Oh jeez, another school shooting

[anunitu]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

Here is a thing that people must understand,way to many people consider owning a gun a right,but here is the thing,in this country(US) driving is NOT a right and this is how it is defined,it is a privilege. One must go through a series of tests and then prove you can be trusted to to drive and can follow ALL the rules in order to be safe on the road. A car is as much a lethal weapon as a gun,and perhaps more so. As I see it owning a gun is also a privilege and you must earn the right to have one as with driving. A training course and a test of your knowledge on safety,and the knowledge that if you show disregard for these rules you may have your gun taken away. To me this does not seem unreasonable. We live in a different time than when gun ownership was a right,back then there were more dangers where a gun was mainly needed for safety. Wild animals, outlaws running pretty much wild, people living in isolation on farms,and of course simply to hunt for food. Today a gun is mainly to protect yourself,and to hunt(but not really needed because hunting is not a way to insure you have food) target shooting..But with ownership comes responsibility to insure the safety of anyone that might gain access to your gun. A license to own and perhaps a yearly re-certification of this license to insure you are complying with all safety rules. To me this seems a sensible approach to gun ownership. I know this might not prevent every bad act with guns,but many people own guns and have NO understanding of responsibility by owning them.

Just my two cents,I have owned guns and was trained in their safe use while in the service. Some would advocate arming EVERYONE but that is not really a solution,it just makes more chance for misuse or someone reacting from anger and instead of shouting shoot another person.

[Hawk]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

Today, in relation to this tragedy, I've learned a sad thing or two about people, especially people I thought I could consider friends.

You tell them that the whole discussion about gun control, using this horrific tragedy as the prop-up, is inappropriate to be having at this time as the murdered haven't even been buried. That right now it's best to donate whatever time, money, and resources we have to help this community and table the conversation as people aren't thinking clearly...apparently that's a form of "politicizing the issue".

Honestly I don't even know where to begin to see or how to comprehend what it takes to see a simple asking to focus on the victims, their families, and helping them rather than arguing as "politics".


As for this tragedy, all I'll say is that there are ways to donate to this community, through the red cross and other venues. I would encourage people to help this community in anyway they can, no matter how small the help may be. Every little bit counts.

[Jembru]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

Maybe I'm just not understanding the scale of the gun issue in the US, because I just don't see how it is so easy to assume that people ranting about guns are more likely to just be using this as political ammunition.

An example I experienced recently: I have no interest in the freedom of the press here in the UK. I couldn't give a crap whether we allow super injunctions or whether the press is left to spout the same old rubbish they always do. I understand why people care, and I appreciate it is a serious issue, but I like to think I am smart enough to decide if what I am reading is based on fact, or just trying to sell me papers (there's a trick, if the front cover says 'sun' or 'mail', it's probably the latter). I never went online to see the photos of Prince Harry in the buff, or Kate with her boobs out. I simply respected that they'd rather I didn't look, so as an adult with the ability to choose what I do and don't do, I chose not to care. So I have definitely not been waiting for a reason to go 'grrr... media...' however, when that nurse killed herself, I was upset for days over it. Everyone pointed their fingers at either the Australian radio hosts who made the call, or the hospital management staff (who, btw, I don't believe for a second supported her like they claim and I am quite sure threatened her with disciplinary action as people with more power than common sense tend to do). But I got annoyed with the news for not only mocking her for being fooled by such bad accents, but also playing the call, so that not only people working at the hospital, but also her friends and family, heard her voice. Had her identity been protected, maybe she would still be working and providing care to the sick. So I blamed the news. My only reason; I was sad and needed someone to blame. It made me feel better to get angry and stamp my little size three feet.

I stick to what I said. Those angry at the people being political, are also using anger as a distraction. If you really mean what you say and want to focus on the families and community affected by this, how about we just do exactly that, donate to the charities supporting the community like Hawk suggested, and ignore the political ranting. I see stuff I can't be bothered with or have no interest in on FB all the time. It's honestly not that hard to ignore.

Also, River. I missed so much here because I was hardly online yesterday, but I am really sorry about your nephew. My thoughts are on their way across the Atlantic to be with you as we speak.

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

I'm very sorry for your loss, River.
I am still quite "PTSD" over Hurricane Sandy, and it's bothering me on some visceral level that the name of the elem. school was "Sandy Hook", as a place in New Jersey named Sandy Hook is one of my favorite places......something about the name "Sandy" - I just never want to hear it again.
As far as the gun argument -
The shooter stole guns from a legally registered owner. All the laws in the world won't prevent that.

[RiverSong]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

Thanks, Jembru and Hawkfeathers! HUGS!
I'm sorry about dumping my situation here, I usually wouldn't. Yesterday was kind of unreal for me. I had wrote my original two cents into this debate one hour before getting the news about my nephew (his named was Robert) and it's so crazy how close to a coincidence that is. It's like the universe is playing some kind of sick joke on me, but whatever. My initial feelings about "banning guns" was a knee-jerk reaction to the children being killed in Connecticut, but my soap box was based on the fact that in my city we have a real gun issue here. I live in Philadelphia, a huge metropolitan city, that for the last ten years have been crudely dubbed as "Kill-adelphia". Men, women, children, and police officers have been killed in gun violence in waves. It doesn't matter which part of the city you live in here, suburbs or inner city, you can be a victim of gun violence. When I went to look for the news article about the shooting that took my nephew, I had to scroll through 1000 other articles of shooting and killings just to find one blurb and crime scene photos of my nephew's case. I kid you not... I wish it wasn't this way, but it is. My reaction of, "we should ban all guns like they do in the UK!" is my frustration to my own environment so I agree with MaskedOne, that I may have been a tad bias in suggesting that people on soap boxes may be political and angry as an distraction to something so hard to deal with, because look at me... I'm here in the middle of my own soap box because my family is still sleeping and I can't sleep, and I rather rant about gun control so that I don't have to sit in silence and think about those children, my nephew, and the huge problem in my city. And I bet my city isn't the only one in American with this problem...

I agree fully with what Hawk said, about how guns shouldn't be a right but a privilege. The criminal that murdered the children and whoever was involved in my nephew's homicide were clearly not trained and never would have been given a gun if such a law existed. As for the man who murdered the children in Connecticut, it's true that he stole the guns from his mother who was registered, but if she had to be well trained with firearms before getting that privileged maybe she wouldn't have been granted them? That's just a guess, maybe she was trained, maybe not. For my nephew's case, these criminals were of age and their guns may have been illegal or legal, yet they were not trained at all... they sprayed the whole car with bullets before hitting their target twice, one fatal shot in the head and one in his shoulder. I think gun violence have A LOT of factors mixed up within in, not just the laws on the guns, but also the problem within mental health, poverty, lack of education and jobs, all of it. It's easy to yell about gun control laws, because it's sitting right there in everyone's faces and people like me who have lost someone this way, we do tend to blame the gun itself as if it's a monster. It's just one way of coping. Though, I'm from an ex military family and I've always wanted to work in law enforcement... thought that dream was never realized, but I feel like I should have been a cop or an Agent, I'm a writer instead. My point is, I have great admiration for law enforcement and military and I do believe that they should be armed. It's fair enough to say that citizens who are trained and mentally sound should have the privilege to be armed too. But those on the soap box often scream out the extremes, "no one should be armed, melt down all the guns!" or "everyone should be armed! it's our right". I don't agree with extremes, in general.

But as Jembru pointed out, I tend to find it very easy to ignore the rants and soapboxes on Facebook. It's not that hard... just chat with close friends and relatives on there, play app games, then log off too and so something else. If you want to care for the victims, donate and research their names. It's not easy to find out the names of victims, as the media doesn't care to list them here in the US, they're more about the sensationalizing of the criminals. My nephew is listed as "Man in 20's", with no name released and I doubt they'll pick up the story again, since my nephew was older or not famous.

As for the hurricane, I'm so sorry Hawkfeathers. I know how tough that storm was, my friend in New Jersey was right in the middle of that. He's fine, but a lot of his neighbors weren't. HUGS to you! I know how tough PSTD can be, as I suffer it from something else in my past. I wouldn't wish that on my worse enemy. I understand why you don't like the name anymore too. :-(

[Maria de Luna]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

River I am so sorry to hear about your nephew, and I am so sorry that the only thing to remember him by in the papers was a short blurb with out even his proper age.


I do understand the knee jerk reaction i.e. if thing 1 were illegal tragedy could not have happened. I get it and I know where it comes from... Those are not the people that make me angry...

But I also agree that the horrific nature of this tragedy angered me as well. The reactons of some, however, to me seem inexcusable. I refer mostly to news media, who within hours had gun control and mental health "analysts" on their shows to give us a perspective on how these shootings chould have been prevented, or how we could have seen this coming and stopped it... Having those ideas thrown at me while the bodies of the innocent were still warm made me angry in a way that is hard to express.

The young and old survivors alike will forever be mentally scarred by this tragedy, but by this time next year, everyone will be thinking about something else, and these children and their parents and families and classmates will all have been forgotten, and that feels wrong. We should not dwell on tragedy, but we still need to remember it, or we forget, and have to be reminded by another. Again, it is beyond me how someone could pick up anything a gun, a knife, or a car, and go out and try to end someone elses life, just for the sake of ending someone elses life. That is what I never want to see again, the mental health issue, the gun issue, they are all so very insignifigant to the humanity issue, or the killing innocent children issue... Doesnt that deserve some level of thought?

[DanieMarie]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

I also missed the post about RiverSong's nephew somehow. River, I'm very sorry for your loss

[RiverSong]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

Thanks, Maria. HUGS! Yeah, they didn't say his exact age just "man in 20's" and he's age 24. He would have been age 25 next month. And the only thing I have of that article is the crime scene... which I should stop staring at that, it's too morbid (even though it's dark in the photos and the body isn't there), yet I want to be so close to my nephew now. It's like I'm trying to be there for him at the moment he died, trying to see what he saw and feel what he felt. Geeze... is there some thread on this forum where I can vent this? It doesn't seem appropriate to keep bringing it up here in the midst of the Connecticut tragedy and debate about the reactions to it. I think this is a very good topic, but I don't want to muddy it with my issues. lol.

Yeah, you know I never meant to say that people irked by the people on soap boxes were wrong in any way. My comment was more on the side of, "let's not stand on our own soap boxes about the soap boxes", because I'm curious about why people who turn tragedies into a political arena do that. It's easy to say, "they're just assholes pushing an agenda", but I can't just toss everyone in that boat. Maybe because I stand on soap boxes sometimes, like those against the soap boxes do as well, and it's not politically motivated but human motivated. So... really, mine was a comment of, "let's not judge the soap box itself. ignore the shouters, because they're probably not all motivated by some political want, but the ones who are just ignore them and they'll get tired and go away in time."

As for putting the media being in the asshole category, yes... yes, I can do that. It's clear that journalism have fallen downhill, way before the last election. Reporters, in my view, are nothing more than sensational hacks nowadays, and everything is an excuse to push some political view or another, instead of the good old days where journalism actually meant something and I had respect for it. I just told my sister, the other day, "The changes of getting correct information and non-bias truth from the news is the same chance of getting the same from any random person on Facebook." It was gross how they sent out misinformation of the murders in Connecticut, when the news first hit. They said that the gunman killed his mother who was a teacher of that school. Then later correct it to, no the mother is an ex-teacher and never worked at that school and was killed at home. Then they said it was two gunmen, but took it back. Then they released the name of the gunman's brother as the shooter, because the gunman had his brother's id on him, then had to correct that because his brother is way across the country and at work at the time of the killings. And that's not before Facebookers made hundreds of "let's kill this guy!" pages directed at the gunman's brother. Then this new misinformation that people are spreading around Facebook, that the mother and brother was killed in the school with the kids and teachers, by the gunmen. Seriously???? >_<

When it comes to the media, I feel a lot like that old movie, "Network"... "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!!!" u_u

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I also missed the post about RiverSong's nephew somehow. River, I'm very sorry for your loss

Thanks, DaniMarie! Hugs! Yeah, I just blurted that out yesterday and then logged off. It blindsided me, of course, and I was without sleep when I shared. sorry for that, I didn't mean to interrupt the original topic. ;^_^

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

Sorry to hear about your nephew, Riversong. Sending blessings and hugs your way.

[Dumuzi]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

I'm sorry for your loss, Riversong. May he rest in peace.

[volcaniclastic]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

I am a horrible person. I've been reading through all of this, and all I can think about is River is from Philly, and therefore Fresh Prince of Bel Air is stuck in my head.

[RiverSong]

Re: Oh jeez, another school shooting

I am a horrible person. I've been reading through all of this, and all I can think about is River is from Philly, and therefore Fresh Prince of Bel Air is stuck in my head.

Bwahahahahaha! Well... if we're known for any celebrity, Will Smith is not a bad one. ^_^

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Sorry to hear about your nephew, Riversong. Sending blessings and hugs your way.

Thanks, Tylluan. HUGS!

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I'm sorry for your loss, Riversong. May he rest in peace.

Thanks, Dumuzi! Hugs!