Lord Almighty, when are we going to do something about this nonsense? I apologize for this rhetorical and sarcastic question but every new event gives me another heartache.
Second school shooting this week. https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/16/us/illinois-dixon-high-school-shooting/index.html
“Is that a good idea to pull the fire alarm? Does that create more targets for the shooter?”
My understanding was that it was the Parkland shooter that pulled the alarm to intentionally draw out more victims. Is that the same thing here, shooter or an accomplice pulling the alarm?
I teach ninth grade and we were doing a lesson today where they had to write a poem about a memorable news event from their lifetime (we had spent the week reading war poetry). Literally as students were sharing out that Sandy Hook and Parkland were the stories that really shook them the most, I got the phone alert that there was another one. It was so surreal.
I was talking to one of my best friends who lives in Manchester, England this morning while this was breaking. He said people avoided crowded places after the bombing. He said he can’t imagine sending a child to school and wondering whether or not they’ll come home.
He has pretty crippling anxiety and doesn’t think he could’ve gone to school here. He would be too anxious to function.
I told him that this is honestly just daily life here. He offered his condolence.
I know next to nothing about guns. I do know about mental illness. There is not a country on earth that doesn’t have its share of crazy or evil people. But when their crazy or evil people want to kill, they don’t have access to guns, and so they use knives, which just don’t kill as many people at a time. The number of lives lost in mass murders are thus much, much lower in these countries.
But yeah, there’s nothing we can do about our mass murder problem.
I am deeply troubled by the toll this is taking on our kids-the fear they have now normalized in school, the stress. It has affected a whole generation.
Please vote.
I swear I cannot bear this.
Reports of the shooter in this incident indicate that this guy was bullied, a loner, very quiet and seemingly emotionless, wearing a trench coat even on hot summer days. No one talked to him, appently, so he was isolated and socially uninvested. I can’t speak to the veracity of this report. This profile is often sited in school shooters. But there have always been outcasts for as long as there have been schools. In any case, there also seem to be some parallels between this kid and Dylan Kliebold, one of the Columbine shooters. The internet would have made researching the specifics of past massacres readily available to any potential school shooter.
Friday morning in America.
And again, the inevitable “next time”.
It’s been going on regularly for 30+ years. We have failed kids at home, not just at school. An ever-increasing number aren’t developing the moral structure that prevents this, and we are drugging far too many kids, who are even more susceptible to side effects than adults. We need to fix this and it isn’t about voting. Everyone here on this Parent forum most likely has been voting for the last 30 years, as we are all (or should be) parents with families to protect. It hasn’t changed a thing. That’s not the problem area, just like it wasn’t before the regular mass shootings began, when everyone and his brother - and his WW II vet dad - had weapons in the home without incident.
“1NJParent: This is not just another school shooting. It’s another reflection of something seriously wrong with our country, with the way it’s currently governed.”
I’ve been saying this for at least 20 years.
Young people aged 18 to 24 have the lowest voting rate of all age groups. Texas had the lowest voting rate of any state in the US in the 2010 and 2014 elections. So yes, it is largely about voting in politicians who will support policies (whatever you think those might be) which will address this issue.
Trend is changing, roycroftmom. I have college students and they and their peers as a group are the most seriously invested in politics of anyone today.
College and university students voted at a higher rate in 2016 than in 2012, according to a study from Tufts University’s Tisch College, which today released an analysis of the voting patterns of millions of students. from here:
https://now.tufts.edu/news-releases/analysis-college-student-voting-increased-2016
Involvement has been steadily rising among young people in general. http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics
I don’t think our country is divided into polar opposites. Many politicians would have you believe that because it makes it easier for them to be reelected. But there is much common ground and the “common folk” need to stake that ground and refuse to support the extremes.
Reporter: Did you think that it could never here?
Student: No. It happens everywhere and I figured it would happen here eventually.
I had to pull over because I heard it on the radio and just started sobbing.
There was a report released recently that said children are more likely to die in a school shooting than soldiers in combat zones.
I’m sincerely curious, heartofdixie. What indoctrination are you referring to? The US is substantially more conservative socially and morally than most other industrialized societies which have far lower rates of violence. And the US has become substantially more conservative in the last 30 years, but that hadn’t seem to help these incidents. It is almost inconceivable now that a conservative politician would go to Red China (,like Nixon), or support a ban on assault weapons (like Reagan)
Access to good, effective, affordable mental health care is…not good.