Another Shooting
 

This is fucked.

18 children. 18 CHILDREN.

No words.

inb4guncontroldiscussion

Poor kids.

absolutely heart-breaking.

...

That is just fucking sick.

Disgusting. I really feel for the families of the deceased.

I think even if gun-control laws were implemented, this sort of sick fuck would just grab a butcher knife and do the same thing. It's down to the person rather than the specific weapons they have access to.

That's really, really messed up.

That's just terrible ]:

Urgh, the US needs much tighter gun-control. That being said, what a disgusting event and what a sick man.

These tragedies happen almost yearly in the US now. I'm not quite sure what it's going to take.

Well, that's a stupid thing to say.

I'd rather deal with someone with a melee weapon than a firearm. You can block a knife or bat with your arm. Horrible injury, but not death.

I suppose that's true, I was referring more to the mindset that believes such tragedies would simply not occur if guns were outright banned. Perhaps a knife was a bad example to use.

I'm still interested as to why it was a stupid thing to say though.

You can't fly into space with a plane. You can't kill ten adults, who are trying to protect children, with a melee weapon. Not before the police get there. Not unless you're some kind of supersoldier.

Unbelievable

That's why it was a stupid thing to say.

Also, getting up close, and personal with a knife is an entirely different ball game to the impersonal use of a fire arm. It takes a lot more mental instability to stab a person to death than it does to shoot them.

This might sound cynical, so I'll pose it as a question instead of a statement. Is there anyone else who actually feels little emotion about this? I find myself feeling animosity towards the killer of course, but no heart throbbing sadness or bitter tears. This sort of thing is reported upon so regularly in the news I think I've become desensitised to hearing about it. That being said, I haven't seen any footage or listened to any eye-witness accounts which I imagine is a whole other ball game.

I'm sickened enough by it that I have refused to watch the news, or look at news sites today.

Okay, well sorry, I guess I just didn't think it out thoroughly enough.


Scraptrapman, I feel similar. I am disgusted by the killer and my thoughts go out to the families but the news report is so impersonal that it's difficult to feel any deep emotional attachment. Like you said though, eyewitness accounts and footage would probably be much more upsetting.

But I guarantee you this sort of thing has happened within the last week or two in somewhere like DR Congo or Sudan. Because they're not westerners and the media benefits little or nothing from covering those stories, we don't find out about it. Would you care if that came to light? I mean, Kony 2012 was a really shit attempt at charity work by a shady organisation but the story behind it, kidnapping and massacring hundreds of kids, is the same and equally as disastrous. I know for a fact there isn't a single person here that felt the same way about that as they do this. Why grieve for those you can't help? Surely offering some monetary assistance into a fund to help the grieving families directly involved pay for funeral costs would be more welcomed? If you generally care about this, do that.

I did, but the feeling is coming back. I don't care for it.

I don't feel much of anything either, but I also don't hold life very sacred and I don't know what it's like to have kids of my own. I wouldn't say it's cynical, or even a matter of desensitization, I just think some people have different thresholds for empathy. I've never felt more than a whiff for anyone other than those closest to me.

On the other hand, I get really sad when I learn of the death of an animal, especially a dog. Maybe I just don't give a shit about humans.

There's an old saying that the death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of 100 people is a statistic.

I felt inexhaustibly angry all day after hearing about this; frustrated and disappointed and furious, but again, most of those emotions were directed at the shooter. It wasn't until someone suggested these kids all probably still believed in Santa Claus that I got really unstable. Something about that just makes me really, really sad. That and the guy who did this allegedly shot his mother, the kindergarten teacher, first. Someone needs to take the reigns of our out of control monkey asses.

Honestly, I feel like this is a daily thing. Our tragedy is their reality. Boooweeeeoooo.

I'm more interested in what drives people to commit atrocities like this than controlling firearms. I don't have a clue how firearm distribution is handled in the US, so I don't really feel fit to comment. The entire Australian media seems to be content saying that it's horrible and that guns in the US are bad, but not explaining how they're bad or what makes them so damn easy to obtain.

I'm very much in the same boat as STM as not feeling too attached to it. I've never had anyone particularly close to me die. I have nothing to relate this to. I'm too young to really be effected by this story.

I think what upsets me more than the actual shooting is how certain assholes are using it to further their own agendas. Today I was subjected to a thread on a campus forum in which the token fundie used the shooting as an opportunity to wax pious with uninitiated bullshit such as what Jesus would say about the shooting, and why they somehow deserved to die. Naturally, the thread was closed after four pages of his peers calling him an opportunistic smegbag.

That's not what i have been hearing on the news. I've heard he killed his mother before he even went to the school. They were really vague with the details. The police have been really hush hush about the whole thing.

Although it completely disgusts me to watch the news right now, i have trying to keep up with it as much as i can. What is this, like the third shooting this year? Seems like the whole country is going crazy.

They tend to feed off each other. Even if they're not explicitly copy-cat things, events like this tend to inspire people who have similar thoughts.

I keep wondering why it's always schools this happens to. If it's a student who goes to school there I can see the connection, but this was apparently some 24 year old shooting up an elementary school. Why, out of all places, would he pick a school to shoot up?

Not that I support shooting up places, but if you're going to shoot something to shit with a lot of people inside surely there are more deserving places to do it. Like a KKK meeting or an NRA convention.

Anyway since this brings up the entire gun debate again, I want to input something I came across a while back.
I know the history of the gun laws in the US, I know why it was done the way it was done and why people feel a need to defend their right to have guns. And I agree to a certain point (I've slowly been changing my stance on it since the last time we talked about it here) that people should be able to own a handgun and even carry it around with them if they want to. I still believe that owning any sort of firearm should require a permit and at least a basic background check to make sure you're not some mental patient, but beyond that it shouldn't be entirely illegal. Right now the US is in a situation where it's easier for the mentally ill to get a firearm then it is to get medical help.

Anyway, back to my point. I came across these videos of people defending their right to own guns and defending their right to 'open carry'. Basically meaning they carry their guns visible to the general public. And even that shouldn't be a direct problem. I think the streets would be a lot safer if a trained selection of people walked around doing their daily business with a handgun strapped to their side in a secured holster.
But these people take it to the extreme and not only carry their handgun, but also carry shotguns and semi-auto rifles on their back. Why? Because they can. They don't care that they cause a stir in the community. All in all I think it's extremely childish. Anyway go check it out first before I go on.



He's right, this is legal. It is legal in a lot of states to simply carry a loaded AK-47 or MP5 or whatever. In theory it would be legal to carry a rocket launcher. But this guy was stopped by the cops, they asked what he was up to and had a 15 minute chat with him before letting him go. He has good intentions, but he could just as easily have wandered into a school or a shopping mall and shot up the place and the cops couldn't have done a thing about it, even though they stopped him and encouraged him to leave the guns at home.

Something is screwy in the US. It being legal to carry semi-auto rifles might have something to do with that.

Because it's a large gathering of people; the same reason all of the non-schoolhouse spree shootings this year (3 or 5 including those in Canada) were directed at big groups. And again, reports are saying his mother worked at the school.

Except Switzerland.