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

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highlights of a decaying society

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Obama playing his role very well, with dramatic and emotional pauses, his role as the grief-stricken hand-wringing father of the nation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mIA0W69U2_Y

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3. I know this is an emotionally trying time, but some of this obsessive news-watching in this thread comes across as almost excited, as does the outraged politicking/anti-politicking.  I know no one is genuinely glad this happened, and I think reasonable people can calmly disagree over the politics here (and whether they're appropriate to talk about)...but, really, this is nothing to get excited about.  Let's not subconsciously turn this into sport.

this I can't stand.  who are you to tell people how they should react?  as if we are able to choose how we initially react.  what's wrong with excitement?  with all of life now filtered through these screens, these media forms, it isn't real for me, I can say that.  this is no different than watching people play roles in a movie, and I will have energy for listening to the details.

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Horrible. Surely America should restrict guns for those with mental health issues or criminal records? Do gun rights activists like seeing deaths of school children?

the toothpaste is already out of the tube.  the silly liberals only have their moralistic outrage and no coherent picture of the society.

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we've already "invested in mental institutions", the child is now more likely to be prescribed psychiatric medication than he is not.  toothpaste and the tube.

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and the courts send ('divert') hundreds of thousands into mental health and addiction 'treatment' every year. 

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I haven't read enough about this horrible, horrible case but is it the case that the suspected shooter actually had publicly known mental health issues before this? Because that hasn't been the case with many of these spree shooters.

and, again I reiterate, we are talking about a place where it is more normal to be deemed psychiatrically abnormal than otherwise.

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he also reportedly may have lacked anger management skills.

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politicizing it is fine.  everything should be political, only people who have or perceive that they have something to protect seek to go around forcing the de-politicization of this and that issue.

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Talking about gun control is unseemly because it means we are politicizing a tragedy. But this kind of crap from the right wingers is fine and dandy.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/12/14/huckabee_blames_shooting_on_removing_god_from_schools.html

Mike Huckabee told Fox News that today's deadly massacre in an elementary school in Connecticut was due to the lack of religion in public schools.

Said Huckabee: "We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we've systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage because we've made it a palce where we don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability?"

viewed in a certain light, he is not wrong -- there is a chronic moral disengagement at every level of the society, schools included.

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How many times do we have to see this happen before we do something, anything about it? Not even with guns, but with mental health?

Because according to the usual suspects here, that would be considered discrimination against the mentally ill, and they won't stand for it. 

who said that?

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

There is more love in putting a gun to someone's head than there is in posting a status about it (and that includes this one, and this qualification, and this one, and this one...).

...

 It is sad, but not a disaster, because all disasters are measured against the creation of the world. Creation was a catastrophe and the world itself a Fall (and all 'fallen' fall in its image). The minute homo habilis picked up stone tools was the minute she started fashioning a gun. And we shoot people (and children) not because we can, but because it's what we like to do.

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

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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.

no, attention is most focused on a given social problem the moment the tragedy occurs.  more people are watching the news tonight with guns on their mind than have for a long while or will for a long while.  when else should we 'score some points?'

(for clarity, I more or less don't support gun control, "the toothpaste is out of the tube", mass indiscriminate murder is but a symptom of the decaying society in its Last Days).

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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 pointed out above, Huckabee is essentially right in pointing to the existential crisis at the heart of modern society as a cause of mass murder.  the language is the language of a Christofascist, but the idea is correct.  we have no idea who we are and where we are going, a relatively new development in human history.

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it's only been a constitutional right since 2008, my boy.

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I support individual gun rights, but there is nothing unreasonable about keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. 

again, we live in a society where a child born is more likely than not to be prescribed psychiatric medication, so this is going to be extremely offensive and insidious to someone who considers individual gun ownership to be constitutionally protected.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

I have also been to 25 or so 12-step meetings, 5 or so non 12-step meetings, have a living grandfather who is 35 years off of booze and initially got sober through a 12-step inpatient rehab program, etc.

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the majority of people throughout human history, and perhaps (40-60%) today, quit addictions without the help of support groups.  the most prevalent addiction to be quit is nicotine in the form of smoking tobacco and the vast majority (>90%) of those who quit smoking tobacco do so without the help of support groups.

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Does anyone have the numbers for the number of children killed by guns every year?  I realize I could Google it, but I want actual, unbiased numbers...

So nobody knows?

somebody on Twitter said 8 in the USA per day, can't verify that.

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The guy's psychological report seems kinda like mine: Shy, Asperger-ish, semi-autistic, living retreated. But that's probably true for a lot of people posting on this Forum ...

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.