At Least 27 Dead In Connecticut School Shooting - Cbs News

[folium]

Here's an interesting article written from a different perspective...

I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother

Three days before 20 year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.

"I can wear these pants," he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.

....

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

http://gawker.com/59...m-lanzas-mother

All very sad and made worse when such children grow up in homes where guns and ammunition are easy to acquire and are apparently accessible.

[copa8]

Over 300 million guns in the USA and only a handful of nutjobs shooting people

That handful of nutjobs shot over 10,000 Americans last year. The Vietcong never had it so good.

Stupid comment. Anyway, besides the Vietcong, you left out the Germans, Japanese, North Koreans, Iraqis, the Taliban.

[F430murci]

Interesting how some would think an article that somehow makes have guns and assault weapons accessible to just everyone. Blame, music, movie, society, people with screws loose or whatever when it comes to guns. When it comes to drugs, we blame drugs and drug dealers and strive to eradicate drugs from the street.

[samran]

Oh yeah. Just a few nut cases as Kohesti says:

Those stats don't address my comment - which I stand by as correct. To back my claim, here is a chart from Mother Jones, a very anti-gun, liberal website.

300 million guns, approx 31,000 gun-related deaths (2009), and even in that same year the number of deaths by mass-killing crazies total less than 40. So yeah, I'm right, a few nut cases.

Which part of those 31000 gun related deaths do you find acceptable? You seem to gloss over them as 'par for the course'.

[koheesti]

Oh yeah. Just a few nut cases as Kohesti says:

Those stats don't address my comment - which I stand by as correct. To back my claim, here is a chart from Mother Jones, a very anti-gun, liberal website.

300 million guns, approx 31,000 gun-related deaths (2009), and even in that same year the number of deaths total less than 40. So yeah, I'm right, a few nut cases.

Yep, ignore everything else and all facts cited and refer to a single piece of information to misrepresent a broad proposition. The fact is 100,000 plus people are shot and injured by guns each year. Way too many nutcases out there shooting people.

Ironic coming from the guy who just wrote, "don't let facts get in the way".

Here's another FACT for you, guns don't kill people, people kill people. When someone is killed by a car, the driver is blamed, When someone is killed by a knife, the person doing the stabbing is to blame. But when someone is killed by a gun, all of a sudden it is the gun which is at fault.

[koheesti]

Here's an interesting article written from a different perspective...

I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother

Three days before 20 year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.

"I can wear these pants," he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.

....

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

http://gawker.com/59...m-lanzas-mother

All very sad and made worse when such children grow up in homes where guns and ammunition are easy to acquire and are apparently accessible.

I can agree with that. Crazy people can't have guns so a sane, law-abiding citizen who lives with a crazy/mentally ill person shouldn't be allowed to keep guns at home. Keep them at the gun club or wherever, but not within reach of the unstable yet lovable family member.

[Bwanatickey]

I could have been one of the first to comment on here on this forum. It was too raw at the time,for You not Me. I let the time pass to say what I wanted to say. 48 hours later:

Here We go again. Happen again,it will.

Talk shows (radio and T.V) will sprout the same old Blah blah blaa. Fox News will deliver the same old insanity Bla bla blaa.

Every week I watch the news and await the next instalment of entertainment U.S.A

Waiting one day to watch the news and see a home made Drone fly over a Football stadium and get live coverage as the geek at home on his laptop mowes Jock's down. Back ground audiance lines "Oh my God"

[F430murci]

Yep, ignore everything else and all facts cited and refer to a single piece of information to misrepresent a broad proposition. The fact is 100,000 plus people are shot and injured by guns each year. Way too many nutcases out there shooting people.

Ironic coming from the guy who just wrote, "don't let facts get in the way".

Here's another FACT for you, guns don't kill people, people kill people. When someone is killed by a car, the driver is blamed, When someone is killed by a knife, the person doing the stabbing is to blame. But when someone is killed by a gun, all of a sudden it is the gun which is at fault.

Over 500 children kill them selves each year through accidental discharge of firearms. Over one a day. I guess you just think children, not guns, kill these poor innocent 2 and 5 year olds. Not guns. No way. Is all these deaths opf innocent children, not to mention the ones just injured, worth you having your guns and for what, so you can feel tough. Sounds like a shrink may be more in line if it is a needing to feel tough or fear issue.

And if you do own a gun and think your kid won't get to it, listen to this: A recent study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that 39 percent of kids knew where their parents' guns were stored, while 22 percent said that they had handled the weapons despite adults' warnings to stay away. What's more, age was not a factor in whether children had played with the guns: Five-year-olds were just as likely to report doing so as 14-year-olds.

Here are just a few heartbreaking cases:

• Four-year-old Dylan Jackson shot himself to death after finding a loaded gun at a friend's home during a birthday party.

• A 3-year-old Southeast Washington boy shot himself in the foot and grazed his hand while playing with his father's gun -- which he found lying on the floor.

• A 2-year-old Tampa boy shot himself in the chest with a loaded 9 mm he found in his parent's couch while playing.

• Last February, a 13-year-old boy shot himself with a semiautomatic handgun in the home of his guardian, a Maryland police officer.

• The 10-year-old son of a New York City police officer died after shooting himself in the face with his father's loaded revolver. The boy found the weapon on a shelf in the basement while looking for a ball his mom had hidden.

Read more: http://www.momlogic.com/2009/09/gun_accidents_kill_500_kids_each_year.php#ixzz2FG2yOHIU

http://www.momlogic.com/2009/09/gun_accidents_kill_500_kids_each_year.php

[Mosha]

The victims are still warm, and a Baptist Church is celebrating it as a punishment from god for homosexuality.

[endure]

The victims are still warm, and a Baptist Church is celebrating it as a punishment from god for homosexuality.

What else do you expect from Fred Phelps?

[NeverSure]

Do grown ups really need to play with military grade weaponry in the year 2012??

That is not a military grade weapon. It's a simple revolver. At most it holds 6 rounds. While some purists still like them, they have been replaced in military and police work, and by most civilians.

In fact the military rarely uses any type of handgun because they aren't powerful compared to any center fire rifle, and they aren't accurate at anything other than very close range. At most they are a backup. The saying is that "A handgun is what you use to fight your way to your rifle."

This is just another example of the ignorance of the ranting anti's.

[Chittychangchang]

The facts and statistics speak for themselves.

Will America ever wake up and do the right thing?

The answer ....Never!

[NeverSure]

I believe the mother was shot, so the son had easy access to the guns before she was killed. If the controls had been in place, the guns would have been under lock and key in a HD steel locker - as was mine when I had a rifle for hunting in UK. The police checked on me without appointment and always wanted to see how I kept the weapon and the ammo separately and with different keys for access. If such rudimentary safeguards had been in place then the outcome in CT might well have been very different. The deranged son would have to resort to a knife or axe or similar and the total toll of dead would have been considerably less.

OK, let's clarify some things. I don't own guns for hunting. I gave that up a long time ago. My first purpose is for self defense, and my second is that I enjoy the sport of target shooting.

A gun locked in a safe with ammunition separated won't do much to protect me on my rural property. I lock most of my guns in a safe to keep them from being stolen, but I have something available for defense.

We have an explosion of drug users. They rob, burglarize, and do whatever they must to get dope. They are at the root of much of the increase in violence. The drugs are already illegal but that doesn't stop them. If guns were illegal, criminals would still have them. Laws bind only the law abiding as proven by drug and drunk driving laws.

So let's drop the idea of banning all but hunting guns. It won't happen because that's not why most of them are owned. People don't buy handguns much for hunting. It's mostly illegal to hunt with a handgun.

I will take some risk to preserve my freedom. I do that when I get into my car or on an airplane. I certainly do that in traffic in LOS where people don't obey laws.

Again, those drug dealers, gang members and others will have guns regardless. I just want a level playing field. Those who would give their freedom to a government in exchange for some perceived safety are perhaps forgetting the London subway bombing, or the mass murders in the UK with semi-automatic rifles which were illegal.

There is no security in this life. There is however freedom for those who demand and preserve it.

[samran]

I believe the mother was shot, so the son had easy access to the guns before she was killed. If the controls had been in place, the guns would have been under lock and key in a HD steel locker - as was mine when I had a rifle for hunting in UK. The police checked on me without appointment and always wanted to see how I kept the weapon and the ammo separately and with different keys for access. If such rudimentary safeguards had been in place then the outcome in CT might well have been very different. The deranged son would have to resort to a knife or axe or similar and the total toll of dead would have been considerably less.

OK, let's clarify some things. I don't own guns for hunting. I gave that up a long time ago. My first purpose is for self defense, and my second is that I enjoy the sport of target shooting.

A gun locked in a safe with ammunition separated won't do much to protect me on my rural property. I lock most of my guns in a safe to keep them from being stolen, but I have something available for defense.

We have an explosion of drug users. They rob, burglarize, and do whatever they must to get dope. They are at the root of much of the increase in violence. The drugs are already illegal but that doesn't stop them. If guns were illegal, criminals would still have them. Laws bind only the law abiding as proven by drug and drunk driving laws.

So let's drop the idea of banning all but hunting guns. It won't happen because that's not why most of them are owned. People don't buy handguns much for hunting. It's mostly illegal to hunt with a handgun.

I will take some risk to preserve my freedom. I do that when I get into my car or on an airplane. I certainly do that in traffic in LOS where people don't obey laws.

Again, those drug dealers, gang members and others will have guns regardless. I just want a level playing field. Those who would give their freedom to a government in exchange for some perceived safety are perhaps forgetting the London subway bombing, or the mass murders in the UK with semi-automatic rifles which were illegal.

There is no security in this life. There is however freedom for those who demand and preserve it.

Rest assured old chap that the rest of us outside your borders get on just fine without needing guns for 'defense'. We are also as free - even freer than you. There is nothing free in having the paranoia that comes with a state of mind that you describe.

I like America and American's. I really do. But Americans like to think they are special. Trust me, your problems aren't special, or unique. Your criminals aren't any more cunning, your drug problems aren't too different to anywhere else.

And your proposed solutions to all these problem continue to get an 'F'.

Edited December 17, 2012 by samran

[simple1]

Here's an interesting article written from a different perspective...

I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother

Three days before 20 year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.

"I can wear these pants," he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.

....

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

http://gawker.com/59...m-lanzas-mother

An excellent article on the challenges faced by parents of the mentally ill in America today - truly horrific

[jpinx]

I believe the mother was shot, so the son had easy access to the guns before she was killed. If the controls had been in place, the guns would have been under lock and key in a HD steel locker - as was mine when I had a rifle for hunting in UK. The police checked on me without appointment and always wanted to see how I kept the weapon and the ammo separately and with different keys for access. If such rudimentary safeguards had been in place then the outcome in CT might well have been very different. The deranged son would have to resort to a knife or axe or similar and the total toll of dead would have been considerably less.

OK, let's clarify some things. I don't own guns for hunting. I gave that up a long time ago. My first purpose is for self defense, and my second is that I enjoy the sport of target shooting.

A gun locked in a safe with ammunition separated won't do much to protect me on my rural property. I lock most of my guns in a safe to keep them from being stolen, but I have something available for defense.

We have an explosion of drug users. They rob, burglarize, and do whatever they must to get dope. They are at the root of much of the increase in violence. The drugs are already illegal but that doesn't stop them. If guns were illegal, criminals would still have them. Laws bind only the law abiding as proven by drug and drunk driving laws.

So let's drop the idea of banning all but hunting guns. It won't happen because that's not why most of them are owned. People don't buy handguns much for hunting. It's mostly illegal to hunt with a handgun.

I will take some risk to preserve my freedom. I do that when I get into my car or on an airplane. I certainly do that in traffic in LOS where people don't obey laws.

Again, those drug dealers, gang members and others will have guns regardless. I just want a level playing field. Those who would give their freedom to a government in exchange for some perceived safety are perhaps forgetting the London subway bombing, or the mass murders in the UK with semi-automatic rifles which were illegal.

There is no security in this life. There is however freedom for those who demand and preserve it.

I am not advocating banning anything, I am advocating gun control. Sounds like you have a responsible attitude and keep your arsenal locked up, but I am sorry you feel sufficiently insecure that you need more than one gun. The risk you take to preserve *your* freedom endangers other people's lives. You can cherry-pick incidents around the world to promote your attitude, but you can not avoid the national statistics.

RIP Lanza's mother, but she made a serious error of judgement when she maintained an arsenal in her house knowing that her son was unstable. *THAT* is where existing gun control legislation has failed miserably. The legislation already exists but is so poorly implemented that very few of the checks are actually meaningful, and there is no real assessment of a potential gun owner.

If Obama wants to fix this, all he has to do it force the administration to actually use the existing legislation. No fights in Congress, nothing divisive for people to get angry about.

Unfortunately I see the CT tragedy being used as an excuse for politics of all flavours.

Edited December 17, 2012 by jpinx

[DocN]

A fairly comprehensive article from the Washington Post on mass shootings. A fair amount of data to consider.

Highlights for me:

- States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence.

That's odd considering Chicago & Washington DC have strict gun laws and they are the gun-killing capitals of the US.

-15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States.

And 10 of 25 took place in countries with more strict gun laws? How is that possible?

The problem that you don't seem to get: 15 took place in the USA ALONE! The other 10 are spread to MANY different countries!

So your wonderful country still leads in the "Olympics of Deadly Shootings" by 15 to 2 to 1 to 1 to 1 to1 ....

[DocN]

Oh yeah. Just a few nut cases as Kohesti says:

Those stats don't address my comment - which I stand by as correct. To back my claim, here is a chart from Mother Jones, a very anti-gun, liberal website.

300 million guns, approx 31,000 gun-related deaths (2009), and even in that same year the number of deaths total less than 40. So yeah, I'm right, a few nut cases.

Yep, ignore everything else and all facts cited and refer to a single piece of information to misrepresent a broad proposition. The fact is 100,000 plus people are shot and injured by guns each year. Way too many nutcases out there shooting people.

Ironic coming from the guy who just wrote, "don't let facts get in the way".

Here's another FACT for you, guns don't kill people, people kill people. When someone is killed by a car, the driver is blamed, When someone is killed by a knife, the person doing the stabbing is to blame. But when someone is killed by a gun, all of a sudden it is the gun which is at fault.

Don't be silly, now!

A car and a knife are not intended to kill people! Neither are lawn mowers, spoons and chalk!

But tell me, what is a guns purpose?

[chuckd]

Don't be silly, now!

A car and a knife are not intended to kill people! Neither are lawn mowers, spoons and chalk!

But tell me, what is a guns purpose?

Cars and knives can be intended to kill people if that is what some deranged individual intends to do with them.

[DocN]

Here's an interesting article written from a different perspective...

I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother

Three days before 20 year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.

"I can wear these pants," he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.

....

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

http://gawker.com/59...m-lanzas-mother

You think this article is in favor of your points?

No , it very well isn't!

You read the part, where she is taking out all the SHARP OBJECTS in the house, to protect herself and ALL her kids?

Do you think, she took the knives out and left the guns inside?

There were no guns! Important point!

Second: the very SAME PEOPLE who advocate an assault- rifle in every household and who are fear- mongering everyday on TV and radio and who are arch- conservatives and republicans, are the SAME PEOPLE who constantly block each and every try to give people a sensible, universal health- care! ...because it is "unamerican"! Because being American, you need a weapon in your home, to defend yourself and your families from all th evil in the world!

People like this wacko!

[DocN]

Don't be silly, now!

A car and a knife are not intended to kill people! Neither are lawn mowers, spoons and chalk!

But tell me, what is a guns purpose?

Cars and knives can be intended to kill people if that is what some deranged individual intends to do with them.

That is not the question. You can practically hit someone with a fluffy bunny and kill him!

Cars and knives are not INTENDED to kill!

Guns ARE!

[samran]

Don't be silly, now!

A car and a knife are not intended to kill people! Neither are lawn mowers, spoons and chalk!

But tell me, what is a guns purpose?

Cars and knives can be intended to kill people if that is what some deranged individual intends to do with them.

Great - then you'll have no problems with guns being stored and restricted to:

- gun clubs where they can be shot at targets

- farmers - who need them for pest control and to control their livestock.

- designated hunting areas where they can be used as intended.

- the odd museum where gun nuts can come and drool over them

Excellent and safe ways all there.

Cops, national guard and army can be relied for everything else...

[F430murci]

The facts and statistics speak for themselves.

Will America ever wake up and do the right thing?

The answer ....Never!

President just gave a speech at memorial. Sounds like something will be in the works. We will see what and how well it goes soon enough I guess. Something needs to be done. Problem is like everything else in America so much entitlement and self centeredness hard to get anything done.

Good thing Lanza mother had all those weapons for protection. Worked out real well for her.

[chuckd]

Don't be silly, now!

A car and a knife are not intended to kill people! Neither are lawn mowers, spoons and chalk!

But tell me, what is a guns purpose?

Cars and knives can be intended to kill people if that is what some deranged individual intends to do with them.

That is not the question. You can practically hit someone with a fluffy bunny and kill him!

Cars and knives are not INTENDED to kill!

Guns ARE!

I have had guns all my life and have never killed anybody with one, because not killing was my INTENT.

The gun couldn't have done it on its own. It needs help.

I have never owned a fluffy bunny either.

[NanLaew]

....

What has really changed in recent decades is the decline of the two-parent home, discipline at home & school. Parents seem more eager to be friends with their kids instead of raising them to be responsible adults. Instead of one parent (father) working and another (mother) staying home to take care of the kids, IF there are two parents, both need to work and the kids end up raising themselves half the time.

So, IMO, the problem is not guns, the problem is we as a society don't raise our children anymore.

The perpetrator's parents only divorced relatively recently. We can assume the 'ideal' two-parent family unit prevailed for the greater part of his life. His older brother doesn't seem to have any 'issues'.

The perpetrators mother held a very visible, respected and responsible position in the community.

The community itself was in the upper percentile when it comes to personal wealth, median cost of homes, etc..

Earlier, a neighbour of the perpetrator and his mother reported that the mother would take the younger boys to the shooting range regularly. So one would think here is a mother that cherishes her constitutional rights AND her children by teaching them responsible firearms possession.

Then a more recent account claims that the mother had a seemingly irrational fear that there would be some sort of apocalyptic event in the US due to the worsening global fiscal crisis. These were an educated woman's fears. A woman with full access to all the media and all the reporting via internet and print and holding a good job in a well-off community. Was she being irrational?

Now all that maybe heresay at this juncture but when there was a fuel shortage in Houston in the days immediately after Tropical Storm Allison on 2001, there was a real threat of violence at gas stations and people in apartment complexes were guarding their vehicles WITH GUNS after there was a run on locking fuel caps at auto parts stores. Law and order quickly breaks down when basic essentials are threatened. The Federal and State governments quickly made 1-45 an all-lanes one-way southbound freeway so that tankers could bring gas into the city fast enough to defuse the rising tension.

I understand that the constitutional right to bear arms was so that individuals in fledgling American communities could protect themselves from rogue militias and thieves while they went about building local and state police entities that would eventually protect their own. This is not dissimilar to the case in Iraq and ongoing in Afghanistan More recently, this is being repeated in countries arising from the 'Arab Spring'. It must be terribly disconcerting to live in what is touted as the leading light of democracy and freedom in the world, with it's enforcement of right and reasonable laws but still feel the need to have firearms and having to inevitably take care of your own. In the +224 years or so since the ratification of their Constitution, is the American trust in their own law enforcement and their own state and federal governments still so fragile?

To be honest, most if not all these recent atrocities be it in the US, China or Norway, has been at the hands of someone with some degree of mental instability. There certainly is no way that one can legislate for EVERY crackpot that MAY decide that killing lots of people with any sort of firearm is justified. One cannot hope to identify and remove every POSSIBLE perpetrator of such crimes.

Gun control in it's current shape and form is a total failure. Gun elimination should be the pursuit but if state and federal entities don't have anything in place that fosters trust in their citizenry, then these tragedies will play out again and again.

[submaniac]

[

President just gave a speech at memorial. Sounds like something will be in the works. We will see what and how well it goes soon enough I guess. Something needs to be done. Problem is like everything else in America so much entitlement and self centeredness hard to get anything done.

No it won't. There is still a Republican controlled house of representatives. In the senate, the democrats have a very slight numerical advantage but it is nearly 50/50 republican/democrat. Whatever Obama says he does not have the votes to push it through congress. Even he will not have the support of all democrats to shove this through. If I'd known Obama would try to push gun control, I would have voted for <deleted>' Romney.

It's called "democracy". Majority of people who can vote in the United States are not in favor of more gun control.

[chuckd]

Don't be silly, now!

A car and a knife are not intended to kill people! Neither are lawn mowers, spoons and chalk!

But tell me, what is a guns purpose?

Cars and knives can be intended to kill people if that is what some deranged individual intends to do with them.

Great - then you'll have no problems with guns being stored and restricted to:

- gun clubs where they can be shot at targets

- farmers - who need them for pest control and to control their livestock.

- designated hunting areas where they can be used as intended.

- the odd museum where gun nuts can come and drool over them

Excellent and safe ways all there.

Cops, national guard and army can be relied for everything else...

That sounds reasonable IF you are willing to park all automobiles and never drive them as well as having only un-sharpened knives in every home.

Close down those roads to nowhere.

[DocN]

Don't be silly, now!

A car and a knife are not intended to kill people! Neither are lawn mowers, spoons and chalk!

But tell me, what is a guns purpose?

Cars and knives can be intended to kill people if that is what some deranged individual intends to do with them.

That is not the question. You can practically hit someone with a fluffy bunny and kill him!

Cars and knives are not INTENDED to kill!

Guns ARE!

I have had guns all my life and have never killed anybody with one, because not killing was my INTENT.

The gun couldn't have done it on its own. It needs help.

I have never owned a fluffy bunny either.

You don't really get the point, do you?!

[submaniac]

I get it. People that own fluffy bunnies are more likely to kill. Point well taken.

[Ferangled]

It struck me that many of those advocating free and easy access to firearms justify this by saying that the guns are necessary for protection. Indeed statistics show that 2/3 of gun owners cite protection as the reason for owning the guns. With that in mind this makes interesting reading... minutes of a radio discussion about firearms.

"A study that was done to look at whether having a firearm in your home actually does protect you, or whether it puts you at greater risk, showed that families and homes in which there was a gun, not only were they not protected against homicide, but the risk of gun homicide to people in those households was 2.7 times greater than the households without a gun."

"And the risk of suicide in those households was 4.8 times greater in the households with firearms. So it looks like, in terms of this very important question of protection, that having a firearm in the home doesn't protect you, but it puts you at much greater risk."

http://www.npr.org/2...nd-what-we-dont

Now I understand that statistics can be manipulated to serve purpose but there really seems to be no denying the fact that by having a gun in your household you are actually putting your family and those around you at greater risk. You are increasing the likelihood that you or one of your family will get shot.

Reinforcing this point is the fact that the overwhelming majority of homicides are committed by people known well by their victims, at a ratio of 3 - 1. The same goes for non lethal assaults & rapes. It is not the stereo typical "your not from round these parts" stranger that you need to protect yourself from, it's your own peers, family and friends and the best way it seems to do that is not allow them ready access to firearms.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Ferangled