12/14/2012 Another Shooting in Newtown, Connecticut

[MikeE]

I was a counselor at a inner city high school with a long history of gangs and violence. We had a full time cop stationed in the school. 3 full time guards hired by the district.Every square inch of the building and grounds were covered with cameras. All the doors were on timers and locked in between class. Staff were trained in lock out and lock in drills multiple times per year. It took the kids about 2 weeks to figure out how to beat the lock system. If anyone wanted in they would simply have a kid meet them at the door and the open the door for them. Instead of finding weapons on the kids inside the building they simply stashed them outside. The kids felt like they were in prison. Short of having a full time swat team in the building i do not know how you could have a more secure site. Teachers for the most part are not going to arm themselves even if it was legal for them to do so. Most believe in banning guns. They did not go into teaching to be police officers. Parenting is the real issue. And a lack of real consequences from the courts and parents when kids make choices that harm others. Most adults would be shocked at how many kids have no hope and how many do not feel like anyone cares about the choices they make. I was very good at what i did and it never ceased to amaze me how many kids loved being with me. I was hard as nails on them i expected them to change and would not settle for excuses. I chased them down daily if need be and held them accountable when they made bad choices. Most would remain with me for the 4 years they were in my building. All they wanted was someone to pay attention and care enough to draw a line. Most parents have no idea who their kids are let alone what they do on a day day basis. The fix is not ban guns. It is fix parenting in America. There will always be kids and adults who are just plain nuts. But we have
a huge population of kids who are not parented. And guess what if they were not parented how do they parent when they become parents. Truth is parents often give their family pet more time and attention than they do their children. Teachers are overwhelmed all across America they are expected to teach parent and now be cops! People need to wake up and take a honest look at how well they really know there kids. The most screwed up kids are often the best students they live in homes with parents who expect a lot but spend most of their time vested in their work world and recreational activities. Their children come home to a empty house and a home no matter how much it cost and how expensive is still a cold lonely place if a kid feels like no one cares enough to know them. I can tell you this in 35 years of working with kids i never met a bad kid.But i retired because i was overwhelmed by the sheer number who had bad parents who thought they were on top the job. Most were so full of themselves you could not get them to look at what their kid really wanted and it was not a car or to be able to smoke weed. They just wanted someone to notice them and take time to know them.

This is a great post, and gets as close to the truth as anything I've ready about this disaster, so far. Seems to come from someone with actual real-life experience. Thanks.

 

[DuneHopper]

I was a counselor at a inner city high school with a long history of gangs and violence. We had a full time cop stationed in the school. 3 full time guards hired by the district.Every square inch of the building and grounds were covered with cameras. All the doors were on timers and locked in between class. Staff were trained in lock out and lock in drills multiple times per year. It took the kids about 2 weeks to figure out how to beat the lock system. If anyone wanted in they would simply have a kid meet them at the door and the open the door for them. Instead of finding weapons on the kids inside the building they simply stashed them outside. The kids felt like they were in prison. Short of having a full time swat team in the building i do not know how you could have a more secure site. Teachers for the most part are not going to arm themselves even if it was legal for them to do so. Most believe in banning guns. They did not go into teaching to be police officers. Parenting is the real issue. And a lack of real consequences from the courts and parents when kids make choices that harm others. Most adults would be shocked at how many kids have no hope and how many do not feel like anyone cares about the choices they make. I was very good at what i did and it never ceased to amaze me how many kids loved being with me. I was hard as nails on them i expected them to change and would not settle for excuses. I chased them down daily if need be and held them accountable when they made bad choices. Most would remain with me for the 4 years they were in my building. All they wanted was someone to pay attention and care enough to draw a line. Most parents have no idea who their kids are let alone what they do on a day day basis. The fix is not ban guns. It is fix parenting in America. There will always be kids and adults who are just plain nuts. But we have
a huge population of kids who are not parented. And guess what if they were not parented how do they parent when they become parents. Truth is parents often give their family pet more time and attention than they do their children. Teachers are overwhelmed all across America they are expected to teach parent and now be cops! People need to wake up and take a honest look at how well they really know there kids. The most screwed up kids are often the best students they live in homes with parents who expect a lot but spend most of their time vested in their work world and recreational activities. Their children come home to a empty house and a home no matter how much it cost and how expensive is still a cold lonely place if a kid feels like no one cares enough to know them. I can tell you this in 35 years of working with kids i never met a bad kid.But i retired because i was overwhelmed by the sheer number who had bad parents who thought they were on top the job. Most were so full of themselves you could not get them to look at what their kid really wanted and it was not a car or to be able to smoke weed. They just wanted someone to notice them and take time to know them.

Has to be the best post seen on this forum, very insightful to the physical, mental, behavior that drives the misguided at youth !
Great Post !!!!!

 

[RVTECH]

Anything specific, new or just the same drivel?

Disregard - I DO get CNN and MSNBC and in 10 minutes I got more on the need for new gun laws, mag restrictions and the big issue for them - why the mother had the guns in the first place than I did in the last 24 hours on FOX.

 

[mkwerx]

While I haven't heard anything more since listening to the radio yesterday - one thing that struck me is that FOX and CBS news both had made statements that the actual shooter, the 20 year old, was said to have Aspergers and/or Autism. That leads me to believe that he likely had help of some sort in accomplishing these killings.

And then we have another publicized shooting - the one at the Excaliber in Vegas. I have a friend who was there during the shooting - he was taking in a show at the theater there and is OK. But with three shootings in a 4 day period, it makes me wonder just how many more of these were are going to see in the coming days. The politicians are jumping on these like sharks on a blood trail. We will have a horrible political fight on our hands - and it sickens me that the dead, especially dead children, will be turned into political pawns for an agenda.

I am numb a bit inside from all the craziness this week - especially yesterday's. I pray for the families who've lost loved ones, and children. How many parents had to go home yesterday and look at their christmas trees, maybe with presents underneath for their dead children. As sad as it is, I will not be surprised if we see a few of the parents of these children committing suicide over their loss. I can't imagine what it would be like to loose my son, especially at such a young age.

 

[badclam]

This was an act of terrorism. One person wanting to terrorize and create as much carnage as possible to the most defenseless.
When Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building he killed a lot more people including a bunch of children. Timothy McVeigh did not use a gun, he proved that for man to kill a lot of people that there were even worse tools than guns.
When Timothy McVeigh blew up that building we were all shocked and stood together as Americans to mourn the dead and contemplate what had happened. I hope we do that now. It is time today to grieve. The politics should wait. The arguments can wait for at least a little while.
The arguments of why this happened and how to stop the next one will be plentiful, but not today, not from me.

 

[JimmyS1985]

I have autism. Just because you have a classification of autism doesn't make you too stupid to plan out a massacre on your own, actually in a lot of area's people with what use to be classified as Asperger's, are brilliant people on several topics (I can talk for hours, instead of having a solid social life I just research various topics on the computer for hours at a time). The kid was mentioned as very smart and possibly a genius by some of his friends in subsequent interviews however quiet and a loner, which sounds about right when I look at my own experiences of growing up with autism. I think Cho Seung Hui was suspected to have autism as well and in his manifesto listed his difficulties with meeting women and socializing with kids his age as one of his reasons for carrying out the Virginia Tech Massacre.

 

[Liberty97045]

Apparently the background check & waiting period prevented him from purchasing so he had to steal the guns from his mother
Newtown gunman tried to buy rifle days before shooting - U.S. News

 

[DuneHopper]

The anarchist of the world, even anti-gun people will take up arms to cause harm in times of a society's paranoia.
These may seem random but are triggering people for some reason, and there lays the question if these continue !

 

[sig]

Correction: The UK does not have a semi auto ban.. the possession restrictions and permit process are difficult and they are very limited as to capacity, but they can own for instance an FN SLP MK 1 12 ga limited to a 2 shot tube (dimpled) and semi auto rifles with very limited mag capacity

They cannot use them legally even in home defense and most Brits are very conformist so as far as that usage they don't see use

I have been reading comparisons to other countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, etc. All countries are not the same. These countries don't have Mexican drug cartels running drugs and guns across their boarders. Their government isn't running guns to these Mexican drug cartels. They don't have illegals flooding across their boarders. They don't have vicious drug gangs, of all races, killing and destroying the their cities and the inter fabric of their countries. Other countries are pro business and aren't trying to tax their corporations into oblivion.
They do have bleeding heart liberals though. Probably not as rabid as ours, but just the same. They do have the threat of Muslin terrorist, you know that religion of peace.
We have a unique situation, and gun control is not the answer.

 

[8ball]

I have never seen a reaction like this - even the most outspoken conservatives on my Facebook page are in hiding. It's just an outrage and a dark blot on the heart of our nation right now. You can't blame the media - they didn't kill a schoolroom full of innocent children. This has gone beyond our worst nightmares of Columbine and VT to a whole, sickening new level of evil.

We cannot screen every American for mental issues like this murderer. We can't arm schoolteachers. We can dance around the edges of the argument all we like, but I have zero doubt that there will be a broad push to reduce access to guns for everyone, and there is likely nothing the traditional gun lobby, NRA etc can do about it. The comparisons to other countries don't help us either, when you look at the body count from this year alone.

I am as outraged, sad and angry as the next gun owner or any American. I am also willing to bet it if you took a constitutional convention right now, the 2A would be toast. People will stop at nothing to see this doesn't happen again.

 

[timac]

Are other forces behind these shootings? Just posting possibilities.

 

[JimmyS1985]

I have been reading comparisons to other countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, etc. All countries are not the same. These countries don't have Mexican drug cartels running drugs and guns across their boarders. Their government isn't running guns to these Mexican drug cartels. They don't have illegals flooding across their boarders. They don't have vicious drug gangs, of all races, killing and destroying the their cities and the inter fabric of their countries. Other countries are pro business and aren't trying to tax their corporations into oblivion.
They do have bleeding heart liberals though. Probably not as rabid as ours, but just the same. They do have the threat of Muslin terrorist, you know that religion of peace.
We have a unique situation, and gun control is not the answer.

War on drugs kills more people than it helps, it is the same as prohibition just with different substances. When they enacted Prohibition in the 1920's, the murder rate went up 10x from what it had been prior to prohibition, should be no surprise that the murder rate is very high around the Mexican border due to prohibition of other drugs, thats the result of prohibition, an underground economy without a criminal justice system backing it up to arbitrate grievances. The penalties for violating rules in the drug world are more a form of street justice and that includes murder. The only people who really support the war on drugs still tends to be the social conservatives.

 

[DuneHopper]

The anarchist of the world, even anti-gun people will take up arms to cause harm in times of a society's paranoia.
These may seem random but are triggering people for some reason, and there lays the question if these continue !

 

[jordanvraptor]

The chief medical examiner on CNN said everyone was hit more than once and the primary weapon used was the rifle.

 

[Sling Blade]

The anarchist of the world, even anti-gun people will take up arms to cause harm in times of a society's paranoia.
These may seem random but are triggering people for some reason, and there lays the question if these continue !

You can say that again.

Oh wait, you did!

 

[oneharmonic]

 

[novamind]

The chief medical examiner on CNN said everyone was hit more than once and the primary weapon used was the rifle.

I read this today also. Conflicts with rifle found in car( implied unused) and two handguns were primary weapons as reported first. Things are not adding up, just like most shootings of this kind do not add up.

 

[taylor]

Something I haven't heard about is these were all legally owned firearms by the mother, why weren't they locked either with some kind of safe or trigger lock all this could have been avoided with simple precautions. In my view the mother was partly responsible for what happened.

 

[Burt Gummer]

Dr Dietz nailed it.

The greedy corporate Banker media is more complicit in fostering these horrific acts than anyone else.

 

[Flash]

You can bet that the fast and furious bunch will have the rifle from the trunk of the mothers car in the school doing all the shooting before it's over, so they can continue with their assault weapons ban.