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Update1: Devastation by parents as number of children killed may top 10 20. Witness said hundred rounds fired.
School principal and teacher among those killed. A whole class of kids unaccounted for. Fears for the worst.
Gunman is 20 year-old Adam Lanza and is connected to the school. The gun used is a .223 caliber Bushmaster automatic rifle.
Update2: Original title deleted – “School Kids Should Be Armed”
Update3: The man identified in media reports as the shooter, Ryan Lanza, has told friends that he thinks his developmentally disabled brother (Adam Lanza)
may have committed the crime, Newtown Patch has learned. See comment below, psychiatry and “Asperger Syndrome.”
A neighbour told CNN the son was a troubled person and the parents were divorced in 2009.
Sources: Multiple Deaths, Including Children, At Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting
Newtown, CT (Hartford Courant) – [Hart]breaking news – Multiple people, including children, have been killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The number of victims is unclear. Many of the shootings took place in a kindergarten classroom, sources said.
A person believed to be a shooter is dead. Earlier reports of a second shooter are unconfirmed. Police were still searching the school at 11 a.m., and police dogs had been brought in.
Shortly after 9:40 a.m., police reported that a shooter was in the main office of the school. A person in one room had “numerous gunshot wounds,” police said.
Groups of students — some crying, some holding hands — were being escorted away from the school by their teachers. Some students were still in the school at 10:30 a.m., parents said.
Photo’s at scene of shooting in Newtown, CT
School and local emergency officials are accounting for the children, who will be released to their parents to get them home. A staging area has been set up at the Sandy Hook fire department, directly in front of the school.
Schools in the area are in lock-down and hightened security as standard procedure.
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Shooter was 20 year-old Adam Lanza and his older brother Ryan lives in Hoboken NJ and is on the bus headed to Newtown CT.
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CNN Video
At the risk of having yet more comments deleted on this site, I wish to point out that the shooter was apparently considered emotionally and/or mentally disturbed. Words like autism and Asperger’s syndrome are being used, along with others like “brilliant” and “remote.” Once again, a potential killer slips through the cracks of this cracked society.
I wonder how many meds he had been given over the years. Too many, I’m betting. I have a son only a little older than the shooter, and I saw firsthand in a middle class/upper middle class suburb like the ones in which this kid grew up how cavalierly the know-nothings in charge of the schools…administrators, teachers and so-called guidance or psychological counselors…recommended medication at the slightest hint of a child being in any way “different.” I fought them and won. Other parents and children were not so lucky. Now my son is working on his doctorate in environmental biology at a really fine Ivy League University. I include Big Med in my overall condemnation of this system. I grieve for those that have been hurt, both in this instance and in a broader sense throughout the society. I got slammed here for saying a similar thing about our murderous foreign policies and their own influence on society in general so I suppose I’ll get slammed here as well. No matter…the truth will out eventually.
Walt Kelly knew 40+ years ago.
Deny it at your mortal peril.
AG
Strangely…the comments to which I referred were missing here the last time I looked, on Friday evening. I am sure they were gone because I was quite shocked and checked several times. I just checked again, and now they are back.
Hmmmm…
AG
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Not all is lost in this world of violence.
Please not him, the ugliest proponent of the NRA and its lobbyist cronies elected to Congress doing His Master’s bidding. Prof. Juan Cole has some excellent statistics by comparing the US “outlaw nation” to the UK colonial empire, now civilised?
Be careful the type of weapon you turn-in to police in gun buy-back event. This news item also took place in Connecticut, a state with the strictest gun laws. Newtown cold case murder solved after 26 years
Charlton Heston. Ronald Reagan Jr.
Another alien-designed humanoid for Christ.
Christ!!!
AG
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Considered a setback in diagnosis and treatment of children and youth. Obsessive authoritian parent can harm a child’s development. Same for an abusive partner in marriage can harm a wife to the point of mental illness. The Dutch Reformed Church considers the man above the woman, demands obedience and illness is a sign of God’s wrath.
Oh yes!!! Big Med regularly changes the diagnostic names for all kinds of health-related matters…sort of a medical bait-and-switch routine. Keep the marks guessing. But the actual number of possible “diseases” continues to rise and so do the profits made from them by the Big Med triumvirate: Big Brother Doctor, Big Pharma and Big Insurance. Notice that the cures are always the same. “Take this pill.” Notice further that whenever one pill or another is proven not to work/proven to have dangerous side-effects/simply is around long enough to show a serious drop in profits, why…mirabile dictu!!! Another pill is right there, ready to be sold and popped.
And the con continues.
AG
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Many, many heartbreaking stories with a commonality of teacher heroics. All were professional, kept the kids calm and acted like it was a drill. Even in the assembly lines of all kids at the fire station, teachers kept calm, held up the class designation and a roll call for parents to take their kids home to safety. Due to the large number of kids in school (450+) many parents were unaware of the atrocity the teachers and kids went through. Many thought only the principal was targeted and there were no kids involved. As the hall emptied, the drama became clear as for two classes no kids showed up and those parents felt the anguish of unknown fate of their son or daughter. The toughest moment was when the20 names were announced that these children fell victim to the deadly attack.
The “lucky” parents only realized many hours later the horror which has taken place in their elemetary school. Bravo to the teachers and first responders. Depenedent on age and what the children have heard and/or seen, the trauma can extend over years to come. A taught knit community becoming more dependent ons haring grief with one another.
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I was looking at chart yesterday (WHO 2012) to find incomplete data, as in certain countries the guns are primarily used in suicides.
Astounding differences in rates per 100,000 – must be culture/religion and living circumstances (economics/healthcare) causing this:
Country homicide / suicide
Brazil 18.10 / 0.73
Mexico 10.00 / 0.67
USA 2.98 / 5.75
Switzerland 0.58 / 5.61
Canada 0.76 / 3.72
Finland 0.26 / 3.34
Serbia 0.62 / 2.81
France 0.22 / 2.33
Norway 0.04 / 1.72
Germany 0.06 / 0.94
Italy 0.36 / 0.81
Israel 0.94 / 0.71
Spain 0.15 / 0.42
UK 0.04 / 0.17
Poland 0.02 / 0.12
Japan 0.02 / 0.04
[More violent than Brazil in: El Salvador, Jamaica, Honduras, Guatamala, Swaziland and Columbia]
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(Statistically speaking) Pushing the suicide rate in the red states above the birth rate, wouldn’t that imply in a few centuries we’ll all be blue?
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Unless gun owners act responsibly with guns, no law can prevent potential murder. Apparently Adam Lanza tried and failed to buy guns and/or ammunition as he was refused by gunstore owners earlier in the week. This setback may have infuriated him even more. Project ChildSafe: Putting A Lock On Safety In Your Home
“…the tens of millions of freeloaders they created using your tax money.”
Gosh, I had no idea there were that many bankers, hedge fund managers and Wall Street hangers-on.