This was posted by the same newspaper that published the names and addresses of registered owners.
http://www.lohud.com/article/20121220/COLUMNIST08/312200060/Phil-Reisman-Mother-s-kids-use-guns-not-iPhones?nclick_check=1--------------
Nicole Katz is a mother and one of 4.3 million Americans who pay annual dues to the National Rifle Association.
She owns two shotguns — one for home protection and the other to defend her place of business.
Each of her three daughters — ages 9, 11 and 15 — has been given gun-safety training. They have gone skeet shooting together. Target practice is fun for the whole Katz family.
However, there are no video games in Katz’s Yorktown home. The kids are not allowed to have televisions in their bedrooms. Or computers.
The middle daughter was denied an iPhone, something she badly wanted for Hanukkah.
“I’m not going to get my kids unlimited Internet access all day long, whenever they want,” Katz said the other day. “I just don’t think it’s a good thing.”
By any modern definition, Katz is a strict, no-nonsense mom.
But she does not believe in stricter gun laws. The hue and cry for legislative action in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings does not shake her resolve — even though the tragedy hit close to home.
Nearly a decade ago, she and her husband, Assemblyman Steve Katz, planned to move to Newtown, Conn.
“We had an accepted offer on a house that we loved and were about to sign off on the paperwork,” she recalled. “I changed my mind at the last minute because it would’ve added a lot of time to my commute.”
It was a fateful decision. Had they made the move, Katz said, “my kids would’ve been in the school on Friday.”
Nonetheless, gun ownership, Katz believes, is a sacred constitutional right.
“It’s unfortunate that when a horrendous tragedy like this happens, people tend to act out of emotion instead of thoughtfully considering all the facts,” she said. “It’s easy to blame guns, but that doesn’t address the root cause of the problem.”
She offered the oft-repeated argument that guns don’t kill people, people kill people — and most of the rampage killers are people with mental illnesses.
“Violence has to be treated holistically,” she said. “In the past 20 years, what we’ve seen with these mass shootings is a common thread — they’re all young male loners who were anti-social, disengaged from society. They kept to themselves. Very often, they spent hours alone in their rooms, playing violent video games.”
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These young males, she suggested, were stunted, angry and coiled to kill. What’s needed, she said, is raising the national consciousness so that the warning signs are spotted earlier.
“I know that in our own state, mental health services have been cut,” Katz said. “The parents of these children with psychiatric issues are overwhelmed. They’re not equipped to handle it. They can’t afford to get them the help they need, so it’s a big problem.”
By all accounts, Adam Lanza’s mother, a woman who owned six guns and was living on high alimony payments, certainly had enough financial wherewithal to get her troubled son the best professional care.
“She obviously was aware that her son had mental or behavioral issues and I question why she would not have those weapons secured,” Katz said. “I don’t understand it.”
We may never understand it.
Katz said she supports anyone who wants a gun to get one as long as they pass the required background check, were free of mental illness, broke no laws and passed a safety training test. In light of Sandy Hook, she conceded that a background check should include looking into the mental health history of family members.
New gun restrictions?
“All the gun control legislation in the world is not going to stop a criminal from obtaining guns,” she said.
Katz is fighting against an inexorable tide. It is impossible to see how the massacre of 26 people — 20 of them small children — will pass without a serious review and overhaul of firearm regulations and without an examination of how the widespread availability of guns continues to fatally intersect with mental illness.
Give Katz some credit, though. She is nothing if not consistent. I asked for her opinion because I knew she wouldn’t shy away from the discussion, unlike NRA officials who have suddenly become scarce.
She’s been in the public eye before and fully backed her husband last summer when he held a controversial campaign fundraiser at a security training center where guests were invited to partake in target shooting. The event was held two weeks after the killings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.
On Wednesday, Katz went to Woodbury, outside of Newtown.
Word got out that members of the anti-gay, anti-Semitic Westboro Baptist Church were planning to picket the funeral of Dawn Hochsprung, the Sandy Hook principal. Presumably, Westboro’s venomous aim was to declare that the shootings were God’s retribution for the sins of gay marriage, or something like that.
It seems that only bilious fools can provide certain answers to the mystery of evil.
On her Facebook page, Katz offered to take anyone along who would help her provide a “human shield” to block the Westboro crackpots from the view of people attending the funeral.
At the end of the day, the picketers did not show up. Katz claimed on Facebook that they saw the crowd and backed down.
“We did our job and we did it peacefully,” she said.
These young males, she suggested, were stunted, angry and coiled to kill. What’s needed, she said, is raising the national consciousness so that the warning signs are spotted earlier.
“I know that in our own state, mental health services have been cut,” Katz said. “The parents of these children with psychiatric issues are overwhelmed. They’re not equipped to handle it. They can’t afford to get them the help they need, so it’s a big problem.”
By all accounts, Adam Lanza’s mother, a woman who owned six guns and was living on high alimony payments, certainly had enough financial wherewithal to get her troubled son the best professional care.
“She obviously was aware that her son had mental or behavioral issues and I question why she would not have those weapons secured,” Katz said. “I don’t understand it.”
We may never understand it.
Katz said she supports anyone who wants a gun to get one as long as they pass the required background check, were free of mental illness, broke no laws and passed a safety training test. In light of Sandy Hook, she conceded that a background check should include looking into the mental health history of family members.
New gun restrictions?
“All the gun control legislation in the world is not going to stop a criminal from obtaining guns,” she said.
Katz is fighting against an inexorable tide. It is impossible to see how the massacre of 26 people — 20 of them small children — will pass without a serious review and overhaul of firearm regulations and without an examination of how the widespread availability of guns continues to fatally intersect with mental illness.
Give Katz some credit, though. She is nothing if not consistent. I asked for her opinion because I knew she wouldn’t shy away from the discussion, unlike NRA officials who have suddenly become scarce.
She’s been in the public eye before and fully backed her husband last summer when he held a controversial campaign fundraiser at a security training center where guests were invited to partake in target shooting. The event was held two weeks after the killings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.
On Wednesday, Katz went to Woodbury, outside of Newtown.
Word got out that members of the anti-gay, anti-Semitic Westboro Baptist Church were planning to picket the funeral of Dawn Hochsprung, the Sandy Hook principal. Presumably, Westboro’s venomous aim was to declare that the shootings were God’s retribution for the sins of gay marriage, or something like that.
It seems that only bilious fools can provide certain answers to the mystery of evil.
On her Facebook page, Katz offered to take anyone along who would help her provide a “human shield” to block the Westboro crackpots from the view of people attending the funeral.
At the end of the day, the picketers did not show up. Katz claimed on Facebook that they saw the crowd and backed down.
“We did our job and we did it peacefully,” she said.
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