School Shooting in Connecticut

[Npoess]

Jesus christ.. This is so sick. Targeting kids, and you're own mother.

 

Is just me, or are these mass killings/school shoothings happening more often these years?

[SR4]

Jesus christ.. This is so sick. Targeting kids, and you're own mother.

 

Is just me, or are these mass killings/school shoothings happening more often these years?

 

 

its definitely been on the upswing since Columbine....not only that, its now a worldwide phenomenon...the US is just the tip of the iceberg (albeit usually the most violent)

 

Part of me would like to blame it on the sensationalized media....but there must be far more to it than that.

[Hautlle]

One thing that drove me nuts was during the TV special alert or whatever they kept filming one young lady bawling on the phone after I suppose she recvd the horrible news. I understand you need to report, but leave her the fuck alone for chrissakes.

 

Here's how my local news lead off their coverage, "A tragic story no child should have to re-tell" **cuts to interview with 8 year old girl telling what happened**

 

Fucking disgusting

 

I too don't look forward to the constant flow of bullshit we'll now be seeing on any and all news...

[Guest Frankie5fingers]

this fucking shit really pisses me off. let this little fucker rot in hell.

[Npoess]

I don't want to sound like Bill O'Reilly or some ignorant ultra-conservative reporter from Fox News.

 

But I honestly believe this society we live in today, with all the romanticizing of violence/guns in movies, video games etc... has something to do with it.

 

Clearly there are some miserable scum who can't tell the difference between that sort of stuff and reality.

 

Or... I don't know. It's hard imagine what's going on in the head of a sick fucker who targets kids.

[Salvatorin]

I can't help myself from crying about this every time I think about it

[SR4]

I can't help myself from crying about this every time I think about it

 

i dont think anyone in the world would blame you. its a pretty horrible thing to consider.

[MisterE]

i don't see how it can be attributed to a symptom of capitalism, if the same thing happened in china. and i don't see that america is necessarily the most violent place in the world either. lots of people getting killed on a daily basis in certain other parts of the world. lots of women getting acid dumped on their faces by their own husbands, in societies that basically support that type of behavior, in certain other places. so america might have some fucked up shit going down in it, like this, but it doesn't make sense to just emote and condemn an entire country based on one single psycho kid flipping out. why do people have to try to take these events and use them to support their political beliefs?

[LimpyLoo]

i don't see how it can be attributed to a symptom of capitalism, if the same thing happened in china.

 

 

Does not compute.

 

China is subject to the horrors of capitalism. The entire world is.

[SR4]

i don't see how it can be attributed to a symptom of capitalism, if the same thing happened in china. and i don't see that america is necessarily the most violent place in the world either. lots of people getting killed on a daily basis in certain other parts of the world. lots of women getting acid dumped on their faces by their own husbands, in societies that basically support that type of behavior, in certain other places. so america might have some fucked up shit going down in it, like this, but it doesn't make sense to just emote and condemn an entire country based on one single psycho kid flipping out. why do people have to try to take these events and use them to support their political beliefs?

 

 

well part of that was in response to someone posting the screenwipe video.

 

and the whole sensation=profit thing is not a condemnation of capitalism, just noting that there are some negatives to an economic system where profit is at the top of the heap....and that capitalism would only be a sliver of the complete "problem"....a lot of people in here had some good suggestions...mental health illnesses, etc. etc.

[Npoess]

It's definitely not a america-only thing.

 

Just look at what happened in Utøya last year. I thought a place like that, would be the last place on earth for something like that to happen.

[joshuatxuk]

 

Jesus christ.. This is so sick. Targeting kids, and you're own mother.

 

Is just me, or are these mass killings/school shoothings happening more often these years?

 

 

its definitely been on the upswing since Columbine....not only that, its now a worldwide phenomenon...the US is just the tip of the iceberg (albeit usually the most violent)

 

Part of me would like to blame it on the sensationalized media....but there must be far more to it than that.

 

 

Motherjones just wrapped up a huge report on mass shootings in America and the main reporter was interviewed today on NPR. He said of the 61 shootings they counted 7 were this year and statistically it's the worst.

 

I think it's unavoidable - mass shootings have occurred worldwide - but as I said earlier, if there's an uptake the media is a huge factor. You can read about shootings in the past and up until the 90s the details were kept succinct about the shooter and motivation. Most coverage was about the loss of life and then to some degree legal and social ramifications after. Now media outlets will write entire articles and program dozens hours about the sick bastards that commit these massacres with little, if any, legitimate reasons beyond perverse fascination. That alone can push people to commit these atrocious crimes.

 

Another trend - the media dances around issues pertaining to shootings - gun control, fringe ideologies, the treatment of mental health, etc but they will not call for nor acknowledge major efforts to change any current policies. They rile people up until the news story fizzles out. Anyone sounding too "out of line" will be demonized, yet they'll continue to milk the story for as long as possible. I have to tune it out for my own sanity, I feel bad even for listening to NPR's coverage today.

 

I don't want to sound like Bill O'Reilly or some ignorant ultra-conservative journalist from Fox news.

 

But I honestly believe this society we live in today, with romantizing of violence in movies, video games etc... has something to do with it.

 

Clearly there are some miserable scum who can't tell the difference between that sort of stuff and reality.

 

No your right, it's absurdly distorted and romanticized. The "video games are ruining kids" argument is more of the social conservative/moral panic argument of the 90s. The issue now is this disconnect Americans and similar societies have from the realities of war and violence. The FCC censors language and sex but is very lenient on scenes with violence, torture, weapon usage, etc. I still regularly scoff at ads for Call of Duty - commercials with big explosions and stylized choreography starring celebrities running around with AR-15s having "fun." It's just so fucking surreal. All while men and women are being killed in Afghanistan in a war we've been fighting for over a decade. Shooting automatic weapons in a computer game or at some shooting range is all fun as hell when it's not connected to scenes of dead civilians, the smell of rotting flesh, the imagery of women crying over children killed by some stray bomb or unexploded mortar shell. They don't air that aspect of war on the news because they don't want to "upset" anyone. Politicians don't dare bring it up - they get called out as pacifists or traitors or unpatriotic.

 

It's not a new phenomenon and it's not exactly one that will go away, but there's this childish fascination our entire society seems to have with unrealistic imagery of war and violence I can't comprehend. I feel like there was a time most kids grew up and stopped playing with toy guns and army men not only because they matured out of playing with such things, but they knew that's not how war really is. They realize that COD or paintball or other wargames are just games. I'm not sure a lot people really acknowledge the distinction. I don't know, as other mentioned, there's a huge issue of mental health in the U.S. and it's precisely the last thing being focused on by policy-makers.

 

 

 

Terrible, but as usual the media outlets are going about this in the opposite manner that they should be. This video pretty much sums up my feelings...

 

That was excellent. Thanks for sharing.

 

Why listen to the forensic psychiatrist. Eggheads--pfft, what do they know?

 

 

 

 

I've shared that video a lot today, particularly to a friend who said this seemed "historic" even though sadly it really isn't the first shooting of this magnitude or scale. This article also shows a disturbing but very interesting comparison of newspapers in how they presented the Aurora shooting.

[SR4]

excellent post TX...you summed it up perfectly i think

[MisterE]

 

i don't see how it can be attributed to a symptom of capitalism, if the same thing happened in china.

 

 

Does not compute.

 

China is subject to the horrors of capitalism. The entire world is.

 

wow. super convenient. so you've basically now declared that anything BAD that happens in the world, is the fault of capitalism, and therefore, america. brilliant. in china, little kids are working because their government owns everything, and basically owns them. their government has no care for concepts such as child labor being a bad thing. all the government of china cares about... is the government of china. oh but that's capitalism's fault somehow. beautiful.

[SR4]

so did they find out yet how the shooter was able to get by security?

[pattern recognition]

so did they find out yet how the shooter was able to get by security?

i haven't heard yet, but i wonder if he used his mom's keys or security badge to gain access, since he killed her before going to the school.

 

the whole thing is unbelievably sad.

[ambermonk]

Some of the first details to show up on news reports after almost every mass shooting are the location, the number of people killed, and the ID of the killer(s). That seems to be the formula.

Then, it explodes into a political argument over gun control. Truth is, even if guns are taken away, killers will find other weapons. Knives. Bombs. Poison. Even cars.

But why did the perpetrator kill? What was the motivation? Lack of attention, or affection?

Situations like this make me embarrassed to be a gun owner. There's no kind of person I disdain more than those who kill masses of unarmed people, especially children. If they hadn't taken such action maybe I'd perceive them in a different light. But once you do something like this, there's no going back.

And..

 

It's definitely not a america-only thing.

 

Just look at what happened in Utøya last year. I thought a place like that, would be the last place on earth for something like that to happen.

Exactly. And no one in Norway except Anders Behring Breivik is to blame for that attack. Same thing with Min Yingjun in his knife attack today in Chenpeng village in Hunan.
Don't blame the rest of the country for one attacker.

[MisterE]

i agree with the people who feel that the media is helping sort of snowball this phenomenon, by focusing on the killer's backgrounds more and more. they are making it into some kind of exposé, as if there is some kind of puzzle to be put together with these people. i'll admit that there will probably be some kind of warning signs in someone's life, before they do something like this, but what's the point of televising the search for those signs? it's really just giving these people spotlight, and possibly showing other kids out there that if they do it themselves, they too will get that spotlight/15 minutes of fame.

[sweepstakes]

It would be awesome if we could have a dialog about possible causes of this tragedy (or at least preventative measures against future ones) without taking topics off the table like gun control. Sometimes real change takes more than quick wins, it takes tough choices and often painful honesty.

[LimpyLoo]

 

 

i don't see how it can be attributed to a symptom of capitalism, if the same thing happened in china.

 

 

Does not compute.

 

China is subject to the horrors of capitalism. The entire world is.

 

wow. super convenient. so you've basically now declared that anything BAD that happens in the world, is the fault of capitalism, and therefore, america. brilliant. in china, little kids are working because their government owns everything, and basically owns them. their government has no care for concepts such as child labor being a bad thing. all the government of china cares about... is the government of china. oh but that's capitalism's fault somehow. beautiful.

 

1) please don't put words in my mouth

 

2) child labor = capitalism - regulation (I don't know why you think child labor isn't capitalism)

 

3) capitalism has played a big part in making this world a cold rigid dehumanizing place where pathos thrives

[ambermonk]

i agree with the people who feel that the media is helping sort of snowball this phenomenon, by focusing on the killer's backgrounds more and more. they are making it into some kind of exposé, as if there is some kind of puzzle to be put together with these people. i'll admit that there will probably be some kind of warning signs in someone's life, before they do something like this, but what's the point of televising the search for those signs? it's really just giving these people spotlight, and possibly showing other kids out there that if they do it themselves, they too will get that spotlight/15 minutes of fame.

 

And also, if you treat people like time borbs bombs, that's exactly what they'll become. If you treat them like human beings - that is, educate them, feed them, and care for them, then they'll act accordingly. Even dogs are less hostile if you give them more care and affection. As ridiculous as all this may sound, it's true. Proper cultivation of a being is what it comes down to.

[Zephyr_Nova]

But then there's people who come from loving families and are well respected members of their communities who end up becoming serial killers anyway, so there's only so much you can do. Making leathal weapons less readily available to them would be a good start.

[Npoess]

I agree that some of these psycho's motivations might only be to get the attention.

 

You could see how much Anders Breivik clearly loved to have his fat ugly face filmed by the cameras in his trials. And knowing their own picture will be in the 10 O'clock news, must be some kind of victory for them.

[sweepstakes]

I posit that our world/society is cold and rigid and dehumanizing and as a result frustration-aggression is rampant.

 

 

Isolation, lack of sense of community and all such hackneyed excuses are oh so true.

I think there's something to this frustration-aggression, especially combined with the detached, insecure, jealous form of interaction encouraged by social networking. Not blaming facebook for this shooting per se but it does seem to exacerbate alienation and even sociopathic tendencies.

 

And I do think media glorification of the shooters plays a big part, as well as inaccessibility of mental health care.

 

And then the accessibility of guns.

 

It's one big awful shit sandwich.

[joshuatxuk]

 

so did they find out yet how the shooter was able to get by security?

i haven't heard yet, but i wonder if he used his mom's keys or security badge to gain access, since he killed her before going to the school.

 

the whole thing is unbelievably sad.

 

 

Yeah the from a report I heard, again on NPR, the school buzzed guests in and out - I'm assuming as someone who had been there before or who knew the staff since his mom worked there, he just walked in after giving his name. They interviewed a mom of a school kid there who got out ok (as did his teacher and class) but she was more or less not telling him the details of what happened. He really liked his principal and another teacher he had earlier, both of whom were killed. He mentioned hearing "snapping" and then after being in a group huddle in his class, having police officers tell him to run across the street with them. On a ironic note, he said it was "neat seeing SWAT guys" but otherwise was confused and really unaware of what all occurred. The fact that kids and teachers were wasted is so brutal. I work at the Texas State Capitol and school field trips are common, and I got quite emotional seeing 20 or so cute and innocent little kids skipping around. To think that many were killed today and that even more are killed daily in wars overseas is utterly devastating.

 

Interesting tweet, I think it sums up my main issue with fervent "4th amendment rights advocates." I'm a gun control skeptic to a degree, but something needs to change. We as citizens can't handle such "rights" especially when they are arguably irrelevant in daily life to all but few.

 

Our culture is cowed by extremists who would rather see dead children than let go of their fantasy of armed insurrection. This must change.