Another School Killing Spree

[OnMyWay]

I can't imagine how that town and those families must be feeling. This is so sad.

I believe the tragic misuse of guns in cases like this is the end result of many things that are wrong in our society.

- Breakdown of the family structure

- Lack of discipline at home and in schools

- Political correctness that says you have to treat all kids the same, even if they do have something wrong with them

- Violent video games

- Violence in media

Etc., etc.

I used to think it was hogwash that video games / TV might factor into the equation, but I have changed my mind. They contribute to the overall desensitization to violence and parents must be faulted for this. Many games are rated as for 18+ and parents let there young children play them for hours on end.

Apparently this sick person had been playing video games and nothing else for the last few years.

[Thomas]

I can't imagine how that town and those families must be feeling. This is so sad. I believe the tragic misuse of guns in cases like this is the end result of many things that are wrong in our society.

- Breakdown of the family structure

- Lack of discipline at home and in schools

- Political correctness that says you have to treat all kids the same, even if they do have something wrong with them

- Violent video games

- Violence in media

It has to be something ELSE, because all them you listed we have in Sweden too, but we haven't had any such school shootings ever.

I believe depending of:

- To easy to buy guns

- Guns in much more homes, so kids don't even need to buy any...

- and probably culture from being very violent inside the country just a few generations ago during the settling of the West part of USA was done,

plus been in a lot of wars AFTER WWII.

(Sweden was one of the most powerful war nations starting at Wiking period until around 250 years ago, being in a lot of wars, but then we got tired of it and haven't had any wars since 1809. Perhaps coward to not go to war against Hittler, but we wouldn't have any chance anyway. But by OFFICIALY not fight them we could do some better unofficialy fighting results :) e g by supporting Norwegian guerilla stationed in Sweden, plus sabotaged German military transports ourselves. E g a train full with German ammunition was blown up just a few kilometers from where I live now.)

i come from a military background and have been braught up around them i started my collection 40 years or more ago .to give you an idea of the guns i collect the latest gun in my collection was made in 1897 all the others are manufactured much earlier than that

(Each second generation at my father's side were soldiers until my Grandfather. Poor people here back then hadn't much other to choise if wanted to study or get access to some farmland.)

I have a FAKE old rifle just useable as decoration. Some passed and saw it through a window, It took less than an hour before police came to check it.

-Can this be used for shooting? asked the policeman concerned.

-I doubt it, I said and put a finger gentle to the barell, making it fell off :santa_smiley:

[lyno 47]

thomas the gun laws here in oz requires all guns to be locked in secure safes and the ammo to be stored separatly also in a locked container .you are not allowed to display a working firearm all gun owners are required to have a licence and each time you renew it you must supply the firearm registry with your reasons for owning them.like other countries there are many illeagal guns mostly owned by criminals ,lawfull gun owners abide by these laws unfortunatly the crims do not.i would be happy if the govt required a phyc evaluation on anyone applying for a gun licence maybe it might weed out some of the potential crazies regards lyno

[OnMyWay]

all them you listed we have in Sweden too

That may be true, but in the U.S. I think the family structure is far more broken than in Europe. I lived in Germany and they value family far more than most people do in the U.S.

[lyno 47]

i should have added that the police can turn up on your door step any time they want and ask to look at the safe storage of you guns .if they are not stored safely they will confiscate them and you have lost them in most cases you will never get them back.so we try very hard to do the right thing.

Edited December 16, 2012 by Dave Hounddriver

[FlyAway]

Tragic by all accounts and my sympathies to all affected.

Of course this stirs up emotions about quick fixes to stop tragedies like this from happening. Not going into the political aspect of things but the article below opens my eyes to a lot of things.

Here is a link to an article on Yahoo news published by Associated Press. Bit of a long read.

http://news.yahoo.co...-185700637.html

No rise in mass killings, but their impact is huge

A gold plaque hangs next to a bullet hole in the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., where a lone gunman killed six worshippers and injured three others last August. It is engraved with the words, "We Are One."

"It frames the wound," says Pardeep Kaleka, son of former temple president Satwant Singh Kaleka, who died in the massacre. "The wound of our community, the wound of our family, the wound of our society."

In the past week, that wound has been ripped open with shocking ferocity.

In what has become sickeningly familiar, gunmen opened fire on innocents in what should be the safest of places — first, at a shopping mall in Oregon, and then, unthinkably, at an elementary school in Connecticut.

Once again there were scenes of chaos as rescuers and media descended on the scene. Once again there were pictures of weeping survivors clutching one another, of candlelight vigils and teddy bears left as loving memorials. And once again a chorus of pundits debated gun control and violence as society attempted to make sense of the senseless.

"Are there any sanctuaries left?" Kaleka asked. "Is this a fact of life, one we have become content to live with? Can we no longer feel safe going Christmas shopping in a mall, or to temple, or to the movies? What kind of society have we become?"

As this year of the gun lurches to a close, leaving a bloody wake, we are left to wonder along with Kaleka: What is the meaning of all this?

Even before Portland and Newtown, we saw a former student kill seven people at Oikos University in Oakland, Calif. We saw gunmen in Seattle and Minneapolis each kill five people and then themselves. We saw the midnight premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises" at a theater in Aurora, Colo., devolve into a bloodbath, as 12 people died and 58 were wounded; 24-year-old James Holmes was arrested outside.

And yet those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.

"There is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.

The random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest, Fox says. Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer.

Society moves on, he says, because of our ability to distance ourselves from the horror of the day, and because people believe that these tragedies are "one of the unfortunate prices we pay for our freedoms."

Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.

Chances of being killed in a mass shooting, he says, are probably no greater than being struck by lightning.

Still, he understands the public perception — and extensive media coverage — when mass shootings occur in places like malls and schools. "There is this feeling that could have been me. It makes it so much more frightening."

On one spring day more than four years ago, it WAS Colin Goddard.

For two years after a gunman pumped four bullets into him in a classroom at Virginia Tech, Goddard said he couldn't bear to listen to television reports about other shootings, or read about them. It brought him back instantly to that day — April 16, 2007 — when he lay on the floor of classroom 211, blood dripping from his shoulder and leg as he wondered if he would survive.

And then, on April 3, 2009, he turned on the computer and heard the news. A 41-year-old man had opened fire at an immigrant community center in Binghamton, N.Y., killing 11 immigrants and two workers. The shooter, a Vietnamese immigrant and a former student at the center, killed himself as police rushed to the scene.

Goddard watched, riveted, realizing that this is what it was like for the rest of the world when a mass shooting occurs. Inside the school, or the mall, or the theater, the victims lie wounded and terrified and dying, while the rest of the world watches from afar. People glue themselves to the television for a day. They soak in the horror from the safety of their office or home. They feel awful for a while. Then they move on with their lives. They grow numb.

Duwe says the cycle has gone on for generations.

"Mass shootings provoke instant debates about violence and guns and mental health and that's been the case since Charles Whitman climbed the tower at the University of Texas in 1966," he said, referring to the engineering student and former Marine who killed 13 people and an unborn child and wounded 32 others in a shooting rampage on campus. "It becomes mind-numbingly repetitive."

"Rampage violence seems to lead to repeated cycles of anguish, investigation, recrimination, and heated debate, with little real progress in prevention," wrote John Harris, clinical assistant professor of medicine in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona, in the June issue of American Journal of Public Health. "These types of events can lead to despair about their inevitability and unpredictability."

And there is despair and frustration, even among those who have set out to stop mass killings.

"We do just seem to slog along, from one tragedy to the next," Tom Mauser said last July, after the Aurora shootings.

Mauser knows all about the slog. He became an outspoken activist against such violence after his 15-year-old son, Daniel, was slain along with 12 other at Columbine High School in 1999. But he has grown frustrated and weary.

"There was a time when I felt a certain guilt," said Mauser. "I'd ask, 'Why can't I do more about this? Why haven't I dedicated myself more to it?' But I'll be damned if I'm going to put it all on my shoulders.

"This," he said, "is all of our problem."

Carolyn McCarthy enlisted in the cause in 1993, when a deranged gunman killed her husband and seriously injured her son in shooting rampage. She has served in Congress since 1997.

Known as the "gun lady" on Capitol Hill for her fierce championship of gun control laws, McCarthy says she nearly gave up her "lonely crusade" after hearing about the Virginia Tech shooting. And when she heard about the January 2011 shooting of former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords she says, "I just sat there frozen and watching the television and couldn't stop crying."

"It's like a cancer in our society," she says. "And if we keep doing nothing to stop it, it's only going to spread."

After the Binghamton shootings, Colin Goddard resolved that he had to get involved, to somehow try to stop the cycle. Reminders are lodged inside him: three bullets, a legacy of Virginia Tech.

He now works in Washington for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

"I refuse to believe this is something we have to accept as normal in this country," he said. "There has to be a way to change the culture of violence in our society."

[Call me bubba]

And on the same day 22 kids are stabbed in China, luckily no deaths. There are lots of crazy folks all over this world!

http://news.ca.msn.c...-schoolchildren

I have not heard of this incident til I saw this post. FUNNY how the press will report what they think is Important.

had this occurred in a asian country that is over 90% cat, people there would cry,

then powers to be would make their speeches.making the same song&dance rountine :chickendance:

.

But nothing would change..

and if the "shooter" was caught, his legal journey would take years (cough cough more cough).

...

Edited December 16, 2012 by Pittman apartments Sgn

[Call me bubba]

"Mass shootings provoke instant debates about violence and guns and mental health and that's been the case since Charles Whitman climbed the tower at the University of Texas in 1966,"

sad thing about this case. He knew he had problems,even sought treatment. Nothing,

he left a note "asking that his body" be examined as he knew something was not right. when the body was examined

FOUND that he had a brain tumor or lesion pressing on the "part" that controlled his "reasoning"(excuse if I am not 100% correct as it has been many years since i read about him & frankly thats some info I never care to remember)

2nd note Whitman was a former marine. Heard that the marines are trained to use the weapon well.

[Thomas]

thomas the gun laws here in oz requires all guns to be locked in secure safes and the ammo to be stored separatly also in a locked container .you are not allowed to display a working firearm all gun owners are required to have a licence and each time you renew it you must supply the firearm registry with your reasons for owning them.like other countries there are many illeagal guns mostly owned by criminals ,lawfull gun owners abide by these laws unfortunatly the crims do not.i would be happy if the govt required a phyc evaluation on anyone applying for a gun licence maybe it might weed out some of the potential crazies regards lyno

In Sweden they even need to split bolt/tailpiece (call translater it)

I don't know about Australia, but USA has much to many firearms. Many killings in USA are made with LEGAL firearms. That happen very seldom in Sweden. Harder to kill someone by beating than by firearms when not have that as goal...

Even with locks, children probably have figuered out where the keys are :) So forearms in more homes add risk for school shootings :(

all them you listed we have in Sweden too

That may be true, but in the U.S. I think the family structure is far more broken than in Europe. I lived in Germany and they value family far more than most people do in the U.S.

I don't know about Germany, but there are around 50 % divorces here.

2nd note Whitman was a former marine. Heard that the marines are trained to use the weapon well.

That's one of the parts I just mensioned in my list of probably reasons.

A weapon culture add skills to use them, as well as thinking having much guns at home.

Wars make some come back with big Post Traumatic Stress problems. Without firearms such type of problem isn't so dangerous, because without firearms a snaping person will be owerpowered by a bunch of people, while if the attacker have firearms it's a big risk they will all be shot...

To get a chance to reduce risks for such attacks, enough Americans need to think of the DIFFERENCES from other countries, which don't have several such mass shootings,

and start realy LOOKING at the reasons, without trying to fool yourself...

[Will]

You know, for the forum to not allow political views, this thread sure has a lot of political views (and they continue even after being warned) How many more posts do I have to read with the person(s) preaching their view? This thread should have been stopped long ago, to be fair to everyone.

Its funny how if you have a "no arguing" rule, the only people that get heard are the ones that don't, or won't, follow the rule. The poor guy that wants to follow the rule must hold his tongue as not to upset, while the other rants on with impunity.

And yes, the school shooting is a tragedy. I feel horrible for the families that lost their loved ones. Just a terrible situation.