I can’t think of a worse mass-killing that has ever occurred in this country. It is beyond my capability to even imagine what might drive a person to murder elementary school children.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Heaven forbid that we try and talk about our obsessive gun culture, though.
You have gone to the core of the problem. I listened to Air America in disgust as host and callers ranted about the need for gun control and, in particular, a ban on private ownership. I know several gun owners who are handgun owners. I would not hesitate to leave my 5-year old with them. Most I don’t trust to vote, but I trust that they don’t want to shoot kids.
The problem is indeed those who want to kill kids. That is what should be focused on, the identification and neutralization of these homicidal individuals, not focusing on the inanimate object.
31 U.S. school shootings since Columbine. School shootings in every other country in the world combined since that time: 14.
39 gun related deaths in the UK (guns are illegal) versus 11000 per year in the US. Coincidence? NO.
Yawn.
No, not a coincidence. There are lot more sick people in this country for a variety of reasons. Let’s look for real reasons. There are lot more non-gun homicides here too. This is a violent society.
ANOTHER moronic comment. How did this fucker kill 27 people? With a high-cap magazine. We need to ban high-cap magazines. THERE IS NOTHING IN THE 2ND AMENDMENT ABOUT HIGH-CAP magazines!
You have gone to the core of the problem. I listened to Air America in disgust as host and callers ranted about the need for gun control and, in particular, a ban on private ownership. I know several gun owners who are handgun owners. I would not hesitate to leave my 5-year old with them. Most I don’t trust to vote, but I trust that they don’t want to shoot kids.
The problem is indeed those who want to kill kids. That is what should be focused on, the identification and neutralization of these homicidal individuals, not focusing on the inanimate object.
I’ll be honest. I don’t know what can be done wrt to gun control. The time to act was decades ago. Now there are just too many guns floating around that controlling them doesn’t do much of anything, although more guns doesn’t make it better either (when you control for education and poverty). Not saying to do nothing, but I don’t know what to do.
However, with the NRA gradually losing its power, I think in the future these asshole conservatives will need to convince people like me that we should care about their “right” to have guns. And that’ll probably take more than abstract appeals to minority rights (as most people do not own guns), because I don’t think you have a right to own a gun.
Also, this shit is personal for me: I was a freshmen at Virginia Tech during that massacre, and I walked through that building every morning for class…except that day (I was sick and stayed in bed).
Do we really have that many more crazy people, per capita, in this country; who want to shoot up schools, churches and shopping malls?
Or could there maybe be a few other factors?
Perhaps we have the some number of crazy people, but our crazy people are more violent.
Why not? Our non-crazy people are more violent, why shouldn’t our crazy people be?
Health care system more “crazy” people fall through the cracks here than in other first world societies where they have comprehensive mental health as part of universal health care. We don’t know the facts but I think it is likely this individual had a schizophrenic break (he is of the right age) and it went untreated so it escalated to this point.
yes, more attention to mental health. This guy didn’t shoot a random classroom, he killed his mother and either his brother or father in a different location.
So, the Oedipal theory. Every kid who is mad at him mom is a threat?
That is simply insane. The question is NOT WHY? Why is a question asked by idiots.
The question is HOW. The answer is a gun which could shoot 100 bullets in 20 minutes.
yes, of course, gun access is the immediate issue, but that’s not the only problem this event brings to light. it’s more than that. I’m also arguing for more mental health resources, for intervention before it comes to this point. The Columbine killers did not kill their parents. It’s a different kind of mental illness with this young man. and I wouldn’t reduce it to oedipal theory (I’m not a freudian) –
Worst mass killing? In Chicago last year 700 children were hit by gun fire…66 of them died. Please note not one of those deaths made national news.
So, did you just come here to advertise your ignorance of the term “mass killing,” or what?
Man…grow up. This person was making a point., One at a time or all at once, what’s the difference? They’re still dead children, and dead children are dead innocents. Do we even have numbers for the children that have been killed in our own post-WWII wars and other militart/paramilitary adventures?
No, of course not.
Karma is a bitch, brother. Bet on it.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
Yes, because what better time to quote bin-Laden approvingly?
Bin Laden spoke the truth. Deal with it it. Was he wrong in the way he followed through? I am a situational pacifist. Attack me directly and I will respond. Directly, in the defense of my own life and those who are near me. Attack my surroundings and I will look for the reasons behind the attack and try to change them. I would not have done what he did. His culture is as sick as is ours, but that does not ameliorate our own guilt. I also would not have done what the U.S. has done worldwide for 60+ years. I am open about my criticism of what it has done, and I am sure that the upward spiraling culture of violence in which we find ourselves today is a direct result of the massive guilt of this country since WWII. Is it now verboten to mention the real causes of the violence that killed 18 or more children today, a killing culture that seems to be escalating on an almost weekly basis? Sorry. I didn’t get that memo.
Shame of you all for averting your eyes from what is really happening here.
Shame on you all.
AG
Yeah, I think I understood you quite well the first time around.
What the hell AG? Can you even control your impulses to write shit like that?
Are you just completely insensitive, or do you compulsively need to place things in your “big picture” and shout it here to teach us?
Usually your posts are mildly amusing, like some guy on a street corner. This one at this time would get you punched in the nose if you said it to someones face.
Maybe you could try that, go out and tell everyone you meet in person. You might learn how to shut up when its appropriate.
I’ll say it to any individual’s face any time, and I do, every chance I get. You don’t like it, come talk to me. I’m easy to find.
AG
As someone who has questioned your discretion on comments before, I upvoted you because I don’t think this comment deserves to be buried. Looking at the big picture is the only way we are going to reduce this kind of violent occurrence. While your argument was not particularly tactful, I don’t feel that is oft a consideration of yours, and I agree with your overall point.
Please change your rating. AG’s comment does NOT DESERVE to be seen. Do you want non-members to be able to see it and judge the rest of us BY it? Seriously, this is beyond bad taste. Sure mention other children who die every day. Argue that this event should be put in perspective. That’s fine even tho it’s callous and inconsiderate of the shock and horror many of us feel. But, using that quote is way over the line into being rabid poo-slinging ape-shit. AG has been spiraling down into madness for quite some time. Stop enabling him.
You should be judged, sjct. Look away from the real root of the problem and you not only ignore but render impossible any working, long-term solutions.
Ban guns?
Lord!!! How many hundreds of thousands of weapons are already out there? What’re you going to do, try to get some gun-hunting drone system in place so’s you can zap the bad guys? Please. Change the culture…change the murderous actions of the culture in other lands…and you will change what happens here. Do not do so at your…our… own risk.
AG
Sorry sjct, but I won’t. You’ve been here a long time too, just as AG and I have. It is obvious that he is not a troll; it used to be that troll ratings were reserved for…trolls. And as a community we’d accept that if someone judged us based on what one commenter said, that was a reflection on the person doing the judging.
One of the things I love about the pond is that it encourages open discourse. At times I’ve found myself feeling uncomfortable but usually that merely illustrates my own shortcomings.
Thank you. Tact in the face of a murderous culture is just looking away from the truth of the matter, ejmw. The time for “tact” is past when our children are being murdered.
Thank you.
AG
Hmmmm….
A sure way to get massively downrated in post-Bush II Leftinessville.
Make the point that this vicious economic imperialist culture in which we live…a vicious economic imperialist culture that is steadily being streamlined and made more efficient by your very own leftiness president, Barack “We’re not broke!!!” O’Bomber… is to blame for its own ills.
Thanks, folks. I needed that. A dose of leftiness reality.
Have a nice day. Tomorrow, the next day…whenever you forget about this day as you have forgotten about so many others.
And treasure it, ‘cuz you’re gonna need the memory.
Sooner rather than later.
Bet on it.
AG
So glad you could drop by to exclaim how much holier you are than the rest of us, once again.
Thank you for your misunderstanding, Killjoy. I’m used to it.
“Holy?”
No.
A sinner, as are we all. Almost. I’ve just lived a little longer than most of us here and…due entirely to accidents of birth and accidents of given talents and weaknesses, none of which did I have any hand in acquiring…I have seen a lot of shit that most people do not get to see. Especially middle-class-by-birth (and probably by aspiration as well) white North American people, which is I am sure is the demographic in the vast majority on this site. I am trying to share what I have learned.
I do keep trying.
Saying nasty things to me isn’t going to stop me.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
Sadly, the death of poor people or people of color has never interested the American news media much.
The number of accidental fatal shootings is appalling.
I don’t even know what to say. I’m stunned by the horror of it.
Guns don’t kill. Just look at China! Same day, same situation, madman armed attacks a school…with a knife. Oh…22 wounded, no deaths:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html
I guess he wasn’t using an AR 15 knife with multiple blade magazines.
Crazy people will do crazy things. But weapons matter.
I can’t bring myself to read any of the reports, and I don’t think I’ll be able to. It’s just too horrifying.
I’ll shorten some of it for you;
Teachers are fucking heroes.
.
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The War of 1812 is 200 years ago, could we please join the civilized world and put a ban on assault rifles.
Massacre at CT Elementary School Gunman Kills 20 Kids
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 a 20 year-old and is connected to the school.
Update2: Original title deleted – “School Kids Should Be Armed”
Photo’s at scene of shooting in Newtown, CT
Developing story, a press conference any minute now. Perhaps asd many as 29 killed.
This can only turn out awesome.
Yeah, that’s not him but they did find the shooter’s Twitter feed, apparently. And it’s pretty damn disturbing.
I also hate all this information the news org are giving based on “sources” rather than waiting to hear official news.
.
And now, apparently, the shooter isn’t Ryan, but Adam Lanza. So says the news reports. Ryan(the FB and Twitter accounts) likely being his brother.
And they are reporting he used her guns.
Not in any way saying she had a role in her murder. Just ironic.
not ironic, that’s part of it. Gun culture at home
Y’all want an end to violence in the U.S.? To the deaths of innocents? It’s simple, really. Stop killing innocents abroad….a U.,S. specialty since Vietnam. Bring the troops home. Rebuild the United States from within. Do that and the domestic violence will start to go away. Bet on it. Don’t do it?
The chickens will come home to roost.
Bet on that as well.
One way or another.
Watch.
If you can bear it.
AG
Both of your comments are inappropriate. There is a time and place for everything. This ain’t the time or place for this.
What a fucking moronic comment.
Arthur, for a musician, you are staggeringly tone-deaf.
Just curious if you parallels between you comments and these http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/12/14/1339971/huckabee-says-connecticut-school-massacre-occur
red-because-we-removed-god-from-our-schools/?mobile=wt
I really hate that some of these news orgs are interviewing children. I don’t know what I hate more, the parents allowing their children to be interviewed right now or the news org for even having interviews with the children
agree
Idiots ask “WHY?” WHY WHY WHY WHY ?
Who the fuck cares why. To paraphrase, every crazy person is crazy in their own way.
The real issue is HOW? And the answer is “With a military style weapon.” Either a high-cap magazine, or a rapid fire automatic weapon.
Why do we allow high cap magazines? The last 5 mass killings have ALL featured high-cap magazines.
Many advanced-for-their-time civilizations practiced human sacrifice, and had deities that had to appeased with blood.
I don’t think it’s fair to pick on us because our idol is a document, and not a rain deity. Granted, an obsidian knife can’t continue on through a wall and kill someone on the other side, but that’s just nit-picking.
Freedom isn’t free, and one can actually measure just how precious this particular freedom is by taking a yardstick to the pile of corpses.
Let’s look at the wording of the Second Amendment again:
A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
What is being protected here is the right of “the People” to maintain their own militias. That this is so is reinforced by the use of the term “bear Arms.” “To bear Arms” doesn’t mean “to own a gun.” It is a phrase that has a specifically military connotation. The guarantee of “the right of the People to keep and bear Arms” is not a guarantee of the right of private individuals to own guns, but rather of the right of the people in their collective capacity to provide for their own military defense without relying on the federal government to provide it for them.
This was deemed “necessary to the security of a free State” not because, as your average right-wing gun nut fervently believes, because the people might need guns to rise up and overthrow the federal government in a violent revolution, but because the alternative to the militia in maintaining the security of the state was a standing army. Standing armies were considered to be dangerous to liberty, because they could be used by the government against the people as well as against foreign enemies. The use of a standing army against their own people was one of the very reasons that rulers maintained such armies in the first place. That was true in the eighteenth century, and it remains true today — take a look at Syria.
The claim that “The second amendment grants an individual’s right to own guns as personal, private property” is false. So is the claim that “The Second Amendment guarantees my right not to be prevented from acting defensively, with extreme prejudice if necessary, to protect life, limb and personal property.” This is not to say that you do not have such a right, but rather that such a right is not the right that is protected by the Second Amendment.
What is important for the current discussion is that the “right to bear Arms” protected by the Second Amendment is the right of the people to avail themselves of those very “weapons designed solely for killing large groups of people and ammunition that is designed to pierce bullet proof vests, among other ordnance that been specifically designed to wreak massive amounts of havoc,” etc., that many folks would rather not be in the hands of private individuals. In other words, military-grade weaponry, the kind of weapons with which one makes war. But this right belongs to the people in a collective capacity, not as private individuals. This kind of weaponry can, in full accordance with the Second Amendment, be owned by state or possibly local governments and kept stored under lock and key in arsenals and armories, only to be handled by members of a “well-regulated Militia” (in the modern context, members of the National Guard) acting under orders in pursuance of their official duties.
Admire the effort, but the Supreme Court has ruled there’s an individual right. How far does that right go? No one knows.
I agree that the wording is ambiguous, and I’ve seen gun rights advocates argue that an individual right is clearly in those same words.
Ugh. There’s no place for automatic weapons outside of warfare.
The Virginia Declaration of Rights, of which the Bill of Rights was modeled, is not ambiguous. And for Scalia, the supposed “originalist,” you’d think he would know the history of what I just posted. Maybe he does; after all, “originalist” only means, “Whatever the fuck I want.”
“Originalist” clearly means whatever Scalia wants it to mean.
Again, I don’t disagree with you, but Supreme Court precedent is a powerful thing.
Except for when it goes against what the Right Wing want, as in Gore v Bush and the Citizens United ruling.
In Maine, it’s unconstitutional even to ask…
Maine State Constitution: “Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms and this right shall never be questioned.“
Amended by referendum in 1987.
So, still reeling from the mall shooting last week, we are still unable to talk about how to keep this from happening. If we can’t sit the fuck down, put facts on the table, make some rules and make them happen, this will happen over and over.
President Obama is addressing the country and he’s struggling to maintain his composure. He can’t get to the heart of the matter as a politician, but he’s listing the previous tragedies and he’s calling for meaningful action regardless of the politics.
We will say the same tired lines again and again, because this type of incident is going to continue. We’re a gun culture, falsely clinging to the Constitution as a justification for having hundreds of thousands of guns in our homes. Until people face reality and admit there’s a big problem, we’ll keep saying the same tired lines.
And keep burying innocent children.
Actually, the mall shooting was earlier this week. I understand, though. It’s hard to keep track of them all.
Girlfriend and I almost went to the Clackamas Mall the other day when someone went off and killed a few people there. So now this.
The Michigan legislature, after passing “right to work,” just passed “concealed carry” so people can carry guns in schools, among other places.
Culture of Death.
I’m surprised there isn’t an All gun, all shootings, all the time cable channel. There would certainly be enough material.
What Juan Cole said:
This is more Republican/Libertarian insanity. The freedom to be slaughtered.
Why are they not publicly shamed, then shunned?
‘Guns don’t kill people, people do.’ Doesn’t that sound familiar? What a stupid talking point.
A new talking point”Guns make it possible for people to kill people.
News is saying the mother was a kindergarten teacher. And he opened fire on her classroom. Kindergartners for gawd sake.
I suppose the NRA is going to say this happened because the 5 year olds weren’t armed to defend themselves.
Is it me or shouldn’t this shooting translate into Dear NRA, your answer to every shooting has been more guns and since that is your answer to self regulation your voice is not longer allowed in the discussion.
I don’t think I’ll ever get the vision (in my head) of kindergartners lying dead in the school room today or the little boy on the news when asked how he reacted said, “Whoa!”
I am sickend by this.
I taught for 37 years. I began my career at a Job Corp Center. It was a transformative experience for me. I always hoped it was for the students too. But violence among 16-21 year-old high school dropouts was not uncommon. One day two of my better students brought their problem into my room, and I stepped in-between them. I got hit in the shoulder. Instantly the fight was over. They knew if I picked up the phone and called security they were gone. I didn’t. They stayed and graduated. We all learned a lesson.
15 years later, after changing to elementary education, I taught for a principal who believed in being proactive. While other schools were doing the normal fire and severe weather drills, he had us doing earthquake and intruder drills. He was a M*A*S*H fan; if w heard ” Mr.O’Riely report to the office.” come over the intercom we knew to lock the doors, close the blinds, and get the kids into a corner of the room and quiet. All the teachers thought he was a bit of a worrywart/ And then there was Columbine. And then there was Jonesville. And by the time I retired, I’m sorry to say, I lost track.
I want today to have never happened. I’m sure the children, teachers, and parents of Newton, CT feel the same. Unfortunately, it’s just pretty to think so.