Have you heard about the shooting in the Connecticut school?

I just did. I was so confused because I flipped on the TV and the news was talking about a police officer getting shot in Memphis this morning, then a minute later talking about a shooting and children who were shot and killed. I didn’t have the stories straight, I didn’t know where the school was. I just asked facebook and my Memphis friends straightened me out.

It is so horrific! Killing these so very young children, it makes me sick. My heart breaks for the families and the community, I just can’t imagine it.

The world has gone mad.

@JLeslie
I was waiting to have a procedure when I heard.
I feel very sick.
Why are unstable people getting guns.
How can anyone kill a child?
What does this say about our society?
I could not kill another human unless my life was threated.

I wish I had an answer. I will never understand it, I don’t care if someone tries to make sense of it, it will never make sense. Little children, K-4th grade. OMG! It is so incredibly upsetting, unfathomable. What could those young children ever have done to deserve this? Life is so random and unfair. It all makes me so sick, I am teared up thinking about it.

@JLeslie
I agree it is overwhelming sad.

@philosopher I think we have been posting simultaneously. Here’s my question.

Yes, sick fucks!

I am horrified and saddened.

I live VERY close to Newtown. The shooter was Ryan Lanza. He had a problem with his parents so he shot his step-father in New Jersey, shot his mother who was a teacher in that school, and shot her entire kindergarten class. I just can’t believe this. 18 five-six year olds that will never get to grow up.

30 dead, at least at current count. But remember, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. You can kill people with a steak knife or a baseball bat. Strange, I can’t recall the last time somebody at a baseball game went wild and killed 30 people with a bat, can you?

Well…as I said in another Q. I have no desire to hear the gory details, but, I think NO civilian people outside of law enforcement should be allowed to keep firearms.
Fuck the constitution. This isn’t 1745 anymore and there is no reason for the average person to keep firearms IMO. If hunters want to hunt, they get to use a rifle ONLY for their specific hunting season and then it is returned to the state to be kept until next year.

Not a popular opinion I know, but really, WTF!
If crazy people can’t get guns they won’t be able to kill 30 people single handedly with a baseball bat or steak knife.
If you want to protect your home and hearth get a taser to zap the thief with a baseball bat.

There is NO EXCUSE for this sort of thing to happen, ever!

Innocence lost.

@Coloma: I agree wholeheartedly. Fuck guns. Have a drink on me.

Yes, people kill people, but it sure is vastly facilitated by how easy it is to buy guns in this country.

@NostalgicChills : How do you know it was this guy? Did you know him personally? Do you know how old he was?

Gun control is not the answer. In many controlled experiments by psychologists, overpopulation in lab animals leads to some of them going berserk and killing their fellow animals.

22 children were just stabbed in China by a man with a knife, and this is not the first time

There is not one answer that fits it all.

@ETpro
What you wrote above about guns is what my husband and I say all the time.
I can comprehend why people who are afraid want guns but their logical is clearly faulty.
Guns are too easy to get and mentally ill unstable people use them to kill innocent people. Something must be done to stop this.
It feels like the US is the Wild West.

@YARNLADY : Are the results of those experiments deemed to be applicable to humans?

Even if they are, then why would reducing access to highly efficient killing machines not be an answer?

@bookish1 I read about one town that required every adult to own a gun, and crime ended in their town. tried to find it on the internet, but I don’t have time right now.

There were also 22 kids in China stabbed today. Today is a day of international tragedy.

I’m just completely sickened by it. And I’m glad the fucker is dead. Good riddance.

There was also a rampage on children in China as well. This guy had a knife, too. Wtf?

As I said on another Q, none of the children died in China. Both are horrific, don’t get me wrong. The republicans are posting the China incident all over my facebook, and it just feels like they are trying to say guns don’t kill, people do, except, in this case the guns did if you compare to China. I am not directing that statement at you @YARNLADY I know you are not some hard rights wing, pass along their emails, and listen blindly person.

@bookish, I’m going mostly by what I’m hearing on the news and now it seems its Ryan’s brother Adam who is the shooter not Ryan. I knew the mother, she was a good friend of my dad and uncle and a customer of my dad’s restaurant where I work.

Yes. Very, very sad. No parent should have to go through this, school should be a safe place for children. I agree with @Coloma, I think the gun laws are too slack. There will always be nutters, why make it this easy for them to kill people. Sorry but if that person had a baseball bat or even a knife, I doubt he would have been able to kill so many people in such a short space of time.

@Leanne1986
Your correct but the R Wingers will come up with endless bullshit stories to distort the facts. As an Independent I would hope everyone could review the facts. Guns are getting into the hands of unstable people. Something must be done to stop this.

I seriously, just do NOT understand why the obvious, banning firearms amongst private citizens, is seen as such an outrageous concept. Outrageous is the deaths of dozens of little children, yet, the powers that be turn a blind aye and a deaf ear to the freaking OBVIOUS solution. Truly amazing IMO. Aaah well….in a perfect world.

@Coloma Stricter gun control seems to have a higher correlation with less gun violence, then banning guns. Plus, if only the police have gins, then what happens when the police suck? Nazi Germany, parts of the south during slavery and segregation. As a Jewish person I can understand wanting to put a bullet in that bastard coming for me in my country that I always thought was civilized, democratic, and good. We are taught if it can happen there it can happen anywhere. I am not a “gun” person, so I prefer to live in a town with no guns, but I can’t go as far to say I want to make it ilegal for private citizens to own guns.

@JLeslie Yes, I can certainly see your POV, but really, something HAS to be done to prevent these situations from occurring. I dunno, but I’m pretty sure all these devastated parents would agree that taking the classroom mentality of punishing the group for the actions of one, is preferable to allowing the one to run roughshod over the majority. There are no easy answers, other than however it is done, these incidents must be stopped!

@Coloma My mom thinks all schools should have metal detectors at entrances. Bells should go off.

@JLeslie
I see both sides. Intelligence says, we must work out away in which obtaining a gun requires a screening process. Right now some states allow anyone to buy them.
Even here in NYC illegal guns are all over the place.
I think it might be good idea to have guns that require a hand print to use. This could cut cut down on illegal weapons.
Congress must address this issue objectively.

@Coloma, @JLeslie & @philosopher I just asked here what we might realistically do to limit such tragedies.

I heard that they think this young man was aspergers.
FYI most aspergers people are highly intelligent and have great trouble socializing. This tells me he probably never received the help he needed. There are few qualified therapists.
I think most aspergers people can be productive and contribute much.
His pain does not excuse his evil actions. I wish we could help people like him before they become evil.
My son is autistic, aspergers and very high functioning autistic people have given me important advice. Most are not violent and they want to be accepted by our society.

@philosopher I think this is the direction the national conversation should go, rather than on security or gun control. It was mentioned in a thread shortly after the Aurora shooting, and I think if we as a culture want to find out why this is happening we need to discuss this.

@philosopher
I know for a fact that he was a complete sociopath. His mother even sent him away for a couple years.