'27 dead' in Connecticut primary school shooting

[bart]

very sad !

[bubbleymonki]

very heartbreaking news :(

[taameen**sparks**]

This is absolutely horrific.

[Prospector]

I'm at the same time sad and angry, I mean, this kind of things have stop!

[taameen**sparks**]

I'm at the same time sad and angry, I mean, this kind of things have stop!

 

I'm sure the rest of the US wants it stop. We just need to come to a decision on gun control laws now.

[Mollyxyloto]

ohz

 

Your avatar shows how I feel about this

[Megalomania]

This is so horrible, I don't even know what to say except to express my condolences to the friends and family of the victims.

 

As for the calls for gun laws, I don't see how that will make any difference. As Violet said on Facebook, the gun isn't the one responsible, but the person pulling the trigger. If someone is violent, they're going to find a way to harm others no matter what laws are passed.

[Italian Plastic]

“The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about Basketball Diaries?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?” The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory.

 

“Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”

 

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.”

- Roger Ebert

[Prospector]

^ :nod: I think it's much more about the media than anything else, of course the lack of gun control is also an important factor, still...

[Spider-Man]

My hopes and thoughts go out to the families.

[Batman]

Why the hell would you kill little children?! I don't even know what to say.

[coldlocked]

This is so horrible, I don't even know what to say except to express my condolences to the friends and family of the victims.

 

As for the calls for gun laws, I don't see how that will make any difference. As Violet said on Facebook, the gun isn't the one responsible, but the person pulling the trigger. If someone is violent, they're going to find a way to harm others no matter what laws are passed.

 

Exactly, that's why the black market exists, for when the law comes in the ways of those who want to cause harm. What should be discussed is school security. For example, how did he get in wearing body armor and all black clothes with guns? Didn't something look suspicious there?

[Violet]

As for the calls for gun laws, I don't see how that will make any difference. As Violet said on Facebook, the gun isn't the one responsible, but the person pulling the trigger. If someone is violent, they're going to find a way to harm others no matter what laws are passed.

 

Yes, thank you for bringing this up.

 

In case you aren't friends with me on Facebook and/or didn't see what I posted, I made a pretty clear indication of where my beliefs lie as far as gun control. Not even a day before this incident happened, 22 schoolchildren in China were stabbed by some man. People will use guns, knives, drugs, poison...it doesn't really matter. If they want to hurt people, they will find a way to do it. This quote pretty much states my opinion perfectly:

 

"The laws of [false utility] are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator?"-Cesare Beccaria

 

Also, Eddie makes a very valid point with his post. There are so many outlets of media that go on and on about violence, even to the point of glorifying it. This is a pressing problem that needs to be fixed. The problem is figuring out how to make this happen without infringing 1st amendment rights and censoring all things violent. To make my point clear, though, I'm not blaming the media in itself (movies, games, music, etc.), so much as how it is marketed and how we as a culture treat it.

 

Either way, this is a sad state of affairs. Shootings in themselves are bad enough, but when they involve young children...I can't even imagine. My brother does work-study for an elementary school, and he had a pretty heart-wrenching status about how thankful he was to see his kids and how he was glad he got to spend his birthday (He turned 21 today) with them. My thoughts are with all these children and their families.

[golfing7861]

Sickening...

[Coeurli]

I feel that blaming only guns, blaming only the media whatever...it's missing the point.

It's not one element, it's a whole thing, it's cultural, it's the guy and easy access to guns and gun culture and the media and other elements probably as well. It's a whole society that needs to think and start wondering: what point have we come to?

And as long as death will still be considered a way of getting justice and fame, deranged people with personal dramas will shoot at people because it's an easy way of getting justice and fame.

[Tnspieler1012]

I'm sure the rest of the US wants it stop.

 

hahaha! nope. *snort*

[Reilly]

^I thought she might have meant that they want these atrocities to stop. Yeah surely a lot of Americans stand behind the 2nd Ammendment.

 

I wonder what will happen to the 300 million firearms (Estimated up to 1/3rd of the world total) in the US if it becomes illegal, at least all the civil wars across the world will benefit.

[Tash]

Someone posted this on 4Chan 2 days before the shooting (warning: it includes an image of the dead Columbine high school shooters). Coincidence or posted by Adam Lanza?

[nancyk58]

How terrible that 20 children and 6 adults were killed in Connecticut.:cry: What a tragedy.

 

Danish TV2 News has sent non-stop from Connecticut since it became known that shooting was going on in a school there.

 

Danish TV2 News has a very good and beloved correspondent stationed in the New York area - so she is now keeping us up-to-date on events here (as she did on hurricane Sandy a few weeks ago).

 

So interested Danes are kept up-to-date on this story.

 

But I cannot help comparing this to the following piece item of news from yesterday (seen on both Danish TV2 News, Text-tv + dr.dk/news):

 

A MAN WITH A KNIFE WOUNDS 22 SCHOOL CHILDREN IN CHINA

 

(Initially, I thought that he had killed the children - luckily he did not succeed in that).

 

The man wounded 22 children and one adult in front of a school in the Henan province in central china - so ABC News reports. This took place at 8 o'clock local time only minutes before school was to start.

 

Attacks on school children are no unique event in China (rather a recurrent one).

 

According to ABC News, a number of similar attacks in China in 2010 cost 20 human lives while more than 50 were wounded / injured.

 

But my point is: If events like these take place in an area where our news correspondents are stationed - then these events are power-covered for hours if not days or weeks. If not, then they are hardly mentioned.

 

Or it is done in a way so that we do not remember / recall it after a while.

I for one do not recall hearing about these attacks against Chinese school children. Maybe I have read one line once in a while but not so that I had any picture of the massive scale.

 

 

My thoughts go out to the families of those affected both in the USA and in China.

[Reilly]

Someone posted this on 4Chan 2 days before the shooting (warning: it includes an image of the dead Columbine high school shooters). Coincidence or posted by Adam Lanza?

 

Nah, the post times don't have seconds on them. Someone always photoshops something like that from 4chan, when even a day has passed it means it's most certainly fake (Otherwise it would be circulated instantly after the attack).

 

Can we really post stuff like the link to that Columbine photo? I'm pretty sure Ian blocked links to a similar photo recently involving kids in Israel (I didn't see it though).

[Tash]

Nah, the post times don't have seconds on them. Someone always photoshops something like that from 4chan, when even a day has passed it means it's most certainly fake (Otherwise it would be circulated instantly after the attack).

 

Oh OK, I'm not familiar with 4Chan.

 

Can we really post stuff like the link to that Columbine photo? I'm pretty sure Ian blocked links to a similar photo recently involving kids in Israel (I didn't see it though).

 

That's why I didn't post the image but linked it and added the warning.

I'll remove the link since it's probably fake.

[the_gloaming09]

Just terrible news! Completely sickening and saddening to hear.

 

I think that gun control is definitely something that has to be talked about, especially assault weapons. Absolutely no reason anyone should have one.

 

Unfortunately I think that just blaming guns is not the sole reason to the problem since there are more emotional disturbances in the persons life, and also various influences. Guns are a big problem of course, but there's more to it.

[Reilly]

That's why I didn't post the image but linked it and added the warning.

 

That's what I just said the other girl did, you already know posting a link is the same thing as just posting the picture. I don't care either way about the picture obviously, whether it stays or goes, just found this strange.

 

Just terrible news! Completely sickening and saddening to hear.

 

I think that gun control is definitely something that has to be talked about, especially assault weapons. Absolutely no reason anyone should have one.

 

Unfortunately I think that just blaming guns is not the sole reason to the problem since there are more emotional disturbances in the persons life, and also various influences. Guns are a big problem of course, but there's more to it.

 

It's a catch 22 with people who believe in pro-gun rights, right now their argument is that if a person who knew how to handle a gun was in that school, the murderer wouldn't have taken more then a few lives, this is also the attitude a lot of people took in Colorado after the Batman shootings when people were literally lining the streets to get more guns and ammo the very next day.

 

It's a view of actually increasing the access and availability of purchasing guns, for protection. And yes, in mass shootings such as this and Colorado, maybe people have a point, and that's what's annoying, while these incidents in a way bring to light the dangers of giving any member of a large population access to weapons to carry out a mass shooting, they also somewhat promote the idea of protecting people against nutcases who gain access to guns.

 

So in an odd way to these people, protection against mass shootings overshadows the other 12,000 individual homicide cases a year, or that half of suicides are by gunshot, are forgotten. And without the mass shootings, it never gets discussed. You just can't win with these people.

[Coeurli]

^This.

 

 

Also: If teachers have guns at school, then I bet that in no more than 2 years there'll be another mass school shooting, because of a teacher who lost his/her mind. That's just bound to happen. And then what will people say? That 5yo kids should have a gun to protect themselves as well ?

[vanessarrent]

^There should be a security guard armed in every school.