<p>"Part of me believes that if that wasn’t enough, then we’re beyond hope. "</p>
<p>Agree 100%. </p>
<p>Nothing is going to change. </p>
<p>“High school students should not have guns in their backpacks. Where are the parents? I really think I would have noticed if my teenagers were playing with guns.”</p>
<p>Not if they wanted to hide it from you.</p>
<p>-Let’s be clear, you cannot seat with them, while they are in classroom. So, you do not need to quit your job to be able to pick them up after school and ferrying tehm around. I done it working full time and my kid was in 5 after school activities at 7 y o, 3 of which continued all thru graduating from HS.</p>
<p>What on earth was your kid doing in 2nd grade to be involved in 5 different activities?
I always told my kids one activity if they were year round. If sports, then it depended on the season which sport. </p>
<p>Also, I was supporting the * school* not my kids directly.</p>
<p>Schools need many more hands than they have and one school for instance was a k-12, all city school, it needed a lot of support, but we had one pretty small core group of volunteers. Parents work in the library, they run book groups, drive on field trips, supervise art projects. They are assistant coaches for sports teams, and supervise when the younger kids walk across the street to go swimming. They need tutors during school so that teachers can break up the classroom into smaller groups.
This school had dance, music and art teachers, but parents were needed to assist in those rooms, because as many know, just one kid can be so disruptive that classroom time is lost for everyone. Parents supervise on the playground and in the lunchroom. I did perimeter sweeps to encourage middle and high school kids to get back to class. 
( yes, we had a security person. He spent most of his time in his office reading the newspaper. I know, because the parent group room was just outside & we could hear him turn the pages. Now he works at district headquarters. @@)</p>
<p>The private schools my oldest attended also needed parents. Just producing costumes for the high school musical was a full time job in the spring. I have many fond memories even though my skill set was limited and their costumes & set were professional quality. ( the whole thing was actually)
:)</p>
<p>Obviously, I got a tad off topic, but if youve read this far, I would mention that I think we need a better ratio of caring adults to kids in schools. Not just herd them through because thats the way it was when * we * were in school.</p>
<p>Not every single parent in the country is responsible, or ever will be. Not every administrator in every school in the country is going to be on top of every kid every day. Those are just facts. The belief that we’ll be safe if only everyone will be perfect all the time is naive. </p>
<p>I didnt say, we would be " safe".
But perhaps we should have childrens mental and physical health at least as a * goal*, instead of only interested in test (& football) scores.</p>
<p>I agree, ek. I was addressing those who think the parents and/or schools are to blame for all the gun violence.</p>
<p>I think we have reached a tipping point. Much of the media today has been showing a map of the US with the 74 places marked where there has been a school shooting since Newtown. Obama mentioned this yesterday --that he’s frustrated. And the NRA has been amazingly quiet. </p>
<p>I think former NY Mayor Bloomberg has been incredibly outspoken – he has founded a couple of groups and has donated mega-millions: <a href=“http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/16/us-usa-guns-bloomberg-idUSBREA3F10F20140416”>http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/16/us-usa-guns-bloomberg-idUSBREA3F10F20140416</a></p>
<p>I’m unsure of anyone has seen or has mention this, but MTV has a commercial addressing the Oregon shooting and how it’s the 74th school shooting since Sandy Hook. </p>
<p>I don’t get why the NRA is always so quiet.
<a href=“Seattle Pacific University Shooting Hero Debunks The NRA's Biggest and Most Bogus Claim”>http://www.politicususa.com/2014/06/07/pepper-spray-seattle-pacific-university-shooting-hero-debunks-nras-biggest-claim.html</a></p>
<p>They were silent for several days after Sandy Hook too. I think they understand when it would be a bad time to say that the answer is more guns, which is always their answer. But they beat back the outrage after that, and they’ll beat it back again. </p>
<p>They could advocate for many things besides more guns that wouldn’t upset their position except with those who cannot be swayed by reason or ethics.</p>
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<p>You mean like maybe a mental health database to make sure mentally ill people are not getting access to guns due to poor reporting and lack of information?</p>
<p>"The issue came to a head after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. Shooter Seung-Hui Cho was, under federal law, ineligible to purchase a firearm after a Virginia judge had declared him to be a danger to himself. At that time, however, Virginia had no law requiring reporting of mental health records to the federal database. Cho’s disqualifying diagnosis was never transmitted into the background check database. "</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/21/the-nra-wants-an-active-mental-illness-database-thirty-eight-states-have-that-now/”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/21/the-nra-wants-an-active-mental-illness-database-thirty-eight-states-have-that-now/</a></p>
<p>Oh, that was shouted down by the mental health lobby.</p>
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</p>
<p>What proposal for more guns are you talking about? I missed that.</p>
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<p>I believe this will change. I don’t know how, but I do believe it’s time. </p>
<p>I have decided that for the next couple of election cycles i am not going to make any donations to politicians, but only to groups that work for gun control and in opposition to the NRA. Our elected officials are unwilling and/or unable to work. The only thing that seems to have any effect is lobbying money, which the NRA has in abundance. I figure my money is better spent trying to offset the NRA’s financial muscle than on the election of specific candidates.</p>
<p>And if it’s not obvious, one needs to write one’s representatives – both House and Senate – repeatedly. My particular representatives are on the “right” side of the issue, but I’ve told them in my emails that that’s no longer sufficient. I expect them to be leaders in this issue and to actively take steps to get guns out of our public arena. </p>
<p>I have also done that, veryhappy. I expect them to be sponsoring and cosponsoring legislation on this issue.</p>
<p>Apparently this shooter had a semi-automatic rifle, a handgun and a knife along with 9 loaded magazines capable of holding several hundred rounds and body armor. He got them from home. This article says that they were secured but he was able to access them anyway (knew combo or something). He carried them on the school bus in a guitar case and a duffle.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Police-Shooter-at-Oregon-school-had-assault-rifle-262753261.html”>http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Police-Shooter-at-Oregon-school-had-assault-rifle-262753261.html</a></p>
<p>In other words, they weren’t secured.</p>
<p>Gun violence in NYC is up 43-percent since they stopped “stop & frisk”. This is a classic collision of rights and freedoms. Half the country wants the rights and half the country wants the freedoms. Both don’t seem to work well.</p>
<p>Also, to the posters who think it’s perfectly understandable not to know that your high school kid is packing heat. Are you kidding?</p>
<p>^^Exactly!!! A gun is not a 777 and a house is not the Indian Ocean. A involved parent would notice! I know more than kiddos suspect I knew about their HS life, but I stayed out of it. However, if I saw something dangerous, I would have been on top of things. Unfortunately, not all parents are so involved or have the luxury to be so involved (working multiple jobs trying to make ends meet, etc.).</p>