Shooting at Sandy Hook. Many dead.

[Cheshire Cat]

The facts here are ever shifting.  It will be a while before there is enough valid information available to begin to understand how this tragedy unfolded.



3:54 update: NBC News reports the gunman may have been carrying someone else’s identification and may not be Ryan Lanza

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2012-12-14/story/ap-connecticut-shooting-suspect-20-year-old-son-teacher#ixzz2F3znYKE9

[Timkin]

Incredibly sad.   

[copperfiend]

very moving speech by Obama.

Something about seeing the President cry is heartbreaking.

Even our local anchors, Tom Wills and his partner were reduced to tears on air after the President's speech.

It was a very touching speech. And I am sure many reports/anchors across the country are having a tough time reporting on these tragic events.

[Dog Walker]

Unspeakable! Children! Innocents!  Sometimes I wish hell was real.

[buckethead]

Stephen, I believe you have been misinformed about the shooter's name. In the race to report, it has been incorrectly dispensed throughout the media world.

Things are still being sorted.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-wrong-ryan-lanza-pictured-on-cbs-2012-12?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1#comment-50cb97d4eab8ea7548000007

It looks to me like schools are becoming more and more dangerous. Something needs to be done about these places... Children corralled together. Easy targets. Few adults, with zero firepower to respond to a gunman.

Serious consideration needs to be given to alternative means of educating our children. No more corralling them in for loonies with weapons.

[Pinky]

I have no desire to step into a "gun control" debate. But I wish that mental health care were as easy to get as a gun.

Yes, however every time something like this happens there is a certain segment of the population that immediately wants to take away the guns of the people that DIDN'T SHOOT! Same old thing, the 911 terror attack was done with box knives, should we all register our cutlery?

As for the incident, I can't wrap my mind around this outrageous, cowardly, murderous event. For me its not the guns, but the actions of someone far too sick to have been in the general population. Shame he is dead, because the prisoners at the state pen would have had a field day with this nameless bastard. How does anyone kill an innocent child? I hope I never know.

When the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot seized control of Cambodia they moved the entire urban population into the countryside where they proceeded to remove all of the children so they could be clubbed to death or tossed into fenced bogs full of crocodile's.  People with a desire to murder will find a way no matter what we take away or restrict from the law abiding community. In the case of Cambodia, somewhere between 1.5 and 3 million were murdered.

Hear, hear!

What on earth does this have to do with a single person being able to shoot and murder hundreds of children at a time?

We shudder at giving a woman the responsibility for choosing to end a single fetus, but turn around and defend empowering mentally disturbed people to decide life and death for a hundred people at a time.

This is inconsistent at best, and having people with the ability to kill so many at one time is a danger to the entire society.

Ock.  Are you under the impression that the Khmer Rouge was unarmed?

First off, what a horror.  I can't even imagine what scores of families are going through tonight, and I'm not certain that I want to.  What a crazy, crazy man.

But once again I have to take exception to your (predictable) rush to pin responsibility for this action on the tool used, rather than the person wielding it.  Think this wouldn't have been an equally horrific scene if this guy went on a rampage with a bowie knife?  How about if he had that baseball bat you like to use as a rhetorical device in these gun control arguments?  Or a brick?  It would have been slaughter regardless; he was up against women and children. 

I think we all agree that crazy people should not have the ability to acquire firearms, and there are laws in place to prevent precisely that which work exceedingly well.  Criminals, drug addicts and those with mental issues cannot purchase firearms.  Period.  Wont get out of the store with it. 

Disarming our society would not eliminate violence, but would merely change the details of the horror.  Evil exists, and no amount of legislation, prohibition, regulation or overreach will ever remove violence from the hearts of evil people. 

On a related note; yes, the Khmer Rouge was very well armed, unlike the peasants they indiscriminately slaughtered.  Not really the sort of model we ought to be following here in the USA, wouldn't you agree Stephen?

[Cheshire Cat]

^This tragedy is just 10 hours old.  The bodies of many of the victims are still lying on the floor of the school where they fell.  Let's keep the focus on the victims and all of those in shock and pain at this moment around the nation and world.  It's just basic respect for the lives of those so tragically taken.  Just for today please, let the arguments about the who, what's, when and where's alone and hold up the memory of those lost in a loving way.  Please.

Diane

[Cheshire Cat]

What we can do is hold in our hearts the three positively identified victims at this point.

The school Principal Dawn Hocksprung, age 47 and Mary Sherlock, school psychologist age 56. 

Nancy Lanza Kindergarten teacher (mother of shooter)

[JeffreyS]

Talking about prevention now is not too soon it's too late. We need guns to be harder to get.  Knives and other weapons are not as effective at creating the instant carnage guns do.

[ronchamblin]

Imagine the parents of these children.  Imagine the sisters and brothers.  Imagine the grandparents too.  Horror and anguish and helplessness.  Each moment being the same as before.  Only time will bring the relief.  But not soon enough. 

Sleep, our precious ones, as we cannot.  We live, and endure, and feel the pain.  And you are gone.     

[stephenc]

Knives and other weapons are not as effective at creating the instant carnage guns do.

I beg to differ...

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/14/15901085-villager-slashes-22-kids-with-knife-at-elementary-school-gates-in-china?lite

[JeffreyS]

Thank you for making my point none of the children died in that attack. Some are critical but luckily the monster did not have a more effective weapon like an I don't know gun.

[Pinky]

I have no desire to step into a "gun control" debate. But I wish that mental health care were as easy to get as a gun.

Yes, however every time something like this happens there is a certain segment of the population that immediately wants to take away the guns of the people that DIDN'T SHOOT! Same old thing, the 911 terror attack was done with box knives, should we all register our cutlery?

As for the incident, I can't wrap my mind around this outrageous, cowardly, murderous event. For me its not the guns, but the actions of someone far too sick to have been in the general population. Shame he is dead, because the prisoners at the state pen would have had a field day with this nameless bastard. How does anyone kill an innocent child? I hope I never know.

When the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot seized control of Cambodia they moved the entire urban population into the countryside where they proceeded to remove all of the children so they could be clubbed to death or tossed into fenced bogs full of crocodile's.  People with a desire to murder will find a way no matter what we take away or restrict from the law abiding community. In the case of Cambodia, somewhere between 1.5 and 3 million were murdered.

Hear, hear!

What on earth does this have to do with a single person being able to shoot and murder hundreds of children at a time?

We shudder at giving a woman the responsibility for choosing to end a single fetus, but turn around and defend empowering mentally disturbed people to decide life and death for a hundred people at a time.

This is inconsistent at best, and having people with the ability to kill so many at one time is a danger to the entire society.

Ock.  Are you under the impression that the Khmer Rouge was unarmed?

First off, what a horror.  I can't even imagine what scores of families are going through tonight, and I'm not certain that I want to.  What a crazy, crazy man.

But once again I have to take exception to your (predictable) rush to pin responsibility for this action on the tool used, rather than the person wielding it.  Think this wouldn't have been an equally horrific scene if this guy went on a rampage with a bowie knife?  How about if he had that baseball bat you like to use as a rhetorical device in these gun control arguments?  Or a brick?  It would have been slaughter regardless; he was up against women and children. 

I think we all agree that crazy people should not have the ability to acquire firearms, and there are laws in place to prevent precisely that which work exceedingly well.  Criminals, drug addicts and those with mental issues cannot purchase firearms.  Period.  Wont get out of the store with it. 

Disarming our society would not eliminate violence, but would merely change the details of the horror.  Evil exists, and no amount of legislation, prohibition, regulation or overreach will ever remove violence from the hearts of evil people. 

On a related note; yes, the Khmer Rouge was very well armed, unlike the peasants they indiscriminately slaughtered.  Not really the sort of model we ought to be following here in the USA, wouldn't you agree Stephen?

I call bullshit pinky.

If a fire burned these kids to death it would be gobstoppingly stupid to pretend there wasnt a fire.

And this isnt about removing evil, but from limiting the amount of damage that one person can inflict on innocent strangers.

Perhaps you think that indiscriminately slaughtering a bunch of 5 year old children is a better model or somehow a different model than ocklawaha's absurd comparison?  Does it make you feel better to know that the slaughtering was done by an unpredictable person with mental problems?

If a fire burned these kids to death, would you be so loudly calling for the banning of matches and Bic lighters??  Again, you confuse "tool" with "action".   Your confusion apparently extends to what is an "acceptable" level of damage that one person can inflict on others, as if it would have been hunky-dory had he only slashed 15 kids instead of shooting 30.  When you strip away the shrill hyperbole and emotional knee-jerking, your position is laughable.

And of course I don't think that indiscriminate slaughter is an acceptable model, and that is why your Khmer Rouge analogy is as laughable as your call to ban firearms; my point is that level of slaughter was possible BECAUSE the peasants were unarmed, just as you would have us here in the US.

[Pinky]

<SNIP>
  Does it make you feel better to know that the slaughtering was done by an unpredictable person with mental problems?

Whoa there; stop the presses... 

I thought THE GUNS were doing the slaughtering???!!!???   

Wow, maybe we ought to look at regulating "Unpredictable people with mental problems" instead of the guns??

[Pinky]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRVHlD1Gnv4

Shall we ban cars too?  The Dutch have very strict gun control.