Today's horrible news

[dreamflower]

I can hardly believe it. I was very late learning about it. We slept most of the day, and watched the news late (we always DVR the news and watch it later)--and so today we found out much later than everyone else did.

I can't help but thinking of all those poor babies being slaughtered for no reason, all those parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters who've been planning Christmas and buying presents and anticipating the joy, and now it has all turned to ashes.

Why? Why do some people have to try to spread their own misery to as many other people as possible in such a violent and horrific way? I can't begin to understand. I suppose I ought to feel as sorry for the shooter as I do for his victims, but I just can't.

And guns? Especially assault weapons. Yes, it's true that someone determined to be violent and commit murder will find a way. But at least the havoc would be reduced if they did not have such an easy way to harm so many people at once. Perhaps their evil would be confined to a smaller number--not that even one murder is acceptable, but still...

I don't know. I guess I'll never know. All I can do is pray.

Comments

[westwindschild.livejournal.com]

I also heard about it very late in the day; on the drive home after a beautiful afternoon. Little glow of happiness inside --- completely extinguished.

I can get inside the mindset of misery and wanting to end it all. I can even almost get inside wanting to make the ones you blame for it pay for your misery. But mowing down a room full of babies? I can't even begin to conceive what it would take for that much horrible to seem like an option.

I don't think today was what the founding fathers had in mind when they included the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights. Given the changes in technology and our culture since the 1700s, I don't know if they would consider a well-regulated militia to be a necessity for the maintenance of a free and peaceful society anymore at all.

[dreamflower]

I don't think today was what the founding fathers had in mind when they included the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights.

I agree. It's a shame they couldn't know what it would lead to, or I think they would have phrased it some other way.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

It's just so horrible. I can't even begin to imagine what was going on in his head to make him do such a thing. I feel sick thinking about it.

[dreamflower]

I know. It's hard to fathom. Of course he was insane--but I just can't begin to feel sorry for him. Why are people like that even allowed to get guns in the first place?

[lilybaggins.livejournal.com]

But he did NOT get the guns legally! He tried to buy a rifle and he was turned down---the gun laws working---so he STOLE his mother's guns and used them illegally. A person under 21 can't even legally use a pistol.

I admit I'm not a gun control advocate, but it is baffling to me why society believes criminals will obey gun laws. There are already a ton in place and it hasn't made any difference.

[wizard42745.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why he was even allowed to enter the school. If I heard right, the principal had locks installed so that any visitor had to be buzzed in. Whoever let him in, didn't they noticed his guns? It's not as if the guns were hidden. He killed his mother, then targeted the children in his mother's class! How sad for for the parents and siblings.

[dreamflower]

I found that puzzling as well. I hope we will learn how that occurred.

Some people just want to make everyone else miserable and take others with them when they go. Why? I don't know.

[pearltook1]

It is all so horrible.

Horrible at any time but worse at Christmas, a holiday celebrating a child and so child-centered.

I don't feel sorry for the shooter at all. I do for whatever family he has left as it is a horrible ordeal for the family of those who do such atrocities, but I don't feel sorry for him at all.

(((Dreamflower)))

[dreamflower]

(((hugs back)))

Christmas will be tainted for those families from now on.

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

We had a similiar atrocity in the UK about 20 years ago when a gun fanatic shot a class of small children and their teacher. Guns were banned here as result. I just can't fathom how anyone could kill little children.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre

[dreamflower]

Yes, I remember that, and your country was smart enough to make sure that it stopped at the one time! Other countries have much more intelligent viewpoints about guns and don't believe that it's everyone's right to have them.

But there have been dozens of such incidents over here, mostly high schools or colleges, but a few years ago someone did the same to a schoolhouse of Amish children. And this year alone there have been massacres in malls and at movie theaters.

The gun lobby is powerful here. There is no way the NRA would allow all guns to be banned, and there are too many fanatics who think that they need to "protect their right to bear arms". But at least assault weapons need to be forbidden to people who are not in the military or the police. You don't need an assault weapon to go hunting.

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

We British find your gun laws hard to comprehend when we read of one school shooting after another.I wish some sort of regulation could be put into force, such as a ban on assault rifles to protect children from such cruel and senseless slaughter. My heart goes out to the families of those litttle children.

[gamgeefest.livejournal.com]

The UK may have banned guns but you still have gun-related crime and such crimes have risen 35% in the last year.

The reason these criminals (who aren't worried about upholding the laws we have in place to prevent these things from happening) choose schools is because they're gun-free zones. They know there's no one there to stop them before the police show up and start going down their procedural checklist.

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

Most of the gun related crime here is gang members shooting each other with illegal weapons in rundown inner cities, therefore gunmen running amok and shooting innocents is mercifully very rare.

I don't think I've ever seen a gun even other than antique weapons in museums.

[gamgeefest.livejournal.com]

Our gangs aren't polite enough to keep their violence in-house. Too many of them have that cartel mentality. And I'm not keen on the only people having guns being the police, the military and the criminals. No thank you.

I grew up with guns. My dad has pistols, a magnum, a six-shooter, a rifle and a shotgun. We used to go out target-practicing every summer. My dad taught us how to handle them, clean them and use them responsibly. My brother has a couple that my grandfather had. I don't own a gun myself though.

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

I guess it is a matter of different cultures. Even the police rarely carry guns here and only a few have them in certain circumstances such as if a suspect is suspected of carrying a gun.

[lilybaggins.livejournal.com]

AMEN!

I grew up with guns, too. I am completely BAFFLED as to why society believes that CRIMINALS will obey gun laws. New York has a ban on handguns, so does that mean they have no crimes committed with them? Of course not!

Banning guns just takes the freedom away from law-abiding citizens, giving criminals even more of a chance to take advantage of innocent people.

[gamgeefest.livejournal.com]

Private gun ownership was banned in Mexico. Look how well that worked out for them. They have more gun-related deaths than we do. Chicago and DC also banned guns and that's only made things worse there too.

Law-abiding citizens who own guns, respect them and use them properly are not the ones causing all this mayhem. The vast majority of gun-related crime is from people acquiring guns illegally. Outlawing guns will do nothing to prevent this from happening again. It will only prevent citizens from protecting themselves.

[dreamflower]

To get an idea of the mindset of many Americans I don't know how often today that I heard people comment on the shooting with the cliche "Guns don't kill people, people do!" and fears that this might cause the gov't to try and have stricter gun laws, because you know owning an assault weapon is a right! When I point out that there was no such thing as assault weapons in the 1700s when our Constitution was drafted and that if the murderer was restricted to such weapons as a knife or even a handgun or an ordinary rifle, that the death toll would have been much less, they just give me a look and repeat that they hope that it doesn't cause them to lose their "rights", as if that was more important than the lives of innocent children.

Yet they'd also be horrified if you told them that was how they sounded!

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is hard for me to comprehend the mindset of the gun lobby.After Dunblane there was a huge petition here to ban guns which had massive public approval.Yes, we do get people killed by criminals with guns, about 50 a year,in a population of 63 million, I believe,still too many, but it would be far worse without the laws against guns.

At least I know that many of my American friends don't like guns any more than most of my British friends.I don't desire the "right" to own a lethal weapon. I think guns are far too easy to cause mayhem with if someone gets angry ect or suffers some mental disorder.

My friends in the UK are all upset about the tragedy of the children too.

[lilybaggins.livejournal.com]

I'll pray with you... it's just so shocking and awful. And at Christmas!

I read that the shooter played video games. I'm reading that more and more (the mall shooting this week, James Holmes...) and I'm wondering if there is a connection somehow with extreme violence in video games and these sorts of things.

[dreamflower]

I wouldn't doubt it. I think the mindless violence in the games tends to make a shooter think of victims merely as targets to score in the game.

Add to that the fact that for some of them (especially the ones who get themselves dead in the end) is that it makes their suicide easier to take as many as they can with them.

[fafojoy.livejournal.com]

I don't know how people without faith survive or get through such things. My only hope is knowing we have a loving just God who knows and understands, even when we don't. I can only imagine the pain those families are in, the fear of the children who survived, the long term coping they will need as a community. And what we can do is pray for them, which is no small thing.