is it just me?

[evanescencefan91]

is it just me or are public shootings becoming more common?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/niu_shooting

I saw this article on the yahoo home page.

there was virgina tech last year 30 people definitly the worst so far, the amish killings. And the Omaha mall shooting that was so sad because a lot of them where christmas shopping. And it's weird becuase it wasn't at school so it wasn't like he was killing people that he knew and had harassed him. He was just killing strangers.

I even heard that some guy was planing on going to the super bowl to kill a bunch of people he was like in the parking lot. luckily he was caught before he could hurt anyone.

It's weird because there isn't a motive and they ussally commit suicide afterwards.

I've been very emotinally distressed the last few years that i can actually sympathise for the killer. of course i feel for the victems and the family.

But i think I understand. they where tired of such a hard and distresing life, they had probably been lonely and harassed by others. They wanted to kill themselves. But if they did. It felt like that was too small of an act to comprise their terrible and unforunate lives. And when they do the family will mourn. But no one would remeber them. They probably had few friends, probably not very kown in school or their community. I guess they wanted to go down in some kind of blaze of glory, if they went down they felt they should take others down with them people that made them suffer people that made them hurt. And even if they will be remembered of somekind of monster or horrible person at least they will be remebered. No one wants to die and have there be no trace of their existance left on the world.

i guess I would like to hear some of your guys opinions on this,

Also a major issue i think is that it is too easy for people, escpecially in the US, to obtain firearms. I think there should be a limit on the kind of guns that are aviable to citizens, i don't really know much about guns, but these people are getting, big guns. A lot of them are obtained illegally too, i don't think gun control should be banned, the reason the right to bear arms was given to the people in 1976 was so that we form a milita in a time of crisis and rise up against the goernment in case it became corrupted. I don't think people should get rifles in case some one breaks into their house, it's fairly unlikely and if it did happen you would probably just lose some material items.

I think that gun control should be regulated a lot better, and have more severe crimes against the illegal obtaining of guns.

What do you think?

 

[sloth4urluv]

I think you need to stick with giving out hugs instead of bullets.

Ive thought about killing myself many times, but never taking anyone else with me. Thats not my call to make wether that person deserves to live or die.

about gun control I dont really see the need for people to own a gun, but im pretty much against any legislation that violates my personal freedom. I think the government has become an overcomplicated and overcontrolling piece of honeysuckle. Somewhere along the lines the government has shifted its purpose from serving us to us serving it. fresia babysitting me! I already have parents to do that, instead spend my money on something usefull like restructuring our crappy ass education system, or improving the honeysuckle ass roads where I live. I dont want my money bieng spent on some dumbass election campaign where it ends up making no difference who gets elected anyways.


im pissed off now...

 

[evanescencefan91]

I'm sorry

 

[sloth4urluv]

I'm sorry

Lol not your fault

Just the way the government is driving is straight into poverty is maddening.
Thus country needs a tyrant to take office and format the government like it was a computer filled with spyware and crap.

 

[Hijacc]

we have brought this upon ourselves,people making fun of other people,it is a disgusting act
And is the cause of most school shootings =/

 

[IgnoredOne]

Gun control is the surest way to make sure that guns only get into the hands of the wrong people. The black market for guns, like the black market for illegal drugs, cannot be completely suppressed as even nations like Engand have discovered. This results in criminals obtaining more firearms, and actual crime rate being as high if not higher than in the US.

The fact remains that the best deterrent against armed criminals is armed and law-abiding citizens.

Regards,
IO

 

[Matt]

These high school shooters aren't "criminals" in gangs. They're "regular" kids who were able to obtain firearms from friends or relatives (or just bought them, even).

 

[IgnoredOne]

These high school shooters aren't "criminals" in gangs. They're "regular" kids who were able to obtain firearms from friends or relatives (or just bought them, even).

Then the fault lies with those who were provided them with guns, but also with those who did /not/ carry guns that could have easily stopped him. In a democracy, gun ownership is as much as a responsibility as it is a right.

Regards,
IO

 

[Larsen B]

They seem to be coming quite common don't they?

Where do they get the idea from to do such things, that's what i would ask.

I mean in the Wild West there were plenty of guns, and plenty of bad people using them i'm sure, but did they go into schools and start shooting kids? No.

Something's happened to these modern shootist's brains - maybe something that is de-sensitizing them to violence and gun crime. Hmmm...what can we blame? Computer games, the gun-crazed media, government setting bad examples with illegal wars - with horrendous disregard for life, the break down in community - values, a common good and community spirit, or modern parents who just don't care about anything. Maybe all of the above.

 

[Hijacc]

Its us children we are to blame for the shootings.
We make fun of kids to the point were we drive them insane
to the point were they dont know what to do anymore
so they just take anyone they
care about or hate out with them
it is sad and even i have caught myself
saying something rash to another student it is
disgusting and i hate that ive done that i will
never do it again,and if i do and someone gets hurt for
i couldnt live with myself.We have ourselves to blame
How far weve come.......*head in hands*

 

[sloth4urluv]

Its us children we are to blame for the shootings.
We make fun of kids to the point were we drive them insane
to the point were they dont know what to do anymore
so they just take anyone they
care about or hate out with them
it is sad and even i have caught myself
saying something rash to another student it is
disgusting and i hate that ive done that i will
never do it again,and if i do and someone gets hurt for
i couldnt live with myself.We have ourselves to blame
How far weve come.......*head in hands*

Agreed, its become common practice to ridicule anyone that is different.

 

[stone-rose]

It is very sad to see such things occurring much more often lately. Student life can be incredibly tough for people especially when they feel they can't "fit in" and then become ostracized. And it's difficult to tell what happens to someone's mental state after a period of time. And it breaks my heart to hear things like this. True, we don't know the killer's motives most times (especially if they take themselves as well), but if someone's going back to their school, it's plausible that something happened there that triggered the action.

I'm very against the right to owning firearms, it frightens me a lot. I feel safer living in Canada because of this. But for people that wouldn't question going out and doing such a thing, it's pretty easy to do. There should be a better way of controlling firearms to, at least, decrease the possibility of these things happening.

 

[Matt]

These high school shooters aren't "criminals" in gangs. They're "regular" kids who were able to obtain firearms from friends or relatives (or just bought them, even).

Then the fault lies with those who were provided them with guns, but also with those who did /not/ carry guns that could have easily stopped him. In a democracy, gun ownership is as much as a responsibility as it is a right.

Regards,
IO

Actually, the most recent shooter was a 27 year-old former student who purchased two guns legally less than a week ago, and even had a valid Firearm Owner's Identification Card.

The notion that everyone has a responsibility to carry a gun around to shoot down troublemakers is a little scary, don't ya think? ><

 

[NeverMore]

Something's happened to these modern shootist's brains - maybe something that is de-sensitizing them to violence and gun crime. Hmmm...what can we blame? Computer games, the gun-crazed media, government setting bad examples with illegal wars - with horrendous disregard for life, the break down in community - values, a common good and community spirit, or modern parents who just don't care about anything. Maybe all of the above.

My thoughts exactly. I read an article I forget where, but it said that the way we raise kids and the environment they grow up in now a days, like you said with the media and things, is causing them to be desensitized and their brains closely resemble that of serial killers, where they feel no guilt for what they do. I think the blame doesn't lie in the kids but in the **** media, and rather the parents that don't stop their kids from being exposed to it. An example, I don't know if you remember, but there was a teen some years ago who went on a rampage based on what he did in grand theft auto, the video game, and when he got arrested, he said life's a video game, we all have to die eventually or something like that. But the point is he wasn't 18, he shouldn't have been allowed to play that kind of a game, his parents or someone should have stopped him in the first place...

 

[Kristen]

Indigo Is Blue,



nice avatar, which flower is that?
I think flowers and butterflies and birds are cool

 

[Larsen B]

Indigo Is Blue,


nice avatar, which flower is that?
I think flowers and butterflies and birds are cool

Very pretty isn't it? It's a tulip! Albeit a photoshoped tulip Was pink, now it's bleu! Yeah! Cute

Huggles

"flowers and butterflies and birds are cool" ~ i think i'll use that

 

[armor4sleepPA]

Yes, something has changed. From an educator's prospective, I'd say it's partly due to the domino effect, so to speak. Adolescents often react to suicides and shootings by repeating those behaviors themselves. Suicidal kids see others dying and it gives validity to their cause. It also provides a sense of pressure to follow through. Suicide pacts are horrific, as some students teetering on the edge and possibly looking for a way out end up going through with it simply because they've agreed to do so. Shootings... another story altogether. Violent kids with these tendancies often mull these feelings about in their heads, and when shooting after shooting is successfully carried out, they gain confidence and eventually follow suit.

It's sad. The more it happens, the more it will happen in the future. Each success is a challenge to a would-be killer to step up to the plate themselves. When people feel they have nothing to lose, they don't fear consequences. That's the scariest part...

 

[Kristen]

Indigo Is Blue,


nice avatar, which flower is that?
I think flowers and butterflies and birds are cool

Very pretty isn't it? It's a tulip! Albeit a photoshoped tulip Was pink, now it's bleu! Yeah! Cute

Huggles

"flowers and butterflies and birds are cool" ~ i think i'll use that

yea I love tulips. there are blue real ones too

 

[IgnoredOne]

Actually, the most recent shooter was a 27 year-old former student who purchased two guns legally less than a week ago, and even had a valid Firearm Owner's Identification Card.

The notion that everyone has a responsibility to carry a gun around to shoot down troublemakers is a little scary, don't ya think? ><

No more frightening than any of the following ideas:

1) That the sole responsibility for my safety lies in the hand of authority figures(police) that are not necessarily accountable for my safety and who are as potentially corrupt as anyone else, but have far more power to utilize their corruption.

2) That said authority figures will then centralize and legalize their ownership of firearms, while depriving me of the same ability to utilize force, essentially forcing me to surrender either to their power and their intepretation of society or to criminals with guns.

3) That every single adult human being has the ability to potentially destroy the world, no matter how poorly educated, irrational, or even insane, by giving them one vote.

True democracy cannot coexist with gun control, especially if you understand the origins of modern democracy. I would be very happy if all guns vanished from the Earth immediately, because chances are my bloodline and the bloodlines of all other warrior nobility would immediately come to dominate again.

Guns made people equal by giving them all more or less the same killing power, whereas in the past, someone of the warrior caste such as a knight or a samurai was easily the equal fighter over eight or ten untrained men. There would have been no vote, and no mass enfranchisement as the hereditary nobility would simply suppress any movement toward equality by force. Only with the dawning of gunpowder did every single angry peasant become a real threat, and the playing field was levelled.

And soon after that, came modern democracy.

Its not a concidence.

Regards,
IO

 

[evanescencefan91]

Yes, something has changed. From an educator's prospective, I'd say it's partly due to the domino effect, so to speak. Adolescents often react to suicides and shootings by repeating those behaviors themselves. Suicidal kids see others dying and it gives validity to their cause. It also provides a sense of pressure to follow through. Suicide pacts are horrific, as some students teetering on the edge and possibly looking for a way out end up going through with it simply because they've agreed to do so. Shootings... another story altogether. Violent kids with these tendancies often mull these feelings about in their heads, and when shooting after shooting is successfully carried out, they gain confidence and eventually follow suit.

It's sad. The more it happens, the more it will happen in the future. Each success is a challenge to a would-be killer to step up to the plate themselves. When people feel they have nothing to lose, they don't fear consequences. That's the scariest part...

ya, Columbine literally started a trend I was watching this pschye program on thescience channel and i think they called it the Werther effect, or copycat suicide. great name for a metal band by the way-I'm calling dibs. it was named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Where the pangs of unrequeted love drives the protagonists to commit suicide, which actually led to suicides of the readers.
Which is why someplaces don't ussally report suicides.

It's scary to think how much the world affects our own self thought pysche.

they identified the illinois killer, I guess he stopped taking some medication, and that they didn't see any kind of warning sign.

A few years ago two kids a local highschool commited suicide, one of them went to my church, though i didn't know them because i was younger at the time and i never really could make friends at church either. Last year at another highschool where i live someone wrote on a bathroom wall on that on a certain day like in a week, "we're all going to die" The school staff found it and had a ton of police on capmus that day so fortunatly nothing happened. Luckily i haven't had any incidents at my school, though there are a fair amounts of fights that occur, we've got some security guards. but in big cities they have metal detecters, and that stuff, but sometimes it doesn't prevent violence