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School shooting in CT on 14-12-2012


Kimberly

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Although what did annoy me was the usual "lack of god" preachers, to top it off, apparently the Westburo Baptist Church plan to picket the funeral. Seriously, 20 CHILDREN were murdered, 6 teachers who I would salute to for their bravery in protecting a generation of children and being a true teacher, and the WBC are up in arms about god.

WBC mainly gets its funding by baiting people into physically attacking them then suing them. They're doing that precisely because it's abhorrent, not out of some kind of religious justification.

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From today's Daily Mail online: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2249185/Nancy-Lanza-Did-paranoid-gun-crazed-mother-trigger-Sandy-Hook-Connecticut-killing-spree.html?ICO=most_read_module

 

Apparently, this guy's mother wasn't a teacher at the school like originally reported. She was a paranoid survivalist who stockpiled food and supplies and had taught her son how to shoot (this answers the question as to where he got all the guns from, they were already in his house). She also kept him isolated from everyone she could, homeschooling him for his last years of high school and not letting people in the house. Apparently, he shot her in the head several times, possibly while she slept, before going on his rampage at the school. He also had "hundreds" of rounds left when he killed himself, so this whole thing could have been much, much worse.

 

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Why? I'd argue it's more disrespectful to those who died not to debate the issues which surrounded their premature and needless deaths, opting instead to kick the issue into the long grass.

If the only time you ever try to debate gun control is after a tragedy, are you even trying to have a rational argument?

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Why? I'd argue it's more disrespectful to those who died not to debate the issues which surrounded their premature and needless deaths, opting instead to kick the issue into the long grass.

If the only time you ever try to debate gun control is after a tragedy, are you even trying to have a rational argument?

It isn't the only time people have ever tried to debate gun control, and it doesn't always follow tragedies. Both the President and Governor Romney at the very least expressed concern about some aspects of gun control in the run up to the election; they both had anxieties over the availability of automatic firearms, which was particularly prescient of them in this case. So there is clearly some, perhaps very limited, ground for discussion between the two parties.

 

There is one certain organisation, however, which was made it nigh on impossible, for the best part of twenty years, for politicians to discuss gun control at any other time than the immediate aftermath of tragedies like this, so you can appreciate why the dams burst whenever something like this happens. It's impossible to have a rational argument after a tragedy like this, but it's also impossible to have a rational argument elsewhere.

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Well, firstly I'm not really sure how you arrived at that conclusion from what I wrote, but perhaps I should be more clear in the future.

 

What I said was that it's no use saying "Let's wait for an appropriate time to discuss this" because the NRA are an immensely powerful body who have a vested interest in making sure the issue isn't discussed at some other time and throughout the past two decades they've been remarkably effective at it, almost admirably so from a neutral point of view. Time and time again after incidents like this, national opinion and senior politicians have given the rhetoric about getting tough on guns and it's never happened.

 

Do you think it's appropriate for a single organisation to essentially stifle any talk of gun control because they have that much influence over the political system? I'd say that's no better a situation than settling for knee-jerk reactions. In both cases, a proper, rational debate is impossible.

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Nyoshut, I have no problem with someone owning guns (although, why anyone would need or even want more than one is beyond me) or teaching their children how to handle or shoot them. Education removes the mystery and lessens the chance of accidents. It's how she handled the rest of his life that became the problem.

 

The issue here isn't gun control or even survival nuts who think society is going to collapse any minute (seriously, who keeps enough food to last longer than between paychecks? who can afford to?), the issue is this guy's mental state and how it was (mis)handled by his mother.

 

When things like this happen, it's very easy to point a finger and say that "it's because we don't have enough gun control laws" or "it's because he played violent video games", but the simple truth is he had mental issues that were not properly treated by his parents and this was the end result. But that's not what people want to hear, because that means it's somebody's fault, and if it's somebody's fault then it could have been prevented, and people just can't accept the fact that something like this could have been prevented but wasn't so they look for something else to blame. People don't want to point to a person, they want to point to some big, bad intangible boogieman so that it's not anyone's fault but society's for not taking care of them. It's like the Columbine shootings all over again, that was everyone's fault (gun laws, music, video games, etc..) but the parents.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay how horrible and tragic this was. What I'm saying is that trying to legislate everything that might possibly have some remote kind of bad influence on children is not the way to prevent it. After all, the government is not there to swaddle you in cotton from cradle to grave. What we need to do is create more awareness and acceptance for people with mental and emotional issues (hell, it's more acceptable to be a drug addict than have mental issues, and guess which one you have a choice over?), have more support systems in place for teenagers and their parents who have these issues, and try to head things like this off before the idea to shoot up a school pops into their heads.

 

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Nyoshut, I have no problem with someone owning guns (although, why anyone would need or even want more than one is beyond me) or teaching their children how to handle or shoot them. Education removes the mystery and lessens the chance of accidents. It's how she handled the rest of his life that became the problem.

 

The issue here isn't gun control or even survival nuts who think society is going to collapse any minute (seriously, who keeps enough food to last longer than between paychecks? who can afford to?), the issue is this guy's mental state and how it was (mis)handled by his mother.

 

When things like this happen, it's very easy to point a finger and say that "it's because we don't have enough gun control laws" or "it's because he played violent video games", but the simple truth is he had mental issues that were not properly treated by his parents and this was the end result. But that's not what people want to hear, because that means it's somebody's fault, and if it's somebody's fault then it could have been prevented, and people just can't accept the fact that something like this could have been prevented but wasn't so they look for something else to blame. People don't want to point to a person, they want to point to some big, bad intangible boogieman so that it's not anyone's fault but society's for not taking care of them. It's like the Columbine shootings all over again, that was everyone's fault (gun laws, music, video games, etc..) but the parents.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay how horrible and tragic this was. What I'm saying is that trying to legislate everything that might possibly have some remote kind of bad influence on children is not the way to prevent it. After all, the government is not there to swaddle you in cotton from cradle to grave. What we need to do is create more awareness and acceptance for people with mental and emotional issues (hell, it's more acceptable to be a drug addict than have mental issues, and guess which one you have a choice over?), have more support systems in place for teenagers and their parents who have these issues, and try to head things like this off before the idea to shoot up a school pops into their heads.

 

Well blaming mental health is basically the same thing as blaming guns, video games, etc. Except in this case, yes, I'd argue that mental health was the primary (not sole) cause of this. But that doesn't mean everyone should go blaming mental health and pour all of our resources into improving mental health. These things are not preventable. We can lower the frequency of such events, yes, but we cannot prevent them altogether. Regardless of how low the frequency becomes, they'll still happen. And when they do, people will continue to blame things beyond their control, even if the things they're blaming can't be improved upon any more.

 

Like I said, it's easier to blame someone or something else than it is to accept the fact that something terrible can happen anywhere at any time for no reason.

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Oh, so much for "wait a few days"...

 

Nyoshut, I have no problem with someone owning guns (although, why anyone would need or even want more than one is beyond me) or teaching their children how to handle or shoot them. Education removes the mystery and lessens the chance of accidents. It's how she handled the rest of his life that became the problem.

 

The issue here isn't gun control or even survival nuts who think society is going to collapse any minute (seriously, who keeps enough food to last longer than between paychecks? who can afford to?), the issue is this guy's mental state and how it was (mis)handled by his mother.

 

When things like this happen, it's very easy to point a finger and say that "it's because we don't have enough gun control laws" or "it's because he played violent video games", but the simple truth is he had mental issues that were not properly treated by his parents and this was the end result. But that's not what people want to hear, because that means it's somebody's fault, and if it's somebody's fault then it could have been prevented, and people just can't accept the fact that something like this could have been prevented but wasn't so they look for something else to blame. People don't want to point to a person, they want to point to some big, bad intangible boogieman so that it's not anyone's fault but society's for not taking care of them. It's like the Columbine shootings all over again, that was everyone's fault (gun laws, music, video games, etc..) but the parents.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay how horrible and tragic this was. What I'm saying is that trying to legislate everything that might possibly have some remote kind of bad influence on children is not the way to prevent it. After all, the government is not there to swaddle you in cotton from cradle to grave. What we need to do is create more awareness and acceptance for people with mental and emotional issues (hell, it's more acceptable to be a drug addict than have mental issues, and guess which one you have a choice over?), have more support systems in place for teenagers and their parents who have these issues, and try to head things like this off before the idea to shoot up a school pops into their heads.

 

Well blaming mental health is basically the same thing as blaming guns, video games, etc. Except in this case, yes, I'd argue that mental health was the primary (not sole) cause of this. But that doesn't mean everyone should go blaming mental health and pour all of our resources into improving mental health. These things are not preventable. We can lower the frequency of such events, yes, but we cannot prevent them altogether. Regardless of how low the frequency becomes, they'll still happen. And when they do, people will continue to blame things beyond their control, even if the things they're blaming can't be improved upon any more.

 

Like I said, it's easier to blame someone or something else than it is to accept the fact that something terrible can happen anywhere at any time for no reason.

You can prevent a statistical amount of homocides by improving certain things, be it mental health or gun laws or so on. If we go out looking to change the world and start by saying we will only accept solutions with 100% prevention rates, we're not going to get anywhere. This one may or may not have been preventable, but it could have been made less likely, and it's that risk that both adults and children are subjected to that needs to be addressed. Our problem is that we're trying to talk about just this incident, when the issue really is that this happens far too often to be acceptable, and so far cost-effective methods that would make the risk more acceptable are not being employed because of political money and lobbying.

 

A watertight solution is not on the table, so we need to move on to the next best thing. I say the most cost-effective thing for the US to do right now is to ban assault rifles.

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Nyoshut, I have no problem with someone owning guns (although, why anyone would need or even want more than one is beyond me) or teaching their children how to handle or shoot them. Education removes the mystery and lessens the chance of accidents. It's how she handled the rest of his life that became the problem.

 

The issue here isn't gun control or even survival nuts who think society is going to collapse any minute (seriously, who keeps enough food to last longer than between paychecks? who can afford to?), the issue is this guy's mental state and how it was (mis)handled by his mother.

 

When things like this happen, it's very easy to point a finger and say that "it's because we don't have enough gun control laws" or "it's because he played violent video games", but the simple truth is he had mental issues that were not properly treated by his parents and this was the end result. But that's not what people want to hear, because that means it's somebody's fault, and if it's somebody's fault then it could have been prevented, and people just can't accept the fact that something like this could have been prevented but wasn't so they look for something else to blame. People don't want to point to a person, they want to point to some big, bad intangible boogieman so that it's not anyone's fault but society's for not taking care of them. It's like the Columbine shootings all over again, that was everyone's fault (gun laws, music, video games, etc..) but the parents.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay how horrible and tragic this was. What I'm saying is that trying to legislate everything that might possibly have some remote kind of bad influence on children is not the way to prevent it. After all, the government is not there to swaddle you in cotton from cradle to grave. What we need to do is create more awareness and acceptance for people with mental and emotional issues (hell, it's more acceptable to be a drug addict than have mental issues, and guess which one you have a choice over?), have more support systems in place for teenagers and their parents who have these issues, and try to head things like this off before the idea to shoot up a school pops into their heads.

 

Well blaming mental health is basically the same thing as blaming guns, video games, etc. Except in this case, yes, I'd argue that mental health was the primary (not sole) cause of this. But that doesn't mean everyone should go blaming mental health and pour all of our resources into improving mental health. These things are not preventable. We can lower the frequency of such events, yes, but we cannot prevent them altogether. Regardless of how low the frequency becomes, they'll still happen. And when they do, people will continue to blame things beyond their control, even if the things they're blaming can't be improved upon any more.

 

Like I said, it's easier to blame someone or something else than it is to accept the fact that something terrible can happen anywhere at any time for no reason.

I don't really understand why that bears repeating, I don't think anybody is saying otherwise.

 

The thing is that a lot of the things that contribute to shootings are in fact controllable and can very much be improved at this point in time.

 

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Assuming that the reports are actually accurate now (in regards to the shooters personal circumstances), than it does make a poor example for gun control, since it would seem everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. I find societies ability to deal with any kind of mental issue to be a little scary. People seem to consider the brain a magical thought box that either works perfectly, or your (possibly secretly) frothing at the mouth with lunacy. You can see what I mean in literally any discussion involving clinical depression ever.

 

In a case like this, I don't think the problem is the laws at all. I think the problem is ignorance.

 

You can't prevent everything, but that doesn't mean blame can't be assigned where blame is due. The real trick is the balancing act. There is a fine line between a regulation that keeps people safe, and a regulation that just obstructs life for people who aren't stupid (that's what Darwin Awards are for), or makes other things dangerous by accident. My general observation is that there are a lot of safety rules in the world that have no why, and that people don't like to follow rules they don't know the reasoning behind. Laws that force employers to provide a safe working environment are great, because your employer has financial incentive to do otherwise. Speedbumps on the other hand do nothing but slow ambulances down, which almost certainly means they kill more people than they save.

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It's really sad how Americans just approach these killings as if it's just a normal occurrence now (like that guy said "they'll still happen" - [bleep]ing wow). I guess the lives of 20 children is just something you sacrifice so rednecks and psychos can keep buying guns without having to apply for permit/license.

 

Anyway, I don't even think anymore that changing gun rights will make any immediate impact. There's just too much guns available in America to even attempt to control it now.

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It's really sad how Americans just approach these killings as if it's just a normal occurrence now (like that guy said "they'll still happen" - [bleep]ing wow). I guess the lives of 20 children is just something you sacrifice so rednecks and psychos can keep buying guns without having to apply for permit/license.

 

Anyway, I don't even think anymore that changing gun rights will make any immediate impact. There's just too much guns available in America to even attempt to control it now.

 

you just presupposed several points to be true in your argument then threw in there there some emotional replies like "redneck or psycho".

 

 

 

anyways... http://www.ncpa.org/...rticle_ID=17847

 

AUSTRALIA: MORE VIOLENT CRIME DESPITE GUN BAN

 

April 13, 2009

It is a common fantasy that gun bans make society safer. In 2002 -- five years after enacting its gun ban -- the Australian Bureau of Criminology acknowledged there is no correlation between gun control and the use of firearms in violent crime. In fact, the percent of murders committed with a firearm was the highest it had ever been in 2006 (16.3 percent), says the D.C. Examiner.

Even Australia's Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research acknowledges that the gun ban had no significant impact on the amount of gun-involved crime:

  • In 2006, assault rose 49.2 percent and robbery 6.2 percent.
  • Sexual assault -- Australia's equivalent term for rape -- increased 29.9 percent.
  • Overall, Australia's violent crime rate rose 42.2 percent.

Moreover, Australia and the United States -- where no gun-ban exists -- both experienced similar decreases in murder rates:

  • Between 1995 and 2007, Australia saw a 31.9 percent decrease; without a gun ban, America's rate dropped 31.7 percent.
  • During the same time period, all other violent crime indices increased in Australia: assault rose 49.2 percent and robbery 6.2 percent.
  • Sexual assault -- Australia's equivalent term for rape -- increased 29.9 percent.
  • Overall, Australia's violent crime rate rose 42.2 percent.
  • At the same time, U.S. violent crime decreased 31.8 percent: rape dropped 19.2 percent; robbery decreased 33.2 percent; aggravated assault dropped 32.2 percent.
  • Australian women are now raped over three times as often as American women.

While this doesn't prove that more guns would impact crime rates, it does prove that gun control is a flawed policy. Furthermore, this highlights the most important point: gun banners promote failed policy regardless of the consequences to the people who must live with them, says the Examiner.

Source: Howard Nemerov, "Australia experiencing more violent crime despite gun ban," D.C. Examiner, April 8, 2009

 

I grabbed a quick article because most australians I talk to agree with its conclusion. If you really want greater detail you can go and check Australia's violent crime index following the gun ban.

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2012/12/18/anonymous-hackers-target-westboro-baptist-church-after-protest-plans/

 

In a showdown that rivals Predator vs. Alien, the hacker group Anonymous has set its sights on bringing down the hate group Westboro Baptist Church.

Westboro, whose members are more at home conducting despicable protests at the funeral processions of U.S. military servicemen, announced that they were going to have similar protests at the funerals of the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. In a strike to wound Westboro, the activist group Anonymous hacked the names, phone numbers, and social security numbers of numerous people it said are members of Westboro Baptist Church, which is based in Topeka, Kansas. The data dump also included the names of multiple members’ children and grandchildren. According to Information Week, the Anonymous attack was documented in a YouTube video (available here), which informed Westboro of the hit coming its way. “Your downfall is underway. Since your one-dimensional thought protocol will conform not to any modern logic, we will not debate, argue, or attempt to reason with you.” Instead, Anonymous promised to wage a sustained assault that would “progressively dismantle your institution.”

Anonymous also claimed to have changed Westboro spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper’s PC desktop wallpaper to gay porn, and filed a death certificate in her name, which would prevent her from using her social security number. Anonymous don’t play!

Meanwhile, on Monday Phelps-Roper’s Twitter account was taken over by someone who claimed to be the hacker Cosmo The God, and who posted several tweets to the account about the takeover. Wired reported that Cosmo is a 15-year-old hacker who was arrested in June by the FBI, and who remains on probation until his 21st birthday, before which time he’s not supposed to use a computer without supervision. If it is THE COSMO, I’m saying we cut the kid a break.

I know that the FBI has had its problems with Anonymous but our country has struggled to find ways to curb the Freedom of Speech that Westboro has, in my opinion, abused. It looks to me like Anonymous has found a way to stay off the FBI’s watch list and at the same time harass a group that deserves a bit of harassment. My hope is that the FBI looks the other way on this one.

In other news, the KKK has announced that it will counter the protests of Westboro at military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. I’m thinkingPredator vs. Alien writers will never run out of material.

KKK and Anon. This is madness.

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I grabbed a quick article because most australians I talk to agree with its conclusion. If you really want greater detail you can go and check Australia's violent crime index following the gun ban.

There were thirteen mass shootings in the eighteen years leading up to Australian gun control laws. There have been no mass shootings in the fourteen years since.

 

Comparing crime statistics across countries is immensely difficult because of each country's differences on what defines crime, and there appears to have been no attempt by that article to appreciate those differences. India's one of the safest places in the world as far as rape is concerned but that's simply because their law enforcement and record-keeping on the issue is tragically poor, and not because less women are being raped. South Africa would have the world believe no one at all is sexually assaulted there; they publish no figures for it. Hong Kong does publish figures on rape: apparently there were zero cases reported. Incredible.

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Wait, what? The KKK article was not published on the Onion? It's real?

 

Wow. You know you've gone too far when people from every single part of the political spectrum are against you.

The KKK has been against the WBC for a while now because they picket military funerals, I believe.

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Not sure how I feel about that. Two wrongs don't make a right...

 

Disgust is pretty much the right response to reading that article.

 

It's absolutely shameful that people are worshiping these actions, yet vilifying the WBC -- they're doing the exact same kind of hateful and destructive acts, yet people only cheer because someone they don't like is being targeted. This isn't how the WBC will be stopped, ignoring the fact that the kids in the Anonymous 'group' have never achieved any of their crusades they've started.

 

And just like that, instead of people talking about the tragedy, it becomes what is basically little better than watching some kids get in a slap-fight.

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Wait, what? The KKK article was not published on the Onion? It's real?

 

Wow. You know you've gone too far when people from every single part of the political spectrum are against you.

 

But that's the point. Being outrageous and noticed by everyone is how they operate, it gets them notoriety, supporters, donations and lawsuit money from free speech laws. To top it off, they're tax exempt in the US. They go on the principle of "no such thing as bad publicity", which holds true especially when you're already hated. For them, "too far" is the end goal.

 

Ok, I'm going to avoid talking anymore about the WBC, it's probably best if we collectively shifted our focus back on topic. I don't like how the WBC has successfully managed to sway such a tragedy towards them (and Anonymous is not helping), let's try to focus more about a) the incident itself, b) the implications and c) what you guys think could be done about it.

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From today's Ottawa Sun Online: http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/12/19/bikers-show-up-to-protect-mourners-from-westboro-baptist-protest

 

A group of bikers from New York formed a wall of motorcycles to protect the mourners from the WBC protesters, which ultimately didn't even show up. And apparently there's a Whitehouse.gov petition to "legally recognize Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group."

 

And then this was posted yesterday: http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/12/18/utah-boy-charged-with-bringing-gun-to-school

 

An 11-year-old in Salt Lake City brought a handgun to school to protect himself from a Newtown-style attack. Fortunately, it was unloaded and the ammunition he had with him didn't appear to be for the gun, but that didn't stop him from brandishing it at three classmates during recess. Which bring up a disturbing question, did he really want to protect himself or did he just use that as an excuse to bring a gun to school?

 

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So, Kaida is the real version of every fictional science-badass? That explains a lot, actually...

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