Another GodAwful Massacre In A School

[Amskeptic]

My school. My elementary alma-mater. There's my fourth grade classroom windows visible from the helicopter footage. The playground where I used to swing is now a barnacle of a permanent "temporary" classroom. There's the bus curb where I used to hurtle after classes.
But no, we are dealing with 20 dead young children, seven dead adults. I am so god-damned sick and tired of guns guns guns guns. I cannot imagine the anguish of these parents. Again and again and again, we will have these stupid earnest discussions about gun control, and the defenders of assault rifles and of no background checks and easy guns show purchases will reliably spring out of the woodwork to again tell us that it is the shooter not the gun, that is the problem.
There are first responders in the Sandy Hook Elementary School halls, whose blue and yellow plastic trays and half-pint cartons of milk I used to swill on my way to the playground, who have been reported as vomiting from the carnage, the children were commanded to hold hands and walk out with their eyes shut, and it is a sad sad day for America because we don't seem to get it. I want to throttle the dumb stupid breathless babble emanating from the TV as they describe my home town as some "rural" "peaceful" "pastoral" "perfect" suburban town where nobody imagines such horrific crimes could occur. Cameras stuffed into the faces of traumatized children "how did you feel?" STFU and let that kid be with his or parents. I can imagine it. I remember classmates in that very school who I deeply wondered about. I was friends with one tormented eight year-old soul whose home life could easily have turned him into a bullet-spraying maniac. He died young.
Did I say take away anybody's guns yet? Read again. Mental illness, rage, and incredibly efficient killing appliances are part of this recipe of devastation. We have *got* to tighten up. The NRA needs to be utterly run over by us, we are better than this.

[zabo]

beyond words- but well said colin.

Our culture needs a huge shift in priorities and it really needs to come from the top.
Wars, terror, Guantanamo, religon - these all send the wrong messages about how we should treat one another.

Love goes out to everybody today.

[hambone]

We live in a violent, disconnected nation. These are the fruits. Even our games have become horrific, cartoon war.
Are we awakening as a species? Are these old horrors seen with new eyes? So many tipping points, all at once...
I just don't know anymore. It is all so crushing. And the media? They fucking LOVE it. Sickening.
All we can do is offer our gift of peace to this troubled world. Love our families and one another.

[airkooledchris]

Im picking up my kid from school early today.

[yondermtn]

And the media? They fucking LOVE it. Sickening.

Just awful.

[Amskeptic]

President Obama just spoke. He was clearly emotionally full-up. I could see that he is a father first, but he is the President second. As President he said, " we have endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years."
Hello!
So, what must we do?

[airkooledchris]

When Americans are outraged the NRA is silent.
When Americans are silent the NRA is busy pushing its agenda.

Outrage must become action.


What's even worse - is that gun sales go UP after events like this. The shitkickers get duped into thinking that the gubment is going to come take their guns - so they go out and blow their monthly Golden Corral budget at the local gun show instead. What they don't get is that they aren't even the ones who are causing the problems - nobody gives a flying F if they want to go shoot up a bunch of junk at their farm. It's these punk ass young privileged white boys with psych issues becoming obsessed with weapons and stockpiling up at the gun shows (which are more popular than ever now that everyone's so scared of being denied access to buying them!)

The ease of access of weapons to those who didn't grow up with them - and have no respect for them - are the NEW problem.


Why don't we start out by just enforcing the existing laws and tightening up the restrictions on these stupid gun shows?


After the movie theater shooting someone made an excellent suggestion - you should be able to get at least 1 other person to vouch for you.

[hambone]

Can we blame the Military Industrial Complex and all its marketing? We are promoting a culture of peace while war rages behind.

The question is, did this sort of thing happen in Roman times? Earlier? Or is it truly a side effect of a dis-functional culture?

I sure wish I could offer those families some comfort. An ad on TV yesterday reminded me that 26,000 kids die each day around the world.
Death must be, seed/plant/seed is how it all functions, at least mechanically. But not like this.
How can we make the world a better place when there is so much suffering and clouded judgement?

[Amskeptic]

did this sort of thing happen in Roman times? Earlier? Or is it truly a side effect of a dysfunctional culture?

How can we make the world a better place when there is so much suffering and clouded judgement?

It happened in Roman Times. Massacres occurred during the Vietnam War. Killing as a function of the state was greater in our near history than now. Death by the hand of other human beings has a rich reliable consistent history. The Roman Emperor surely had people killed in numbers greater than today's unhinged serial killers, and wars were frequent and extremely deadly without the trauma care we now have access to.

But I do think this loner-massacre stuff is new.
Colin

[Cindy]

Our local news station has already stylized the massacre. The photos of the kids have been recreated in dramatic black and white. The background music has been added. It is now indistinguishable from a SHOW.

Cindy

[Elwood]

It is a "Show and Tell" by any standards. Give us the whole of it all, its called freedom of expression, and available to all who care to watch. Be good to see the local mental health care availability.

[IFBwax]

The only gun control I see that will ever prevent what happened today is to make every American turn in their guns. And that unfortunately will never happen. People bent on destruction will always find a way to get a gun. In both the cases here in Oregon this week and early reports out of Conn. say the guns were legally purchased, but then stolen by the shooters. And Conn. is one o of the few states with an assault weapon ban. Didn't help.

The Washington Post did a great story on the difference between gun deaths in Japan in the US and there were more people killed accidentally in the US then all the murders by firearms in Japan. They have strict controls, they allow police broader search powers and they just plain don't have many guns over there. Here in the US, I think we have more guns than every man woman and child who live here. If anyone has a solution I'd like to hear it, but I sure don't have one.

Metal detectors in school won't work. What about when kids go to recess. Improve mental health? That's a great start but no guarantee one crazy won't slip through the cracks. I'm so fucking pissed at this world right now and so sad that there probably is no answer. Thankfully the vast, vast majority of people are good honest decent humans. It only takes a couple though to screw it all up for all of us. Sorry for my rant.
And sorry Colin. I can only imagine what this must feel like for you!

[Amskeptic]

And sorry Colin. I can only imagine what this must feel like for you!

Oh, I am not going to own the real estate as anything special to me, just a rude shock. But as we sat and watched the news coverage with the sun setting outside, I could not help but feel the pain of twenty families whose daily routines of dinner and bath and bed for their vital alive children were just instantly replaced with violent emptiness and the roaring silence, and I am so sad and angry.

Amy and I reminisced about the students we knew and the teachers we endured and the community that surrounded our school years, we both have very Not Sentimental memories of the stressful bus rides with bully peers, and I, of course, remember that school's office, and principal's office all too well.

We are too good of a Nation for this insane idiotic violence and I do not have patience any more for arrested children who tantrum the instant we discuss regulating the obscene unchecked sales of automatic human killer weaponry. This is not difficult in the realm of adulthood and common sense. We have the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, and we have the highest gun death rate in the world. La Pierre's little NRA had best not push back this time.
Colin

[Velokid1]

I can only hope that there are enough people who feel like I do now, who have had enough. My gun-nut friends make zero sense, but i have now had enough of even my reasonable, compassionate, responsible gun-collecting friends whose best argument now is "there are 300+ million guns in America already and we'll never get those "off the streets." Which is really just saying that there's no perfect solution, so lets just not do shit for another 50 years. I'm DONE with that. If these people refuse to have serious, honest talks about tightening regulation of firearms, then they have only themselves to blame when the country finally tunes them out completely and then hastily passes impractical, highly flawed, heavy handed regulations... Because some of us want to do SOMETHING. Anything. Their paranoid fear of having "their guns taken away" is going to be a self-fulfilling prophesy if they can't get their heads out of their asses and get REAL.

[Amskeptic]

(heavily edited for brevity)

I can only hope that there are enough people who feel like I do now, who have had enough.

If these people refuse to have serious, honest talks about tightening regulation of firearms, then they have only themselves to blame when the country finally tunes them out completely.

get REAL.

Yes.

There is a personal drama slowly coming to light under this horrible tragedy, that the 20 year-old shooter lived at home with his mother, that he had mental health issues that caused his mother to comment to a friend that she was concerned . . . yet she took him to the shooting range where she loved to practice firing her weapons.

This issue MUST be addressed. There is, sorry NRA, a true and real and ethical and very American very Constitutional need to defend the right to LIFE, then liberty, then the pursuit of happiness. 10,000 gun deaths every year is worthy of a discussion. Rabid foaming irrationality is out. We HAVE fellow Americans who are disenfranchised, angry, isolated, disturbed, depressed, hopeless, and prone to lashing out, and I bet Adam Lanza had no idea no idea of the profound destruction he left in his wake, because he was just too dead inside to imagine that there are parents who love their children.

We HAVE to redefine *freedom* in an adult and nuanced way. I do not buy this NRA sponsored idea that we are all free to roam the halls of schools and local bars packing heat.
Colin