Sick freak kills first-graders

Astronuc

I'm sure the FBI and law enforcement agencies are collecting evidence and working hard to build a profile of Lanza in order to cevelop a better threat assessment model.

Meahwhile Yahoo reports that police report - The victims at the school were shot multiple times, and apparently Lanza shot his mother multiple times. He was apparently determined to take many more lives.

So I would imagine that investigators will explore the accumulation of his stockpile and try to decide how to apply that in the future.

I would imagine that the question to be asked at some point is "how to keep guns out of the hands of people who are intent on committing mass homicide?"

edward

That is true. ??

edward

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-1...-pressure.html

nsaspook

I'm sure the question will be asked and answered. A more useful question is how do we find the people who are likely to have the intent to commit mass homicide with guns or any other weapon before the decision is made.

encorp

That and his mother was preparing for the "end of the world" so to speak, so she probably impressed a lot (of bad) on his fragile mind.

Though I believe strict gun control is super important.. I don't think it would have stopped this in this situation, I think that there are a lot of issues. One of them being that we so easily allow the media to propagate "end of world" hype that feeds people like this guys mother and sets the stage for this kind of thing.

Adyssa

a) read minds
b) make generalizations about various types of people and lock anyone who ticks enough boxes up
c) lock everyone up

It all gets very Orwellian. Personally, I think

d) make weapons less available

is a far more reasonable choice. Of course, people that like shooting things are going to be upset, but you know what, I don't care two hoots about people that like shooting things, for sport, for protection, for whatever. The rest of us enjoy non-violent hobbies and deal with problems of personal safety in non-violent ways.

At the macro level, we are all people of the world but we fence ourselves in. Go and get to know your neighbours (even the ones that dress funny, or talk funny), be compassionate towards the poor and outcast, help out in your community, be the person that helps some young rascal find a path that doesn't lead to violence and despair. We all turn a blind eye to the parts of society that don't match our own little happy ideals, and it is we that are guilty of ignoring problems until they become massacres. You don't need more security, you need more heart. If this young lad had a well-intentioned friend he might not have done what he did. It's not an instant fix, but there is no instant fix. The road to peace requires patience and diligence from everybody.

People throw their arms up and say it's all too hard, and I say they're the weakest most pathetic example of what a human could and should be. Nothing worthwhile is accomplished with ease.

I guess we could always arm the teachers, and the kids, and the parents, and lockdown the schools, and install CCTV everywhere, and predict what crimes this and that individual might intend to commit and take them out pre-emptively, and I mean, if we're heading down this road, why not just put everyone who doesn't act and look like Everybody Loves Raymond in a big dark hole and bury them all? The couple of million white, middle class Americans that are left can all have a great time together.

Evo

Excellent post, thank you.

edward

Is this post your way of telling me I need to CHILL a bit? If so you are right. I do.

nsaspook

I hope you feel better now but "Orwellian make weapons less available" ranting won't solve anything. "I don't care" is a very effective argument about your position.

Drakkith

Perhaps the best thing would be to do nothing. Further gun control? Less freedom. More safeguards in schools? Less freedoms for our younger citizens. Where do you stop? You are NOT going to be able to stop people from killing each other. Period. End of story. So you MUST accept the fact that people are going to kill other people. Knowing this, how far do you go to try to curb it? At what point do you say "You know what, we've done enough."

I know that I don't know. I suggest everyone think long and hard about how far you would be willing to go and ask yourself if you are willing to give up freedoms YOU like in the name of safety. Because I believe that is the issue here.

justsomeguy

This does bring the whole thread of discussion full circle. It's worth asking if giving up additional freedoms will make you more secure as well, before considering giving them up. For that matter, you need to ask, secure against what? In some cases, especially the gun control argument, more security against one type of threat leads directly to less security against another kind.

encorp

What bothers me most is that there are people out there who feel completely comfortable with a loss of life such as this being an acceptable price of admission for gun freedom.

justsomeguy

I haven't heard of anyone expressing such a feeling, though there are many who believe that had that freedom been less restricted than it is, that this tragedy would have been averted.

Drakkith

And some people are bothered that there are people out there who are completely comfortable with banning guns just because a small portion of people overall do bad things with them.

edward

Actually no, the question will turn out to be do we give up high capacity magazines for the ones we all used a few years back before the high capacity magazines became available.

The original purpose of the NRA was to teach young American males to be better marksmen. More recently that bastardized into spraying as much lead as possible, when the profit potential became obvious.

justsomeguy

Who's "we all"? I've had so called "high capacity" magazines my entire life.

The NRA has always been about protecting the second amendment, but what's that got to do with anything?

nsaspook

When you see a defacto police state like China having the same problems it makes you think about how effective the tradition containment solutions of "limits on weapons" and government people control will be in controlling these types of events. They have restrictions on the length of knives you can buy without having to register them with their national identity cards and overall crime is low but mass attacks still happen with frightening frequency there.