allowed someone as obviously compromised as he was to have access.

I'm surprised that more people haven't expressed that sentiment out loud.

And last, NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke at a conference at Johns Hopkins on gun control plans being put forth by a bipartisan group of mayors. Regarding limited funding available for scientific study on gun violence data, Bloomberg offered this:

Today, because of congressional restrictions, CDC funding for firearms injury research totals $100,000 out of an annual budget of nearly $6 billion.  The National Institutes of Health is estimated to spend less than $1 million on firearms injury research - out of an annual budget of $31 billion.  To put that in perspective, NIH spends $21 million annually researching headaches.  But it spends less than $1 million on all the gun deaths that happen every year.  If that doesn't give you a headache, it should.

Yes - it should give us a headache, indeed.

Tuesday's Number: $462,467

Tuesday is the day my local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, publishes bizX, the weekly business section. In addition to special features, tips from stock experts, budgeting advice and the like, we get the judgment and bankruptcy listings. 

As I did for much of last year, I will be tracking health care related filings. I include anything that is clearly a debt owed to a hospital, nursing home, physician or physician group, medical supplier, and so on; I do not include filings by insurance companies, many of which are so diversified it would not be a fair assumption that the filing is related to medical care or health insurance. 

This week, eleven people were listed with new judgments totaling $438,969 to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers.  

This week, two people were listed as having satisfied judgments totaling $23,498 to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers.  

Again this week, there were no health-care related bankruptcies listed.  

None of the thirteen accounts was for less than $5,000.

Gregory Alexander Drummond '51

The obituary below appeared in the Spring 2007 Hamilton College Alumni Review.  I read it every now and then, especially on this day, January 20th.  

Gregory Alexander Drummond '51, whose career took him from office manager to social studies teacher, grew up in Oneida, NY, where he was born on February 19, 1929. A son of Robert W.'12, business executive and trustee of the College, and Olive Tryon Drummond, he was nephew of Richard C.S., Class of 1901, Nelson L., 1902, and Alexander M. Drummond, 1906, as well as W. Gregory Tryon '24. Drummond, who was graduated from Sherrill High School, took courses at Oberlin College for three years before transferring to Hamilton in 1948 as a junior.The move back to his home area was prompted by reasons familial and financial following his father's death.

Greg Drummond, who had his heart set on career in journalism, became an enthusiastic and aggressive reporter for The Spectator. Despite weak eyesight and occasional ill health, he brought keen and inquisitive mind and impressive energy to his quest for news. He seemed to be everywhere on campus at once and put in long hours as associate editor working on the paper in the basement of Root Hall. Among his most treasured memories in later life were the interviews he conducted with such visiting celebrities as Eleanor Roosevelt and Norman Thomas. A member of Alpha Delta Phi and elected to the journalism honorary Pi Delta Epsilon, he received his diploma in 1951.

Rather than journalism, however, Greg found himself working for Goodyear Tire Rubber Co. as an office manager for its retail stores in various upstate New York locations. In those years, he met his future wife, Shirley R. Hobbs, an elementary school teacher. They were married on August 21, 1954, in Schenectady. After dozen years with Goodyear and with three children, he decided at the age of 34 to"retread" himself as teacher. Working for Goodyear in Providence, RI, at the time, he left the company in 1963 to pursue graduate study in education at Rhode Island College.The following year, he returned to central New York and began teaching high school social studies and especially American history at Jordan-Elbridge Central School, west of Syracuse.

Greg Drummond, who obtained his M.A.degree in teaching from Rhode Island College in 1967, continued as faculty member at Jordan-Elbridge for 22 years. He found those years most satisfying and never developed what he called "the TGIF syndrome." During his tenure he was the faculty advisor to several student groups, including the yearbook staff, and regularly chaperoned dances "where he was known to jitterbug with anyone who could keep up with him." Chosen once as Teacher of the Year by his students, he retired in 1986.

Residing in Jordan and long active in the community, Drummond held volunteer and leadership roles in numerous organizations from the Cub Scouts and Little League to the village planning and zoning boards, and the Jordan Community Council, which he served for many years as president. Also a golfer and former secretary of the Jordan Golf League, he finally realized his youthful journalistic ambition by writing and editing the school district's newsletter and writing columns for the local newspaper. In recognition of his services to the community, which included helping to bring medical professionals to the area and efforts to save the school district's Head Start program, he was named, along with his wife,Citizen of the Year in 2000 by the Greater Elbridge Chamber of Commerce. He was also inducted in 2006 into the Central School's Hall of Fame.

Gregory A. Drummond, devoted alumnus, was still residing in Jordan when he died on January 20, 2007. In addition to his wife of 52 years, he is survived by two sons, Peter G. '79 and Andrew B. Drummond; daughter, Susan H. Drummond; and seven grandchildren and his sister.

The Difference Between Guns and Bathtubs

If you've been paying attention to the gun control conversation of late, I'm sure you've seen or heard any number of entertaining but completely meaningless snippets like these:

• Baseball bats kill people, why don't we ban those?
• More people drown in their bathtubs every year than are murdered, but you don't see us banning bathtubs.
• Cars kill more people than guns do. When are they going to ban cars?
• We might as well take away scissors, box cutters, and pencils because they can be used to kill people too.

Frankly, I think these comments say more about the people making them than anything else. They certainly are not adding to the conversation; rather, they detract from the legitimate debate of whether more gun laws are necessary.

Regardless of where you stand on gun control, there's a very clear distinction between cars, scissors, pencils and a whole host of objects that could be used to harm or kill someone, and guns of any kind.

Let's take a look at some definitions:

Automobile (noun): a passenger vehicle designed for operating on ordinary roads and typically having four wheels and a gasoline or diesel powered internal combustion engine.

Bathtub (noun): a tub to bathe in, especially one that is a permanent fixture in a bathroom.

Box cutter (noun): a small cutting tool consisting of a retractable razor blade in a metal or plastic holder, designed for opening cardboard cartons.

Firearm (noun): a small arms weapon, as a rifle or pistol, from which a projectile is fired by gunpowder.

Handgun (noun): any firearm that can be held and fired with one hand; a revolver or pistol.  

Pencil (noun): a slender tube of wood, metal, plastic, etc., containing a core or shaft of graphite, a solid coloring material or the like, used for writing or drawing.

Rifle (noun): a shoulder firearm with spiral grooves cut in the inner surface of the gun barrel to give the bullet a rotary motion and thus a more precise trajectory.

Scissors (noun): a cutting instrument for paper, cloth, etc. consisting of two blades, each having a ring-shaped handle, that are so pivoted together that their sharp edges work one against the other (often used with 'pair of'). 

Shotgun (noun): a smooth bore gun for firing small shot to kill birds and small quadrupeds, though often used with buckshot to kill larger animals. 

Weapon (noun): any instrument or device for use in attack or defense in combat, fighting or war, as a sword, rifle, or cannon. 

Have you figured out the difference?

Firearms, handguns, rifles, shotguns, weapons: when used as designed either from an attack position or from a defensive position, are intended to inflict real or simulated harm. Hunting, target practice, skeet shooting, taking out a rival, assassinating a civil rights leader, or yes, killing children in a school are all actions from the 'attack' side of the design.  Firing a warning shot into the air to break up an unruly mob, brandishing a weapon to scare aware a would-be robber, or actually shooting a person you believe poses a threat, are actions from the 'defense' side of the design.

The other objects, when used as designed, are not weapons. Period.

Tuesday's Number: $657,698

Tuesday is the day my local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, publishes bizX, the weekly business section. In addition to special features, tips from stock experts, budgeting advice and the like, we get the judgment and bankruptcy listings.

As I did for much of last year, I will be tracking health care related filings. I include anything that is clearly a debt owed to a hospital, nursing home, physician or physician group, medical supplier, and so on; I do not include filings by insurance companies, many of which are so diversified it would not be a fair assumption that the filing is related to medical care or health insurance.

This week, twenty people were listed with new judgments totaling $449,269 to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers.

This week, three people were listed as having satisfied judgments totaling $208,429 to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers.

Again this week, there were no health-care related bankruptcies listed.  

Dollar amounts crept back up; none of the twenty-three accounts was for less than $5,000 so we'll have to wait to find out if last week's low dollar filings signify a trend of any kind.

The Best Way to Stop a Bad Guy...

By now, I'm sure you've all heard the oft quoted, or almost quoted statement by NRA Executive Director Wayne LaPierre after the Sandy Hook shooting, where he told us something like "the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Folks on the pro-gun side have been vigorously pointing out lots of situations where the media have been ignoring stories where that happens -- someone, either an off-duty cop or just a regular Joe with a gun, is able to prevent or at least minimize a bad situation by stopping the perpetrator before things get really out of hand.  I don't know that these incidents get completely ignored, they're just not getting the same 24/7 coverage that would certainly have occurred had the shooter not been stopped.

However, sometimes the best defense against a bad guy with a gun is actually not a good guy with a gun.  Here are two examples.

In California, at the Taft Union High School, a teacher stood his ground against a 16 year old gunman, allowing other students to escape. According to ABC News,

Science teacher Ryan Heber calmly confronted the teenager after he shot and critically wounded a classmate, whom he claimed to authorities had bullied him for more than year at Taft Union High School.

Closer to home, 50 year old Syracuse resident Anthony Jones is going to prison for a 14 year to life sentence.  Jones, who pleaded guilty to local charges, admitted he was a persistent felon, having some prior convictions out of town back in the 1990's.  What got him in trouble here was a couple of bad acts he committed back in November of 2011.  A few days after Thanksgiving, Jones allegedly robbed two people walking on the North Side around one in the morning; later,  according to this report, he attempted to rob a local head shop:

He was accused of walking into the Twisted Headz store on North Salina Street about an hour later and trying to rob the employees at gunpoint. Authorities said one of the employees grabbed a knife and chased Jones from the store.

Now, clearly these two incidents could have had very different (and potentially tragic) outcomes.  But it just goes to show you that you don't need to fight fire with fire.  Sometimes you can stop a bad guy with a gun using words, and sometimes you can bring a knife to a gun fight and win.

Justice Delayed



Bill Robles/REUTERS

.

After gut-wrenching testimony in a Colorado courtroom, a judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence for accused killer James Holmes to face trial on all 166 felony counts against him.

Holmes, you remember, is allegedly and undoubtedly the shooter at the midnight premiere of 'The Dark Knight Rises', the latest in the Batman franchise. Holmes, who had booby-trapped his apartment, went to the multiplex, where during his rampage, he killed twelve, and shot another 58. In the ensuing confusion, a dozen others were injured.

According to new reports, on one of the 911 calls played in court, 30 shots were heard - more than one per second. At least one police officer broke down on the stand when talking about finding a six year old girl dead in the theater. 

We also learned, according to this report:

Prosecution witnesses also testified that Holmes started assembling an arsenal in early May and by July 6 had two semi-automatic pistols, a shotgun, a semi-automatic rifle, 6,200 rounds of ammunition and high-capacity magazines that allow a shooter to fire more rounds without stopping to reload.

In late June he began equipping himself with a helmet, gas mask and body armor, the witnesses said.

In early July, they testified, he began buying fuses, gunpowder, chemicals and electronics to booby-trap his apartment in hopes of triggering an explosion and fire to divert police from the theater. The bombs never went off.

Also in early July, he took some interior and exterior photos of the theater, witnesses said.

Holmes' attorneys said he was not ready to enter a plea today, and the judge granted a delay; families of the victims - the dead and the wounded - will have to wait until March to find out what happens next.  It's assumed that there will be an insanity defense. One Colorado attorney suggested:

“The defense team has nowhere else to go, given the obvious premeditation and overwhelming evidence against Holmes,” Craig Silverman, a former Denver prosecutor now in private practice as a trial attorney, told Reuters.

I disagree - they do have somewhere else to go. 

It's called a guilty plea. It's called having your client accept responsibility for what was done. 

It's called doing the right thing.

 

Shovel-Ready: People Yes, Businesses No?

There's a funny juxtaposition of opinions on snow removal here in central New York, illustrated by a couple of recent news stories.

Start with this one, out of Oswego, on the shore of Lake Ontario.  The 'Onion' of She Made Him Eat Onions, the mnemonic I learned as a child to remember the names of the Great Lakes, Ontario is a lake effect snow machine, and Oswego is typically buried under between 140 -150 inches of snow each winter.  Most people who live there are familiar with what that means -- once winter starts, there will be snow on the sidewalk, and it needs to be cleared so that people can safely walk to work, stores, churches, schools, their neighbor's house, or wherever they want to go. And don't forget the population of folks who use wheelchairs, scooters, and the like to get around -- they're even more dependent on having safe passage in the snow.

Oswego's been experiencing some growth of late, particularly on the Route 104 corridor. If you're familiar with Syracuse, you're familiar with Erie Boulevard - strip development after strip development.  That's the new reality on parts of Route 104. Apparently the new development brought with it new sidewalks, which the businesses have not kept clear.  Equally apparently, there is some confusion as to who is legally obligated to clear the sidewalks. 

Enter the Oswego City Code Enforcement office, with the information that it's not the city, nor the tenant, but the property owner who has the responsibility.  The property owner in many cases for the unshoveled stretches along Route 104 is a real estate management company in Dewitt, a Syracuse suburb.  They'll send someone out to clean up the snow, according to the news report. 

But here's a question for you: if you're a major corporation, like Walmart, or a New York based family company like PriceChopper, do you really need to know who is legally obligated to clear the snow?  Wouldn't you just do it, rather than allow your customers to be at risk? Wouldn't you just shovel the sidewalk?

And if it's not a sidewalk that you can shovel, because say, the people who plow your parking lot or clear the sidewalk at your front door are filling it up with snow, wouldn't you say something? Ask them to clear it, or at the least not fill it up with snow? Call the landlord and ask them where the heck they are? Are these businesses really helpless on this?

That 'just do it' mentality is illustrated beautifully here in one Syracuse neighborhood, on the Near West Side.  There have been a couple of stories about this group, the Westside Residents Coalition, and their efforts at clearing snow from their neighborhood sidewalks. The group meets on Saturday mornings at a local church, and plan their attack.  Grocery stores, the areas around Centro bus shelters and the like are fair game for the volunteers. 

Instead of waiting around for the wheels of justice to plow through red tape, the community volunteers used some grant money to get the tools needed to get the job done. Shovels, vests, maybe some food for the help, and they're good to go.

Legally, the property owners are obligated to clear the sidewalks in Syracuse too, just like in Oswego.  And we could wait for them, I suppose.  We also could wait for the spring thaw to solve the problem. Or, we could rely on the people who are staring at the snow to handle it.

Kudos to the Westside Residents Coalition volunteers, who are making their neighborhood better one shovelful of snow at a time.  And a big fat snowball in the direction of the businesses in the strip developments along Route 104 in Oswego, who waited to figure out who was 'obligated' to clear the snow, instead of just taking accountability and getting it done.  

Tuesday's Number: $180,476

Tuesday is the day my local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, publishes bizX, the weekly business section. In addition to special features, tips from stock experts, budgeting advice and the like, we get the judgment and bankruptcy listings.

As I did for much of last year, I will be tracking health care related filings. I include anything that is clearly a debt owed to a hospital, nursing home, physician or physician group, medical supplier, and so on; I do not include filings by insurance companies, many of which are so diversified it would not be a fair assumption that the filing is related to medical care or health insurance.

This week, sixteen people were listed with new judgments totaling $180,476 to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers.

There were no listings in the Judgments Satisfied or Bankruptcy sections.  

What I find interesting about this Tuesday's Number is the low dollar amounts being filed by one of the local hospitals. Of the sixteen judgments listed, 10 were from one hospital for under $5,000; six were for less than $3,000. 

Is this a sign of a more aggressive policy towards collections, a refusal to write off small dollar debts? Is it indicative of the economic status of the patients served by this hospital, or of the hospital itself? Or just an anomaly? 

One More Stab at Having a Gun Conversation

I've been doing a lot of reading on guns lately. I have several friends who are anti-gun; I also have friends, and most importantly, a nephew in the Navy, who are on the opposite end of the spectrum.  I have teacher friends who don't want guns in schools, and parent friends who do want a gun available if needed. I have friends who hunt and friends who don't. I have friends who own guns and (I think) more friends who don't.  Both side are posting fast and furiously, pardon the expression, in attempts to sway opinion on guns in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting.

I don't think I've ever seen my nephew more passionate about a subject. Because I love him dearly, and because I respect his opinion, I'm trying to understand where he's coming from. I'm not sure we'll ever agree on guns - but I'm not sure we have to. I do want us to be able to peacefully co-exist, which is what I think most people want. I'm still crazy enough to think there's common ground out there on most of the big ugly issues,  including guns, if we can get past all of the rhetoric and actually listen to each other.

So I've been trying to listen, and trying to see the pro-gun side of things. I hope he's trying to understand where I come from too. Here's where I landed on some of the more popular topics I've seen lately.

There should be no limits on guns, period. What I think I understand is that there shouldn't be any limits on the type of weapons, the number that can be owned or purchased, the number of rounds of ammunition that can be fired or purchased, or how the guns are equipped (barrel shrouds, flash suppressors, silencers, and so on). Limiting the guns that a law-abiding citizen can own only makes it more likely that a criminal will end up being the only one who has guns.  And if we limit or take away one type of gun, it's just a matter of time before Uncle Sam will take away all the guns, leaving the population defenseless in the face of a tyrannical government or a person with bad intentions.

How do I respond to that? The other day, I posted a video of Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn performing his classic, If I had a Rocket Launcher , with this statement:

Sure, I believe in the right to keep and bear arms. But there are limits, right?

I didn't get a whole lot of action on that one, I think because people really like the song and so would 'like' the post for that reason but missed my point: As a private citizen it would be absurd for me to own a rocket launcher, or an IED, or a cannon, or a nuclear missile, or an assault weapon or any number of other clearly 'not intended for personal use' weapons to create a kill zone around my house to protect me and my loved ones. Yes, 'kill zone' is a term I've seen in several articles and blog posts lately, and I have to say it makes me uncomfortable.

Now, I don't think anyone believes I should have a rocket launcher and I haven't seen anyone advocating for this type of weapon being in private hands. But when you go the 'no limits' route, that means no limits, right? And if  I can have one of these, then the bad guy down the road can have one, and before you know it we'll be having nuclear shootouts at the corner market. And while it's extreme to think that would ever happen, that's apparently what's happened with other weapons, such as the kind used at Sandy Hook and similar shootings. Because we allow good guys to have them, bad guys have them too.

My gut response to this is simple: I think there are reasonable limits that we can all be comfortable with, and still allow people to own guns for sport, hunting, and yes, for protection.

You don't even know the definition of an assault weapon. That is an absolutely correct statement. Most people don't know the clinical definition. I've seen more than one lately, similar but with varying degrees of specificity, so I'm not sure the experts even know what the definition is. To me, it's kind of like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's comment on pornography:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it...

Have I ever seen one, up close and personal?  Nope. Have I seen what I think qualifies as one in movies and on the news?  Yep.  Have I seen reports of shootings that used a 'so-called' assault weapon? Yep.  And yet, I don't recall ever feeling compelled to pull out a gun pictorial to make sure people called it by the correct term. The right name in most of these cases is 'the gun that an evil sick bastard just used to kill a bunch of innocent people.' Isn't that sufficient? 

Do we really want to argue over the semantics of it?

Finally, on this subject, there's this interesting fact, from an article I found in my research:

These guns are not the weapon of choice for this nation’s criminals or killers. Indeed, the FBI found that in 2010, the last year for which data is available, more people were beaten to death than killed with all long guns including these so-called assault weapons.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that it would take more than 10 minutes or so -- the amount of time it took at Sandy Hook -- to beat 20 children and six adults to death.

We had an assault weapons ban for 10 years and it didn't go any good.  That's also a correct statement, because the ban was doomed to fail from the start. As with pretty much all legislation ever dreamed up by either side, we get ourselves so strangled up in nonsense that we end up with a law so watered down or so ridiculous that it's pretty much worthless.

Take the ban that everyone on the pro-gun side says didn't work, and everyone on the more gun control side says needs to be resurrected. From an article  in the Washington Post on the history of gun control regulations:

The law defined “assault weapon” narrowly, outlawing the sale of 19 brands of semiautomatic firearms, including certain guns built on the AR-15 design, which is the civilian version of the military’s M-16. To be banned, a gun had to have two or more military-style features, such as a pistol grip, a flash suppressor or a bayonet mount. Manufacturers found workarounds, modifying their designs to comply with the law.  “There were so many ways around the ban that it wasn’t really effective,” said John W. Magaw, who ran the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) during that time.

Almost before the ink was dry, gun manufacturers were working to skirt the language, removing a feature or two so that the gun no longer met the rules.  Now - before you go ballistic on me, that's what's supposed to happen in our political system. Isn't that why businesses, trade associations, unions, and the like spend so much money lobbying?

Do I wish the gun manufacturers didn't work so hard to get around the intent of the law, which was to protect people from being killed by a maniac wielding one of these guns? Yes, of course. But I do not fault them for making a legal product and selling it to people legally.

Limiting the number of shots that can be fired without reloading would make the world more dangerous, not safer. This one comes down to one question -- "Who is holding the gun?"

If it's a bad guy, then you want him to have to take the time to reload, because it means he can't kill as many people. If it's the good guy, you don't want him to have to reload, because that takes away from his opportunity to take out the bad guy.  Plus, "good guys miss sometimes" as I read, and so more bullets without reloading is a good thing. 

Now, if  no one was holding the weapon that can shoot a whole bunch of times without having to be reloaded, we wouldn't have to worry about reloading, would we?

Well, if you ban the manufacturing of these guns, people will just make their own. I thought this was ridiculous; to find out, I did a search for "how to make a plastic assault rifle" and found 31,900,000 results. Many of them are news stories and such, but a significant number of them are little instruction manuals, many with videos.  So sure, it's possible that people would make their own. 

It's harder to find out how many times one of these home-made so-called assault weapons was used in a crime, or more particularly in a mass shooting.  I couldn't readily find a statistic, using a variety of search terms.

My guess is, if you put a bunch of bad guys in a room with some PVC pipe and whatnot, they'd end up hitting each other over the head with it long before the made a weapon out of it.

The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. There's some truth to this, I agree.  Once the bad guy has the gun, and has the intent to use it, there isn't really much that can happen to keep him (or her) from doing what they set out to, except someone else who can take them out.  Which is why we arm the police.  On the other hand, since the police can't be everywhere at once, we need to have other armed people at schools. Or so we're told.

My question: Is it just at schools, or is it everywhere?  Is it also movie theaters, and shopping malls, and WalMarts, and bars, and grocery stores, and churches, and bus terminals, and fast food restaurants, and everywhere groups of people gather? Because if you follow the logic from the pro-gun side, people choose schools and, apparently, only those particular movie theaters in a multiplex that say 'No Guns Allowed', because they know they won't meet any resistance.

Personally, I think the people who do this kind of thing choose the places they do for maximum exposure, not for minimum resistance. I don't think they spend a lot of time scouting the signage. Shooting one person at a Walmart, while a much more frequent occurrence than a mass shooting is simply much less impactful than shooting up a school or a midnight movie. And that's why we don't hear about it.

But it's the media's fault. It's true that the media spends an inordinate amount of time on tragedies of all kinds - we even get special music for the stories, so if you're not already glued to the TV, you can come running when you hear the somber tones.

Here's a perfect example: One of my local media outlets here in Syracuse sent the lead anchor to Newtown.  I have no idea why -- we already had wall to wall coverage by all of the networks. But I had to chuckle when, the same night I saw my guy standing in front of a soccer field on the 6PM news, I saw a local anchor from a Chicago affiliate of a different network standing in front of the same soccer field on their 10PM news.  It's ridiculous.

And I also agree with the folks who posted on Facebook and Twitter that we need to commit to memory the names of the victims and never again mention the name of the shooter.  That's a lofty goal, and admirable, but we know that's not going to happen. How many of the Sandy Hook victims can you name?

It's not just the media, it's the video games and movies. If you're my age or a little older, I'm sure you remember how aggravated parents were with all wildly gyrating rock and roll stars on television that were going to drive all us impressionable girls to do....whatever.  And you surely remember that marijuana would lead to harder drugs. And that reading Playboy or Hustler would cause boys to become rapists or something (even though they got the magazines from their dads).

We laughed at all of that back then, so why isn't everyone laughing now when the NRA blames Quentin Tarantino movies and violent video games?   We've always had violence in the movies, so why now start blaming the entertainment industry? Is it because the violence is more gratuitous? More realistic? Done using the same type of gun that's being used in mass killings?

Seems it was not so long ago that when people suggested that violent cartoons, movies and video games were bad, pro-gun folks would talk about Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner and snidely ask if we should ban safes and anvils. And of course cars, and pens, and broken beer bottles, and pool cues and baseball bats and on and on down the line of absurdity.

Whatever the reasons the NRA chose to raise this issue now, to suggest that the problem is an abuse of the First Amendment, not the Second, seems a little disingenuous. The question is though, what specifically should be done?  What rights do they feel everyone else needs to give up to make our movies and video games less 'pornographic' as Wayne LaPierre said, and safer for our children and society?

People with mental health issues shouldn't be able to own guns. Agree again. Except where do you draw the line?  Anxiety? Depression? OCD? ADHD? Medicated, or not medicated? Seeing a therapist, or not? Would the slightest hint of a behavioral issue, current or prior, preclude someone from owning a gun? If yes, I can think of several gun owners I know who would be disqualified.

Would current gun owners be willing to undergo a mental exam of some sort every year, at their own expense, to certify they're mentally fit for gun ownership?

And don't forget, the Newtown killer's mother was a legal gun owner; she also happened to have a son with 'issues'. So, would all current gun owners be willing to have their family mental health history documented, and tested and affirmed regularly (again, at their own expense), and sacrifice their right to own guns if they had a child or spouse with a current or prior mental health issue? 

We need more people with concealed carry permits, and we need each state to honor all other state's concealed carry permits.  This is a tough one, I admit. Picture a person leaving their home in Virginia and heading to New York to visit family. You've got Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York concealed carry laws to worry about, and I don't think we post the rules on the Welcome signs, can't remember. You either take your chances or you have to learn the laws and do whatever's necessary to be compliant with them along the way. Seems silly, I agree. 

So there are two options: a national concealed carry law, which means that everyone who wanted a permit for CCW would have to meet the same requirements and would be equally vetted and deemed a responsible citizen who is not a threat. The other option is, we trust that if your state says you're OK, my state should assume you're OK, even though each state's 'gun sensibility' may be very different. 

Would pro-gun folks agree to a national law on this, even if more restrictive than their current state law? If yes, then I see that as progress. If no, then I see it as more of the same that we've been hearing forever, that the whole solution lies somewhere else.

People are demonizing legitimate gun owners. The people who are being demonized are not the people who hunt or shoot at targets, like my friends and my nephew.  I think people are demonizing the kind of weapons that allow 20 little children to be murdered in about 10 minutes, and I think people are demonizing the bastards that use these weapons to commit that kind of heinous, senseless, atrocious act. And I think there's a certain amount of demonizing aimed at Wayne LaPierre, the executive director of the NRA.

So where do we go from here? Pro-gun people simply saying 'don't touch my guns', 'guns don't kill people, people kill people', or, now, 'guns don't kill people, video games kill people' doesn't help the conversation any more than anti-gun people saying all guns are bad.  I am NOT one of those people. I respect your right to have guns.

But so far, it seems like everything that's been suggested has been about stopping him and others like him only after they have committed to killing as many people as they can before taking their own lives, or being killed in the process.

To me, that's too late.

The NRA and others have put several ideas on the table, pointed at several contributing factors leading to mass shootings like the one at Sandy Hook, or Aurora, or Virginia Tech, or Fort Hood, or Columbine, and so on. So now, let's talk about those ideas -- a conversation, not a shouting match.  A conversation geared towards solving the problem, not simply perpetuating the status quo.

Tuesday's Number: $498,235

Tuesday is the day my local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, publishes bizX, the weekly business section.  In addition to special features, tips from stock experts, budgeting advice and the like, we get the judgment and bankruptcy listings.

As I did for much of last year, I will be tracking health care related filings. I include anything that is clearly a debt owed to a hospital, nursing home, physician or physician group, medical supplier, and so on; I do not include filings by insurance companies, many of which are so diversified it would not be a fair assumption that the filing is related to medical care or health insurance.

This week, eleven people were listed with new judgments totaling $491,672 to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers.

This week, one person was listed as having satisfied a judgment totaling $6,563 to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers.