<p>Saintfan shared with us that “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”</p>
<p>Something tells me that a parent who kept semiautomatic rifles, body armor and several hundred rounds of ammo, would not disapprove of his high school son handling guns. </p>
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<p>I don’t know how much is involvement vs. suspecting that your child is interested in owning much less using a gun.
(speaking here about the student who had the gun in his backpack, not the one who did the shooting).
Maybe a poor example, but I know a lot of parents who are very surprised at what age their kid starts having sex or that they are doing drugs and the type of drugs they are doing. And those parents seem very involved and interested in their kid’s lives.</p>
<p>I guess as a parent I can imagine being “surprised” about some of my kids’ interests or activities, but I think I’d notice if my kid left for school with a guitar case and a duffel bag instead of just a backpack. I am a single parent and it isn’t always easy to be present and stay on top of what they are doing. But it is a priority. And it certainly was even more so when my kids were only freshmen–by the end of high school, they had earned more trust.</p>
<p>Although mass school shootings are a new thing, packing a gun to school isn’t. My ex-H told me he kept a handgun in his locker for a while in high school when some other kids were bullying him. And he is 62 years old… don’t think he ever showed them (and certainly didn’t use it). But it has happened before…</p>
<p>“Involved” means exactly that, fluffy. Knowing things and preventing things from happening in the first place. </p>
<p>I have no idea if this is the case, but the article also said that his older brother is an Afghanistan vet. It’s certainly possible that the weapons and equipment belonged to the older brother.</p>
<p>The kid could have taken a guitar case on the school bus every day, who knows. One could play in band and hid stuff in your trombone case. I worry more about how he had access to the weapons than how he got the m to school. He must have looked pretty normal if he rode the bus and nobody noticed.</p>
<p>I have always been VERY involved in every sense with our kids, including chauffeuring them a lot until their got their licenses at 20 and 21 years of age (when they were at college, they had to figure out their own transportation). I absolutely knew a great deal about what they were doing much of the time they lived under our roof. Sadly, much of the time, they were honestly too sick to care about or do much other than play on their computers.</p>
<p>If you Google “school shootings Detroit” you find numerous reports of shootings occurring on school grounds or just outside a school but these have never gotten national attention. This is not a new phenomena. I believe the media is hyperfocused on it now and it shocks places where people don’t expect it to happen. They’ve had metal detectors in the schools in Detroit for a very long time. Nobody cared when it was happening in the inner city, but if it happens in happy “safe” suburbia, people become shocked and dismayed. It’s an interesting societal dynamic. </p>
<p>BarnardMom, I don’t entirely agree with you. There were shootings in inner cities near or in schools perhaps but what is becoming more prevalent are mass shootings in public places like schools. Situations like what happened at Virginia Tech, Newtown, Columbine, and so forth (sad to say there are too many to list!) have not been around quite to this degree for a long while. There are more and more of these happening. Yes, crime and murders have been around a while. This kind of mass murder and particularly of children or in public places, is a different situation and getting more and more common.</p>
<p>And…according to this article, the frequency of school shootings has risen sharply since the tragedy at Newtown:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.northjersey.com/news/frequency-of-school-shootings-in-u-s-has-risen-sharply-since-newtown-1.1033453”>http://www.northjersey.com/news/frequency-of-school-shootings-in-u-s-has-risen-sharply-since-newtown-1.1033453</a></p>
<p>Barnard, most violence in Detroit isn’t random. It’s targeted or accidental. Shootings in Detroit schools are different than random mass shootings.</p>
<p>Plus, statistics disagree with you.</p>
<p>Back about 40+ years ago, my relative’s school in Detroit was featured in the cover of Newsweek. He was the only non-black person attending the school and it has a LOT of problems. All his sisters ended up going to private schools instead. It was a very dangerous place, but am not aware that there were any mass shootings at the school like the ones in recent news reports since Columbine and now Newtown and so many other schools where children (especially very young ones) are the targets.</p>
<p>It seems like there are generally 3 categories: accidental shootings when a kid brings a gun in a backpack, targeted gang or grudge type shootings where a kid (who is not suicidal) brings a handgun and shoots at a specific person, and these slightly more random shootings where a person has an intent on causing mayhem and is wanting or willing to go down with the ship. They are all pretty disturbing but I think people jump up and down about the kind that they feel most vulnerable to. In my area my impression from watching and reading the news was that we have more of the first type . . . the “kid obtains (either finds or purchases) gun and brings it to school or nearby location and accidentally shoots classmate or friend”. Suddenly we have two very intentional “suicidal mayhem” type shooting pretty close to home. That gets people’s attention in a different way.</p>
<p>When was the last mass shooting in an inner city? Or the last shooting that wasn’t targeted (i.e., gang retaliation)? It is TRAGIC that any of our kids have to grow up in unsafe neighborhoods where people resolve their differences with guns and there’s a real risk of being hit by stray bullets just walking home from school. No child should have to grow up in fear like that. But solving that problem has more to do with poverty and lack of opportunity, in my opinion. What we are seeing elsewhere, as in Portland, Isla Vista, Newtown, etc., is people–also generally young men–indiscriminately using guns to vent their frustration with life (sometimes exacerbated by mental health issues).</p>
<p>If you look at the map of gun shooting, there’s almost no incidents between Mississsippi river and the Sierras. I would have thought that’s the real gun country. Maybe we have two countires, one thinks a gun is a tool the other a murder weapon. Could it be why we can’t have a national gun conversation? </p>
<p><a href=“http://soccer.si.com/soccer/planet-futbol/2014/06/11/jurgen-klinsmann-usa-will-not-win-world-cup-comments”>http://soccer.si.com/soccer/planet-futbol/2014/06/11/jurgen-klinsmann-usa-will-not-win-world-cup-comments</a></p>
<p>@Iglooo, I think you meant to attach a different map?</p>
<p>Oooops,</p>
<p><a href=“Guns in America After Newtown | BillMoyers.com”>http://billmoyers.com/2013/05/03/gun-violence-since-newtown/</a></p>
<p>The population is lower in a big swath between the Mississippi and the Sierras, which may contribute somewhat to the lower incidence in that region. But still–it’s pretty chilling to see where this is happening.</p>
<p>I do question the inclusion of some of the incidents included, such as the MIT shooting on 4/18/2013–that was work of the Boston Marathon bombers, not anything related specifically to the college campus.</p>
<p>I’m not seeing “almost nothing between the Mississippi and the Sierras.” I see no gun deaths where there are no people, but were there is any kind of population center there are gun recorded deaths.</p>