Newtown CT school shooting

[JimG.]

It's been a rough day. I've cried a few times

After a nap and a couple of drinks, I've been able to calm down.

What happened today is my only true fear in life. Babies were killed. Just thinking of their families brings me to tears again.

Sorry if anything I wrote offended anyone; didn't mean to make this political either.

Understand it certainly wasn't intentional.

I'm going to sign off for the night and have another drink.

 

[Nick]

I haven't been affected like this emotionally since 9/11, this really stuck since it happen in new england

I said exactly this today. I haven't been this affected by an event emotionally since 9/11.

I was decorating my tree with my wife and son tonight. Well my son is just 6 months so he sat their and watched. But I couldn't get out of my head all these families having trees at home, with ornaments ... "Baby's first christmas" .... stockings hung ... presents probably already wrapped or probably getting delivered by UPS tomorrow .... and now the families have to plan a wake and a funeral ... sickening... just sickening

 

[gmcunni]

i live in Monroe CT, we border Newtown. i was driving thru Newtown around 10:15 this morning on my way to pick up Jake at school. as i pulled into the gas station a state trooper flew by me. as i was filling up a 2nd trooper went by (sirens + lights on both) i figured something must be going on, i suspected an accident on 84, which was where i was headed. as i went to get on 84 another police car passed by flying thru a blind intersection, i was shocked that he didn't get on 84 (thinking it was accident related) but rather continued on down the road. i flippped over to news as i got on 84 and heard what was going on. i was beyond shocked. i can't imagine the pain the parents are going thru.

 

[Mpdsnowman]

You know this is the first time Ive watched Rudolf the red nosed reindeer and felt sad. With what happened today, that's tough.

It scares me. My sons are the ages of the brothers involved. As a parent I worried when my kids were in elementary school and to this day I still have to worry because I am asking the same question everyone is....why?? what led that 20 year old kid to this. If the mother was alive she would probably be just as clueless to that answer as everyone else is...

I live with my two sons again their ages (the shooter and his brother who apparently is clueless too). I see fully what they do and as I can figure they are just like all the others their ages in this area. Can I feel secure that it wont happen where I live... no...So I keep asking myself these questions tonight...

Is it in the video games they play?
Is it in their social network/lifestyle?
Is it in their jobs?
Is it drugs/alcohol?
Something I could have missed along the way...what....

 

[deadheadskier]

Is it in the video games they play?
Is it in their social network/lifestyle?
Is it in their jobs?
Is it drugs/alcohol?
Something I could have missed along the way...what....

All of those things and none of those things. What I mean when I say all of those things, is that in certain circumstances anything can tip someone over the edge depending on the individual, yet have zero effect on most others. When I say none of those things, I (unfortunately) mean that violence is part of human nature. An estimated 1400 people a day are murdered world wide. That number doesn't include war casualties. We humans do a lot of killing.

Guess that's why situations like today are so heartbreaking and hard to understand. We search for answers, but there are no answers.

 

[drjeff]

As a parent of a 1st and 3rd grader, this was so hard to take as the news reports kept coming out. About lunchtime when the terrible details of the numbers killed and the first rumors of their ages started trickling out, I was at lunch with 8 of my employees - all of us have kids, 7 of the 9 of us have kids roughly of the age affected, we were al just beside ourselves thinking "what if..."

When I got home, the feeling I had when I hugged my kids has only been rivaled by the feeling I had when I first hugged them just moments after they were born. A few hours later at my kids school Holiday Concert, when the kindergarten class got up to sing their songs, it was impossible for me to not look at those 11 kids on stage singing and think that almost twice that number of innocent kids were taken today, made even tougher by the fact that this time of year for those kids (and often their parents from watching their kids) is the happiest, most exciting time of the year with Christmas and Hannukah, a time when as a parent you really do get to see the amazing excitement and joy that the innocence of youth at that age brings with it. There was hardly a dry parents eye in the auditorium during the concert this evening, myself included.

 

[riverc0il]

I hope it is not to early to discuss the meta, obviously still completely stunned by what happened...

...parents might feel it more immediately due to their children, but everyone feels it too, even us without children. I couldn't believe it when I heard the news. Little kids! Never thought the mass shootings would come to this.

I work in a college. I think about this stuff all the time, these shootings in academic buildings always hit close to home for me, regardless of age of the students. We have annual discussions about "what to do" situations. Mass shooters have walked into high schools, universities, malls, movie theatres, military bases, and now an elementary school.

It can happen any where and the only reason I can see for parents of young children to be more effected now, by this shooting, than by any other of these shootings, is this is the first mass shooting that I can recall in modern times in a friggin elementary school. Unreal.

The issue hasn't changed, only the targets continue to grow more broadly.

It would make sense that parents would feel more "intensely" since they care for the lives of young ones in addition to their own. But in today's world, this type of thing can (and continues to) happen any where people gather. People say "but what can you do" not because they don't have kids, but because of their political leanings. Which I think we should steer far away from in this thread. AZ has become particularly polarizing lately and it is not a welcome change IMO. Let's all agree this is devastating, hits far too close to home for many, is deeply concerning for us all,and leave the talk of what to do at the town meeting and the court of public opinion outside of AZ.

 

[thetrailboss]

This year alone these shootings have happened in a movie theater, a church, and now an elementary school. WTF?

 

[Warp Daddy]

This unspeakable horror touches everyone in a very personal way and that is to be expected as is the search for understanding and insight. These notions and emotions make us who we are as rarional ,empathethic beings. Truth is there are no answers ,only hypotheses. Evil exists in this world . We are neither in control now nor were we in the past, control is strictly an illusion we create to make us better assuage our fears.

Love and empathy is all we have to combat this kind of situation . We truly need to seek ,strive and make very effort imaginable to a kinder , gentler and more empathetic society .

There will always be these unspeakable horrors , there will always be unstable ,sociopaths that are outliers to societal norms all we can do is to use our best instincts to try to better identify markers , behavioral and otherwise that may enable us to better predict and prevent these things from happening . this is a tall order and will require a complete rethinking of how best to manage the delivery of behavioral / mental healthrelated treatment and funding for same that may need to look at reidential facilities for those in need rather than allowing them to wander unassisted and aimless.

As a dad, grandad and an educator my heart like all of yours is very heavy today .

Be good to each other , be kind
Warp

 

[jack97]

My thoughts and heart goes out the families and friends who lost the most important things in their lives.

....People say "but what can you do" not because they don't have kids, but because of their political leanings. Which I think we should steer far away from in this thread. AZ has become particularly polarizing lately and it is not a welcome change IMO. Let's all agree this is devastating, hits far too close to home for many, is deeply concerning for us all,and leave the talk of what to do at the town meeting and the court of public opinion outside of AZ.

I came to this site because this does hit close to home. Not to single out river, imo, if you want to do something about this instead of talking about it. Vote! This incident goes across several polarizing topics that involves Federal, State and Town laws. As much as it pains me to read the details of the shooting, I can easily see how we have gotten to this point.

 

[Geoff]

I came to this site because this does hit close to home. Not to single out river, imo, if you want to do something about this instead of talking about it. Vote! This incident goes across several polarizing topics that involves Federal, State and Town laws. As much as it pains me to read the details of the shooting, I can easily see how we have gotten to this point.

This is the cost for living in a free, open, laissez-faire, mostly-Libertarian society. The mentally ill are out in the general population instead of being locked up in institutions. If you ban guns, a mentally ill person can still make a bomb out of household chemicals using an internet recipe and kill hundreds. What am I supposed to vote for? To institutionalize anybody who might remotely be capable of doing something like this? I don't think so.

 

[Nick]

People say "but what can you do" not because they don't have kids, but because of their political leanings. Which I think we should steer far away from in this thread. AZ has become particularly polarizing lately and it is not a welcome change IMO. Let's all agree this is devastating, hits far too close to home for many, is deeply concerning for us all,and leave the talk of what to do at the town meeting and the court of public opinion outside of AZ.

It's difficult. Stuff like this always brings out the best and the worst in people. I agree that we should keep talk of what to do out of the thread. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

 

[Nick]

This is the cost for living in a free, open, laissez-faire, mostly-Libertarian society. The mentally ill are out in the general population instead of being locked up in institutions. If you ban guns, a mentally ill person can still make a bomb out of household chemicals using an internet recipe and kill hundreds. What am I supposed to vote for? To institutionalize anybody who might remotely be capable of doing something like this? I don't think so.

I read it on facebook somewhere but there are just bad people who do bad things. Where there is a will there is a way. It's unfortunate that will exists.

On a side note, my wife is a 1st grade school teacher, and they do drills and stuff in her school, and the front doors are always locked. I always wondered, who the hell would ever attack an elementary school??

I am still in a total state of disbelief.

 

[jack97]

On a side note, my wife is a 1st grade school teacher, and they do drills and stuff in her school, and the front doors are always locked. I always wondered, who the hell would ever attack an elementary school??

The middle school where my daughter use to go had a glass front door while the elementary school had a window partitioned front desk. The weapons used most likely would have shattered the door.

 

[o3jeff]

Looks like the president possibly is/has stopping by, a couple Chinooks and some Hueys flew overhead about 2 hours ago and a few more just went by now.

 

[Bumpsis]

This is the cost for living in a free, open, laissez-faire, mostly-Libertarian society. The mentally ill are out in the general population instead of being locked up in institutions. If you ban guns, a mentally ill person can still make a bomb out of household chemicals using an internet recipe and kill hundreds. What am I supposed to vote for? To institutionalize anybody who might remotely be capable of doing something like this? I don't think so.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that perpetuates this nightmare from one mass shoothing to another. Yeah, Geoff, tell one of these parents whose child's brains got splattered on the wall that it's OK because the tree of liberty needed to be watered with the blood of their kid.
What kind of freedom is this when we have to live under the terror of a gun?
People should read this: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/newtown-and-the-madness-of-guns.html

 

[deadheadskier]

I'm not a gun owner. I'm also not sure stricter gun control will prevent psychopaths like Adam Lanza from doing the unthinkable.

Look at Norway's gun laws

To own a gun in Norway, one must document a use for the gun. By far the most common grounds for civilian ownership are hunting and sports shooting, in that order. Other needs can include special guard duties or self defence, but the first is rare unless the person shows identification confirming that he or she is a trained guard or member of a law-enforcement agency and the second is practically never accepted as a reason for gun ownership.

FAR stricter than the US.

Yet, Anders Breivik found a way to shoot and kill 69 people, most of them teenagers. Keep in mind he also killed 8 others with a bomb constructed of fertilizer and fuel oil.

What law would've stopped such a monster?

 

[jack97]

I'm not a gun owner. I'm also not sure stricter gun control will prevent psychopaths like Adam Lanza from doing the unthinkable.

Look at Norway's gun laws



FAR stricter than the US.

Yet, Anders Breivik found a way to shoot and kill 69 people, most of them teenagers. Keep in mind he also killed 8 others with a bomb constructed of fertilizer and fuel oil.

What law would've stopped such a monster?

Yes, a law by itself would not stop a monster. However keep this in mind, Norway only had one mass shooting in recent times, we had 8 so far in 2012, btw, changing the threshold of the number killed can make the number smaller however it makes no difference to the victims and the people who lost love ones. Below is a 30 year time line of mass shootings in the US;

http://www.alternet.org/61-30-years-timeline-mass-shootings-america




This a complex issue which cover several topics and without going into opinions, I'll try to point out some more facts;

Weapons tech has increased significantly since our founding fathers wrote the Constitution which gives us the right to bear arm. Currently, the rifles and hand guns are far more powerful and effective for killing than the "arms" available to people back when the second amendment was written.

Due to budget cuts in the 80s, MA state mental hospital had to close.

Mental health coverage is limited among health insurance providers and that's assuming you do have insurance. Paying out of pocket is an expensive option.

 

[marcski]

It might not have prevented this but it would have been a lot more difficult if his mother didn't keep guns at home. And a semi-automatic rifle? What is the purpose of having a weapon like that. They don't call it a semi-automatic PROTECTION rifle. It's an assault weapon. I'm not a hunter but I'd imagine an automatic weapon takes the challenge out of it. And.....she kept the guns in her home when she knew her son was off?

Gun control will not prevent all tragedies but don't kid yourself....it would certainly curb some of the violence. Countries with strict gun control laws just don't have as many shootings the we do here in the USA.

 

[Nick]

Do you guys remember this from a few years ago?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis