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27 Reported Killed In Connecticut Elementary School Shooting
Several readers sent word of a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. According to most reports, 27 people are dead, including 18 children. The alleged shooter is dead, a man in his 20s. He was armed with multiple weapons and may have worn a bulletproof vest. According to CBS, "It is unclear if there was more than one gunman at the school. Miller reports authorities have an individual in custody who investigators said may be a possible second shooter." (Investigators now say the person being questioned is not a suspect.) One student was quoted as saying, "I was in the gym and I heard a loud, like seven loud booms, and the gym teachers told us to go in the corner, so we all huddled. And I kept hearing these booming noises. And we all started crying." Another, 8 years old, said, "I saw some of the bullets going down the hall and then a teacher pulled me into her classroom."
It is time to amend the 2nd amendment.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
The school is a gun-free campus, plus all visitors have to register at the office.
I cannot believe that someone could target children like that. My two daughters are the same age as the dead and I will have to hug and hold them for a long while tonight. My heart goes out to those parents.
our country makes it too easy to become a nutcase.
this is a social problem. blaming what tool you use to act out is not helpful.
what would be helpful is finding out why so many americans are stressed out and going crazy on the population. I think we should look at why our society is freaking out. the tool the crazies use is NOT the issue!
we have a culture of anger. that's a place to start looking for solutions.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
No. The gunman killed the kids. The gun and bullets were simply the tools used. Should all computers be banned because hackers use them to hack?
That depends, do computers serve a purpose other than hacking?
What is the correlation between mass shootings and the closing & defunding of mental health institutions?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Gun laws do nothing in making it harder for "fucking lunatics" to posess. There in lies the logical fallacy. It makes it for "fucking normal people" harder to posess, which is incidentily the root of the problem. It would have taken one normal individual to stop this idiot.
It looks like the first few comments have already been about guns and the second amendment, so I want to throw this out there. There have been spree killings all over the world, even in countries with more restrictive gun laws than the USA. Most of these killings were done with firearms, but many were done with other weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers
I think that rather than arguing about gun-rights in general, we would be better served by working to identify the kind of people that feel they need to resort to this type of violence and getting them the help they need before they snap.
The worst mass school murder in American history took place on May 18,1927 in Bath Township, Mich., when a former school board member set off three bombs that killed 45 people.
I would rather see resources put into identifying and helping the lunatics. That is the elephant in the room.
I'm not particularly in favour of liberal gun laws, but in China there are an ongoing spate of mass stabbings in schools, for example here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7710196/China-suffers-eighth-child-stabbing-attack-in-a-month.html
The latest attack resulted in 22 stabbings. The problem doesn't seem to be the guns in and of themselves, its the culture and how it is dealing with problematic individuals. Or something else, I don't know, but its definetely a social issue first and foremost.
http://thismodernworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/TMW2011-01-12acolorlowres-copy.jpg
That's from two massacres ago.
Gun laws are an oxymoron. Criminals, by definition, do not abide by the laws. So it is only the good people that do not have guns in gun free zones. I do have strong feelings about gun laws but I do not think that this is the time to air them.
My thoughts are with those unfortunate parents whose grief must be too hard for anyone to bear
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
To put things into perspective: over the last twenty years, there have been fewer than 200 fatalities in school shootings (including colleges and universities) in the United States. By way of comparison, during that period in the US there have been about 1000 deaths due to lightning strikes, 25 due to (unprovoked) shark attacks, 3000 due to international terrorism, and 200 due to domestic terrorism. So we really ought to be more concerned about lightning and box cutters than about handguns.
Perhaps you should consider the Akihabara massacre.
To quote Penn and Teller, "You can stop insane people from doing insane things with insane laws. It's insane!"
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
LIBERALS are responsible for this. THEY are the ones who push for gun control so that good people cannot STOP insane shooters like this. This would have gone nowhere had everyone in that school had good access to deadly enough weapons to respond in kind to that shooter.
Teachers hear gunshots, grab their 9 mms, head into the hall. Blast away at the janitors who are shooting back with their AK47s. Both groups start to take casualties from the administrators firing .50 cam Brownings mounted to A/V carts. The lunch ladies lob grenades out from the cafeteria, taking out large swaths of combatants, including the third grader who set off the original firecracker.
Many a gun proponent has been turned by having a spouse or child killed. The rest just don't believe it can ever happen to them.
Many gun opponents have been turned by having a spouse or child killed, while they watched, defenseless. The rest just don't believe it can ever happen to them.
The street - she runs both ways.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Criminals also don't follow laws against theft, murder, etc. And?
Agreed. Guns are made for killing. I don't see why that's a bad thing. Sometimes people need to be killed. As long as bad guys have guns, good guys should have them too. Maybe we should improve our system of determining who's a good guy and who's a bad guy, but we definitely don't need to ban guns. That will definitely only leave them in the hands of the bad guys. Guns are a force multiplier; They can be used to level the playing field. If a 250lb guy with a knife attacks a 90lb girl, she damn well better have a gun. Unfortunately, this does mean one crazy guy with lots of bullets can do a bunch of damage. However, taking away guns doesn't fix crazy. This evil bastard probably could have done just as much damage by rigging an explosive, setting the hallways on fire, or taping a kitchen knife to a broomstick. Crazy fucks will do crazy shit. Treat the disease not the symptom.
if someone who is unhinged wants to do mean and violent things, they will.
when we are ready to start blaming our society instead of tools it owns, then we can move to a solution.
we have a 'war on drugs' as if that does any good. we have a 'war on poverty' and that does no good. we like to declare war and have easy solutions. but the underlying causes are not readers-digest concepts and voters and lawmakers can't read more than a few paragraphs before being bored.
banning tools is rarely going to get you the result you are really after. its easy to blame tools but this won't help.
the anger with so many, runs so deep.
our country is boiling over with hate. bursting at the seams. and we seem to encourage it, if anything! look at the constant fighting with D and R in washington. look at the news. they don't report good things, those don't 'sell'. they report violence and people LOVE that shit.
our society is kind of fucked up. some serious soul searching should be done.
but it won't happen. and more like this will continue while we turn a blind eye. short-term is all we can think about. 'long-term social stability' is a forgotton concept in the western world.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
However, killing is one of (not the only) the primary purposes of a gun. You cannot say the same of a computer.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The question to ask is: if guns were freely and readily available in China, would there be FEWER deaths from these incidents?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The guy's already dead. Personally I think they should just never release his name or any pictures. To twisted wastes of life like this guy, infamy is all they think they can achieve. Take it away from them.
But that is hard... You are telling me that we should care about our fellow man and help him? That costs money...
In the UK we had strong gun laws introduced each time a crazy did something like this but the truth is that each of those crazies had done lesser crazy shit before they went postal. The guy who did the Hungerford massacre in 1987 had take a gun into work to threaten someone and the police had not taken his guns or his license away from him. It should have been the police that were looked at for not enforcing the law as it was rather than introducing new laws. New laws will not make things better. Teachers should not be carrying guns, that is more stupid. Do you really think that teachers never go crazy? I am one and I often want to kill a student. We should have more steps to look at who, good or bad, has a gun. It should not be right, it should be a privilege that can be revoked.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Gun laws are an oxymoron. Criminals, by definition, do not abide by the laws. So it is only the good people that do not have guns in gun free zones. I do have strong feelings about gun laws but I do not think that this is the time to air them.
I do. It's much more relevant now than any other time.
Criminals don't abide by the laws, but with good enforcement and harsh sentencing for criminals using a gun the chance they'll carry one (and use it) decreases.
Britain has harsh gun laws: it's pretty much an automatic minimum-five-year jail sentence if you handle a gun without a license. Shootings are rare, mass-shootings + suicide far rarer, and accidents (child getting gun, etc) very rare too. Knife crime is possibly more common that the US (I haven't checked), but I prefer it that way.
Some criminals have guns, but they're careful with them. They're kept hidden somewhere (hidden in a relative's house, and carried to and from the scene by a young gang member in an attempt to avoid the penalty for possessing a gun).
For example, 12 years for possessing a firearm, ammunition and knives with intent.
Or 18 months for a 13-year-old holding a gun for an older gang member.
citation provided asshole
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Right, it does. How much did we just spend on the election? Let's tax that. Stupidest waste of money I've seen yet.
This system works and take out the crackpots.
What probably helps too is that we take more care of the "crackpots" here. Free (ish, depending) medical care, including mental health care.
We already have the legal framework for making it illegal for a "lunatic" to possess firearms. The problem is our system for detecting, handling and treating such people is seriously deficient. Alarms were up everywhere for the guy at Virginia Tech, yet nobody pushed it through.
Yes because it's unfair to the gun lobby. How are they suppose to pretend that gun violence isn't a problem during times like this.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
PROTIP: Correlation is not causation.
The US simply has a very high level of desperate and crazy people. Masses and masses of insane religious schizos, extreme poverty gradients, generally being an anti-social dog-eat-dog society (Which is the cause for the former two.) aka. ultra-capitalist law-of-the-jungle feudalism, extreme obsession with wars and murder and hate...
Under all those things, the actual effect of the people losing the freedom because they can't stage a revolution anymore simply becomes invisible. And the possibility of staging a revolution was the whole point of keeping the population armed. If anything they are not armed enough... with weapons and defense against social engineering (aka lobbyism aka politics aka marketing aka PR aka news aka propaganda aka churches)!
Because the reason they didn't already have multiple revolutions is because they are grown to be passive-thinkers without an actual free will, completely under the control of social engineers.
Yes, I know. It's the absolute wrong time to talk about things like this
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
Before this was the Empire State shooting. Before that, the Aurora shooting. Before that, the Tulsa shooting. Before that, the Chardon High School shooting. And that's only 2012. We're quickly coming to a state where gun control discussion is silenced the whole year because there is always a shooting nearby.
Note that it says "injured", and not "killed."
Cynical Idealist
This past year over 20 children died the slow death of heatstroke/hypothermia after their parents locked them in cars. A toddler died because his mother was an idiot and let him stand on a ledge at a zoo. Where is your outrage over those deaths? Where is your call to action for those children? Those children died not out of malice, but because their parents and all the bystanders that ignored or didn't notice them were too stupid/uncaring to bother keeping them alive.
More people have been killed this year (including children) by drunk or distracted driving. Since alcohol doesn't benefit society, should we bring back prohibition for the safety of the children?
How about instead of banning things, we focus our resources on figuring out why people go nuts and try to kill children? Why don't we try to help the nutters before they kill our children? If someone wants to kill people, they don't need guns.
Let me be clear here. I'm very much against guns being as prolific as they are. The bullshit defeatist "if guns are illegal, only criminals will have them" argument is so abundantly wrong-headed it defies belief, IMHO. Just look at the gun statistics in England compared to the the US and you have a compelling argument.
However.
When you're looking for reasons why one society in particular has a record of atrocities like this, the first place to look is what makes that society unique. The famous NRA quote "It's not guns that kill people, people kill people" was an attempt to deflect criticism of the penis-extensions^W^W guns generally available (to which my and Eddie's retort is "sure, but the gun helps!"), but like all good propaganda it contains a kernel of truth. The real question then is "why are these people killing each other ?"
The real reason people are using guns to kill themselves and others is the society that they live in. The cold hard truth is that guns are available worldwide, and yet it's a peculiarly American thing (with some outliers) to go crazy and kill a bunch of children/people using your personal arsenal. What's wrong is deeper, I believe.
IMHO American society is in a slow but inevitable death spiral...
It's hard to reconcile that Americans give generously to charities with the first two points above, unless it's just Democrats doing the giving; which is unlikely :). I'd have to posit a discontinuity between the act of giving, and the way of living. It's as if people are ok with being nice to others if they choose to, but refuse to have the general good of society imposed upon them. That's a very odd form of independence, and smacks of biting off your nose to spite your face, but since I don't understand the motivation, I may have it completely wrong there. What's clear is that charitable donation is important to Americans, but charitable society is not.
Religion also plays its part. The society is highly religious, relative to the developed world but religion here in the US is a business like any other. The prime goal is not to try and guide society in the right direction, it's to funnel cash to the higher-ups in the religious power structure. People are told they're doing the right thing as long as the cash is flowing upwards,and the "church"'s goal is simply to continue to make sure that is the case. Upon examination, it's a good metaphor for what's wrong in the more-general society.
It adds up to an uncaring society, and I can see how anyone stuck on the lower rungs with seemingly no prospect of getting higher up could reject it, and similarly reject the rest of the social rules we all expect to be obeyed. There's no golden solution here, no panacea, you're not guaranteed anything will ever be perfect, but if the society had more general welfare built in, it's my personal belief there'd be less atrocities.
A society is by definition a group of people collectively living by a set of rules. As
Physicists get Hadrons!
Not sure what you're arguing. Are you saying that no laws were made after these events regarding bomb material or ability to get into cockpits? Are you saying that all of the laws put into place after these events had zero effect?
I can think of at least one law that was put into place that had great effect - the requirement that cockpit doors are reinforced and locked from inside the cockpit. Are you really willing to go down this road?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Asshole eh? Wow.. somebody has sand in their vagina...
Yet Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the U.S. and oopsie...
I say this as a moderate Dem with a libertarian bent: civilian gun owership will not be outlawed in the US within your lifetime. Witness this and this. We need to disarm criminals, close the gunshow loophole, and find a mechanism to weed out the mentally unstable with respect to weapons purchases. The last is the trickiest, especially considering doctor patient confidentiality.
My wife was shot and killed ten years ago by a maniac who was previously convicted of another felony. The pistol was sold to him by his uncle so his uncle knew he was a convicted felon. It was then transported over state lines without a permit by said felon. He was going to comit a crime regardless of rather there was gun control or not, especially because he and his uncle had already broken two federal laws known as the Brady gun laws months before the murder took place.
I still dont carry a gun and I actually do believe in gun control. Would it have saved my wife? Nope. The maniac still would have had an illegal weapon. But you know what, it might actually save someone elses life. If the choice between saving someones life because of a stupid law or letting people carry weapons that are designed to kill other humans is what get to deal with then I am all for gun control.
Thank goodness you said "many" and not "all."
I also dont believe in capital punishment. Make them rot in prison for the rest of their lives. I will happily pay for it. Provided of course we stop giving them all the great things in life, they get nothing. Two reasons;
1. If by chance they are actually innocent, then I dont want blood on my hands for killing an innocent person. And yes there are some innocent people on death row.
2. If they are guilty then death is a very easy out. Make them wish they were dead. Make them pay for the victims children to go to college or get decent medical care. Make them do something productive that helps the victim(s) of their senseless crime. It wont ever bring back my loved one, but it sure would help this single parent of two over the past ten years survive a little easier having another income that I would have had if my wife hadnt been taken by some lunatic with a gun he shouldnt have had in the first place.
But hey, thats just my $.02
I will always walk around unarmed, as do the overwhelming majority of people in modern day America (let alone the UK). With that in mind, I'd rate my survivability as far higher if I were attacked by a lone crazy person with a metal club or a knife than I would if I were attacked by a lone crazy person with a semi-automatic handgun.
Can I imagine life with a caved-in skull? No more so than having my brains blown out. But can I imagine life after being smacked in the ribs with a crow bar? More so than after getting a couple of bullet-shaped holes in my chest.
...is that folks are using this story as a political foil.
18 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN ARE DEAD! VIOLENTLY.
However, the very first thing that people think of is the age-old political battle about guns.
This kind of abstracting our fellow humans into avatars is not something that I particularly like about modern times.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
Yeah, it's just so hard to drive an ammonium nitrate bomb up to a building.
Driving is easy. Building your own bomb is harder.
Why did McVeigh have to build his own bomb? Because bombs aren't sold in bomb stores, or at bomb shows. Because society recognizes that bombs are too dangerous to sell to the general public.
Why do so few other crazy people follow McVeigh's example? Because it's a lot of work. Buying a gun and shooting people with it, on the other hand, is relatively easy to do.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The article you quoted mentions that gun crimes in Chicago are down 9% overall. 438 deaths this year. Article mentions 900+ homicides in the early 90s. I think you may have accidentally posted an article that agrees with the person you were attempting to refute.
Really? Because my home state of New Hampshire, with some very relaxed gun laws, has a rate of 0.43 gun homicides per 100,000 people.
Compared to New York's 2.67, and California's 4.82 per 100,000... I'd actually say you'd have a hard time concluding that from the data you presented. California & New York both have much stricter gun control. Yet their per-capita rates are 6x and 11x the rate of New Hampshire, with its fairly relaxed gun controls.
In other words: Maybe the NRA has a point, and you can't just draw a straight line equivalence between "strict gun controls" and "lower gun homicide rates."
In other words: Maybe we need to look at the effectiveness of specific gun control laws (or, conversely, look at where the bulk of the maniacs committing mass murder are getting their supplies from), and develop sensible and effective gun policy that will actually lower the rate more than just saying "enact the harshest, strictest controls you can, and the problem will solve itself."
One of the teachers was a gun owner and owned multiple firearms.
Her son used them to murder twenty children.