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Post by xyrn on Dec 15, 2012 1:56:00 GMT -5
sekhmet, my point, is that most people have agreed that there will certainly be a time for debate/politicization regarding this tragedy, and that today is not yet the time. It's too soon.
You are certainly entitled to your opinions regarding this and any subject, my reference to nationalities was simply meant to point out that it's waaaay to soon for people of other countries/cultures to pass judgment on this national tragedy.
I admit I have no idea what your understanding is of The United States Constitution, politics or culture, whether or not you've ever lived in the States, etc.
I DO see how my reference could be taken as offensive to you, and that was certainly not my intent; for that I apologize to you.
I, however, AM offended that anyone, at this time, uses a cartoon to describe/comment on such a horrible incident.
________
Apparently some people want to have this debate already, well, I think it's too early but fine, let's have it.
You said: "that being said, I am also saddened by this disgusting tragedy. Obama was right, and it is time to reconsider many things. Hopefully, this horrible incident will cause people to think about how necessary it is to have a population armed to the teeth. Ann's comments are right on."
Let's look at that logically. Let's say that tomorrow at sunrise there are no more gun stores and no more manufacture or import of firearms. That leaves approximately 270,000,000 firearms in private ownership in the US (as a comparison, there are roughly 250,000,000 registered automobiles in the US).
So, what's the solution? Confiscation, mandatory surrender of private property?
Even if that was decreed immediately, do any anti-gunners honestly believe that the gang-bangers, career criminals and mentally unstable persons are going to turn in their guns? So, let's say that's 1% of the population (it's more, but let's just say). *If* gun ownership was spread evenly and 99% of the population surrendered 99% of the guns, then there are still 2,700,000 firearms "on the street" and now only the bad guys are armed. How does that prevent future crimes and mass-shootings? Honestly, explain it to me.
Okay, and even if the government went door to door (which they logistically could not, and would be expensive and dangerous anyway) you're still not going to get them all.
We didn't see many mass-shootings prior to Columbine (yes, there were a few, but scattered by many years). Columbine happened in 1999, when there were an estimated 200,000,000 private firearms. So, why didn't those 200M guns 'cause' a lot of shooting prior to 1999?
Gun ownership is NOT the problem. The problem has to do with our society and culture becoming more out of whack, that's a hard thing for many to admit and many find it easier to blame the physical gun.
Honestly, I hate that there are so many innocent people being killed by psychos, and if I honestly intellectually thought that more gun control would solve it I'd be on board in a heartbeat. But, it won't. We need to look further into the problem and find a real solution.
Respectfully, -Kris
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Post by Doug on Dec 15, 2012 7:06:21 GMT -5
Just for the record that only counts guns made since 1968. Before that only expensive guns had serial numbers and the records don't exist for many gun makers. And because with few exceptions guns don't wear out all the guns previous to 1968 are still out there and working. I have guns as early as 1880 that still function fine and use modern ammunition. So you aren't talking about 270,000,000, a guess would be 4 times that many.
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Post by xyrn on Dec 15, 2012 7:35:44 GMT -5
Doug, agreed. The higher number, which is unknown, would only complicate any attempts at disarmament.
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Post by timfarney on Dec 15, 2012 7:36:56 GMT -5
It' s easy to blame this on movies, video games, changes in mental health treatment, the generally decline of civility. But it's none of that. It is madness. We may not have a clear diagnosis or a name yet, but a guy doesn't put on body armor, load a handful of automatic weapons and walk into a grade school and start shooting children because he plays video games or watches movies. He does it because he has become completely unhinged from right and wrong, good and evil.
And according to a mass homicide expert interviewed on NPR yesterday, the average number of incidents in America - about 20 per year - hasn't changed in decades.
It's small comfort on a day like this, but we don't seem to be producing more mass killers, more mass killings. We are producing more press. Oh, and the body count per incident is rising.
Tim
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Post by Ann T on Dec 15, 2012 8:00:11 GMT -5
Evidently, there are similar elementary school attacks and killings in China, including one on Friday, only they use knives/box cutters/meat cleavers/axes. ( www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57559179/china-school-knife-attack-leaves-23-injured/ ). "The attack marks the latest in a series of violent assaults at elementary schools in China. In 2010, a total of 18 children were killed in four separate attacks. On March 23 of that year, Zheng Minsheng attacked children at an elementary school in Fujian Province, killing eight. One month later, just a few hours after Zheng Minsheng was executed for his crime, another man, Chen Kanbing wounded 16 students and a teacher in a knife attack at another primary school in Fujian. The following month, on May 12, a man named Wu Huangming killed seven children and two adults with a meat cleaver at a kindergarten in Shaanxi Province. That attack was followed by an August 4 assault by Fang Jiantang, who killed three children and one teacher with a knife at a kindergarten in Shandong Province. In 2011, a young girl and three adults were killed with an axe at an elementary school in Henan Province by a 30-year-old man named Wang Hongbin, and eight children were hurt in Shanghai after an employee at a child care center attacked them with a box cutter." Evidently they blame frustration with communism and lack of mental health facilities.
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Post by Fingerplucked on Dec 15, 2012 8:29:33 GMT -5
We all have a right to protect ourselves. And for those who fear being attacked, that means buying one or more guns. I don't think that's going to change in our lifetimes. Still, it'd be a better world if there were no guns at all, not for the bad guys and not for the good guys.
Trying to keep tabs on all the mentally ill in this country is an impossible job. We could do better, but we're never going to eradicate unbalanced people causing mass killings as long as we have easy access to guns.
I don't think this has been brought up yet: the principal who was killed at the school was new. She was respected and well liked. She wanted to start locking the doors during the school day, but it hadn't been implemented yet.
THAT is unbelievable. I didn't know there were still schools anywhere in this country that did not lock their doors and control who was allowed to enter, denying entry to anyone who is not a registered guardian of a student. I hope that changes now. There's no excuse not to take a measure that simple, and there's no excuse for delay.
The gun control debate will go on. Pro-gunners will say if only more people owned and carried guns, this might have been averted. And they may be right. Anti-gunners will say that if the 20 year old hadn't had access to his mother's guns, those kids and teachers would still be alive today. And they may be right. In the meantime, the NRA will continue to spend millions of dollars to convince Washington that more people should buy guns, not fewer.
Maybe instead of throwing money at Washington, the NRA should contribute to local police departments until there is an armed officer sitting at the back of each and every classroom nationwide.
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Post by brucemacneill on Dec 15, 2012 8:43:26 GMT -5
When I was studying for my security certification one of the things taught was that there is no perfect security and the most difficult attack to defend is against a single actor especially if he's suicidal.
The shooter was apparently buzzed into the school, through the locked door probably because his mother was a teacher at the school and whoever buzzed him in knew who he was and didn't consider him a threat. That's a tough one to defend. As the facts come out, if anyone here thinks they could have prevented this attack, I'd love to hear the plan.
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Post by Fingerplucked on Dec 15, 2012 8:51:05 GMT -5
You just heard it, Bruce. An armed cop in every classroom. It'd be expensive. We'll probably need some new taxes on guns to pay for it.
I don't know if my information is more up to date than what I read yesterday, but USA Today reported that the school was not locked. They also said that the mother supposedly was an occasional substitute teacher at the school, but so far there has been no documentation to establish that as fact.
I hope USA Today wasn't lying to me.
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Post by Fingerplucked on Dec 15, 2012 9:22:50 GMT -5
Maybe USA Today did lie to me. After further checking, it looks like they had the security measures you'd expect: locked doors and visitor screening. But it started at "approximately" 9:30 AM. Adam Lanza entered the school around 9:30 AM.
USA Today is a free paper on my Fire. Maybe it's worth the price.
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Post by TKennedy on Dec 15, 2012 11:14:09 GMT -5
As one who has experienced the unexpected death of a child my heart goes out to those poor shattered parents. I think that as I did, they will eventually realize that God is not a person but a force. A force that if they are open to it, will allow them to eventually re-enter life and live with the fact that there are no answers and realize that it doesn't matter. A major step in my journey was sitting in the control room at Salmagundi Studios in Northfield MN and listening to my dear friends Bruce Kelly and Patty Kakac sing a song that still sums up my feelings about these horrible life shattering events. There was a lot of unconditional love in the room that night. Thank God for friends like that. kennedyguitars.com/_Kennedy_Guitars/New_Reality.html
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Post by Cosmic Wonder on Dec 15, 2012 11:38:26 GMT -5
There was a police presence at every school in Beaverton yesterday afternoon as we picked up the kids to take them home. And I had noticeably lighter loads on the bus.
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Post by Russell Letson on Dec 15, 2012 12:44:51 GMT -5
Amiable, slick, and plausible propagandist Mike Huckabee suggests, "We ask why there’s violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage? Because we’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability. That we’re not just going to have to be accountable to the police if they catch us, but one day we stand before a holy God in judgment. If we don’t believe that, then we don’t fear that," said Huckabee.
He added, "Maybe we ought to let (God) in on the front end and we wouldn’t have to call him to show up when it’s all said and done at the back end." foxnewsinsider.com/2012/12/14/mike-huckabee-responds-to-the-question-of-how-god-could-let-this-happen-following-connecticut-elementary-school-attack/To be fair, his conversation with Neil Cavuto starts off sounding both reasonable and compassionate, but about three minutes in he transitions to his "pastor" side, which is actually his politician-pastor side, and gets around to that familiar theocratic talking point. Of course, he hasn't brought up gun control, so nobody can accuse him of politicizing a tragedy. I mention this because, on the one hand, to the people most directly involved, this event was not political but personal, and that direct and personal loss is felt in widening ripples around those mourners. But on the other hand, those of us who watch from a distance cannot avoid having other thoughts, some of which include considerations beyond the personal and private. Some of those thoughts are going to include the effectiveness of various mechanisms that might prevent or contain or minimize the damage done by various kinds of deranged or deluded people. The mental health system; school-security measures; and, yes, gun control. The desire to put off such discussions until after a period of public mourning is understandable--but I wonder: when a patient dies on the operating table or in the course of treatment, do the surgeons and attending doctors hold off on analysis of what went wrong, or do they start the medical equivalent of examination of conscience right away? Because for this particular observer, out on the farther ripples, once the initial shock of the facts of this event wore off just a little, questions of how and why rose to the surface and will not go away.
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Post by Rob Hanesworth on Dec 15, 2012 13:07:03 GMT -5
As one who has experienced the unexpected death of a child my heart goes out to those poor shattered parents. I think that as I did, they will eventually realize that God is not a person but a force. A force that if they are open to it, will allow them to eventually re-enter life and live with the fact that there are no answers and realize that it doesn't matter. A major step in my journey was sitting in the control room at Salmagundi Studios in Northfield MN and listening to my dear friends Bruce Kelly and Patty Kakac sing a song that still sums up my feelings about these horrible life shattering events. There was a lot of unconditional love in the room that night. Thank God for friends like that. kennedyguitars.com/_Kennedy_Guitars/New_Reality.htmlVery touching song, Terry. I am glad your friends were there for you.
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Post by billhammond on Dec 15, 2012 13:20:42 GMT -5
As one who has experienced the unexpected death of a child my heart goes out to those poor shattered parents. I think that as I did, they will eventually realize that God is not a person but a force. A force that if they are open to it, will allow them to eventually re-enter life and live with the fact that there are no answers and realize that it doesn't matter. A major step in my journey was sitting in the control room at Salmagundi Studios in Northfield MN and listening to my dear friends Bruce Kelly and Patty Kakac sing a song that still sums up my feelings about these horrible life shattering events. There was a lot of unconditional love in the room that night. Thank God for friends like that. kennedyguitars.com/_Kennedy_Guitars/New_Reality.htmlVery touching song, Terry. I am glad your friends were there for you. Mr. Luddite here can't seem to get QuickTime to download, so I cannot listen, dammit.
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Post by HarmonEyes on Dec 15, 2012 14:02:30 GMT -5
Lovely song, Terry...sung straight from the heart.
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Post by RickW on Dec 15, 2012 14:26:08 GMT -5
The mental health issue is one of those intractable problems. Making it easy to institutionalize people was the original problem - abuse by people putting folks into hospitals to 'get rid of them', and predators working in said hospitals. Not that, like most of these situations, everyone who worked there was evil or everyone in there didn't need to be. But it was not good. So we collectively in the US and Canada removed the ability to force people. So now, most homeless people here are mentally ill. There are not enough group homes for them, that would help - my brother in law is in one.
I don't know that we can blame guns, video games, anything. Not going to get rid of all the guns, and as has been pointed out, while it might make the killer less efficient, it's not going to stop such attacks.
There will be much debate. But the thing that needs to be fixed, a place for the mentally ill to go, and some kind of process to get them there not open to abuse, (and I can't begin to imagine how that will work,) will get left by the wayside.
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Post by sekhmet on Dec 15, 2012 14:30:48 GMT -5
As a Canadian, in a country where we are not immune to mass killings, I would just like to state that I agree with Ann, who is an American, and owns the event much more than I do.
In Canada we just passed the memorial date of the Ecole Polytechnique massacre. I lit a candle. If you don't know what that is, never mind, it's irrelevant, being entirely Canadian. But you're welcome to comment, because I don't own it.
Sometimes cartoons are relevant social commentary and not funny. Sorry if you took offence at that xyrn. Not that I posted it, but that you found it offensive.
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Post by Doug on Dec 15, 2012 15:16:34 GMT -5
As a Canadian, in a country where we are not immune to mass killings, I would just like to state that I agree with Ann, who is an American, and owns the event much more than I do. In Canada we just passed the memorial date of the Ecole Polytechnique massacre. I lit a candle. If you don't know what that is, never mind, it's irrelevant, being entirely Canadian. But you're welcome to comment, because I don't own it. Sometimes cartoons are relevant social commentary and not funny. Sorry if you took offence at that xyrn. Not that I posted it, but that you found it offensive. Kate I thought the cartoon was poorly done and I was annoyed at the artist for dishonesty not you for posting it. It's an apples and oranges type thing. To make an honest cartoon it would have to have "Coworkers, Students, Spouses, Store Clerks, etc saved on the left hand column.
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Post by epaul on Dec 15, 2012 15:34:35 GMT -5
I'm breaking my rule, but I think these events should be, by the people not involved, ignored. This was a private tragedy that should be kept private, it is not a national tragedy and it should not dominate the nation for the three or four days that it does.
Why do people like the shooter do what they do? Who knows, but I think it has to do with power. However weak, frustrated, invisible, ignored, rejected, whatever, they are or feel they are, they can, in a single act, take control of the entire nation, impact all the lives in the country, make everyone feel bad, sorry, regretful. It is power. Revenge. Power.
Right now, there is some miserable sap seeing how this one guy, with a single act, was able to turn the country on its head and jerk its heart out, lower its flags, make the president speak, light a thousand candlelight ceremonies, bring tears to all those who ignored, rejected, insulted, didn't see, feel, or notice him. First comes the fantasy. Sometimes, once in a great while, the fantasy takes control and becomes real.
Our news reportage has become too good. This shooting wasn't just reported. The cameras, the photos, the interviews, the obsession does more than inform, it immerses us emotionally, deeply and completely, empathetically into the raw pain and sorrow. For a stable mind, no problem, just sadness and disgust and sadness again. But, for some minds, it is twisted nectar, a perverse pleasure fed by the contemplation of such control, power, and dominance over those others who have shunted, ignored, rejected. One solitary person can move the entire nation to tears and sorrow and regret. They will know who I am, they will regret, they will know, they will ...
A nation can't let itself be moved by the nuts, the deluded, the twisted. Whether it is a 9/11 or a elementary school massacre, we can't put our heartstrings in the hands of crazed puppeteers because to do so is just fueling the fantasies and thirst of the next one.
If there is a difference between now and the 1800s, it may not be in percentage of nuts, it may be in the immediacy, emotiveness and manipulation of the media. The media, by its progress and technology, is getting closer and closer to plugging us into the event, wiring our brains into the raw emotion of the tragedy. And what chemical treats does this release in the twisted synapses of an out of balance mind?
One solitary act can stab the heart of a entire nation in minutes, and the bleeding will be filmed in glorious detail. What power one nut can exert. How can a nut resist.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2012 15:43:04 GMT -5
Epaul. A forensic psychiatrist has similar observations here -
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