The causes and pattern of this sort of atrocity are well documented.

The steps to avoid it happening again are worked out and routinely ignored.

You have someone with a personality disorder going through a crisis of some kind and they want their discomfort noticed by the widest possible audience.

So in their deluded state they kill the people they "blame" and then kill children because everyone will justifiably be appalled and the event will be remembered.

They then kill themselves to avoid the consequences.

The idea grows from watching other people doing it on television and reading about it in the papers or on the internet.

Almost every one one of these massacres is a copycat crime.

It would be more difficult to do if guns were less easy to get hold of (we don't get so many in the UK our last one on this sort of scale was 17yrs go) but rolling back gun ownership in America would be practically impossible.

My lady friend lamented that people who express such an outpouring of emotion now will simply go back to their lives and no lasting effect or change will happen.

I get that, but what should the lasting change be?

Another way to look at it is simply a terrible tragedy, the kind that happens every so often and not very predictable. It should be mourned, but hardly predictable.

Bingo says:

The steps to avoid it happening again are worked out and routinely ignored.

I don't see that.

There are lots of nutty loners - I certainly knew of one or two in school. I think you're imposing too much of 20/20 hindsight in calling the pattern obvious.

In China, a man with a knife slashed 22 children and an adult. If he had a gun it would have been worse, but if the question is to stop any such violence from happening, I don't see how we predict which particular lonely nuts to identify and to stop them before they've done anything.

Sure we should try to stop troubled loners from falling through the cracks, we should give the extra help and all that...but people are going to fall through the cracks, there are going to be lackluster parents, and some will simply be nuts despite our best efforts.

I completely share Warbler's view of the personal tragedy and how it will forever poison the lives of so many families.

The more publicity we give these unwell people the more these things will happen.

It's a feedback loop.

Removing the publicity won't end it entirely, random acts of insanity will always happen but the notion that one can gain attention and immortality through the murder of children is a meme.

It's delivery vector is the media.

The world doesn't need to know about this tragedy.

It can't learn anything new about it.

It should be a matter for local media alone.

I certainly shouldn't know about it but thanks to me you all know about Dunblane.

If one of us was ill enough to contemplate such an act I may have inadvertently have contributed to what ever happened next.

Such are the perils of interacting within a chaotic system.

Mrebo said:

Sure we should try to stop troubled loners from falling through the cracks, we should give the extra help and all that...but people are going to fall through the cracks, there are going to be lackluster parents, and some will simply be nuts despite our best efforts.

since I know that no matter about many people die in these mass shootings, the right will never agree to get rid of the guns,

It's not just the "right." It's any thinking person who sees that solution as extreme and impractical. Take rifles and shotguns away from hunters, take away guns from law-abiding citizens who wish to protect themselves, and ignore/repeal part of the Constitution. And you take away those hundreds of millions of guns in order to stop the occasional nut...maybe.

I'm all in favor of reasonable gun control legislation that would address any problem revealed by this particular event. I'm not supportive of those who instinctively demand imposition their starry-eyed agenda before knowing anything. It's a matter of being realistic.

Did you see the story of the nanny in NYC who stabbed the children to death? Or the occasional stories of fathers who kill their children as a form of revenge against their mother? That also needs to stop. A lot of terrible things happen in this world and I wish none of them would.

If we want to stop more of those instances, we can take extreme freedom-limiting measures. And what price tag (in money or freedom) would you put on stopping the murder and abuse of children?

I think schools will adopt greater security and that's good. Maybe some parents and educators will take greater notice of potentially troubled kids.

Warbler said:

Mrebo said:

I get that, but what should the lasting change be?

I don't know, but this stuff needs to be stopped. 

Mrebo said:

Sure we should try to stop troubled loners from falling through the cracks, we should give the extra help and all that...but people are going to fall through the cracks, there are going to be lackluster parents, and some will simply be nuts despite our best efforts.

since I know that no matter about many people die in these mass shootings, the right will never agree to get rid of the guns,  I propose armed guards and metal detectors at every entrance to every public school in America.  It may be extreme and it may cost a lot,  but what else is there to do?  Columbine, VT, Fort Hood,  Tucson Arizona,  the theater in Colorado , and now this elementary school in Connecticut.    It has to be stopped.  

       Nobody can "get rid" of the INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHT to defense of oneself, one's family, and one's neighbors. This right includes the right to have reasonable means of effecting that defense, just as the right to free expression includes the right to have pen and paper, copy machines and internet access. Even if every adult American agreed to ignore that right, they would not have the right to strip it away from future generations.

      Additional security need not cost much. If these maintainence guys are responsible enough to work in an elementary school, they could take some training and have a pistol chained to their belts and concealed in an unidentifiable pouch. In every group of a dozen women, there is at least one kick-ass gal who could do like-wise. Also, existing police could be based at the schools and alert Maintainence Guy and Kick-Ass Gal when they must to go out on calls.

     Sadly, these evil nuts might just switch to softer targets.

     There are MILLIONS of kids who experience these kinds of great problems during the period when body and brain chemistry is undergoing radical changes. They tend to be more quiet and non-violent than kids as a whole. The ones who have an additional evil malfunction in them to commit mass killings is fantastically rare.

     The only real solution is to make certain they never go over the line of commiting violence. When a kid is indentified as very troubled, perhaps the best ting to do is NOTHING AT ALL. 

     Very troubled kids are dragged out of bed at six in the morning and made to stand in the freezing cold and ride in cold buses. This is before they ever reach the environment they recognize as almost useless to them but as tremendously miserable and hostile. I doubt that's helping.

     Very troubled kids are often dragged to "Mental Health Professionals". These characters seem to be, in some ways, nuttier than their captive audience. You've got to wonder about anyone who makes it a business to have beyond totalitarian control over weakened teenagers.They stamp utterly de-humanizing and horribly demonizing and degrading labels on these kids. The worse the label, the more they can make from insurance. There is no way to prove the negative, but if there was I would bet a penny to a thousand dollars that Lanza would not have crossed the line to an act like this without the labels applied to him by "Proffessionals" and/or common folk in his life. That act or threat could only push the sicko to greater extremes. I think the mental health people do more harm than good to very troubled kids. Their weird chemicals put into rapidly changing bodies might be worse as well.

     The best we can do? "Very Troubled" is as far as we need go in marking these millions of kids. They should never be subjected to, or threatened with, anything worse. As soon as they are so identified, they should be withdrawn from environments they find terribly stressfull. They could learn the essentials at home as a chore in return for being allowed to escape the miserable place. Of course, it would be difficult to separate out the fakers, but it should be done. They also could be banned from violent video games (though for many it might actually help relieve predatory impulses.) They should be required to avoid and overcome any violent tendencies in return for these considerations and under penalty of being placed in a more unpleasant environment. Then we could just sit back and hope their brain chemistry and attitudes re-adjust well enough to at least not be a real threat. They should never have access to unsecured guns.

       Removing the burden of miserable environments, removing the threat of terrible irrevocable and utterly destructive labels, and the requirement to be non-hostile towards innocents in exchange could only help.

      If in spite of this they show signs of great violence towards other innocent people, they should be placed in a secure place.

      Even so, some will escape the net.

      The best we can do is the best we can do :(

Warbler said:

Bingowings said:

The world doesn't need to know about this tragedy.

doesn't need to know about it?  this town needs our help, support, and prayer.   A shooting of this kind is news,  the media is duty bound to report.   How are we to try to prevent it from happening if these tragedies go unreported?

No it doesn't.

It will need to learn to cope with what has happened but it will do that much more efficiently without rubbernecking politicians and oddball religious freaks following the media gravy train.

A shooting of this kind is local news for a while not international news for weeks on end.

You are more unlikely to get events like this by starving the 'craze' of it's publicity and it's appeal to the demented.

I think I'm ready to discuss this, though I'm also thinking we should propose a "current events" type thread to converse about this stuff in an apolitical manner.

In any case, I'm finding a great deal I can agree with in two individuals I usually disagree with, specifically Warbler and Bingowings.  First, just imagine if a single person in that "gun-free zone" had a gun.  If the principal who charged the gunner had instead been the only person armed in the whole facility with a weapon, she may have effectively stopped the gunner before so many lives were lost.  Now principals are obviously not trained to utilize weapons and should not be.  But I agree that armed guards and/or police should be present.  I remember a single officer (not sure if he was armed or not, but I doubt it) along with several ET Special Edition security guards (i.e. armed with nothing more than walkie-talkies) at my high school.  If they were trained to utilize guns and had thorough background checks before hire, they could be an effective measure against intruders of this sort.  "Weapons-free" signs are not enough to keep these sickos out, but armed guards might.

But Bingowings is exactly right: if we gave less attention to this stuff, copycat crimes would not be committed.  I know it's fascinating and tragic and I want to absorb every word, but it is this sort of attention that feeds others' desire for immortality through their horrific crimes.  This town will get the help it needs without everyone in the world knowing about it.  Nevertheless, like my children who ignored our Bible cartoon yesterday except during the scary parts, I hypocritically keep reading up on this latest tragedy.

You might wish to amend the above post as you clearly weren't thinking before you wrote as usual.

It is local news.

Me knowing about this tragedy and having it mentioned over and over doesn't help anyone.

Your prayers well meant as they are help nobody.

The only interests remotely served by this disproportionate publicity is the killer's wishes, the politicians and the sick fancy of the Westboro crowd.

The killer's name will be remembered longer and be more widely spread than any of the children and his memory will inspire more crimes anywhere in the world.

If it's international news you give the guy the publicity he craved, it should be only of local interest.

The president should address the issues separately but he certainly shouldn't be bringing attention to the event itself.

How does you knowing about it help the families, let alone me knowing about it?

        ^I often feel like the only sane individual left on planet earth, but, if I am nuts, at least I have PPLLLLENNNNTTTTYYYY of company ;) 

It's not all about guns.. You do know what happened in China at the same time as the Sandy Hook tragedy right? 

      ^That's an astonishing co-inky-dink ;/

        I agree with Bingo that something should be done about giving these monsters notoriety.

        Perhaps, when it looks like one of these lone gunman cases, the media could agree to never utter the monster's name. They could only show a photograph for the purposes of the investigation.

        It could be made clear that the names of the assailants will only be inscribed on the bottom of a sewer pipe (and in a swine pen for Muslims) as their only immortality.