Speakeasy forum: Multiple shootings at Conn. grade school

or the possibility that someone may go berserk.

And you certainly can't legislate the options they have to do damage if/when they do get mean or go berserk. (gun control)

Looks like you're over a barrel.

'over half of such in US recent history have occurred since 2007', said one report.
Breeding 'em faster, too, it seems.
"be in control of government" Obama said, 'I respond as a father.' Father, President, school Principal- all helpless. I can't imagine the terror in the survivors' little hearts.

On 12/12/12 a father carved a pentagram into his 6-yr-old son's back. (The kid will be OK, I hear.) Why? "It was a holy day." Difference in quantity only IMO.

This is a problem deeper than government can resolve by any method available to them.

Men are men...humans are humans....the only difference is government/laws/regulations?

Since you can't legislate morality....You're over a barrel.....

It's strange how morality recognizes borders, sometimes.

I'm not saying it never happens...just way less frequently, IF it's only because "we're human" was the deciding factor.

The closest things to violence we had when we were younger were The Lone Ranger shootouts, Popeye & Bluto, The Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote, and an older brother's torment.....or a drunken abusive parent here and there. We didn't see it on television or in the movies (unless you count The Mummy or Dracula flicks), and now it's the norm to have as much blood, guts, and gore as possible (Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jason and Freddie Krueger), even in our video games, not to mention the music (or at least what they call music). Kids get numb to it and have learned to see killings as a way to solve a temporary problem permanently. How many actually have seen the inside of a church, no matter what their faith might be? When God is taken out of your life by non-believers, what's left? God is your conscience......and most kids don't have one anymore.

didn't happen because of faulty 2nd Amendment rights. More likely it was faulty upbringing.

That's why you need laws...Not all upbringing is perfect. So it was faulty 2nd Amendment rights.

The laws are the backup plan.....IF they haven't learned by the time they're 16...When all else fails...make a law....enforce a law...punish the perp!!!!

If the perp is still able to accomplish their mission put every roadblock that you can in their way to try and prevent them from accomplishing their mission. IF that means banning guns (or making them REALLY difficult to possess)...then do it....If you figure it will just make them move on to figuring out how to build a bomb...then that's the way it goes....You look for a way to block bomb building.....IF you don't want to do what I've suggested....Go back and sit on your couch with your picket sign and watch Ozzie and Harriet.

make a law....enforce a law...punish the perp!!!!


But when you suggest it ...it is?

Maybe if we actually punished the bad guys for a change instead of slap on the wrist or a wink and a nod, we would have less crime...

I never said that it was BO's fault, too........JP said we need new laws. I responded that we don't need new laws that can be ignored by the very lawMAKERS based on what laws they pick and choose they will enforce, and publicly announce they will ignore them.

And it wasn't the 2nd Amendment that 'forced' Adam's mother to purchase these types of weapons in her name and have them in close proximity to a son that is already 'mentally challenged' and 'autistic'. Why aren't 'we' looking at the mother for making some pretty bad decisions when obviously she didn't personally need or use them? None are the 'normal' guns a woman would have around to protect herself and she wasn't in need of normal hunting rifles or those would have been found at her home.

Obviously that was a reference to "Fast & Furious" situation during this administration, worse really than the rumored Iran-Contra matter during Reagans' term.

We absolutely need to make substantial changes to the way we handle mental health issues. I believe it was the mother of the Virginia Tech shooter who repeatedly tried to get help for her son but was refused because he hadn't done anything violent yet. The system needs to be less reactive and more proactive, while still remaining within the Constitution.

However we need changes in gun laws too. The 19th century wild west attitude held by too many in this country has got to change. It's outdated and has become too dangerous to mollycoddle any longer. To the nuts who argue that lives would have been saved if the teachers were armed, I say that if we come to a point where we feel we have to arm our schoolteachers, then we have failed as a civilized, advanced culture.

There's nothing wrong with kids having a place of haven from reality as long as it's recognized as such.

by bringing up depressing subjects, JP Bill.

Yeah...that's great parenting!

(BTW. Looks like this sub was already at the end of the line. Time to hang up the phone.)

teen gang violence in the 50's was the basis of West Side Story. Big cities had adolescent gangs armed with zip guns, and knives and baseball bats. Big cities had grave Heroin problems, and the crime rate was high though tailing off until the Baby Boom generation became teenagers and then it started to climb again. It peaked about 1992 and has been declining ever since. It is now back to 1972 levels, a period I remember as pretty wonderful except for the War.

I will say that kids were far less well armed then, now they seem to have unfettered access to huge stores of weapons and ammunition. The world always produces aberrant individuals, and it sounds like his mother was a tyrant in the home. He moved out, and then was disposessed by Hurricane Sandy, lost his independence and moved back in with Mom, and he snapped.

There are lots of people who talk about doing stuff like this, who never do it, and there are atheists among those people, just as there are fine church goers who shoot up the congregation. Having a Moral Compass is not dependent upon active religion. We all learn what is right and wrong. Some damaged people don't care about right and wrong, and some just have a psychotic break, which has nothing to do with a religious core, it is more a neurochemical situation brought on by excessive stress and not having learned how to deal with it.

I believe the old Mafia was a collection of people brought up in the traditions and strictures of the Catholic Church but that didn't prevent them from becoming murderers. And David Koresh was a very religious guy, as was Jim Jones.

The entirety of American society is governed by laws and precepts that arise out of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. You don't have to attend church to get the orientation, it's everywhere and in virtually every book and most television programs.

Being religious doesn't stop people from being outraged by a simple statement of fact by Bob Costas, that if there hadn't been a gun in the equation, that two people could still be alive. Not guaranteed, but less likely to have ended in murder suicide. And if she'd been armed, both of them could still be dead.

There is no easy answer to this, though I do think that the evening news has a responibility not to glory in the spilling of blood as much of it does.

Any one remember Charles Whitman? Or Richard Speck? or an endless list of other creepazoids. This isn't a modern disease. Sawney Bean and his cannibal family terrorized medieval Scotland, and Deacon Brodie, a Deacon of the Presbyterian Church, was the great criminal king-pin in 18th Century Edinburgh. It is a simple fact of life that there are people who act this way in all times and places and there's no way of escaping that. Now, fewer weapons would help IMO, but most serial killers don't use guns.

Like I said, there is no easy answer.

Rob