RIP The Students, Teachers and Adults Killed in CT School

[PhotonWrangler]

I just saw photos of some of the beautiful beings who were ripped from us all, deeply saddened........I can't imagine the families trying to get through the Christmas holiday, I lost my son this month many years ago and frankly it changed this holiday for me.( in fact this very date)
If you have children, hug them every day, same for your significant other, we never know when they might be called home.

Beamhead, I'm so sorry to hear this. I hope the passing of time has offered some solace for you as it will hopefully offer for those grieving families in Connecticut.

 

[HighlanderNorth]

I've decided to reopen this thread and let this discussion happen here as I feel that many of us are very confused and hurt and quite honestly - lost. When things like this happen we turn to each other for comfort and perhaps some understanding. This is not a political thing - this is not about gun control. We just want to be around those we care about.

Please feel free to take any political discussions to the Underground as Empath suggested. This thread is simply to express our sympathy and pain... and perhaps to gain some understanding.

I think that it might be impossible to understand why someone could be so deluded that they feel the only way to deal with their own pain is to go and murder a bunch of kids who this person apparently didnt even know........ At least with some of these cases, there is an underlying motive that, although irrational and indefensible, you can understand why they targeted the people they did, but in this case, I dont see how this guy could have been hurt in any way by a bunch of young kids who were many years younger than him! Usually this happens because the perpetrator was bullied by his victims, and then he/they strike out irrationally to get back at those bullies. But little kids(mainly little girls) cant bully a 20 year old! So it makes no sense.

Combine that with the media's usual lack of accuracy(or credibility) and you have erroneous reports being made that the killer's Mom was a teacher at the school, then you find out that report was completely incorrect, so nobody seems to know whats going on here.

We have around 330 million people in the US, and its a very big country. you dont really get a feel for how big this country is, or how many people 330 million is, til you board a plane and fly for a few hours while looking down at the land, the houses and buildings beneath you. Then you realize that with soooo many people, and so many races, cultures, religions all shoehorned together, its unfortunately inevitable that bad people(sociopaths) bare their rage and cause harm to other people here and there(or more than just here and there)...

But even though this is unbelievably tragic, there is an important aspect of this to remember. These occasional, multiple shootings generally occur at around 1-3 per year on average, some at schools, some at theaters, etc. Then its magnified greatly by the press. But its important to remember that for every school where there's a shooting, there are tens of thousands of schools and theaters in the US where there werent any shootings.....

For every one moron who goes out and shoots up a building like this, there are tens or hundreds of millions of people who dont go and shoot up and building like this.....

 

[TEEJ]

It is a terrible tragedy when someone who is obviously mentally deranged attacks innocents who are unable to defend themselves.

This happens ~ every day unfortunately, but we don't really hear about it unless it makes the news...and multiple victims are simply more newsworthy.

As a parent, and as a person who has had loved ones taken via violent acts, the horror of what the children, and those that loved them were experiencing, is heavy to bear.

 

[Ragnar66]

*Content removed by Greta... please let's not go there*

 

[HighlanderNorth]

"If you combine the populations of Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Australia, you'll get a population roughly the size of the United States. We had 32,000 gun deaths last year, they had 112. *Content removed by Greta... please let's not go there*

^Maybe we should at least let the victims parents and the country mourn before we use this tragedy to push a political agenda. I'm pretty sure its not allowed here, and I find it particularly offensive.

 

[Ragnar66]

I am just removing posts all together. My goal was not to discuss ridiculous politics. That incident just really makes angry, sad, and fed up. Time to let it go and think about something else.

 

[Samy]

We have around 330 million people in the US, and its a very big country.

We've got about 22 million in Australia, which is about the same size as the lower USA. The USA is certainly a very populated place!

cheers

 

[nbp]

I think those statistics are pretty grim. People don't always want to hear them, as they run contrary to what they want to believe about their home, but it points to a nation that clearly has a problem with violent crime. It is distressing that many of the victims are innocent in all respects. Each person may have their own opinions as to what causes the problem and/or what should be done about it, but pretending it's not a problem doesn't do anyone any good.

I heard that some of the kids are being buried today. :candle:

 

[LightJunk]

My deepest condolences goes to all the victims' family. I have a 5 year-old daughter and she's going to a pre-school in my country Malaysia where guns are an illegal weapon to carry around.

I can feel how the victims' parents are by just by looking into my daughter's eyes. I shed tears writing this. I hug her pretty tight today and kiss her a lot before she boarded a plane back home(I was on the later flight as it was full).

May God bless America. RIP

 

[HighlanderNorth]

I think those statistics are pretty grim. People don't always want to hear them, as they run contrary to what they want to believe about their home, but it points to a nation that clearly has a problem with violent crime. It is distressing that many of the victims are innocent in all respects. Each person may have their own opinions as to what causes the problem and/or what should be done about it, but pretending it's not a problem doesn't do anyone any good.

I heard that some of the kids are being buried today. :candle:

Again, I dont think this thread is here to argue about what caused this tragedy, and without going into politics I have to say that I dont know of anyone that says that 22 dead kids isnt a problem. WE have a violence problem. Our society is bombarded with violence on tv, in the movies and in today's popular music. That is always justified and ignored. Sociopathic, violent people will always find a way to commit violence. They always have...

Anyway, I wonder if this guy or kid who did this left any kind of note or any evidence of why he did this? I havent heard of any, and usually when this happens every 1-3 years at a school, or elsewhere they make it clear as to their motives. Its important to understand why.

I was watching a psychiatrist last night talking about this, and he made several good points. He was criticizing the way the media jump to the conclusion that these are just shy, troubled kids who overreact. They come to this conclusion because they hear that the kid is a "loner" and often very private. Well, the fact is that kids who are shy and bullied usually are angry at what they suffer, but at the same time they dont have it in them to commit mass murder! That takes a sociopathic mentality. Sociopaths are also very private and dont tend to tell everyone whats going on in their minds. They can also be loners. The point this guy was making was that the media need to stop taking a few basic symptoms and drawing incorrect conclusions based on those symptoms. Kids that do things like this arent good kids who were just pushed a little too far. In order to do something like this, its pretty clear they dont care about about their fellow humans like most healthy people do.

WE need to look deeper into sociopathy. I think its important to stop school bullying and make all kids more comfortable while in school, and to discourage the cliches and the social competitiveness that leads to bullying. Competitiveness is fine in gym class. But still we need to find ways to detect whatever genes lead to sociopathic behavior that causes some people to have absolutely no care or concern for the feelings or welfare of others. They are really just scratching the surface with this stuff, and there are different types of sociopaths. There are many functioning sociopaths who use their lack of empathy to move ahead in business and politics, but they dont usually commit mass murder. They couldnt care less when people die or get hurt around them, but at the same time they do care enough about their own welfare that they wont do anything that will destroy their own lives, or at least they try and be careful when they commit crimes. I can speak to this because my cousin is a functioning sociopath who has done fairly well for himself, often at the expense of others, and he seems to enjoy being deceptive, cheating on his wife right under her nose in the most risky manner possible to get more of a rush from the experience. He can and will stab anyone in the back, and has probably done so to everyone around him many times, but he's gotten so good at it you usually dont even realize he's done something til later. AT the same time, nobody even suspects him because he easily fools people into believing he's this nice guy! He can be charming when needed, and he can walk all over you and get off on it.... He would never kill anyone, and doesnt own a gun anyway, because he's not in the business of hurting himself by going to prison.

Thats the type of behavior that has been around since the dawn of humankind, but its been mostly ignored and not studied enough. If we could detect who has the gene that can lead to murder, then we need to find a way to counteract it.

 

[nbp]

Interesting ideas. I also find it interesting (as a 25 yr old white male) that in almost all the 61 mass murders in the past 30 years in this country, the perpetrator has been a white male from late teens to 30s. Why does this behavior not seem to cross gender/ethnicity/age boundaries very well? Another thing to study I guess.

 

[orbital]

+

Once we recognize these mass shootings as Domestic Terrorism, we can then look seriously at the common denominators.


side note:
was at my local Fleet Farm today, returning some parts I didn't need.
anyway, a guy was there complaining about a gigantic banner they had up for an assault style rifle, this guy was making a huge fuss over it.
This banner had been up for months, by the time I left, the banner was already taken down.




_________

 

[Greta]

I think we've just about run the gamut on this. It seems we are all moving passed our hurt and confusion and on to cause and solutions.

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and feelings, prayers and condolences.

There is a rather... Um... interesting... Thread over at the Underground if any of you would like to continue.

Thread closed.