27 dead in US school shooting

[DigitalBuddha]

27 dead in US school shooting...

DB''s head is bowed   

Today was a day of terror and UNdudeness - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20730717

[Boston Rockbury]

head bowed here too dude. Crazy that some un-dude can get so deep into their own shit that they can be blind to the incredible suffering that they cause to innocent victims.

[DigitalBuddha]

head bowed here too dude. Crazy that some un-dude can get so deep into their own shit that they can be blind to the incredible suffering that they cause to innocent victims.

Very true.

[rev-jaholbrook]

I can't believe someone would do this at a school with little kids.  Sad day Dudes...  Not sure an oat soda and a burger will make this better....

[Hominid]

head bowed here too dude. Crazy that some un-dude can get so deep into their own shit that they can be blind to the incredible suffering that they cause to innocent victims.

Fuckin' eh.  Hard make sense of it. To try and stop this insanity means trying to understand the *why*.  May the discussions ensue..........

[DigitalBuddha]

This might be one reason why (the kid's that shot up Columbine High school were on these "psychotropic or psychotherapeutic medications") ...

Mark it ZERO; School Shootings Linked to Psychotropic Drugs Such as Prozac, Ritalin, Luvox, and Paxil - http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/2000-05-16-School-Shootings-Psychotropic-Drugs.htm

From CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/05/17/ritalin.ap/index.html

On May 17th, 2000 the United States House Sub-Committee on Early Childhood, Youth, and Families looked into reported problems with Ritalin. There are problems with over prescribing, giving samples without proper diagnosis, stealing, and selling Ritalin in the school yard! Ritalin is an SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) in the same category as Prozac, Luvox, Zoloft, and Paxil. With just a little investigation there is a definite relation between School Violence and kids taking these drugs!

I would hope that the Sub-Committee on Early Childhood is investigating this problem through up dating old education laws, would see the under-lying problem of violence and SSRI's. Gun Control Activists quote that there are 30,000 gun deaths a year (1998). Sixty percent of those, or 18,000 were suicides!

Also, check out...

http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-psychotropic-drugs.htm

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/mental-health-medications/complete-index.shtml

[RighteousDude]

Fuckin' eh.  Hard make sense of it. To try and stop this insanity means trying to understand the *why*.  May the discussions ensue..........

I don't know or profess to have even an inkling of what that dipshit in Connecticut's excuse was. But:

My pet theory: Here in the US we have reduced the value of every one of us to dollars, and we treat people like expendable units. Humans tend to get very resentful when confronted by this reality and the total lack of respect for their dignity. It's got so damned bad that if a guy doesn't have money enough hospitals will turn him away to go die quietly elsewhere -- sure, the ER will fix you up if you show up with a broken bone or having a heart attack or whatever, but if the thing killing you is a disease rather than an acute crisis they'll explain that there's nothing they can do for you. People are being pitched out of their homes because they weren't savvy investors and got fucked over by mortgage brokers. Employers treat their employees like shit, explaining that if they don't want the job there are many more who do. Wages that have failed to keep pace with productivity since the early 1970's are falling even faster today, leaving people feeling like the social compact was broken and that working hard and playing by the rules is punished rather than rewarded. And so on.

The "news" media function as political mouthpieces, convincing people that things are going to shit at an alarming rate and telling them precisely who is to blame for it. No matter how you're identified, there's someone somewhere telling millions of people that you're the cause of the problem, and the divisions have become real only because so many people believe them to be real.

That's what makes us so very different from every other "first world" nation on Earth. We've created an every man for himself culture, and we should not be surprised when those who lose the game lash out in anger. The dice are loaded, the game is fixed, the war is over and the good guys lost. Of course people are fucking up dramatically.

None of these factors together or individually justify the violence, but we shouldn't be surprised by it. Unless/until we start seeing ourselves as members of a community this shit is going to continue.

But that's just my opinion, man.

[Hominid]

For anybody that - in a premeditated fashion - fills a duffle bag full of automatic weapons and cuts loose in a mall just because he's angry, there's mental health issues going on. HUGELY out of touch with reality. The cause? Anyone's guess.

[milnie]

we've been watching the coverage on CNN and see a lot of talk about gun control measures. I know we have a recent thread on this issue elsewhere and the immediate question is always " would this have happened if the person couldnt have got access to legally held firearms?"
in my experience, he might have went of the reservation anyway but with a knife or hammer or something else 20 children wouldnt be dead!
when a similar event occured in dunblane scotland in 1996, there was a knee jerk reaction with legilation, but we haven't had something of this magnitude happen again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre

IF anyone can show me that domestic gun ownership has saved more people than it has killed in recent times i will be amazed!

[DigitalBuddha]

we've been watching the coverage on CNN and see a lot of talk about gun control measures. I know we have a recent thread on this issue elsewhere and the immediate question is always " would this have happened if the person couldnt have got access to legally held firearms?"
in my experience, he might have went of the reservation anyway but with a knife or hammer or something else 20 children wouldnt be dead!
when a similar event occured in dunblane scotland in 1996, there was a knee jerk reaction with legilation, but we haven't had something of this magnitude happen again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre

IF anyone can show me that domestic gun ownership has saved more people than it has killed in recent times i will be amazed!

Check this out......

A widely-known study conducted by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz in the 1990s found that there were somewhere between 830,000 and 2.45 million U.S. defensive gun uses annually. A National Crime Victimization Study (NCVS) which asked victims if they had used a gun in self-defense found that about 108,000 each year had done so. A big problem with the NCVS line of survey reasoning, however, is that it only includes those uses where a citizen kills a criminal, not when one is only wounded, is held by the intended victim until police arrive, or when brandishing a gun caused a criminal to flee.

Disarming the Myths Promoted By the Gun Control Lobby -  http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/21/disarming-the-myths-promoted-by-the-gun-control-lobby/

[A Stoned Buddha]

It doesn't seem to say what types of firearms were used by these "defenders". How many needed military spec body armor or an AR-15 with a hundred round drum magazine or high capacity pistols with 17-30 rounds in each hand? Gun control shouldn't mean gun eradication. No sane person believes that's even possible. The guns are already out there in the millions and since criminals break the law anyway, banning guns would be meaningless. Would the founding fathers have written the second amendment different if, in their time, it would have been possible for a lone person to walk into a room and massacre 30 people in a few seconds? I think so. The availability of guns does not cause people to go crazy and kill people, the real issue with these mass shootings is how we identify, document and treat mental disorders in people before they snap. But the problem with guns is they just make it too easy for people. One tiny finger pull and the whole world is different. Yes, truly crazy people could still blow shit up or whatever, but that takes a lot planning and materials. Not something most people caught up in a tidal wave emotion are going to accomplish, when they can just go buy or steal a gun and make everyone pay attention. Revolvers and hunting rifles/shotguns are different matter than military spec weapons designed solely for the purpose of killing humans. Complex problems require complex solutions. But what we have now is not working and people are dying.  This whole thing just sucks balls from any angle.

[milnie]

How many of those people are trained to use a gun? You need a license to drive a car which takes a lot of training to get.
What's my point ... I don't know! I just don't see the need to own one. The mentality of having a gun because it's in the constitution seems similar to a religious belief and a we all know religion is falable

[DigitalBuddha]

It doesn't seem to say what types of firearms were used by these "defenders". How many needed military spec body armor or an AR-15 with a hundred round drum magazine or high capacity pistols with 17-30 rounds in each hand? Gun control shouldn't mean gun eradication. No sane person believes that's even possible. The guns are already out there in the millions and since criminals break the law anyway, banning guns would be meaningless. Would the founding fathers have written the second amendment different if, in their time, it would have been possible for a lone person to walk into a room and massacre 30 people in a few seconds? I think so. The availability of guns does not cause people to go crazy and kill people, the real issue with these mass shootings is how we identify, document and treat mental disorders in people before they snap. But the problem with guns is they just make it too easy for people. One tiny finger pull and the whole world is different. Yes, truly crazy people could still blow shit up or whatever, but that takes a lot planning and materials. Not something most people caught up in a tidal wave emotion are going to accomplish, when they can just go buy or steal a gun and make everyone pay attention. Revolvers and hunting rifles/shotguns are different matter than military spec weapons designed solely for the purpose of killing humans. Complex problems require complex solutions. But what we have now is not working and people are dying.  This whole thing just sucks balls from any angle.

Well said!

[DigitalBuddha]

How many of those people are trained to use a gun? You need a license to drive a car which takes a lot of training to get.
What's my point ... I don't know! I just don't see the need to own one. The mentality of having a gun because it's in the constitution seems similar to a religious belief and a we all know religion is falable

Me, for one. Very well trained. Seriously, not childish bragging.

[Stever]

Fuckin' eh.  Hard make sense of it. To try and stop this insanity means trying to understand the *why*.  May the discussions ensue..........

I don't know or profess to have even an inkling of what that dipshit in Connecticut's excuse was. But:

My pet theory: Here in the US we have reduced the value of every one of us to dollars, and we treat people like expendable units. Humans tend to get very resentful when confronted by this reality and the total lack of respect for their dignity. It's got so damned bad that if a guy doesn't have money enough hospitals will turn him away to go die quietly elsewhere -- sure, the ER will fix you up if you show up with a broken bone or having a heart attack or whatever, but if the thing killing you is a disease rather than an acute crisis they'll explain that there's nothing they can do for you. People are being pitched out of their homes because they weren't savvy investors and got fucked over by mortgage brokers. Employers treat their employees like shit, explaining that if they don't want the job there are many more who do. Wages that have failed to keep pace with productivity since the early 1970's are falling even faster today, leaving people feeling like the social compact was broken and that working hard and playing by the rules is punished rather than rewarded. And so on.

The "news" media function as political mouthpieces, convincing people that things are going to shit at an alarming rate and telling them precisely who is to blame for it. No matter how you're identified, there's someone somewhere telling millions of people that you're the cause of the problem, and the divisions have become real only because so many people believe them to be real.

That's what makes us so very different from every other "first world" nation on Earth. We've created an every man for himself culture, and we should not be surprised when those who lose the game lash out in anger. The dice are loaded, the game is fixed, the war is over and the good guys lost. Of course people are fucking up dramatically.

None of these factors together or individually justify the violence, but we shouldn't be surprised by it. Unless/until we start seeing ourselves as members of a community this shit is going to continue.

But that's just my opinion, man.

Very well said,and I agree!