CT school shooting - Horrible

[AdminAssistant]

I doubt a gun control law would have done much to stop someone sick enough to massacre a bunch of 5 year olds.

[Andara Bledin]

It's worth noting that the guy had several guns on him, so this was a planned attack, not merely a crime of opportunity. Just locking up the guns is not going to stop this type of incident, only change the means. For reference the second highest elementary school mass killing involved a bomb in the '20s, which pretty much anyone on the planet can create if they aren't concerned with their own survival.

Another article quotes a fellow resident as stating, "I knew he had autism." It remains to be seen if that is accurate, and if so, whether it had any bearing on what happened or if there was some other root cause to the killer's breakdown.

I read that last year we were actually at the lowest number of school killings since reporting began, down from a high during a period during 2007-2008.

It's a shame that these incidents (which are definitely shocking) are given so much ink while the horrors that happen to children every single day almost never see the papers unless it's particularly heinous or involves a cute little white girl. >_<

^-.-^

[AdminAssistant]

It's a shame that these incidents (which are definitely shocking) are given so much ink while the horrors that happen to children every single day almost never see the papers unless it's particularly heinous or involves a cute little white girl. >_<

I agree with that. I mean, how many kids have died just this year due to gang violence?

[s_stabeler]

there are two reasons why the horrors that happen every day aren't reported. 1) they do happen every day, so sadly, they aren't considered newsworthy.
2) in the case of gang violence, more often than not, it's against a gang member from a rival gang. People tend to care far less when it's another gangmember that gets attacked, so again, it isn't considered newsworthy.

[Andara Bledin]

I'm actually discounting gang violence entirely. More than 5 children die every day due to abuse, nearly half of which includes actual abuse beyond just neglect.

More children have been killed by abuse since Monday than were killed in the shooting.

But the shootings get the headlines. And there's a lot of evidence to suggest that such exposure makes them more attractive in exactly the wrong way.

^-.-^

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

Reports now saying the shooter was NOT Ryan Lanza, but his brother Andrew Lanza.

[s_stabeler]

Andara, while yes, it's tragic that 5 kids a day die of abuse, it's still not newsworthy. for a story to be newsworthy, it has to be relatively rare. ( for example, the Budget in the UK is newsworthy over here because it's once a year and affects everybody. Individual laws? aren't normally newsworthy.) hence why child abuse is only newsworthy in aggregate, but a school shooting is newsworthy in it's own right.

edit- are you (insert your favorite expletive) SERIOUS? they got the name of the shooter wrong?

[ngc_7331]

edit- are you (insert your favorite expletive) SERIOUS? they got the name of the shooter wrong?

I read somewhere that the shooter had his brother's ID on him so his identity was a bit confused at first.

I'm not a parent, nor do I want to be. I love kids only when they are someone else's and therefore returnable. But I've been crying since I heard what happened. I can't imagine the pain those parents are feeling right now and so close to the holidays at that. I don't know what kind of sick person shoots children, but I think that if there's a hell, there's a very special place for him in it.

[Greenday]

How was a man dressed in all black allowed to just waltz right in anyway?

He was the son of one of the teachers. If the staff knows him, why wouldn't they let him in?

[crashhelmet]

I think it's more numbers per incident than the cause. Every time a child dies from abuse here, it's reported. It doesn't get much discussion, but it gets reported. This was 1 incident that took the lives of ~20 children. It doesn't matter if they were all shot or they were in a bus that spontaneously combusted. It would get the same attention either way.

[HYHYBT]

Both bombs and poison gas could have been just as effective, and there's no real way to stop people making either of them at home.

[Beckpatton]

There's at least some chance of someone blowing themself up, or gassing themself while preparing such an attack (especially when they are inexperienced) unlikely for them to accidently blow their own brains out while loading up the car for a shooting spree..

In saying that I'm going to try and avoid yet another gun control debate, I have my opinion on the matter, but I've come to realise that incidents like this are probably never gonna lead to a gun ban in the US. As others have pointed out, the shootings aren't happening just because the guns are available, there's more to it, (most likely mental illness, not just pure Evil)..

It's time to focus on finding out WHY it keeps happening, not how..

[BlaqueKatt]

It's time to focus on finding out WHY it keeps happening, not how..

better access to mental health care(seriously if uninsured in my city, the waiting list for low cost mental health services is 3 years, and another year to receive medications), mandatory conflict resolution classes in school.

If a person is in treatment for mental health issues, include the family, or at least talk with them about their concerns. I say this because my spouse has shown signs of schizophrenia(violence, "blackouts", substance abuse, auditory hallucinations), but his mental health care providers don't know about any of it because he WON'T TELL THEM(he's ashamed and afraid of the stigma), and they won't talk to me at all. It's infuriating, and I'm scared to death if I do the wrong thing it will set him off again. No one believes me, and no one can or will help me. It's a HUGE gap in the system that seriously needs to be addressed.

[Gravekeeper]

If a person is in treatment for mental health issues, include the family, or at least talk with them about their concerns.

If a person is in treatment for mental health issues, they should be nixed from owning a firearm. Every time something like this happens, there's always this massive series of warning signs leading up to it and/or the guy has his own 50 page manifesto on Facebook.

[Nekojin]

As I've said elsewhere, I've got five bucks saying that it will be revealed at some point that he was bullied in school. All of the school shootings follow the same pattern: Young male who was bullied. In the Columbine case, Klebold and Harris were both bullied, and Harris was a straight-up psychopath. Cho was bullied. Loughner (while not a school shooting, still fits the pattern) was bullied. Todd Cameron Smith, bullied. TJ Lane, bullied by his family.

The list goes on and on. While not every school shooter was bullied, there's an awful lot of them who were. In the Columbine Massacre wikipedia page, it mentions a Secret Service study on school shootings, and one of the high-profile indicators was that the attackers had previously been bullied.