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'27 dead' in Connecticut primary school shooting


Farin

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The shooter, according to reports, had a lot of mental health issues.

When oh when are we going to have a cogent discussion about psychiatric help in this country? Too many people, young and old, are allowed to fall through the cracks because of Ronnie Raygun pushing for de-institutionalization in the 1980s Close to 1/3 of the homeless in this country have mental health issues they cannot afford to take care of, or they lack the support structure to continue treatment. More and more kids who have serious personality disorders are drugged up on Ritalin and passed through the system, not getting any kind of counseling or family help.

While a cogent discussion about gun control needs to happen as well, the root of a lot of these mass shootings is mental health, and if we do more work to help the people who need it, less people will snap and shoot up a kindergarten.

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According to Huckabee it's not because of mental health or gun availability...it's because "we" took God out of schools. God's such a vindictive bastard, eh? Huckabee...suckabee.

TGIA...Thank Goodness I'm Atheist

To quote Kurt Vonnegut, Mike Huckabee can go take a flying eff-you-see-kay at a rolling donut. He's a fat piece of fundamentalist slime.

I'd think that even if I wasn't an atheist.

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This isn't about controlling guns or mental illness, or God. It's about SECURITY! Our children deserve, no, they damned certainly have the legal rights to be protected from the most evil and monsterous elements in the world today.

Schools need to be more secure than airports and courthouses. These most vulnerable and innocent people deserve to have a place they can go learn and never, never worry about what can get at them while in our care!

And, I have heard from Carl, he and his family are fine. Thanks for asking Ken.

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... These most vulnerable and innocent people deserve to have a place they can go learn and never, never worry about what can get at them while in our care!

...

It could be argued that there are those even more innocent and vulnerable than children in a schoolroom - those awaiting their time in the womb.

Anyone denying a correlation in cheapening life in one location, at the expense of the other, is purposefully deluding themselves.

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Thought this was an intersting article...

Morgan Freeman's statement about these random shootings....

"You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.

It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are ho...usehold names, but do you kn

ow the name of a single victim of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell.

You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem."

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No "one" thing sunk the Titanic, it was a combination of things and events. Bad steel, poor judgement, bad (or no) long range optics, and an iceberg.This event is no different. It's ok to have differences in opinions without it devolving into a brawl. My views on guns and gun control are vastly different than Mike's. I don't believe him to be a bad person. So often when things like this happen, it's many different factors that led to a tragedy like this school shooting. A bullied kid. Bad (or absent, disconnected parents). Easy access to deadly weapons. Teachers poorly trained to see obvious warning signs because of a host of other tasks. Friends that are afraid to say anything for fear of offending anyone. In the end, it always goes back to the same thing for me. If you had no hands, it's hard to punch someone in the face. If you had draconian gun laws, it would be far more difficult to shoot someone. None of that though brings any comfort to the parents of these children. This has rattled me to the core empathy-wise. No words or combination of words to express the sorrow. Love your kids, teach them however you can that violence is never, ever the solution to anything.

Peace you guys. Just.. Peace.

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The blame game bothers me. I don't mean here, I mean the media etc. All the talk about the killer, his mother, his issues bothers me. There is no way for us to know today what set of unique circumstances brought this tragedy about. Let's worry about all that later, the fact is, whatever the root issue, it's the fallout of the current world we live in.

What we absolutely know is that twenty seven families are in needless anguish. That is the sad reality. They are going to announce the names of the victims today - can you imagine anything more horrible, to hear your child's name on that list? I prefer to focus my thoughts on them today.

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His issues are why he did this. Not talking about those issues leads to more incidents like this.

I believe that the United States is in the middle of a crisis and it isn't the fiscal cliff. It's a crisis that no one wants to talk about; no one wants to address. It's a mental health crisis. I don't know what the cause or the solution is but we need to face up to it. Is it the stigma of mental illness, the lack of health insurance, too much stress, a combination of factors; I don't know. But there are too many individuals on edge and I believe this kind of violence will continue to occur and all this talk about evil and gun control I think ignores the greater problem. I just hope that we go beyond symbolic gestures that in the end are well-intentioned but ultimately empty, and face the epidemic of declining mental health head-on.

We absolutely should talk about the victims, but the shooter was a victim too. That's not saying we shouldn't feel rage and anger for what he did, but an understanding about why he did it is essential to preventing it from happening again.

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Let me say this again.

If this had been a busload of kids on there to or from a field-trip being killed by a drunk driver who was killed, I don't think people would have the same feelings about this tragedy.

It doesn't matter how or why innocent victims are killed, we need to be "proactive instead of reactive"

When I ride I wear a helmet instead of trying to eliminate anything that in't soft around me. It's called preventative measure.

If there was a single secure entrance to that school monitored by an armed security guard, this thread would not exist here today.

And while I understand everyone's concern to eliminate guns from our society, bad people would still get them, and then the good people would be defenseless. This is why in a gun-free society police and military still carry guns because bad people can't be banned from our existence.

As people have stated, and I agree, this is such a horrible crime, a senseless act of rage that absolutely burns our hearts.

I have never wrote the President of the United States before in my life, but this morning I wrote Mr. Obama a request, a request to secure our schools right now, put the same protective forces he has on his residence at The White House, and the Airport terminals, that no one ever get a weapon or explosives of any kind into another K-12 classroom in American. I begged him!

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I appreciate you guys checking in on me when this went down. In the interest of getting work done, I rarely check news in the morning, so the first place I heard about this was when Alexander sent me a note from England. I'm pretty good with trauma, but can't go anywhere near this one in my mind.

Newtown is about 50 miles away from me. Here are my only connections:

1) A buddy who I used to work with has a son who goes to afternoon kindergarten at the school.

2) Another friend is the morning news anchor at the TV station in New Haven, which is the closest big station to the shooting. Fortunately, he was off the air when this was reported, so he didn't have to flounder about spewing speculation from the anchor desk. The news media gets a lot of flak for sensationalist and inaccurate reporting in situations like this, but the vast majority of these folks are good people with the best of intentions forced to put out some information even if there is none.

Our approach with the kids is to keep it quiet. No candle tonight, no watching the news with them, no talking about it unless they ask. They will hear about it for sure, but I don't want to give it more weight. The schools around here did a great job letting us know how they were handling it, giving us an update on security procedures (you have to be buzzed in and go through the office), and making resources available.

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Let me say this again.

If this had been a busload of kids on there to or from a field-trip being killed by a drunk driver who was killed

Here's the difference: Drunk driving is illegal, semi-automatic guns are not. Does outlawing drunk driving eliminate its occurrence or tragic accidents resulting from its occurrence? Of course not. Does it greatly decrease such tragedies? Of course it does.

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Legal or illegal, selfish destructive waste continues....

How sad.

I believe that narrow focus on a method of destruction is futile and emotionally driven.

Solutions come from logical, statistical facts and data.

If someone can explain to me how preventing law abiding level-headed responsible people from gaining access to automobiles or alcohol will prevent anymore drunk driving killings, then maybe that same person can explain to me how that same responsible, law abiding people being denied access to a firearm to defend themselves from lawless people with illegal access to firearms. Then I will be in full support!

I read story after story month after month about a old persons or a single moms being accosted in the night by gun wielding criminals and they defend themselves, they are alive because of the second ammendment to my constitution, and their instict for survival.

I would love to never read of murder, or never have evil come visiting good people of this land, but until that day is real, we must be our own saviors. We must defend ourselves against the evil heartless creatures who come hunting us in our homes, schools and work places. Heightened securty is the only answer.

Joe, we aren't free, never have been, that's a politicians term, and a farce that should be left by the way side like santa claus, the easter bunny and jesus christ. No on will help you but you!

Remember, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away!

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This isn't about controlling guns or mental illness, or God. It's about SECURITY! Our children deserve, no, they damned certainly have the legal rights to be protected from the most evil and monsterous elements in the world today.

Schools need to be more secure than airports and courthouses. These most vulnerable and innocent people deserve to have a place they can go learn and never, never worry about what can get at them while in our care!

So, you suggest we should criminalise attending kindergarten rather than criminalise accessibility of weapons to the mentally ill? :beatnik:

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We absolutely should talk about the victims, but the shooter was a victim too. That's not saying we shouldn't feel rage and anger for what he did, but an understanding about why he did it is essential to preventing it from happening again.

In this very moment, let me say that I don't give a bleep for the shooter or what sort of life he had or whatever.

Why he did it? Because 1) he's a (bleep), sick, mentally ill, etc. 2) he had a gun.

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