Whiskey Tango Foxtrot--Yet ANOTHER School Shooting?!?!?!

[DBoyWheeler]

Yet another shooting--this one in Connecticut.

27 killed (including the gunman, who, I think, took his own life).  But 20 of the dead (i.e. the majority) are KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN!!!  This makes the act even MORE horrendous!

Honestly, what is the USA coming to?!?!?!

[Darth Mandarb]

The same thing the rest of the world is (but everybody seems to forget the rest of the world is just as shitty).

It's the [shitty-ass] world we live in.  And it sucks.

[Squinky]

Yeah, there was just a guy in China that slashed up 22 kids with a knife. So, not necessarily a North American thing.

It's a tragedy for sure. I think of all the little folks that won't be going home to their families and it just makes me sick.

[miguel]

After reading some articles on the internet I found out that we are very far from predicting who can become a mass murderer. There is simply not enough background behaviours of the mass murderers to even link them together. The only aspect of the phenomenon that is similar is that this people plan out the executions way before the actual event. They often seclude themselves months (Breivik took a year) prior to the executions, training mentally and phisically for it. The other common behaviour is what they call the pseudo-commando attitude. They gather a large arsenal, do it in plain day light and don't have a escape plan. They know they will die. It's a last mission kind of thing.
Similar characteristic among the mass murderers is being male.
I also learned that there are hundreds of scientists studding the phenomenon and their best advice is to warn the authorities if we suspect seclusive behaviour from someone. "Humans are social beings". "Hiding from others for long extents of time are signs of depression".

So, we are fucked! There's no way we can predict that the guy that we see every day doing his normal job and he even smiles at us at time, can or cannot be the next mass murderer.   

[Nikolas]

The same thing the rest of the world is (but everybody seems to forget the rest of the world is just as shitty).

It's the [shitty-ass] world we live in.  And it sucks.

I'd like to offer some other ideas in the hat!

1. It may be a shitty ass world we live in, but we make the world, and we are the world (no relation to Michael Jackson). We form the societies which turn the world into a shitty place to live in. Something to think about I guess.

2. It may be a shitty ass world, but as it appears the gun problem seems very predominant in the USA where it's legal to own a gun. It's not legal over here (Greece) and our experience and education doesn't follow the same ideals that apparently can be found in the US in regards to guns! :-/

Avoiding to face reality won't change anything...

[Radiant]

No, the rest of the world is not just a shitty. Standards of living vary widely throughout the world, and this is an example. There are certainly countries we could take a cue from on how to handle such people before they escalate. You don't need to identify individual people per se to offer support to the stressed or depressed.

[Darth Mandarb]

[Radiant]

[OG]

You guys know there is such a theory as the psycho gene right? Where in which your brain alerts to blah blah blah (research it if you want to know!!!).

The problem with America is that anyone, be it British, American or Belgian (anyone) - you can just simply get a gun from the bank or supermarket. The American gun laws are completely fucked and this whole "right to bare arms" crap is bullshit. Unless you think that the cops can't deal with it; there will be a zombie apocalypse or you want to kill someone in cold blood - why have a gun? Take a look around at the many countries that do not have guns and learn something people of America. Unless you want this kind of thing to keep happening over and over. It's just bullshit to be quite frank with you.

"I need to protect myself" - do you, America? Well then. There is something profoundly wrong with your country that, I'm afraid, guns just cannot fix.

When a simpleton cannot even spell their own name, yet own a gun, we cannot deny the fact that we have a problem.

To stay on topic - I give all my love and prayers for the victims of this heinous crime. Their time was not yet. As far as the killer be concerned and trying to understand their motives... It sounds to me like a broken home with a good-for-nothing douche bag rejected by his perfect family and seeked to wreck revenge and take a few more lives as he made himself feel like god (taking lives).

I wish this scum would have shot himself and saved us all the worry and sadness.

Godbless the teachers and children whom lost their lives.

[Radiant]

Does this really happen everywhere since all of the world is fucked? This map shows all the school shootings in the last sixteen years... I count forty-five in the US, and fifteen in the rest of the world combined. Draw your own conclusions.

[Ali]

That's an interesting map. But it appears to show the Dunblane massacre in Scotland, which happened in 1996.

[Calin Leafshade]

Guns are fundamentally problematic because they allow one to murder in a very disconnected way. You pull the trigger and they die. It's akin to pressing a button to make the thing you dont like go away. That, in itself, is a reason they shouldn't be given to civilians.

However, as to the wider problem, there is very little the US can do about gun crime in general, for the following reason:

1) If you want to use a gun to perform a crime, you want it to be untraceable and so you don't use a legal firearm. That would be stupid.
2) It's very easy for a legal gun to become an illegal gun.
3) There are already thousands of illegal guns in circulation which were supported by the legal circulation of the past.
4) Eliminating the legal circulation *now* will do nothing to eliminate the illegal guns already in circulation.

I think eliminating the traffic of legal firearms would stop most massacres like this though. These massacres are usually done by well-to-do, middle class teenagers who can only get a gun via legal means.
But there were about 12,000 gun murders in the US in 2010 and only a hundred or so were due to school shootings.

[Khris]

It's not "fun to insult the US". It's simply a fact that the US is pretty much the only first world country with a lot of third world problems. I know the reason but this thread isn't about that.
I guess if it were much harder to get a gun in general, a lot of the people that people want to protect themselves from wouldn't have a gun either.
And also, if guns are more of a special thing and not an everyday kind of thing like in the US, people are naturally going to be less prone to use and misuse them.

[Crimson Wizard]

Does this really happen everywhere since all of the world is fucked? This map shows all the school shootings in the last sixteen years... I count forty-five in the US, and fifteen in the rest of the world combined.

I may miss your point here, but I think your example proves only that "school shootings" is a form of violent act highly specific for US, while it does not show anything about violence in the world, nor violence against children. Does your map show violent acts made against children in Africa for instance? And this.
I mean, there could be other forms of crazy things people are doing in other parts of world.

[Radiant]

I mean, there could be other forms of crazy things people are doing in other parts of world.

So let's look at statistics on that. Based on UNDOC and FBI figures, the amount of homicides per 100,000 people per year is four times higher in the US than it is in Western Europe, and twice as high as that in Syria or Iraq. And that's the average for the US; states like New Mexico or Louisiana have two to three times as many, and this figure has not gone done in the last decade. At some point people need to stop thinking of what could be, and face the facts about what is.

[Darth Mandarb]

The world is a fucked-up place.  I'm not claiming, nor will I make the claim, that the U.S. is some beacon shining in the darkness.  It's a fucked up country just like the rest of the world.  My point is/was just that it's very popular to insult the USA.  The USA seems to be the Nickelback of the 'countries of the world' genre and people just jump on the bandwagon to insult the USA when shit like this happens.  If I, as a resident of the states, made some of the blanket generalizations about another country the way non-residents make blanket generalizations about the USA I'd just get flamed for being an "typical ignorant american" (which is just another generalization in itself).

There are more [documented] school-shootings in the states than there are in other parts of the world.

We have less tossing of acid in women's faces for refusing an arranged marriage.

We have less people strapping bombs to their bodies and blowing up civilians on buses.

We have less little girls being shot in the face because they want an education.

We have less women being hanged because their ankles showed in public.

We have less homosexuals being murdered for their "sin".

So, yes, we may be top of the hill with tragic events like school shootings but that does nothing to diminish my original point that the world is a fucked up place.  Period.

So yes;

Avoiding to face reality won't change anything...

I couldn't agree more.

Face-palms or no face-palms.

[Radiant]

It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

[Darth Mandarb]

I don't disagree my friend.

I wish I had the answer.

[Calin Leafshade]

There are more [documented] school-shootings in the states than there are in other parts of the world.

We have less tossing of acid in women's faces for refusing an arranged marriage.

We have less people strapping bombs to their bodies and blowing up civilians on buses.

We have less little girls being shot in the face because they want an education.

We have less women being hanged because their ankles showed in public.

We have less homosexuals being murdered for their "sin".

So, yes, we may be top of the hill with tragic events like school shootings but that does nothing to diminish my original point that the world is a fucked up place.  Period.

Ok so awesome. The United States of America, who we are frequented told is the "greatest nation on earth" is better than Pakistan.

It is not popular to point out the failings of the US because we like to be bullies, it's because we are frequently getting American Exceptionalism rubbed in our faces.
If you're going to dub your president the "leader of the free world" and stuff like that you'd better be damn well ready to back it up with facts.

[OG]

The majority of Americans are lovely people, I am absolutely sure of it without a doubt. But there is no need for guns. Too many cases where people flip out and use them like this imo.

Problem is, because it's such a heated debate they will never change the laws dramatically. The whole thing is too far gone. Hopefully the democrats will be brave enough come up with some changes. In a perfect world guns wouldn't get in the hands of such people. But as Darth says, it isn't a perfect world.