Details are still coming in, but we know that a shooter opened fire this morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Initial reports indicate that as many as 26 people were killed, with as many as 18 children among the deaths. The alleged lone gunman was also found dead at the school.
This video should show live coverage. A news conference has been scheduled with local law enforcement, and it's supposed to begin shortly.
Update: The gunman has a connection to the school -- his mother was a kindergarten teacher at this elementary school, and she was among today's victims.
Second Update: The Associated Press is reporting the suspected shooter is 20-year-old Adam Lanza. His older brother, 24-year-old Ryan Lanza of Hoboken, N.J., is being questioned by police. The AP report added, "An earlier report from a law enforcement official mistakenly transposed the brothers' first names."
If the fatality numbers are accurate, it would be among the deadliest school shootings in American history. Below is a timeline dating back to the Columbine massacre, building a list published earlier this year by Agence France Presse.
-- April 20, 1999: In Littleton, Colorado, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17 shoot dead 13 people and injure 24 at Columbine High School, before committing suicide. The two students had plotted the killings for a year.
-- January 16, 2002: An expelled law student in Grundy, Virginia shoots dead the dean of the school, a professor and a student, and injures three other people.
-- October 28, 2002: In Tuscon, Arizona, a student angered over his failure to pass exams kills three people, two of them professors, before committing suicide.
-- March 21, 2005. On an Indian reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota, a male teenager kills two people at his grandfather's home then goes to his high school and shoots dead seven others.
-- October 2, 2006: In Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, a man shoots 11 girls at a school run by the Amish religious community, killing five.
-- April 16, 2007: A South Korean student shoots dead 32 people on his campus of Virginia Tech, at Blacksburg. The incident is the deadliest campus shooting in US history.
-- February 14, 2008: A young man returns to his former campus in Dekalb, Michigan and shoots dead five people before killing himself.
-- February 12, 2010: A woman teacher angry at being denied a permanent job at a university in Birmingham, Alabama, shoots dead three people there.
-- February 27, 2012: A 17-year-old boy shoots five of his fellow students at a school in Chardon, Ohio. Three of them die.
On April 3, 2012, there was also a shooting in which a gunman killed seven people at a private religious college in the Oakland area. Three others were injured.
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We have as a society passed the point of insanity
I am so inexpressibly sorry for the parents and loved ones who who are suffering this tragic happening.
We are sorry. So what. Hold back the emotion for the time you speak to a gun owner about their fetish with their symbol of virility. Then bring up the names of these children. How many more Christina-Taylor Green's must there be.
The amazing thing is how the Dems have been cowed the issues that may not be discussed: The most important subjects are off limits, both from the perspective of the candidates as well as the media: Gun Control, Climate change, Wall Street reform. The last time guns were seriously discussed was in the Dukakis campaign. And you know what? Even guys like Jon Stewart voted not for Dukakis, but George H.W.
It's pretty sick how we can get so "Sorry" about something and yet neither talk about it nor report on it, or do anything about it.
It's just too hard for us to manage a practical moral response to deeply immoral acts.
Sorrow and grief should never become excuses for weakness but reasons to overcome it.
As essential as it is to address the causes and conditions of things like this it must be with the knowledge that those personally touched by this need the support of their families, communities and their countrymen right now. It is the survivors who are on my mind and the ones who need our attention.
When will our society (and the media) be willing to go beyond talking about gun control as the only way to solve problems like this? I'm talking about helping people make non-violent choices to cope with life. Gun control feels like an immediate solution. It's an obvious way to immediate results. But when will people accept that the real, root problem is lack of mental health treatment? It's a tragedy that so many people were killed today. But more people are killed and damaged every day due to pervasive and ever-growing violence not just with guns. Are people willing to look beyond gun control as a solution?
So NOW can WE start demanding sensible gun laws and stop cow-towing to the NRA and their delusion about their "freedom"! The people killed in this tragedy had a right to be "free" from the senseless violence of a gun-owner also!
You know webjerk, I think we are all willing to look at the root problem, mental health treatment, etc. but being able to reach for a gun so easily means any one of us could be victims just going about our daily business. Personally, I have seen people who were drunk or angry, a mostly temporary condition, reach for a gun without thought because it was there. Thankfully the situation was diffused without anyone getting hurt, but it could easily have gone the other way.
I want to know why your right to own a gun trumps my right to be alive.
Self-congratulatory nationalistic propaganda and a thin veneer ho "high culture" notwithstanding, the US is not really a civilized nation. Power is not virtue. Rhetoric is not reality.
What struck me today was no one seems to point out that even though the shooter's mother's guns were legal, they didn't protect her or the children, did they? In fact, her own guns were used to kill her. I'm sure she thought she owned guns for protection. So, it seems to me that you have a better chance of being killed in your own home with your own gun, possibly by a criminal who takes the gun from you, or worse yet, by a relative or friend who knows you have the gun.
NOW can we have a conversation about gun control?
Yes these children should have been allowed conceal and carry permits.
Not according to the NRA. They won't allow it.
Their solution will be to give children guns instead.
Sad how quick people are to blame inanimate objects for sick peoples actions. Why not address mental health, or societal morals, or violent culture, or the devaluing life, or a myriad of other issues first? If this was done with a hunting gun or simple hand gun, what then?
The left so quick asserted that the Right was politicizing the tragedy in Benghazi yet MSNBC, blog commenters, etc. do not even wait to understand situations like this before they attempt to score political points. Sad.
That would be their solution, sad but true. When that guy killed people in a Colorado theater during the Dark Knight Rises a Texas politician (from that party) wondered why nobody else in the theater took out the killer with their own guns and proclaimed it wouldn't happen in Texas because they all exercise their God-given gun rights. No doubt they feel the same about school shootings.
Why let someone else set the rules? Stop asking and have that conversation.
Sure, RobDon . . . it would be so much easier to address all of those issues you named than to just make it a little harder to buy a gun.
Absolutely right, Rob!
I mean a mentally sick individual who wants to kill 27 people can just go kill'em with an egg beater, or a baseball bat, or a knife. Bu t it would take a while and others would overpower him in no time.
But hey, it is all the sick guys problem, not the rampant gun ownership issue....
Rob: *YOU* are the one who refuses to address any of those issues, because that would require admitting that gun violence is at the heart of it. *YOU* are the one who devalues human life, because you think gun rights are more important than those 18 innocent kids who were just murdered. You are a sick and disgusting person.
When will our society (and the media) be willing to go beyond talking about gun control as the only way to solve problems like this? I'm talking about helping people make non-violent choices to cope with life. Gun control feels like an immediate solution. It's an obvious way to immediate results. But when will people accept that the real, root problem is lack of mental health treatment? It's a tragedy that so many people were killed today. But more people are killed and damaged every day due to pervasive and ever-growing violence not just with guns. Are people willing to look beyond gun control as a solution?
How the @!$%# much more are we supposed to understand here before we're allowed to observe that there have always been, and always will be crazy people, but the crazy people in countries that aren't awash in guns don't have massacres like this with the blood soaked metronome regularity that we do here?
How many more little kids have to die before you gun-hoarding mother@!$%#ers will acknowledge that one simple fact is the starting point of the "what can we do about this?" conversation?
Hey, RobDon, wonder how you'd feel if it was one of YOUR kids dead. Yeah, maybe when some IMPORTANT persons child dies....we will have the conversation.
I am so sick and tired of gun activists hiding behind the 2nd amendment....The 2nd amendment was included in the Constitution to permit people to bear arms against the British who wanted to suppress us when we declared our independance...
The only people who should be permitted to have guns are law enforcement, the military and people who have to hunt for food (not sport).
Yes, its not the guns, but insane people who do these things, but its even more insane to allow people to amass an arsenal. Think of all the violence that would be eliminated if the only people with guns were law enforcement and the military. We wouldn't hear of kids shooting themselves by accident, people going into theatres and schools and massacring dozens, or driveby shootings or people shooting their families.....Contrary to any argument, the world would be a safer place. Its much more difficult for someone to do damage with a knife or a club than it is to blow your head off with one shot.
yet another shocking moment involving the killing of little children by yet another lunatic with guns. The problem is that we will just get carried away with the next news item and this tragedy will be buried somewhere only to be awakened tomorrow with another shooting. I live in Toronto Canada and even with gun laws in place, we have a shooting in the streets.drug dealers shooting drug dealers.Guess where they come from?? Detroit, Buffalo, pennsylvania and all neighboring states. The NRA should be branded a " Terrorist Organisation: and the sale of guns on the Internet and gun shops needs to be shut down.Only hunting guns for those who have a blood lust should be issued and only for the hunting season.As far as I remember, the civil war is over and Jesse James is long gone.
Sorry RobDon you are in the minority on this one! While the 2nd Amendment gives people the right to bear arms, maybe if the magazines were limited to say 7 rounds so many people would not be massacred at the same time! Maybe if there were better back-ground checks, and more limited access we wouldn't have these tragedies happening! Maybe if this nation would leave the "cowboy" movies and the glorifying of violence alone we could avoid this but right now is when WE need to have a conversation! You can't convince me that a "hunter" needs an AK-47 or any other assault gun to "hunt"! That type of weaponry is meant for the battle field and for those that defend their right to have those types of weapons - I'll remind you of a certain WAR in Afghanistan - go there I'm sure your help is needed!
Another horrible tragedy, and what are we all doing? Going to our sides of the mat! It is the same sort of thinking that created the 112th Congress - how's that working out??? That "everybody has to do it MY way" thinking has just got to stop!
I used to own guns, I even had a job where I carried a gun and had to use it once in a while. I am NOT against some gun ownership, but I AM against assault rifles and banana clips for handguns - those are guns for the battlefield. Are we really willing to say that normal life in the United States is now a battlefield?
Yes, people kill people - but it SOOOO much easier when you have a gun in your hand then when you have a bat. Crazy people shouldn't get access to guns, but what laws are out there to stop them? How do you even recognize a crazy person until he performs a crazy act?
BOTH sides have to come to the table and TALK! The NRA doesn't want its members to lose access to guns - so THEY have to talk about what types of guns (NO, NOT ZERO GUNS) they would be willing to ban so that sportsmen can keep their weapons. The other side has to decide what they will put in place to identify the mentally ill and how they will stop them from getting guns, like at gun shows.
Would it be too much to ask that people register their weapons and have a "driver's license" (gun safety classes) to use them? Why can't the NRA even get behind this idea?
Well, we can all go to our sides of the mats and scream at each other and insist on "our way or the highway" while babies are dying, but tell me - does that REALLY make you or anyone else feel better?
well said.
oncearepublican: Please spare us your "pox on both their houses" nonsense. There is only one side being unreasonable about this, and it isn't the side that wants sensible gun laws.
ShadeTail,
REALLY??? You think you can solve this alone? Do you think being "right" is enough? What about the other side? They think they are "right" too!
BOTH sides have to come together to solve this - and I don't really care if you think one side is "all wrong" - their input is needed! It's called "compromise"!
The worst attack in the US was done with a box cutter on an airplane. Individuals intent on doing harm can always find ways of doing that. What if this was done with a hunting rifle? Should we outlaw them? What if it was done with a hand gun? Outlaw all hand guns?
Granted, looking at ways to ensure guns are available responsibly is always a great idea but it does not address the CAUSE of things like this. It would be like outlawing alcohol or taking away cars to stop drunk drivers from killing others.
Would outlawing guns do away with mass killings? No. Would it stop (or limit) some area of mass killings? Probably. But addressing the CAUSE instead of the METHOD would do more effective! That's not political bias, it is factual truth.
RobDon,
And what did we do? We passed laws to ban box cutters and knives in passenger compartments on airplanes.
Is it so different to ban assault rifles and large clips?
I'm not for outlawing guns - but I AM for common sense when it comes to what guns a person should have and the training they should have to own that gun!
Granted, we need MORE MONEY spent on mental health issues, from religous zealotry to depression. We also need to make it easier and less stigmatic for people to get mental health treatments. But this takes TIME and quite frankly, how many people have to die while research is going on when we have a method right now that we can use???
You left out one very important component, we now search EACH passenger to make sure they don't have a box cutter, knife, letter opener, scissors, razor, baby formula (in large quantities), more than 3 oz of liquid...so, it was less the banning of box cutters and more the additional security measures (surely we agree on that).
Laws have already been passed to ban guns on school campuses. A gun massacre occurred in Norway with one of the most strict gun laws in the world.
Now, that said...I think so many things have to be on the table. I think from your comments and pass correspondence that YOU (and many others here) do want to solve the problem. I hope I am communicating the same. Everything has to be on the table, not just an immediate jump to "those NRA nuts are the cause of this." This could occur with chemicals, an explosive, fire, the list is endless.
I heard former NY mayor Guilannia say, these are situations where we have to all lay down our biases and approach this with lots of humility and the recognition that there is no one or simple answer.
I'll leave the discussion now to the rest. Our prayers (I'm sure) are first with those who are suffering in the most unimaginable way tonight. And, our efforts in the future more effective towards how to prevent these tragedies from happening again. Thanks, once!
oncearepublican: You are now being willfully obtuse. You are whining about how both sides need to come together, but the reality is that only one side is prepared to do that. One side wants a solution. The other side rants that wanting a solution is a hateful unamerican thing to do. This is a fact, your obnoxious false equivalence argument notwithstanding.
And the irony is that, going by your comments to Rob, you are on the reasonable side. And yet you are slandering (or rather, libeling, since it is written rather than spoken) your allies with accusations that they are unwilling to be reasonable.
Sad how quick people are to blame inanimate objects for sick peoples actions. Why not address mental health, or societal morals
Robdon , people have been addressing the MENTAL HEALTH issues on this subject , and what happened when we ADDRESSED them after the Giffords shooting? GOP in state and federal government gut funding for mental heath , and your GOP NRA put a stop to anyone trying to address the subject by claiming OBAMA WANTS TO TAKE OUR GUNS AWAY
Take you sanctimonious fiction back to your idiot pals at fox news.com , you people are the only ones dense enough to buy your made up 2 faced hypocrite whining
Patango, you are the "sanctimonious" one. On a previous posting you accused me of always running and hiding when confronted, I responded and what did you do...run and hide! You are so hypocritical it's comical. So throw all the stones you want but don't cry when you get cut by glass from your own house. Wah, wah, wah...
One more remark...it is you and people like you who are just as much the problem as any "no gun control at all" people are in matters like this. You think Democrats are good, Republicans are bad. Democrats have all the answers, Republicans are the problem. Democrats care about others, Republicans care about no one but themselves. How stupid!
There are many on this blog who will engage in thoughtful discussion even with those with whom they disagree vehemently. But you, on the other hand, and those like you, think only one way...and are unwilling to even entertain the thought you might learn something from someone who holds different views.
And, I would be remiss to not acknowledge that people like you are not only on the Left. No, there are many, many like you on the Right as well. They are just as unwilling to have meaningful discussions and think they and their side are always right as well.
So, call me names, characterize me in whatever manner you would like, it doesn't hurt me one bit nor does it make it true. If I have totally miss characterized you, I apologize. I only have your posted comments to go on, and from that perspective, I think I am fairly on target.
Rob,
You are the hypocritical one. Period. End of story.
This is a tragedy that begs for gun control, for regulations to be placed upon guns and all you can say is "mental health care is what is the most important thing here" and "what a tragedy, blah, blah, blah."
There is not an honest bone in your body about this issue.
And that is what is pissing off people about you at this time.
And I am pissed off as well: you are a troll trying to appear as someone who is "moderate" or "level headed." But your posts exposes you for what you are: you are just as bad as Shooter. But at least Shooter has the balls to be what he is: an ignorant troll. You, however, do not. Or: you want to be seen as "moderate" in an attempt to sway lurkers as well as those who comment on this site to think like you do.
But I see through you. I see you for what you are. And Pantango as well as others do as well.
Guns need to be strictly regulated. And people like you who defend any other position are out of your ever lovin minds.
And pretending to have a "heart" about those victims whose lives were lost only makes you more heartless because you really don't mean it.
And that is what makes me really mad about trolls like you. Be a troll. Be bold enough to be the troll that you really are. Don't pretend to be anything else.
And your post: #2.25 shows you to be the Shooter type of troll. Eventually you show your true colors. Always. And you don't care about anything other than yourself.
OH THANK GOD YOUR BACK DONNA!!!!! LOL
RobDon
I am talking about when you are still active in threads , while you jump from thread to thread , after your points have been disputed many times over , you refuse to address anyone after they shoot your GOP FOX NEW posts down in flames , pretending it never happened , repeatedly , it is gop party cowardly 101
I will be glad to oblige you any time you want to stop ducking Rob
Romney confirmed you are the party of dodgers after all
Sorry, but all those that think mental illness is behind all gun violence...guess again.
Yes, it takes a mentally ill person to shoot up a school or theatre full of people...but how much gun violence occurs one on one....make your arguement to the inner city kids who cant play outside because the drug dealers on the street can open fire at any moment...or to the person who had a gun put to the back of their head as someone demands their wallet.
I speak from experience...my sister in law was working at a pizza place and a young man came in with a gun at 5 in the afternoon and shot her in the chest and killed her because the register only had $50.00 in it. Alot of criminals (and others) are far from crazy...theyre just acting out of desperation.
RobDon, it is rare that I have seen you so upset. Shall I pretend to know the cause?
Today, the Michigan legislature finished passing (in a hurry) a new gun reform law dissolving "gun-free" zones. Honestly, where do you think their concerns lie?
Gun sales always go up after a tragedy like this. NRA and gun lobbyests are watching their profits. How excited do you think they will be tomorrow? Will they talk gun sale profits? Or lives?
Just minutes after this horrible incident, among the many condolences I saw on social media, I saw someone say all teachers should be packing in schools. We all know statistics suggest this would likely increase the probability of gun violence in schools as well as gun theft.
All these new lax gun laws over the years are increasing the odds that some of us speaking today will die from gun violence tomorrow. Things like CA 5150 (look it up, I'm holding one right now), are temporary, and have some relief that an identified high risk aggressor can not be sold a gun in my state absent a waiting period and background check.
Face your frustration, mourn, or whatever you need to do; and then let's draw up the courage to begin the serious discussion of analyzing common sense gun control measures as one part of a holistic approach to gun violence.
Donna, you can't see squat. I don't own a gun and other than a Daisy BB gun when I was a little boy, I've never owned a gun. Don't particularly like them. And to your assessment, there is not a violent bone in my body. So, wrong again. But you are right on one thing, you and Patango are two peas in a pod. You may be twins separated at birth.
And, Patango, you make an accusation without any proof. I've asked you to show me an active thread where I've not addressed specific question. I generally follow my posts 24 hours after my last post and then move on. Put up or shut up, I say.
Locknpost, your post makes sense, I agree with a lot of it. Teacher should NOT be packing "heat." Very bad idea. I'm not against all gun control. But, like I've said earlier, addressing the cause will be the most effective, but who said only do ONE thing. (Oh, many, many, people here on this post. They think strict gun control will make all the violence disappear.) I do understand gun collectors, people who value guns, who use them as hobby or to hunt, they aren't violent people. Guns are not bad. (Now, assault weapons, large caliber weapons, etc...different story.)
My "frustration" as you put it, is not related to guns, violence or this sad, sad event. It is directed at illogical thinking. At least as of now, a hand gun seems to be the weapon in this tragedy and people are saying we need to ban assault weapons. Knee jerk reactions are usually bad reactions.
Oh, well...off soap box.
It is sad when another tragedy makes your point. But in China today a man stabbed 22 schoolchildren with a knife. Granted...fortunately, these children survived but that was not the case in March 2010 when a man killed 8 school children with a knife, and then again in May 2010 when another man killed 7 school children with a cleaver...and other similar cases with deaths, dozens of physically and emotionally scarred....
So, what do you do then, outlaw knives? Outlawing guns is not the answer. Smart gun control, sure, let's continue to examine that issue and make effective changes, but the answer lies in the CAUSE, not the METHOD.
dookie if I can't see squat then you have the IQ of a houseplant.
And if you don't own a gun STFU about trying to keep more guns on the street. STFU about trying to blame mental health over the easy accessibility of guns in America.
I could care less if you "like them or not." The fact remains that you are a troll defending an indefensible point, and people have handed your ass to you regarding this issue. Several times.
And as for the knife attacks in china: HOW MANY WOMEN, CHILDREN, MEN HAVE BEEN KILLED? Now compare that to the many many gun massacres here in the US: HOW MANY WOMEN CHILDREN, MEN HAVE BEEN KILLED? You won't answer that one, little dookie, will you?
You are a troll campaigning for the NRA on this site, dookie. You have no argument, yet you still try to defend a reprehensible position.
So you can take your troll opinion and shove it up your ass.
And another thing, dookie:
If the persons in china had GUNS MANY MANY more people would have been killed.
But a troll like you refuses to see that.
So get your head out of your ass and STFU.
So, everybody, Donna is okay if only eight kids are killed in a school attack but not if a gun is used. That is what this line of question implies.
My point is not that there should be no gun control (although you want to pretend that is what I am saying), I've said the conversation must be much larger. In countries with much, much more restrictive gun control than the US, large scale massacres still happen. Looking at the cause and working to prevent them from that perspective will always be the most productive way of address such tragedies.
And just so you won't misrepresent me again, gun control has to be part of this larger conversation.
The point is, dookie: the guy in in china would have killed MORE children if he had a GUN.
And the point is STILL the same: you are DEFENDING and SUPPORTING what happened yesterday to 20 little children. Which makes you not only a troll of epic proportions, but a a horrible human being as well.
And you misrepresent yourself on this site all the time: you are a troll of shooter like proportions who plagues this site with your very presence.
You don't fool me for one minute.
So again: go @!$%# yourself ignorant troll.
Donna, you are way off base, and misrepresenting what is said. This poster has been around awhile. He may have different opinions sometimes, but is generally (I said 'generally') courteous, willing to debate, and certainly not Shooter-like, nor a troll.
I understand how our culture adores hateful speech, and accusatory commentary, but I will not encourage it from either side.
Fess-up Correction: I have recently spit a hateful comment at NRA.
No I'm not, locknpost.
And it makes no difference whether the "poster has been around awhile" or not. Don is a wolf in troll's clothing, pure and simple.
And I never said YOU were shooter like or not: only your posts will reveal that. And I look forward to reading them to see if you truly are a troll yourself.
And you understand nothing: now is the time for plain speak, to call out the bull@!$%#ters in order to keep the conversation and the mission moving forward.
And you can encourage whatever it is that you'd like. But I will continue calling out trolls for who and what they are.
And I could care less what YOU think about it..
Have a nice day.
Certainly, it is within your right to call me, and others you disagree with anything you like. But it will be a challenge to come up with anything more vicious and false than what some of us have endured from the extreme right.
Good luck. I await your character assaults.
Character assaults are the tactics of individuals with a weak argument.
Get ready for the NRA to hit the play button on the OH-Lets-not-politicize-this-tragedy meme.
Let's have some respect after all.
How about respect for the future dead from these stupid laws that allow widespread murder based on an emotional whim?
If you don't act on something because it results in a tragedy like this then the lives that were lost to it were lost in vain
As sometimes happens when events leave me feeling at a loss for words, the great Charlie Pierce has the eloquence I need.
Only a couple of days ago, in the wake of the tragedy in that Oregon mall, he posted this angry and heartbroken gem:
Another Tragedy, Another Missed Opportunity To Talk About Gun Control
Though it wasn't too long a piece, there was more, and it's all well worth reading. Follow the link to a measure of enlightenment.
His column today is just total frustration with the sick priorities of America.......I'm sure we all agree.
They already hit that meme. If you look on the comment section for the NY Magazine, that has popped up more than once.
"gun-hoarding mother@!$%#ers".
Hey Steve, my brother and his family were killed by a drunk with his car.. Do you or have you ever drank Steve? Oh it's not the same because the drunk only managed to kill 6 of my family members?? That makes that car he was in safer than a gun?!????
Comparing ALL gun owners to these two @!$%#ed up pieces of @!$%# is the same as accusing you of killing families because you have a car. I doubt you're a killer Steve, and most of us gun hoarding mother @!$%#ers aren't killers either.
Get your emotions in check before you post and more of us will absorb what you have to say.
To the guy equating car ownership and gun ownership: based upon your name, and your idiotic false equivalency, you must be filled with self hatred.
You left an earlier shooting off the list - Thurston High School, in Springfield, Oregon on May 20th and 21st, 1998, when Kip Kinkel shot his parents in their home on the first day, and then the following day killed 2 students and wounded 22 other people at the high school.
This was in my town, and as I'm sure everyone connected to the shootings listed in your post can tell you, the event never really leaves you.
Watching Andrea Mitchell and want to advise: don't forget, on the heels of Columbine was Charles Andrew Williams Santana high school shooting in 2001.Marc
Just plain effing terrible. My heart goes out to all those kids and all the families who lost their tiny little loved ones. I wish "gun control" would stop being treated like a swear word in this country. Responsible, mentally stable gun owners do not do things like this. It takes a mentally ill person to commit these kinds of atrocities, and the need to address the ready availability of guns to mentally ill people is very real. But the gun lobby won't even let us address that. This week alone, there were these 2 big shootings (this and the one in the Oregon mall), and 3 young children shot themselves with guns that were available to them by their tragically stupid and irresponsible parents. People the world over are positively terrified by gun violence in the US, and they've definitely got the right idea. It's terrifying, and we continue to turn a blind eye like a bunch of effing morons. How many kids will die before we decide that an insane person's right to bear arms does not trump an innocent child's right to live and go to school?
It ought to be painfully obvious that those on the right in general consider these shootings to be a completely acceptable cost of being able to accumulate all the arms they want. So, the answer to your "How many kids will die..." question is, unfortunately, no number of kids will be high enough.
Mental illness and gun control need to be faced honestly, in the name of these victims and in the name of the traumatized around the world. Devastating.
I don't really think that somebody has to be mentally ill to snap at any given moment. A person can get angry enough to commit something like this who under normal circumstances wouldn't do such a thing.
Penny, as details emerge, it seems pretty clear this guy didn't just snap - supposedly he had 4 guns and was wearing a bullet-proof vest. That's premeditated not just some guy who lost it near an elementary school. He wanted to do as much damage for as long as possible.
Let's face it. Mental illness isn't momentary insanity, what happened here was not a moment of insanity. This was clearly something he intended to carry out- but who does stuff like this? CRAZY PEOPLE. PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESS. Normal people do not do stuff like this, someone who just snapped would more likely have hurt themselves in a fit of rage than take the time to suit up, drive to a school, and commit this atrocity. We always like to pretend like there were no signs of any trouble to make ourselves feel better, but had people been paying attention, there were likely plenty of signs that this was a very sick individual.
At the very least his problems probably would have shown up if he had to undergo a thorough psychological exam if he wanted a permit to buy a gun, and in the absence of a permit, if the person who sold him the gun knew that he would be held liable for anything the guy did with it.
I am no expert but generally speaking people don't just snap and go on this kind of brutal rampage.
Only three blocks from my house, a young man killed students in a local high school after raping a woman and setting his house on fire. It is one of my most vivid memories of childhood--can still hear the ambulances arrive at the scene. We have to face some hard truths about the fragility and pervasiveness of particularly acute mental illness.
That it is not confined to mass killings but rather to countless less globally publicized incidences of violence is something we need to face.
Rachel please, please, bring attention to this. And never stop until it does. This has to be the last straw! I can't live in this country anymore, nothing ever changes. I am afraid to raise my family here. Another mass shooting and this time 20 children!!! This is absolutely beyond words. This time it has to change. THIS IS THE LAST STRAW!!!
I am saddened by the continued violence and my heart goes out to all the victims and their families. But I am not surprised that this has happened. Our culture glamorizes violence, and trivializes love. Sex and sexuality are taboo, while war and violence is commonplace. Books, movies, TV shows, and video games which contain murder and torture are OK -- as long as there are no nipples showing. Gun rights are violently defended while access to contraception is violently opposed. The rights of loving gay couples to marry are questioned and used as political fodder. But it's OK that the President of the United States is allowed to have a personal "Kill List" of people to murder with remote control drones.
This is the inevitable result. And unfortunately, this pattern is almost certain to continue. No, we should not be surprised. We should make change happen! We should talk with our friends and family about these upside down values and make a stand for what's right. It's well past time. Anyone with me?
I don't mean to distract from this tragedy, but I want to illustrate another, subtler one.
In the list above, only one person is identified by their ethnicity - The South Korean. I think there is an unfortunate reflexive bias when the media assigns labels to the different people.
Point taken largenose, though I wouldn't be too quick to ascribe the distinction to racist motives, the student referenced, Seung-Hui Cho, although he'd been in this country since age 8 and had status as a "permanent US resident", was still a South Korean national, not a US citizen.
That may have been the only reason, in journalistic terms, for the mention. This, after all, was a listing of such tragic events in the US. Tragic massacres have obviously taken place elsewhere, e.g. the attack in Norway by Anders Breivik, but this article was focused on the need for a discussion of what seems to be a particularly American propensity for this behavior.
Pretzel
I realize that there is that distiction between citizen vs. non-citizen. And I am pretty sure that some of the assailants in the other crimes were non-whites, and not identified as such. Not sure about that, though.
That may only serve to reinforce my point.
People look for answers, and they scour these articles in search of them. I know I do. It is too easy to put your finger on one seemingly innocuous fact or another, and say "Aha! That's it!". It could be anything...Race, ethnicity, neighborhood, single mother, gay parents...It could be anything, relevant or not. And that's when the scapegoating begins.
I appreciate learning from an earlier Maddow post that President Obama has placed federal marijuana law enforcement way down on the bottom of his list of priorities. Nobody has ever shot up a bunch of precious, sweet, treasured-by-their-parents elementary school children with a bong.
It's time to move gun-control legislation up on that priority list.
Let me guess . Assault rifle or large capacity clip.
Whats it going to take , some congresswoman getting gunned down....
OH Wait.............
According to the news reports, the man had two guns, one a rifle. No details on capacities.
HOW MANY MORE have to die before Americans scream NO MORE?!? Senseless gun violence in America is not the exception; it is the norm. Today is just like so many other days. WHY?!?
Is it not possible to re-fit all entry doors w/buzz in?
We have to stop these madmen from gaining entry. But then-they'll probably just wait outside.
Is there an answer at all?
I can't imagine the grief.
Well, one answer would be to make it a lot harder for them to get the high-capacity guns in the first place. Another would be to address issues of mental health and isolation in our society.
And why does it have to be either/or?
Not to make light of this tragedy in any way, but in Chris Rock's classic (and profoundly hilarious) take on this subject, I've always thought there was a serious policy position to be considered:
Never mind gun control... let's just have some "bullet control". As Rock said, "If a bullet cost $5,000, there'll be no more innocent bystanders!".
Constitutional, and effective. Can't have gun control? Fine. Tax the @!$%# out of ammo. Hunters and "recreational" shooters don't like that? No problem... let them take a number and line up to explain the importance of their "hobbies" to the parents of these dead kids... the Constitution may say they have a right to engage in such hobbies, it doesn't guarantee that this should be cheap.
What a horror. What a horror.
If I belonged to a group of people and a small portion of that group committed murder, I would be outraged. The sponsors of unregulated gun availability need to step up and take put in the rules and regs to stop this atrocity.
How many dead kids do we have to bury before we can finally have an adult conversation about gun control in this country? This is something like the fourth mass shooting in the country this year--that's not even counting the thousands killed in individual accidents or violent crimes.
A congresswoman gets shot--no reform. A movie theater goes up--no reform. Will photos of first graders riddled with bullets be enough? Amazingly, I don't think it will. As horrifying as the shooting itself is, what's almost worse to me is the fact that this will still not be enough to spur on real gun control reform.
In light of our current politics, I'm not optimistic that this will even spur on real national conversation about the subject. If you haven't seen it, check out Charlie Pierce's thoughts on the subject from just a few days ago (the meta-tragedy being that what he wrote in the wake of the Oregon mall shooting will probably, with little modification, be able to be "re-run" with sickening regularity from now on). I posted a link to it in my earlier comment above...
Absolutely unimaginable!!! Children this time. come on, children! What a crazy country! time after time after time. Nothing ever ever changes! the country is lost. 20 small children slaughtered in a Conneticut elementary school, merry christmas! Safer to be in Afghanistan than the USA.
You also missed this one in 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-school-shooting-in-jonesboro-arkansas-kills-five
Nothing much has changed. What a waste!
after devastation, i feel furious, and want to shout this:
http://kellysalasin.com/2012/07/27/drop-the-@!$%#ing-gun-america/
It's time. How many innocent people have to be killed in this country before new gun laws are enforced and the mental health of every gun owner should be accounted for. This is horrid. Prayers and Blessings to the families of the fallen, just everyday, law abiding citizens.
If the religious right spent half as much time trying to save lives of real people by advocating serious gun control instead of pointless attacks against abortion at health clinics and so forth, imagine the lives saved. Imagine them picketing gun shows, etc. However, it will never happen.
Folks seriously invested in existential combing of indeterminate values often have a bit of difficulty slowing their brutal rush of logorrhea over the tangible costs of supposing inerrancy . Sigh ...
What a tragedy. LAM is right, a discussion on mental illness and gun control does need to be faces honeslty and LOGICALLY, which i fear is all but impossible in todays far right/far left political climate. As a gun owner, veteran, highly educated liberal i'm afraid that simply banning assult weapons or guns would do little to stop these tragedies. Look at Great Brittan, almost impossible to own a gun, yet gun violence has sky rocketed in the last decade. The solution is not that simple, gun violence in the us, which seems so drastically different that in other countries seems to point to underlining problems in our culture that we havent been able to properly recognize. Being that so many of these attacks seemed to be carried out by the young, one has to assume that there is a aspect of our society that is affecting the psychology of troubled youth to the point that they are led to extreme violence, and the ability to buy a gun, legally or not is not it.
For a highly educated liberal you really do say things which are...well, at best, oddly weighted and, at worst, willfully untrue. Gun violence (nicely unspecific term,there) in the UK has not 'sky rocketed' in the past decade, except in the sense that there used to be almost none and now there is almost almost none. A single gun killing is front page news in the UK for days, even weeks and a school shooting like this is so rare that when it does happen (once in British history, at Dunblane) it is remembered by everyone nearly two decades later. The solution to gun murders is to ban guns - it really is as simple as that, and it's disingenuous in the extreme to claim anything else.
Not according to the UK government, you must know something they dont...
"The latest government figures (as of 2009) show that the total number of firearm offenses in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1988/89 to 9,865 in 2009, a rise of 89 percent"
Those numbers might seem low to the US, but the population and geographic size of the UK itself is much smaller. Also, having known a Brit police officer that moved to colorado from GB who said he felt nearly powerless as a police officer in the UK agains the rising violence, i would have to take government stats and his one the ground experiance over utter lack of facts that you present.
Also you completely missed the point of my post, i wasnt saying the UK is better or worse, but that there are much deeper issues in American society that seems to be the root cause of this type of violence, and that perhaps these issue are relatively unique in America.
Dan, I'm curious about that statement of the UK numbers. Firearm offenses means shootings?
No, they don't.
A firearm offense is anything to do with a firearm. One that isn't registered. One that isn't properly kept under lock and key. A hunting rifle left, forgotten, in a station wagon. Any crime in which one of the perpetrators was armed, whether or not that weapon was ever brandished. The presumption being that if the person with the gun didn't plan on using it, the gun wouldn't be there.
There are more.
As usual, people grasping at straws, asking the same old stupid questions. Wringing their hands wondering why this happens. Look at most other countries in the world, it does not happen anywhere with such frequency and magnitude, except in the USA. Merry Christmas. Go hug your kids and be grateful that they are still alive because in the United States, that is not something that you can take for granted. Crazy, crazy country.
I wonder if some gun-enthusiast will suggest that this wouldn't have happened if all seven-year-olds carried concealed handguns to protect themselves.
NRA HQ conference room -- probably now in full crisis damage control mode -- do they ever worry about getting mowed down by one of their own? There must be a plan -- for workplace violence, even at the NRA.
They do have a plan - carry a bigger gun.
"Damage control mode" - hardly. They know nothing will change.
NRA Responce: Welcome to Dodgecity
Reckoning through the cauterized appeals to brute force logicks and magicks , conjured up for "Special" moments like these , it may be possible to imagine the inner reflections of the deadly seerious mugwumps of unrestrained force .
Of the deep and of the dark the committed see the desire rather than the revulsion .
Naturally we have the hero of 911 in his own unutterably serious foolishness taunting imaginary villainy with his own foppish spinelessness ,
..........................................................."Bring it on"...........................................................