My GOD another elementary school shooting

[uklandrn]

I just found this out and want to throw up. At least 14 dead according to the news report I read. More injured. 18 year old gunman killed by police. I want to just fly away. The world is just too ugly. I can't imagine sending my child to school and finding out I have to plan a funeral hours later. May God comfort those families.

[BigBluePappy]

As news trickles in, it appears it was an 18 year old who had shot his own grandmother just prior to the shooting at the school.
Kids killing babies.
May God have Mercy on us all.

[dan_bgblue]

Experts are blaming it on "the pandemic". Closing the schools and trying to have school on a PC led to mental issues. I saw it in my 16 year old granddaughter and my 12 year old grandson. They lost out on the peer activities and were forced to wear masks every where they went and to school when they returned to in classroom schooling. There was an amount of fear involved due to all the TV news showing all the hospital patients and the reports of deaths due to the disease every night, plus the loss of activities among friends and relying on social media to stay in contact.

[bigsky]

I had armed guards at my high school my senior year, 1970-71. Why doesn’t every school have a guard with a nice Benelli semi auto and a 10mm?

[kingcat]

I had armed guards at my high school my senior year, 1970-71. Why doesn’t every school have a guard with a nice Benelli semi auto and a 10mm?

I agree. That's about the only answer.

[dan_bgblue]

Many schools have security personnel, but most if not all of the are unarmed, and there are generally only one or two of them to patrol a mile or two of school hallways. The most effective ones are positioned at front entrances and the doors are locked.

[Catfan73]

They’re stabbing each other now in Louisville. Must have run out of ammo.

[KentuckyWildcat]

Many schools have security personnel, but most if not all of the are unarmed, and there are generally only one or two of them to patrol a mile or two of school hallways. The most effective ones are positioned at front entrances and the doors are locked.

I worked 17 years at a college. Every door on that college was a point of entry and all of them were unlocked. I finally got an SRO on campus and couldn't win for losing. Try to be proactive and one group was mad. Be more reactive and one group was mad. Never mind the resistance I got by trying to criminally trespass some individuals that were NOT even students and causing all kinds of issues.

[CitizenBBN]

We as a nation need to ask ourselves about our mental health system. What kind of person can just kill kids like that, regardless of the weapon?

Prior to the Texas tower shooting in the 60s this country had basically no mass shootings of random people like this, despite massive availability of plenty of guns that could do that job as well as any modern semi-auto. We also had very little of all the other crimes we see in this country as well.

You had some serial killers out there, but nothing like this mass, young teenage, insanity.

You also had nowhere near this level of homeless problem, or drug problem.

All of it is tied to mental illness. It's not a gun problem or a housing problem, it's a structural societal problem that we are creating and then not treating or otherwise securing these people from our midst. Nearly every one of these cases if not every one had at least some warning signs, and some of them had massive warning signs up to and including police and others being aware of the threats that were then carried out. Heck, it was even true of that bombing in Nashville that took out part of the AT&T network.

We have to examine how we handle mental illness in this country, and how we deal with those who are threats to themselves and others. Bluntly we have to be a lot less nice about it.

It's one of the biggest mistakes, if not the biggest mistake of the Reagan era that we went away from mental hospitals and making some people wards of the state. Now they wander the streets, and these young teens to young adults committing most of these crimes are clearly not getting either the help they need nor the security society needs from them.

The answer may be broader powers to commit people, and funding to have the facilities to do it.

I fear as a nation and as a planet we are creating a society in which we really don't function well as human beings. Isolation, lack of community, near constant input and stimulation, an obvious indifference to others. I think we are building a world that isn't really suited to our makeup as humans.

It's sickening what some people in this country are capable of doing. You see this in wars, in nations with dire desperate poverty, but seeing it here is senseless.