At least 27 people - including 18 children - have reportedly been killed in one of the worst school shootings in US history.


kindergarten kids. I am almost shaking thinking about it. my daughter turns 5 on tuesday.

Yeah, it's garbage.

freaking sick.

school only had kids from kindergarden to grade 4

really really sad. What else can you say:(

At first, CNN was only saying two ppl, as well as the gunman, were killed.

Then, it said close to 20 dead.

Now it's saying close to 30 dead.


And I'm thinking that if I would have been there, I may have been able to stop it before it got ridiculous. And I'm knowing that I would have probably just added to the body count.

yeah, apparently the primary target of the shooter was his mother, who was a teacher there.

Evil. Pure evil. Nothing else to say here.

So sad =(

I wish we had more to say about these shootings as a society and the media too.
The killers are almost always not psychopaths but people who suffer from major depression. An illness that runs rampant in our societies. I'd like to know why =(

msg in our food is why, we dont hunt/forage anymore


oh and drugs/alcohol, not to mention corporal punishment at schools and compulsory military conscription, where you were taught respect not only for others but yourself.


bassically food and the world is too PC and mind altering substances, yes im an alcoholic and drug use myself...

fluff that guy.

If only those elementary school kids were armed, they could've stopped this rampage alot sooner..

Leave it to Trife to troll with idiotic bullfluff

awww, still butthurt about the election? =)

Yeah its pretty horrible

This is unimaginable. I'm an elementary school teacher... I can't even begin to think what it must be like for that community. This makes me sick. These are kids. fluff.

Trife - you're making a joke within hours of 20 young children being killed. There is no universe in which that's appropriate. You know better.

The shooter should've just taken his own life, this is sickening.

When talking about this incident around my office people mentioned this as well (as why this incident will be very hard for the gun lobby to argue against, precisely because they can't use their typical argument of arming the victims = solution).

Regardless, I assume Robert Redford is elbow deep in organizing a rally in Connecticut as we speak.

There's no gun control that will stop a murderer(s) from killing, they will find other means even if you take every gun from this planet and make them vanish, its a cold hard fact to swallow, sad day :-(

That's funny. Why doesn't this happen with such regularity elsewhere in the west them? It happens in the States and only there. Everywhere else is an exception when it happens because it is so rare. Take the guns away and it is far far harder to get one for some guy who just snaps.

This situation is so sad though. Poor kids :(

ahh there we go. someone with a bit of brains is able to figure out what i was getting at.

i'm not a horrible monster, hawkeye, i was making a point. i know first hand how horrible these mass shootings are - my roommate was shot 3 times in the virginia tech event, but thankfully recovered fully.

It happens often enough in Europe to not call them exceptions. There's not a one-on-one relation between gun laws and mass shootings.

there not being a one-to-one relation != there being a statistically significant correlation between frequency of shootings and laxness of gun laws (i suppose that's up to how you measure it)

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a correlation.
But there have to be other factors.

There was a girl in a town, in Holland, about an hour's drive from me that commited suicide this week by jumping in front of a train in view of her classmates that had bullied her.
I was reading a discussion about it on a forum and someone called her a coward, someone else responded that it was good he was never bullied because if he had been he might have done the same and take some people with him. It's easy to see how you could have a mass shooting on your hands like that.

Evidently it's not enough to be shocked and to call the killer a sicko or complain about gun laws.

Most people seem to live in their own little world and take no responsibility for the problems in society. What we do really care about others?

I only looked at one aspect of it Magellan and the entirety of Europe had 16 in the one category since 2000 and the US had 19 despite having a vastly smaller population. I dont think it included things like school shootings etc though.

Feel sorry for all the families, so many lost. Very sad news indeed.

Looked at school shootings.. apparently China sucks :/

17 for China, although quite a few had only injuries and no deaths. Also their huge population partially explains that...
8 for USA
12 for the rest of the world. 3 of which were Germany with the next highest total.

That is since 2000 again. Bleh.. the top three most deadly were all in the USA too :/

And Switzerland?

seems like the sample size is way too small to draw any strong conclusions if there really were that few shootings

Guns are about to be scapegoated for what happened in CT. Unfortunately, the problem is much deeper than that. The problem is that we are a society that produces men capable of using guns to kill 20 children. Boys grow up with mixed messages as to what it means to be a man. Too often they grow up without fathers at all. We teach children that right and wrong is relative to each individual. We no longer value personal responsibility and instead blame all personal failures on something else. We reject moral authority higher than the self.

just nuke every town this stuff happens in, and you'll eventually kill all the bad guys.

And yet you couldn't even wait one day before attempting to use this tragedy as propaganda?

I'm wondering about all the warning signals that were more or less ignored for this to happen.

Of course, hindsight being 20/20 and all that...

Very sad indeed. Such youth wasted without even having a shoot at the "celebration" called life.

However this brings into my mind another thread that was heavly debated a while ago - about guns and the freedom to get them in USA compared with any other country in the world.

There - an idiot was trying to convince the audience that is his RIGHT to purchase any weapons for his own fun ( i think he was saying that he was shooting the weapons for fun somewhere outside the civilisation ).

However when sane people can get a Colt with an id paper than it won`t be to hard for an insane idiot ( or a sane one who will turn into an insane after an unfortunate event ) to get one.

Therefore the right to carry/purchase a weapon easy will always lead to such unfortunate events in USA.

That is just school shootings. It is the entire world's results since 2000. The sample size is fine.

"This section of the list of rampage killers contains cases that occurred at kindergartens, schools and universities, as well as their affiliated buildings. If the perpetrator was a member of the school staff and the victims primarily his colleagues the case is not included here, but added to the list of workplace killings."

"This list shall contain every case with at least one of the following features:
Mass murder cases with six or more dead (excluding the perpetrator)
Mass murder cases with a double digit number of victims (dead plus injured)
Mass murders by intention with at least a dozen victims (dead plus injured)"

That leaves out everything that was smaller than those numbers and was faculty initiated. The sample size is already too big.

you worry about people being able to purchase weapons, but how many cops are out there walking around with them within easy reach?

I hope he's not another earth player.

I meant the sample you posted was too small to draw any conclusions from. It's going to under/overstate the true probability of school shootings especially in smaller countries. If we have something with only about 30 observations globally since 2000, whether a lot of countries (esp small ones) have a school shooting is a function of luck as opposed to any characteristics about the country.

I agree in smaller countries but the total number of incidents they have if all categories are included is 1261 which is sizable enough overall.

calm down and have a wank, ya deutsch. obama's not coming for your guns - no need to get your thong all wrapped up around your balls... geeesh lol

p.s. you sure it was even propaganda? and not just how people have different ways of dealing with tragedy? piss off.

My prayers are with the families of the victims.


I think it’s more of a security issue not a gun issue. Unfortunately schools are soft targets the security if any at all is very lax. Even the ones that "lock" the doors at a certain time will usually buzz you right in no questions asked. Others with 1 "controlled entry point" often have an old woman that should be long retired guarding/greeting you when you walk in. An armed police officer or security guard at the entry point will go a long way to deter someone looking for an easy target. If they truly want to kill they will do whatever it takes, outlaw guns they will make homemade bombs, Beef up security in schools they will go to the some other soft target i.e. Park, sports field, church ect... Guns or no guns Bad people are going to bad things no matter what. The worst school disaster in the US remains Bath School Massacre of 1927 and no guns were involved. It is happening more frequently because we are becoming a morally corrupt and broken society. Traditional family values and giving back to the community is no longer the centrifuge of our society. We have become a society of people who will do anything for a quick buck no matter what the cost, a society where a criminal’s rights are more important than swift justice for their victims.

Does it strike anyone as too early for the gun control debate?

I understand its an issue, but if it took you less than 12 hours to digest this and make any sort of sense in it....well you are far wiser than I.

Not totally true. IF someone will just bring up the % of weapons (legally purchased in any of the states) and used in this type of massacres you`ll notice that a properly gun control = less unfortunate events.

When so many own guns, automatics etc. one day, something, somewhere will go wrong. Maybe not at your place, maybe not at your friends place - but it will happen.

A Neighbours fight over the dog poo, a bullied teenager at school, some kids playing with dad`s guns.

At that point people will be the victims of their own ignorance.

Or.... murder will always happen guns or no guns they will just find other ways of killing and alin the states with the most guns to people are the safest

The 31 states that have "shall issue" laws allowing private citizens to carry concealed weapons have, on average, a 24 percent lower violent crime rate, a 19 percent lower murder rate and a 39 percent lower robbery rate than states that forbid concealed weapons. The nine states with the lowest violent crime rates are all right-to-carry states. Guns are used for self-defense more than 2 million times a year, three to five times the estimated number of violent crimes committed with guns.

Helmet, can't believe I'm saying this... I couldn't agree with you more. People are always looking for the easy blame.

PS locket, this also happened today:

http://www.cbsnews.com/...attack-leaves-23-injured/

Knives should be banned also right?

Source?

this is about 40 mins away from me, its a pretty small town.

the gun control argument is stupid, the kid wasnt even old enough to legally own a gun, even if guns were not legal for people to carry he still would have done it. crazy people find any means to do the crazy fluff they do.

Helmet, can't believe I'm saying this... I couldn't agree with you more. People are always looking for the easy blame.

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I'd love to hear what other opinions I've had that you find so illogical.

bonus

I won't side-track this post. We just disagreed constantly on PDM-SoF politics 2 resets ago.