Shooting at CT elementary school leaves at least 27 dead, 18 of them children

[Ban my account ffs!]

I just find scoring political points while our country has just started to mourn to be distasteful.

Like Huckabee blaming this on God not being in the schools?  Conservatives make plenty of political hay out of stuff like this.  It's only when people bring up points they don't like that we're "politicizing a tragedy."  I call BS on the hypocrisy.

As I stated earlier, I am equally upset about the politicization on my side of the aisle.  My twitter timeline at the moment is making me ill, because for some folks the only solution to a problem is to introduce even more guns into the equation.

if you made tragedies apolitical there is nothing left.  is war apolitical?  is war not a tragedy?

I just find scoring political points while our country has just started to mourn to be distasteful.

Don't kid yourself.  The country is not mourning.  You don't know any of the people affected.  You could, however, be supportive of efforts to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again, right now.  That might be the best way to mourn the murdered children for someone who has no personal stake in the tragedy.

That's absolutely insulting, but I'm not holding it against you because this is a very sensitive issue.  

Attacking Constitutional rights is never a responsible reaction to a tragedy, whether its internment camps, the PATRIOT Act, going to war without purpose, or unreasonable gun control.

Stop the melodramatic posturing.  It's insulting that you are using the devastation wrought by this tragedy among the families involved to try and steer the debate/conversation away from preventing such an act from happening again.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

I just find scoring political points while our country has just started to mourn to be distasteful.

Like Huckabee blaming this on God not being in the schools?  Conservatives make plenty of political hay out of stuff like this.  It's only when people bring up points they don't like that we're "politicizing a tragedy."  I call BS on the hypocrisy.

As I stated earlier, I am equally upset about the politicization on my side of the aisle.  My twitter timeline at the moment is making me ill, because for some folks the only solution to a problem is to introduce even more guns into the equation.

if you made tragedies apolitical there is nothing left.  is war apolitical?  is war not a tragedy?

I just find scoring political points while our country has just started to mourn to be distasteful.

Don't kid yourself.  The country is not mourning.  You don't know any of the people affected.  You could, however, be supportive of efforts to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again, right now.  That might be the best way to mourn the murdered children for someone who has no personal stake in the tragedy.

That's absolutely insulting, but I'm not holding it against you because this is a very sensitive issue.  

Attacking Constitutional rights is never a responsible reaction to a tragedy, whether its internment camps, the PATRIOT Act, going to war without purpose, or unreasonable gun control.

Stop the melodramatic posturing.  It's insulting that you are using the devastation wrought by this tragedy among the families involved to try and steer the debate/conversation away from preventing such an act from happening again.

I have yet to see any solutions in this thread that would prevent this act from happening again.  Please, if there are any such solutions, bring them forward.

[Marokai Backbeat]

What a terrible, terrible thing to happen.

How long before the US works out that the current gun laws (or lack thereof) aren't actually working?

So you're a communist, Smid?

[© tweed]

What a terrible, terrible thing to happen.

How long before the US works out that the current gun laws (or lack thereof) aren't actually working?

So you're a communist, Smid?

the real Commies used a lot of guns.

[Frodo]

I just find scoring political points while our country has just started to mourn to be distasteful.

Like Huckabee blaming this on God not being in the schools?  Conservatives make plenty of political hay out of stuff like this.  It's only when people bring up points they don't like that we're "politicizing a tragedy."  I call BS on the hypocrisy.

As I stated earlier, I am equally upset about the politicization on my side of the aisle.  My twitter timeline at the moment is making me ill, because for some folks the only solution to a problem is to introduce even more guns into the equation.

if you made tragedies apolitical there is nothing left.  is war apolitical?  is war not a tragedy?

I just find scoring political points while our country has just started to mourn to be distasteful.

Don't kid yourself.  The country is not mourning.  You don't know any of the people affected.  You could, however, be supportive of efforts to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again, right now.  That might be the best way to mourn the murdered children for someone who has no personal stake in the tragedy.

That's absolutely insulting, but I'm not holding it against you because this is a very sensitive issue.  

Attacking Constitutional rights is never a responsible reaction to a tragedy, whether its internment camps, the PATRIOT Act, going to war without purpose, or unreasonable gun control.

Stop the melodramatic posturing.  It's insulting that you are using the devastation wrought by this tragedy among the families involved to try and steer the debate/conversation away from preventing such an act from happening again.

I have yet to see any solutions in this thread that would prevent this act from happening again.  Please, if there are any such solutions, bring them forward.

Improving mental health treatment is certainly part of the solution, if not The Solution. 

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Improving mental health treatment is certainly part of the solution, if not The Solution. 

100% agree.

[Dave from Michigan]

I just find scoring political points while our country has just started to mourn to be distasteful.

Like Huckabee blaming this on God not being in the schools?  Conservatives make plenty of political hay out of stuff like this.  It's only when people bring up points they don't like that we're "politicizing a tragedy."  I call BS on the hypocrisy.

As I stated earlier, I am equally upset about the politicization on my side of the aisle.  My twitter timeline at the moment is making me ill, because for some folks the only solution to a problem is to introduce even more guns into the equation.

if you made tragedies apolitical there is nothing left.  is war apolitical?  is war not a tragedy?

I just find scoring political points while our country has just started to mourn to be distasteful.

Don't kid yourself.  The country is not mourning.  You don't know any of the people affected.  You could, however, be supportive of efforts to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again, right now.  That might be the best way to mourn the murdered children for someone who has no personal stake in the tragedy.

That's absolutely insulting, but I'm not holding it against you because this is a very sensitive issue.  

Attacking Constitutional rights is never a responsible reaction to a tragedy, whether its internment camps, the PATRIOT Act, going to war without purpose, or unreasonable gun control.

Stop the melodramatic posturing.  It's insulting that you are using the devastation wrought by this tragedy among the families involved to try and steer the debate/conversation away from preventing such an act from happening again.

I have yet to see any solutions in this thread that would prevent this act from happening again.  Please, if there are any such solutions, bring them forward.

this whole thread is full of we need to do something to stop these shootings, but very short on actual solutions.

[© tweed]

Improving mental health treatment is certainly part of the solution, if not The Solution. 

100% agree.

you fools, do you know what mental health and addiction 'treatment' entails.  just like the liberals who spew their sh**t about diverting drug users into treatment when it is all just a windfall for the insurance companies and formerly-addicted 'counselors', at the expense of people who have nothing left to expend.  let the cure be worse than the symptom and you'll have your dystopia ready-made and microwaveable, and don't ask me for relief when the bombs drop.

[Smid]

I have yet to see any solutions in this thread that would prevent this act from happening again.  Please, if there are any such solutions, bring them forward.

Well, the current laws didn't prevent this tragedy, just about anything would be better than what you've got now. The argument that law-abiding citizens doesn't cut it either - it did nothing to save lives today.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I just find scoring political points while our country has just started to mourn to be distasteful.

Like Huckabee blaming this on God not being in the schools?  Conservatives make plenty of political hay out of stuff like this.  It's only when people bring up points they don't like that we're "politicizing a tragedy."  I call BS on the hypocrisy.

As I stated earlier, I am equally upset about the politicization on my side of the aisle.  My twitter timeline at the moment is making me ill, because for some folks the only solution to a problem is to introduce even more guns into the equation.

if you made tragedies apolitical there is nothing left.  is war apolitical?  is war not a tragedy?

I just find scoring political points while our country has just started to mourn to be distasteful.

Don't kid yourself.  The country is not mourning.  You don't know any of the people affected.  You could, however, be supportive of efforts to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again, right now.  That might be the best way to mourn the murdered children for someone who has no personal stake in the tragedy.

That's absolutely insulting, but I'm not holding it against you because this is a very sensitive issue.  

Attacking Constitutional rights is never a responsible reaction to a tragedy, whether its internment camps, the PATRIOT Act, going to war without purpose, or unreasonable gun control.

Stop the melodramatic posturing.  It's insulting that you are using the devastation wrought by this tragedy among the families involved to try and steer the debate/conversation away from preventing such an act from happening again.

I have yet to see any solutions in this thread that would prevent this act from happening again.  Please, if there are any such solutions, bring them forward.

Require gun owners to keep their guns locked up.  Enact severe penalties for letting someone else without a permit handle/possess/use the gun, including confiscation of all guns and revocation of all permits and a lengthy period of being barred from gun ownership.

As such, if weapons are stolen and the robbery is not reported immediately to police (say, within 48 hours of finding that it is missing), the owner of the gun becomes partially criminally responsible for any crimes committed with the gun by the person who stole it.

Tie a mental health flag to background checks.  Just as a doctor can forcibly have you hospitalized for a psych evaluation if you are suicidal, they should also be able to put a red flag in your record that would come up on background checks that you are mentally unstable/unfit to own a weapon pending proper medical treatment of the mental issue.

Put conceal/carry under higher scrutiny.  Make handgun owners prove mental stability at regular intervals with their permit renewal, and make the owners of the guns keep them safely locked up when the gun is not on their person.  Require registration of all guns in a national database.

The Slippery Slope argument need not apply.  These are common sense ways to help prevent these tragedies from happening.  By making hunting-rifle ownership relatively easy and red-tape free, you will satisfy a lot of gun owners.  

With owning a gun comes great responsibility.  If you cannot properly ensure that the gun stays in your possession, you should not be allowed to own them.  Period.

If you have a history of mental illness where owning a firearm would greatly increase the danger to others... you are then treading on the right of others to live peacefully without the fear of being shot by a maniac... and you should not own guns.

That said, I think non-violent felons should be able to own guns like anybody else.  Unless your crime involved a weapon... such a broad ban on owning guns is nothing but reactionary bullsh**t.

[Vosem]

How long before the US works out that the current gun laws (or lack thereof) aren't actually working?

This will occur, at the very earliest, when my generation will be elderly. Not before. So, many decades, in other words.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Improving mental health treatment is certainly part of the solution, if not The Solution.  

100% agree.

That is the biggest part.  90% of preventing things like today's shooting from happening is proper mental healthcare.

Unfortunately Republicans not only want to give everyone a gun... they also want the crazies to own them too by default since without any appreciable healthcare, we'd never know they were crazy in the first place.]

The cognitive dissonance among conservatives is enough to drive a person crazy, in and of itself.

[AndrewTX]

Just to put a combo breaker to the political bitching, I finally got in touch with my friend Scott who I went to school with, who's daughter was in the school when it happened. Everyone is okay, but they havent found a way to tell her that a friend she had has passed in this event. So please, keep the insensitive fighting going on the tragic event that just happened. It's appreciated.

[useful idiot]

This is horrible. And will happen again, and again, and again, and again. Because certain people say we can't do anything about it.

But what exactly do you propose we do about it? I'm reading posts, and hearing things on tv, that seem to suggest that the answer is so simple and as a society we're just too stupid to do the obvious, but perhaps I could be enlightened as to what the obvious is.

The weapons used today were two 9mm handguns; he had a 223 hunting rifle he didn't use. These were not "assault weapons." Are we going to ban all handguns? Is the government going to go into the homes of 45 million Americans to take their legally purchased handguns away? Surely the government isn't going to go into the homes of 80 million people that own a shotgun or rifle.

Assuming that this guy bought these guns in CT or NJ, he did so in one of the two most restrictive states for buying guns. NJ requires you to undergo a background check, file for two permits, get fingerprinted, and has a waiting period. CT requires you to file for and obtain a permit to purchase a handgun, with a waiting period. Lets see what the Brady campaign has to say about NJ: "New Jersey has strong gun laws that help combat the illegal gun market, prevent the sale of most guns without background checks and reduce risks to children according to the Brady Campaign. In the organization’s 2011 state scorecards released for all 50 states, New Jersey has the second strongest gun laws in the country earning 72 points out of a total of 100." The Brady campaign ranked CT as having the 5th "strongest" gun laws in the country.

Any national legislation that could get passed would NEVER ban handguns, and its hard to imagine any piece of legislation going beyond the state regulations CT and NJ already have in place, let alone what they have in CA.

Let's say we just banned gun ownership by civilians outright, which I don't think even most European countries do. How good of a job do you think the U.S. will do in enforcing that? See what sort of job they do at enforcing a ban on illicit drugs, or controlling their flow? The guns are already out there for people to buy on the black market. Hell, people can make their own guns, it's actually not hard at all. This is a gun:



How hard do you think it would be for people to make that, which is the firing mechanism on a Sig Sauer P250 (he used a Sig), stick it in a piece of plastic, and sell it on the street? Regardless, if this guy was so committed to killing a bunch of kids, how hard do you think it would be for him to make a pipe bomb and toss it into a classroom?

It's easy to say there's a simple fix to this, but unless someone can come up with a workable solution to the problem, I'd really like to see the MSNBC crowd stop their pontificating.


Addendum: Apparently I've been out of the loop as it's Ryan Lanza's brother, Adam, who was apparently the shooter. He's 20, which means it would have been illegal for him to have a handgun anyway...

[Ban my account ffs!]

Just to put a combo breaker to the political bitching, I finally got in touch with my friend Scott who I went to school with, who's daughter was in the school when it happened. Everyone is okay, but they havent found a way to tell her that a friend she had has passed in this event. So please, keep the insensitive fighting going on the tragic event that just happened. It's appreciated.

And I really am sorry for your friend's family and their daughter's friend.  This is something that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

But how does ignoring the elephant in the room while being melodramatic and pretending to "mourn and grieve" (which is really inappropriate since I don't know any of the people involved and can't relate to what they went through in any way) going to make things better?

Maybe it's insensitive.  But I'm pretty sure sensitivity didn't come into the equation as the guy was shooting small children in cold blood.  It was a disgusting act of violence that happens over and over again because people get all butthurt when gun control is brought up after these tragedies... but we barely have time to get over it before the next tragedy comes along.

I'm sorry, but the debate has to start right now.  Taking action to prevent this from happening again is the best thing that the non-personally involved public can do to honor to lives of those that were killed today.

[useful idiot]

Require gun owners to keep their guns locked up.  Enact severe penalties for letting someone else without a permit handle/possess/use the gun, including confiscation of all guns and revocation of all permits and a lengthy period of being barred from gun ownership.

As such, if weapons are stolen and the robbery is not reported immediately to police (say, within 48 hours of finding that it is missing), the owner of the gun becomes partially criminally responsible for any crimes committed with the gun by the person who stole it.

Tie a mental health flag to background checks.  Just as a doctor can forcibly have you hospitalized for a psych evaluation if you are suicidal, they should also be able to put a red flag in your record that would come up on background checks that you are mentally unstable/unfit to own a weapon pending proper medical treatment of the mental issue.

Put conceal/carry under higher scrutiny.  Make handgun owners prove mental stability at regular intervals with their permit renewal, and make the owners of the guns keep them safely locked up when the gun is not on their person.  Require registration of all guns in a national database.

The Slippery Slope argument need not apply.  These are common sense ways to help prevent these tragedies from happening.  By making hunting-rifle ownership relatively easy and red-tape free, you will satisfy a lot of gun owners.  

With owning a gun comes great responsibility.  If you cannot properly ensure that the gun stays in your possession, you should not be allowed to own them.  Period.

If you have a history of mental illness where owning a firearm would greatly increase the danger to others... you are then treading on the right of others to live peacefully without the fear of being shot by a maniac... and you should not own guns.

That said, I think non-violent felons should be able to own guns like anybody else.  Unless your crime involved a weapon... such a broad ban on owning guns is nothing but reactionary bullsh**t.

Those aren't the worst suggestions I've heard, but would any of those regulations have prevented this? If this guy was 20, then the guns were either a) stolen from someone he knew or b) bought on the black market, and hence none of those regulations apply here. The gun lock measure has absolutely no way of being enforced to any real degree, and if you know the person, you probably have access to their key. Criminals aren't worried about following the law to keep a lock on their pistol anyway. Being punished for letting others use your gun is something that can only be enforced after the fact. Lanza couldn't have gotten a concealed carry permit because he wasn't the owner, so that's a moot point. Concealed carry isn't the problem anyway, because you're unlikely to make sure you get a permit in order to transport your gun to the scene of a crime you plan on committing.

California has the most stringent gun laws in the country. Are we going to try to force something beyond California's laws onto a country in which the majority of the states wouldn't even accept CA-style measures? Good luck with that. I actually wouldn't mind CA-style laws if it meant these things could be prevented, but the problem is that there's no evidence, looking at CA, that they would. Banning or severely limiting the production of guns for the civilian market is the only thing the U.S. can do to limit the number of guns in people's hands, and even then, there are already hundreds of millions of the things floating around. That would only prevent people from buying them legally, which most criminals don't do, and Adam Lanza didn't do.

[Comrade Funk]

I can't watch the news today, or tomorrow, and maybe the whole week too. I just can't.

[Dave from Michigan]

I read the guns were his mothers
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/us/connecticut-school-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

[Napoleon]

I'm sure I'd get crucified by the usual suspects if I even started to make this political..... But seriously, how often does this have to happen before we actually do something about it?

Jesus

Mental health services in the United States are quite dismal.

I don't know what would drive someone to do something this horrific- I don't want to know.

[Frodo]

Require gun owners to keep their guns locked up.  Enact severe penalties for letting someone else without a permit handle/possess/use the gun, including confiscation of all guns and revocation of all permits and a lengthy period of being barred from gun ownership.

As such, if weapons are stolen and the robbery is not reported immediately to police (say, within 48 hours of finding that it is missing), the owner of the gun becomes partially criminally responsible for any crimes committed with the gun by the person who stole it.

Tie a mental health flag to background checks.  Just as a doctor can forcibly have you hospitalized for a psych evaluation if you are suicidal, they should also be able to put a red flag in your record that would come up on background checks that you are mentally unstable/unfit to own a weapon pending proper medical treatment of the mental issue.

Put conceal/carry under higher scrutiny.  Make handgun owners prove mental stability at regular intervals with their permit renewal, and make the owners of the guns keep them safely locked up when the gun is not on their person.  Require registration of all guns in a national database.

The Slippery Slope argument need not apply.  These are common sense ways to help prevent these tragedies from happening.  By making hunting-rifle ownership relatively easy and red-tape free, you will satisfy a lot of gun owners.  

With owning a gun comes great responsibility.  If you cannot properly ensure that the gun stays in your possession, you should not be allowed to own them.  Period.

If you have a history of mental illness where owning a firearm would greatly increase the danger to others... you are then treading on the right of others to live peacefully without the fear of being shot by a maniac... and you should not own guns.

That said, I think non-violent felons should be able to own guns like anybody else.  Unless your crime involved a weapon... such a broad ban on owning guns is nothing but reactionary bullsh**t.

Those aren't the worst suggestions I've heard, but would any of those regulations have prevented this? If this guy was 20, then the guns were either a) stolen from someone he knew or b) bought on the black market, and hence none of those regulations apply here. The gun lock measure has absolutely no way of being enforced to any real degree, and if you know the person, you probably have access to their key. Criminals aren't worried about following the law to keep a lock on their pistol anyway. Being punished for letting others use your gun is something that can only be enforced after the fact. Lanza couldn't have gotten a concealed carry permit because he wasn't the owner, so that's a moot point. Concealed carry isn't the problem anyway, because you're unlikely to make sure you get a permit in order to transport your gun to the scene of a crime you plan on committing.

California has the most stringent gun laws in the country. Are we going to try to force something beyond California's laws onto a country in which the majority of the states wouldn't even accept CA-style measures? Good luck with that. I actually wouldn't mind CA-style laws if it meant these things could be prevented, but the problem is that there's no evidence, looking at CA, that they would. Banning or severely limiting the production of guns for the civilian market is the only thing the U.S. can do to limit the number of guns in people's hands, and even then, there are already hundreds of millions of the things floating around. That would only prevent people from buying them legally, which most criminals don't do, and Adam Lanza didn't do.

So applying more stringent gun control laws isn't going to solve the problem -at least not with any bipartisan support.  Which leaves improving mental health treatment which, theoretically, should be an easy sell no matter what your position is on gun rights. 

[Ban my account ffs!]

I don't know what would drive someone to do something this horrific- I don't want to know.

we're all but a day or two removed from doing it ourselves.

No.  I'm pretty sure that it takes more than a day or two to develop the mental illness required to carry out such a horrific act.

[Simfan34]

I liked the status of this provocative kid I know, a Mets fan, on the Facial Book

[Ban my account ffs!]

Improving mental health treatment is certainly part of the solution, if not The Solution. 

100% agree.

you fools, do you know what mental health and addiction 'treatment' entails.  just like the liberals who spew their sh**t about diverting drug users into treatment when it is all just a windfall for the insurance companies and formerly-addicted 'counselors', at the expense of people who have nothing left to expend.  let the cure be worse than the symptom and you'll have your dystopia ready-made and microwaveable, and don't ask me for relief when the bombs drop.

Have you ever met a recovering alcoholic who put his life back together and got that started in a treatment program?

Or a former meth or heroin addict who kicked the habit in treatment and used the aftercare support groups to stay away from the drugs and live a more meaningful life?

Nobody is arguing for severe intervention because you blew a .09 one time.  Or because you had a pipe and a quarter ounce of weed in your pocket.

But it just sounds like you're railing against the man as either some kind of self-justification to keep a potential addiction going or because you have had very little experience with people who have benefited from interventionist mental healthcare and treatment.

I may be wrong... and I don't know you personally, so I'm sorry if I assumed where I shouldn't have... but my personal experience is contrary to your argument above.

[© tweed]

I am an addict myself and know plenty of other addicts, within and without the family, those who have gotten sober and those who haven't.

[© tweed]

I don't know what would drive someone to do something this horrific- I don't want to know.

we're all but a day or two removed from doing it ourselves.

No.  I'm pretty sure that it takes more than a day or two to develop the mental illness required to carry out such a horrific act.

it's pretty to think so, I disagree, the evil resides in all of our hearts, certainly within mine.