Ah, gun control. At least what the NRA might call it.
There will be a lot of irrelevant psychobabble about the shooter.
How he was toilet trained or whether he has an unresolved Oedipal complex is Freudian nonsense.
What we do know is that a 16 year old had a gun he should not have had.
We know he killed with that gun.
To help keep guns out of the hands of those who should not have them we need UNIFORM IN ALL 50 STATES gun safety laws so that someone who obtains a gun in a state with lax laws can not bring that gun into a state with stricter laws.
5
Why are we so fearful and insecure that we need to have guns? And, why is it that individual rights trump collective benefits?
3
I’m wondering as I watch another school shooting, Venice underwater, politicians lying even though we have transcripts and video showing them lying, micro plastic in our food, and on and on, if the coolaide drinking brainwashed will ever snap out of it.
4
This high school is five miles from my brother’s house, where he and his wife raised their three kids, all adults now in their 30s. A few have settled in the area to raise their own families. To this day, my brother, along with two of his offspring, vote republican. Yes, those same republicans who were bought by the NRA and refuse to legislate on gun control. I feel sorry for them all. I wish the schools could fix stupid, but they can’t.
2
Maybe my memory is incorrect but after one of the more recent horrific shootings did not Trump and McConnell utter some kind of wishy- washy drivel about changing things. Well here we go again and Pelosi, McConnell and their brethren still lack the intestinal fortitude to take on the NRA and the gun lobby. As for Trump, always deflective and duplicitous worthless prattle from his mouth. This kid had a machine pistol, yet another instance of a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of someone who obviously shouldn't have ever had access to it. When places of worship, public gathering sites and our school are not safe what type of country do we now live in? Rest assured, nothing will change and that is appalling because much can be done and the solutions have already been outlined many times over but dirty money and the 2nd Amendment argument (please!) trumps any concern for the lives and safety of our fellow citizens.
1
What is different today?
Some ask that question and automatically go to 'more guns are available." I propose an alternative answer which is NEVER addressed in these shootings.
We have seen a HUGE increase over the last 30 years in the number of children receiving prescribed psychiatric drugs.
Anti-depressants are in common use HOWEVER most of them have CLEAR WARNINGS that these drugs may cause violent behavior and suicidal thoughts - especially in adolescents.
How many of these shooters were taking prescribed drugs?
What drugs and at what dose?
For how long?
Had they recently stopped taking any such drugs?
Had they tapered off those drugs? (NOT doing so can produce erratic behavior)
Frankly I have NEVER seen this issue addressed. WHY?
Drug companies have been VERY sensitive to reports linking use of their products to such behavior, yet there are many incidents on record and clear warnings about the use of these drugs.
Many veterans have been prescribed anti-depressants as well. Is there a link between suicides and prescribed drug use there?
2
How many more? How many more sacrificed on the altar of the 2nd Amendment? Many seem to forget that the beginning of the 2nd Amendment is "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ..." So we have neither a well regulated militia nor security in our free State. Rather we are going more and more down the path of a failed state. Words can't say enough to convey the anguish and loss of another five or possibly 6 notches on the hand-grip of the 2nd...
7
@Catwhisperer, Chicago has laws that basically ban all gun ownership, yet you see dozens of people shot in one weekend there. Therefore, disarming law abiders is NEVER the answer.
Most large blue cities are like this, yet are more dangerous than Afghanistan.
Your crisis is criminal behavior. If you were to put an gun in every home in Chicago & made it easy for lawful gun owners to practice with them that requested one, the city would be a safer place to live.
I cry and cry when I see these stories. How could anyone not? The poor kids. I did not grow up that way.
And yet some people think it is totally fine to have guns with no laws. I know hunters. They obey gun laws and whack animals, but they have licenses, and I am fine with that.
Nobody needs a gun that can kill multiple people. You want to hunt, fine, but eat your prey. People, don't kill them.
2
Lindsey Graham is blaming the impeachment of Trump for inaction on gun reform.
I am running out of words.
6
I have read this article as I get ready to go to sleep. There are tears in my eyes and a weariness from trying to understand this insanity permeates my soul. My husband was shot at his office in 1987, and lived as a paraplegic for the next 30 years. Then he died. Another man was murdered that day, and the murderer shot himself in the head. The young people who were murdered, and injured today, their families, and all of the witnesses to this tragedy will face a lifetime completely altered by what they have experienced. We should too. I do not believe the background checks, and automatic weapon ban will stop what is happening. In 1987 when my husband was shot there were background checks, there are background checks currently. Whoever purchased that gun used today, and whoever knew it existed and made it available to the shooter is as guilty as he is. Actually we are all guilty until we put an end to guns.
2
What could possibly make a young man do this and where did he get the gun?
America does not have a mental health problem. It has a cultural problem. That cultural problem is reflected in a belief that many Americans share—the belief that an individual has an inviolable right to choose to use deadly force to defend himself when he feels his person, property, or liberty is threatened.
Because we believe that, we refuse to control guns. Other countries are safer because they have sane gun laws. But they have sane gun laws because they have cultures less tolerant of the use of deadly force in self-defence.
We need to fix our gun problem desperately. But even more essentially, we need to change our culture. Because until we do that, the chance that good gun laws can be passed is nil.
131
We can’t change our culture until we change our laws. And that means voting out every Republican possible, from president down to dog catcher.
17
@617to416 That's just plain ridiculous. Most often, 99.9% of lawful gun owners will resort to other forms of protection before they opt for a firearm...but if you want to allow people to rob you, assault you or your family without the use of deadly force, then good for you, but I'm not going to take that risk when it comes to my family.
5
@W.H. ...you mean vote out every do nothing Democrat...
Is the anything left to say? Another tragedy. more pain, suffering and grieving. What is it going to take, how bad does it have to get before we as a nation, say no more.
if legislators would worry as much about mass killings of children as they do women's wombs, certainly none of these mass killings would have happened in the first place. Ironically, our legislators, and quite a few Americans, find wombs and guns sacred stuff; children who are already born are in the "quite disposable" category. The lack of sane action that would save children's lives prove that in our great, civilized, religious country, it is preferable to have our children slaughtered like lambs than to control all of these weapons of war. Baaaaaaaahhhh......
9
I taught high school for many years, and retired. I remember drills for suspected shooters. My students and I would strategize how to be in a safe space with the lights off to confuse the shooter. Students who reasoned with me were as somber as can be.
We need gun laws. We need gun control. Another school shooting will happen if we don't enact that.
4
"School safety" is a billion dollar industry? School districts are spending billions of dollars for "consultants" to supposedly help them prevent students from being murdered, but as a nation we do nothing to keep guns out of the hands of murderers.
13
We have failed our children. Period. Full stop.
And the current US Senate continues to fail our children.
While the US House passed several reasonable gun limitations laws, Massacre Mitch won't let the Senate take them up. Not to say those laws would always prevent a massacre such as this, but to keep ignoring ways to help prevent them, to keep sticking their heads in the sand with sympathy and prayers, that's certainly not going to help.
You can respond to this comment with negativity about my bringing up politics at this time, but it's politics that's gonna put an end to this killing, and it's up to us, as voters, to put in Reps and Senators that will work to stop these shootings.
13
How do you describe yourself as pro-life and play Russian roulette with kids' lives in this manner? We cannot speak meaningfully or persuasively about the sanctity of life and then abandon our nation's children - her most vulnerable and defenseless lives - to desperate and ongoing fear. It is, simply, an outright mockery of the concept. If you truly believe young life is sacred - protect it.
16
Yes, it sure seems like the people closing Planned Parenthood might be more interested in controlling women than they are in "protecting life". They've tried to pass over 400 laws against abortion in the past decade, but gee I don't see ANY attempts at curbing gun violence. Pay attention to what they DO. Please!
1
According to the NRA and the politicians the NRA keeps as hostage, this kid was exercising his Second Amendment rights. According to Trump, he is mentally ill.
My question: why don't these mass killing and mass killing attempts, except some terrorism incidents, take place in Europe, Japan and other civilized countries? Don't they have people with mental problems?
4
Sacrificing the safety of our kids and citizens for a deflected masculinity called second amendment! the rest of the world shakes it’s head in disbelief, while we accept it as a new normal. Pathetic!!
9
When I got the alert for this on my phone this afternoon, I wasn’t even surprised. I was saddened and angry that this was happening yet again to our kids and our country, but surprised? No.
That’s the great tragedy of this: that it’s becoming so commonplace, we’re no longer surprised by it as a nation.
I’ll make another useless call to my elected officials expressing my outrage about this latest round of carnage inflicted on children by a disaffected lunatic, but I have no doubt it will disappear into the “thoughts and prayers” abyss. I’m so disgusted by the lack of action on the part of our leaders regarding these repeated mass murders of our young people. Speaking to them on this topic is like screaming into the void. Nothing comes back. I’m beyond asking what it’s going to take for them, really. It’s a wasted question, not to mention a useless one.
To America’s kids: I was in high school when Columbine happened. It’s a hideous dereliction of national duty that this savagery is still going on 20 years later and that you have to worry about dying in English class or in the cafeteria or in the hallways of your high schools. As best you can, carry your light forward into the future and be your best, most generous, most hopeful selves. Maybe that’s the only way to stop this. I hope we can become an America you can feel safe living in, because if it’s safe for you, then it’s safe for the rest of us, too.
7
Will my school be next?
3
Is the easy availability of guns a problem? Of course. Now imagine what it will be like with the latest bit of tech "progress", 3-D printers, when anyone can make almost any type of gun, including those invisible to metal detectors, at home with plans easily available on the internet.
And one does not even need an imagination to realize how the internet guarantees that any individual so inclined can have the power to control the news (and, consequently, lives) of 300 million Americans and a big chunk of the rest of the world by going out and shooting up a bunch of people. All it takes is one in ten million to give us a steady diet of carnage. Or a group wanting to "publicize" its agenda. And every article, tweet, comment, posting, retweet, etc. merely serves to feed into the sense of power and control that says, "Hey, watch how I can make you pay attention to me, to do what I want! Bang, bang, bang!!"
Of course for those who prefer not to go out "in a blaze of glory" but prefer serial mayhem, armed drones and self-driving cars should do the trick.
1
This is not the world now! It is the world we are allowing to exist with unfettered access to weapons that can kill many people before we have any chance to apprehend or disarm the shooter. While this was happening, I was preparing my high school English students for an armed intruder drill we are running next week. We were told to instruct each of our classes where they should hide if the drill, and any subsequent event, were to happen. And here are my thoughts as the word spread among increasingly terrified students addressing this very possibility: we are sacrificing our children's emotional well being to avoid facing the reality of semi-automatic weapons. There is no need to politicize the tragedy or opportunistically bring up gun control. It's there in the research. We do not have a higher mental health rate, we do not have more angry teens: WE HAVE MORE SEMI-AUTOMATIC WEAPONS. Let the legislators work out whether it's the guns or the ammunition, whether it's a full ban, or a stringent repercussion for unsecured guns- It's just time to move forward already. The statistics are VERY VERY VERY low that your child will be involved in a school shooting- in the neighborhood of 1 in 615 million: but the fear and anxiety, the normalization of violence, the belief that the world is violent and no one should be trusted- that is real. That is the world you and I are allowing to exist. It's time to stop pretending we care and actually work with each other to solve this problem.
8
The only thing worse than a country in which a 26-year-old first-year music teacher needs to keep a gunshot kit in her classroom is a country in which she needed to use it to save the life of a student.
Thoughts and prayers from our elected officials in Washington DC aren't worth the paper they're written on. Vote them out as if your children's lives depend on it - because they do.
9
Does anyone know when will this madness stop in America ? My heart bleeds whenever such barbaric incidents occur but nothing concrete happens unfortunately and life moves on as if nothing has happened.
4
Instead of Happy Birthday, another Thoughts and Prayers Day because the cursed Second Amendment means infinitely more to us than the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
9
How did this child get hold of the weapon? Who owns it? Will that person stand trial?
And as one must always ask in these situations, to what "well-regulated militia" does the gun owner belong?
7
My thoughts exactly. Why do we NEVER see the parents of these children (almost always CHILDREN) being arrested? Apprehended? Sure I was able to sneak a cigarette or two in high school, but a gun? Not a chance. This is not child care. This is not a safe household. The adults that are supposed to be raising and protecting their children are not paying attention. Maybe if more parents of child shooters were put where they belong we could protect the children of the parents who actually care. Put gun laws in effect, protect from violence, and have consequences for those who are not following them like ANY other law. Too afraid to take your child to therapy? Take them to a friend to talk, ask them how their day is, know them. Take them to a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a temple and help them learn and heal. So sad that some people leading our youth are underpaid and others are apathetic.
"Tristan Aguirre, a 17-year-old senior, said he was in English class when he heard shots, a situation the students had prepared for in shooting drills.
“It’s the world now,” he said. “The world now is weird.”"
Dear child, no. It's not the world. The rest of the developed world doesn't have a gun massacre every few days. This only happens in the US of A. Please don't think this is normal. It's not.
In a few months when you are 18, register and vote in every single election for candidates who fight for gun safety. You and the rest of your generation can change this. Do it.
16
@The Poet McTeagle Sadly (tragically), this does not happen only in the US. It has taken place the world over, including the Vatican.
It is not normal.
Unfortunately, it is also not unheard of.
Post McTeagle, lemme intro to you to Thomas McGrath.
1. First check Planet, then claim only in USA. Good luck.
2. Or to introduce, “”No, no, no, no, all of us or none.”
Stop the sale of bullets to the crazy GOP Americans and there followers. There have been more serious mass shootings during Trumps dividing term than ever. He caused the state of Texas to go down in history as the highest mass murder state in the free world saying in his speeches a lot our Mexican invasion. Trump needs to be impeached for his supporting the NRA and there hatred to many Americans. Lock Trump up now so we can stop these mass murder attempts in schools.
2
This is one reason why my adult kids don’t want to have kids. I can’t blame them
10
It’s another sad, sad day in a country with too many guns. No 16 year old should be able to get his hands on a deadly weapon without strict adult supervision, if even then. Sadly, this disturbed young man destroyed the lives of those he shot, their friends and families, and no doubt traumatized many in his school and neighboring community.
His own family must also be devastated, never to recover. If the shooter survives a bullet to his brain, he probably won’t be near the same nor will it be possible to hold him accountable.
But perhaps we can hold the gun lobby and their enablers responsible at the next national election.
4
I feel we are well past the point that legislation will render any aid in this matter.
Commenters and this article point out that California has the strictest gun laws in the country. So what. Between 1982-2019 California was the home to the greatest number of mass shootings (21) - nearly double the next state (Florida, 11).
The Las Vegas gunman purchased some of his weapons in California - so the argument of "lax border state gun laws" would seem to miss the mark.
There are nearly 300-million guns in this country. Toughening up laws regarding the purchase of the next 300-million is noble but seems nearly a waste of time.
I would hand over every firearm I own if I never had to see the photo of another parent in grief over a murdered child. But alas, my guns are not the problem and are definitely not part of the solution.
I've been on this planet a long time and I deeply fear this really is the new normal.
2
@Wilson1ny "Commenters and this article point out that California has the strictest gun laws in the country. " And their "defense" reminds me of "well, Jimmy hit me first."
@Wilson1ny California also has the most people, so regardless of the success of the laws or not, there is a higher chance of something happening. Toughening up laws may not solve the problem, but it sure can't hurt.
1
@Scott S
Don’t fall for the easy assumptions - Wyoming and Washington DC have the highest number of guns per capita - and NY - with a population close to Calif. has the fewest guns per capital.
Wyoming, with nearly 200 guns per person, statistically should show a high incidence of gun violence - but it doesn’t.
Republicans take money from the NRA every year. Democrats rarely do. If you like the terror the Republicans are enabling, keep voting for them. I can assure you that Mitch McConnell never loses sleep over kids shot in their schools.
8
There should be no restrictions on guns in the White House, the Capitol, or the Supreme Court until they're restricted everywhere else. Something tells me we'll get action soon enough.
8
This is why so many city folks are weary of rural folks dictating our gun policies.
10
Where did he get the gun?
@NYC Born out of a CrackerJack box. Why?
No chain is stronger than its weakest link.
We need UNIFORM IN ALL 50 STATES gun safety laws.
California's strict gun safety laws are by passed and evaded when people get guns legally in other states with lax gun laws and then bring those guns into California.
I believe the 1934 FEDERAL Gun Safety law that regulates machine guns and sawed off shotguns is a UNIFORM FEDERAL law.
We could pass similar type federal laws for other guns.
9
If the gun belonged to one of the shooter's relatives, that person needs to stand trial for the crime and go to prison. Even in neighboring states, a 16 year old should not have been able to purchase a handgun. Where did he get it?
7
It's not "the world." It's the United States. It sells papers.
No one will be marching about this tomorrow because we have become stupidly immune to it.
9
@Brooklyn mom
and maybe because marchers are a shooter's easiest target. we've seen that too.
"Crazy"---I've heard this disturbing word twice in the last two days--said once in this article in a classroom lockdown and said once by Taylor in describing the withholding of needed military aid for political motives. We are becoming a not-normal society where events that should not be accepted, that should be objected to by more forceful protests than the protests in Hong Kong, are now part of a new normal , where we ho-hum horrors as they become common, normal events. No political figure should blithely lie repeatedly . Gun laws should be strengthened to make ownership safer for society at large. From a surfeit of destruction and bad actors--as in wartime---people become acclimated to what should not be tolerated. It's crazy, really crazy, that we are so accepting of such developments.
@shimr "....events that should not be accepted...are now part of a new normal"
That "new normal" is not so new..... The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
And that, unfortunately, is when "Johnny Got His Gun."
@kenneth
I read your reply and have heard this defense of individual gun ownership untold times. I am not a lawyer and may be mistaken, as I suspect interpretation by precedent may agree with your statement.
But I would ask: Why does the amendment start with the necessity of citizens having "a well regulated Militia"? Are we not saying here that a state can have its own police force or its own National Guard and makes no reference to giving all individuals access to their own assault weapons? " The "right of the people" may very well refer only to their right in the form of their state only.
Meanwhile, it is business as usual in Washington. Politicians whose "thoughts and prayers are with you", turn a blind eye to doing anything other than echoing empty sentiments each time a child is gunned down.
So sad... so heart-breakingly sad.
2
We're well on our way to having entire generations of children with acute, chronic and untreated P.T.S.D. just from going to school.
5
I wonder how long it took for someone from the N.R.A. to call Trump to explain to him in small, one-syllable words how this is to be expected so he should continue to drag his feet and do nothing.
12
We ended slavery. It took a civil war and a couple Constitutional Amendments, but we did it.
More Americans have died from gun violence in the last 55 years than in all the wars we've fought.
Consider these deaths a second civil war. We need another Constitutional Amendment to remove the 2nd Amendment, which is outdated (muskets anyone) and misinterpreted (well-regulated militia anyone).
8
Calling it a civil war legitimizes it. It’s terrorism.
Hatred spewing from mobster-in-chief, mass shootings every single day, innocents being killed left and right and all politicians care about is filling their pockets. This is the land of opportunity where one adult working two full-time jobs have to struggle to run a family of three. Any major health-issue can push anyone into bankruptcy. Welcome to the Great USA.
9
My niece is a teacher in LA. Second Amendment advocates, I ask you. Are your so-called rights more valuable than her life? If you answer yes, then I despair for your soul.
9
Mental health is the problem, not gun rights. We didn't have these problems like we do now thirty years ago. A large difference is the neglect of children's well being today compared to then. When a kid makes a cry for help, adults just see it as ADHD or disobedience. They don't see it as a problem with underlying issues. We need to stop the shootings before the shooters even get the gun.
2
@Henry Alley We have a lot mentally ill people in Canada. What we don't have is mass shootings every week. Why? Gun control.
10
Tell me: why do countries that control guns not have school shootings? I beg you, please reconsider your position.
6
Mass shootings did exist 30 years ago. Maybe mental health is a part of it. However, the gun lobby does block moves limiting gun sales and removing guns even from identified people with mental illness or even domestic abuse threats.
2
Lots of LAPD officers live in the Santa Clarita area, probably the reason for a high number of registered gun owners.
1
Where is there hope in this devastated, debased country. Nowhere. Nowhere.
4
If the shooter obtained the gun which was owned by someone else and not secured, that person should also be charged with a crime. I am surprised that this approach has not carried over to other shooting incidents. At least that is something more which can be done to curb these events.
2
Many parents choose home schooling for their kids. These home schooled kids are relatively safe but they miss out with interacting with others their age.
I now wonder what kind of protection will the Federal courts give this 16 year old killer.
The typical school shooter is a student who uses guns obtained from home. It is noteworthy that the frequency of school shootings has increased while the percentage of households with guns has declined. This suggests the significance of the "contagion" or "copycat" effect in the incidence of these shootings. Also note that the shooter here used a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol, and not the so-called "military-style" assault rifle commonly associated with shootings.
2
Thoughts, prayers, inaction, repeat.
8
A quick image search confirmed my first thought, "that school is probably one of those concrete monstrosities and looks more like a supermax prison than a school."
Put large numbers of people in windowless cages, and soon enough, some of the less mature individuals will react in violent ways to this kind of day-in, day-out imprisonment trauma.
When will we tell our architects that enough is enough?
@Dominik Jacobs
The architects did it? Really? You really believe this?
The gun did it.
In every school shooting, in every shooting in a theater, church, synagogue, music festival, Walmart, or street corner, there's a gun.
It's the common thread. It's the reason the atrocity could happen.
2
@JohnH
What a brilliant criminal defense strategy -- "not guilty; the gun did it!"
Seriously, though, while I was only referring to school shootings, I meant that putting windows into schools would be much easier than taking guns out of the U.S., common threads notwithstanding.
Students below 18 should not have guns. If California has strict gun laws how did this shooter carry the gun in his back pack. When are we going to make schools, places of worship and public places like hospitals Universities and malls gun free zones. After the Democratic majority in congress how come we are impotent to stop mass shootings?
2
@Girish Kotwal
Under 18? Why 18? The Las Vegas killer was well over 18; should he have had a room full of guns?
Nobody below the age of , well, 100, should have an automatic weapon of any kind unless they are trained military, under authority, in a combat zone. Period.
4
There should be a way to punish states like Nevada and Virginia whose weapons are transported into states like California that have strong regulations that protect their citizens. The sanctification of the Second Amendment is ridiculous. Either you care about your citizens and especially your young innocent kids or you adore the NRA. The only persons allowed to be able to have guns must be extremely mature and responsible and have training. Guns should only be stored where there is no access to anyone who does not possess everyone of these qualifications. Irresponsibility re guns is resulting in horrible physical and personal l injuries everyday. Communities and families are being destroyed every single day due to reliance on guns.
1
“It’s the world now”. No, sadly it’s America.
7
Its awful to say, but at least it was only a handgun with limited bullets to shoot 5 people and himself.
Vote Republican and you'll have the blood of children on your hands.
Vote Progressive and lets get the change we so desperately need.
4
I'm 79. When I went to school I always thought I'd go home to first play til dark, then have dinner, listen to Sky King on our old radio, give my parents a hug, say a prayer, and go to sleep.
I never thought I'd never go home because one of my fellow students shot me dead.
Now students go to school with that thought front and center. Hard to study that way.
Where is this generation going? I really feel sorry for them.
13
This is a great time to remind ourselves that Canada hasn't had a double-digit mass shooting since 1989 and that the NRA and the politicians it supports are guilty of conspiracy to abet murder one hundred times over.
Quit talking about mental health.
Quit talking about parental responsibility.
Quit talking about videogames and media.
It's the guns and our laws around them that cause this here. Because other places have elections and a free press and multiple political parties, watch our media, play our games, have irresponsible parents and still don't let people get shot as much as we do.
It's the guns, and anyone who says otherwise isn't just lying; they're lying with an agenda.
This doesn't have to happen. How long are we going to let it?
355
@JJR Judging from past performance we're going to let it go on forever.
8
@JDK Canada has strong gun control laws. Guns must be registered. Yes, facts do matter.
24
@JDK
The US has almost four times the firearms rate than Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country
I wouldn't call that "comparable".
9
Folks, Fox News Pravda is already criticizing calls for gun control as inappropriate since the families are still grieving for the victims.
Thoughts and prayers.
Blue state gun control will never work.
What about those vaping pipes and the damage they may do to young lungs?
Nothing to see here - move along.
Need more research on the killer, another mentally ill “Betty White” character.
What about the sham and fake impeachment process? That is the real tragedy.
Land of the free - no foundation up and down the line.
8
@Mr. Monk
And yet, I would suspect that the grieving families would be the first to call for stricter gun control.
10
How do legislators in DC live with themselves when they care more about the money from the NRA than protecting lives? They live in a protected shell where murders and mass shootings are simply something they read about.
In the past the NRA actually helped write laws to regulate guns. These days they use the second amendment simply as a cover for an industry seeking higher profit.
If someone is so worried they cannot pass a basic background check, they probably should not own numerous weapons and ammunition.
220
@pseg The NRA has nothing to do with a mentally dysfunctional human being.
3
@bfree The NRA has everything with arming dysfunctional human beings.
46
@pseg
It's not how can they live with themselves. It's how can voters, ordinary Joe and Jane, live with themselves after repeatedly voting for legislators who impede, block any attempts to make us just a little safer, to make schools safer for our children?
30
So much winning.
8
@Mike dude... spellcheck or something please.
I can hear the "thoughts and prayers" of the gun advocates right now. Their thoughts are that this isn't happening to them, and that guns don't kill people--people kill people. Their prayers are that their guns won't be taken away. Yes, thoughts and prayers really do work.
3
Lindsey Graham responded to the news of the shooting, telling reporters he is "dying to do something about this." Interesting choice of words. Meanwhile, while he and his brethren do nothing, children are dying and becoming traumatized in their schools. If only Graham approached gun safety with the same fervor he summons to defend Trump.
9
Mental illness is often pointed to by politicians after shootings as something that needs to be addressed.
We all need to shout back at those politicians: "The rate of mental illness in the United States is not different than the rate of mental illness in other modern western societies like Canada and Europe and Australia. But none of those places have anything remotely near the gun violence death rate America has. So mental illness cannot be the problem.
9
These days, there are a lot of reasons to be grateful I don't live in the United States. Unfettered gun violence ranks #2 on the list.
9
"American school students are all too familiar with the threat of shootings."
That puts them on par with their fellow youths in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Palestine and other nations plagued by the threat of American-made WMDs.
Could there be a connection between U.S. warmongering and the senseless slaughter of Americans in the Homeland?
6
I don’t know how this is even newsworthy... I mean, we are getting used to much larger shootings. People are just jaded and numb. If they were not, they would actually do something about the gun violence.
1
That is a moving photo by David Walter Banks of two guys holding each other.
American's have to understand, mass slaughterings are normal. For crying out loud, what do citizens expect with millions of guns in folk's hands? The only question after each massacre is where and when will the next one be.
Standby for another period of grief. Another period of lighting candles and praying. Just so long as you don't take my guns.
What really needs to be understood is why, even as their children are terrorized and slaughtered in schools, Americans continue to indulge the juvenile gun fetishes and childish protector and defender fantasies of emotionally regressed men.
7
I am not a crier by nature. But every single time I come across this news headline today I have teared up.
This morning, I drove my kids to school earlier than usual. As they got out of the car, I saw my son's thin frame under his too big backpack. He is a boy of 16 but a man when he needs to be. He carries heavy bags for me and he moves furniture. He is kind and sweet and hopeful.
He turned around as he got out of the car, this morning. He waved and then came back and motioned for me to roll down the window. He said, "Hey mom. I love you--thank you for bringing us early."
I drove away with a lump in my throat. I was sad for the crazy demands made of him academically and socially. For the stress he is always under. For the fact that as I said goodbye to him, there were no guarantees he'd be home. The truth is that dropping your child off at any crowded space is an exercise in Russian roulette.
I had forgotten about all this when I heard the news. The first thing that smacked me was the age of the shooter. The news reporter was calling him "the suspect" but I know what that kid really is: a child.
Today, he had a meltdown, perhaps months in the making. Maybe it was the social and academic stress. The hopelessness of our time. Teenage angst and hormones. Parental problems.
All typical. All survivable.
If only he had not had a gun.
My prayers to those who lost children this morning.
18
The ignorance here is astounding. There is zero evidence that the gun came from out of state, yet the angry masses want that banned anyway. OK - wish granted. It's already illegal. And it ignores the comparative absence of school shootings in "loose" states. If guns cause crime, why isn't this a problem in those neighboring states? "I don't care. I just want more laws." You got it. Let's start: HS kid buying a gun - already illegal. Unregistered gun - already illegal. Failure to secure it at home - illegal. Unregistered bullets - illegal. Guns on school grounds - illegal. Red flag laws (if you think someone might commit a gun crime some day, disarm them now) - already in place. Background checks - got 'em. One gun per month - you got it. Waiting periods - check. Licensing - done. Safety classes - required. "Assault weapons" - banned since 1989. Big magazines - them too. Outlaw private/untraceable sales - done. The same people who praise Mexico's strict gun laws have clearly overlooked the slaughters that occur there regularly. Or that Israel is awash in firearms yet no mass shootings. "Stop telling me facts. Just build a big space magnet to suck all guns into the sun. I will accept nothing less. Until then, I want the country's 336,000 National Guardsmen to stop what they're doing and start confiscating the 400 million guns legally held by American citizens. Skrew the Constitution."
4
No one is coming for your precious guns, @Randy. Calm down. It is just another day in the USA.
3
@Randy
Just. Get. Informed. Until you do, I cannot even bother to refute your nonsense.
https://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9444417/gun-violence-mass-shootings-us-america
2
You are so completely and utterly wrong.
4
Mitch McConnell, these children’s blood is on your hands.
13
Thanks, NRA!
4
I read this on my lunch break, inside a high school (I'm a high school teacher), surrounded by students.
My rage, fear, and grief are in competition with one another. Enough! Why don't we do what it takes to stop this from happening? Should all of my students - and colleagues - drive to work in fear each day that it can be their last?
We do active shooter training annually. I feel sick every time I think about it, knowing that the training might be one day need to be used. Will I be brave enough to sacrifice myself for my students if the need arises? Will my daughter forgive me for leaving her motherless if I do so?
Thoughts and prayers aren't enough, nowhere near enough. And yet from me, in my school, to these students and staff, I send you my thoughts, prayers, love, grief.
8
California is really having a bad year. The five shot in Orinda and now this. The fires killing people and destroying homes. The rising tide of climate change that will flood the big coastal cities. And a major earthquake is expected soon. I was just in California and was shocked that despite 4.50 gasoline and passionate talk about climate change, the roads were jammed with cars at all hours.
4
@Rick Not just that, but all the money we pay to the federal government subsidizes the freeloading states in the welfare belt.
2
Buy all the guns you want, but there's nothing in the Constitution that says ammunition can't be regulated — make it very difficult to impossible to purchase, and make every bullet with traceable materials, so that there is a traceable chain of ownership of ammunition from manufacturer to distributor to gun owner.
Buy all the guns you want, but there's nothing in the Constitution that says that gun owners and manufacturers can't be held liable for misuse. Require liability insurance from people who need their toys. Give out jail and prison time for people who carry uninsured weapons.
Sure, we make excuses so that ammunition is freely and openly available, and that insurance isn't required as a condition of ownership, but those are just that: excuses, so that gun sales can continue, unimpeded.
Until we keep the gun manufacturers and NRA's Russian money from filling the pockets of legislators, we'll always have excuses — and gun massacres.
10
@Alex Not just that but we are in such a rush to have guns in the supermarket, at Starbucks and in the National Parks. Perhaps we need to allow guns in the Capitol Building? I have a hunch that things would change fairly quickly after that!
1
Is the easy availability of guns a problem? Of course. Now imagine what it will be like with the latest bit of tech "progress", 3-D printers, when anyone can make almost any type of gun, including those invisible to metal detectors, at home with plans easily available on the internet.
And one does not even have to imagine how the internet guarantees that any individual so inclined can have the power to control the news (and, consequently, lives) of 300 million Americans and a big chunk of the rest of the world by going out and shooting up a bunch of people. All it takes is one in ten million to give us a steady diet of carnage. Or a group wanting to "publicize" its agenda. And every article, tweet, comment, posting, retweet, etc. merely serves to feed into the sense of power and control that says, "Hey, watch how I can make you pay attention to me, to do what I want! Bang, bang, bang!!"
Of course for those who prefer not to go out "in a blaze of glory" but prefer serial mayhem, armed drones and self-driving cars should do the trick.
One does not have to be a Luddite to see that banning guns, the N.R.A., and the Second Amendment, while making for "reassuring" bumperstickers, will not solve the underlying problem.
Like many foreigners, I'm mystified about the American obsession with gun ownership. It's as if many Americans feel, in some way, incomplete without firearms - and that those that don't, need the weapons to defend themselves against those that do.
'Constitutional right' is the inevitable justification. But, citizens of most other countries don't live under a specific fear of government tyranny - nor do they perceive the need to be constantly ready to violently remove their elected representatives. I don't feel enslaved, bullied or cowed by my rulers because I'm not allowed to own a gun - nor would I wish to own one if it were permitted.
Would Hong Kong be a better place if the HKers all had assault rifles in their cupboards? Catalonia? Brexit Britain?
No thanks...
10
Is the easy availability of guns a problem? Of course. Now imagine what it will be like with the latest bit of tech "progress", 3-D printers, when anyone can make almost any type of gun, including those invisible to metal detectors, at home with plans easily available on the internet.
And one does not even have to imagine how the internet guarantees that any individual so inclined can have the power to control the news (and, consequently, lives) of 300 million Americans and a big chunk of the rest of the world by going out and shooting up a bunch of people. All it takes is one in ten million to give us a steady diet of carnage. Or a group wanting to "publicize" its agenda. And every article, tweet, comment, posting, retweet, etc. merely serves to feed into the sense of power and control that says, "Hey, watch how I can make you pay attention to me, to do what I want! Bang, bang, bang!!"
Of course for those who prefer not to go out "in a blaze of glory" but prefer serial mayhem, armed drones and self-driving cars should do the trick. .
2
This is terrible. It will be interesting to see how this shooter aligns with the profile the new Secret Service report describes. And how that profile will help family and friends in the future.
1
I'm afraid to turn on the news these days. This morning alone, a shooting at a college in Russia and one at Saugus High School.
These are precious lives we're losing and we can't seem to get a handle on it. I don't want to hear more platitudes and I don't want to discuss whether it's a mental illness problem or a gun problem. It's both.
The guns are too readily available, clearly, and mental illness is a component of many of these evil acts of violence against innocent people.
When will we make the decision to do whatever it takes to solve these problems? When will we have the courage to say, and mean it: not one more life?
1
@Pamela L.
A mentally ill person without a gun? A problem we can handle.
Put a gun in that hand? Who knows how big the problem might be.
It's the gun.
It's the gun.
2
I hate to say this but Trump has broken another record.More people have been killed during his term in office in mass shootings than with any President since Lincoln(Civil War).During his three year term(not finished yet) there have been an average of 10 mass shooting per year.Obama had 5 mass shooting per year and other Presidents went down from there.During Trump's three years an average of 82 victims per year were killed while with Obama the figure is 39 per year.I'm not saying that any President is directly responsible for these tragedies but something is going on.I think Trump's rhetoric ,weakening the rule of law and encouraging fringe lunatics to act out violently, are a big part of the problem.And it's getting worse.
11
Once again our children are dealing with an issue no Boomer has ever had to address while in school. Disgusting gun laws that put children on the lowest level of consideration have been supported by older generations for decades. God help these kids.
3
Where are our leaders? There was once a time when tragedy struck, and America’s political leaders would offer guidance and support. Instead they quibble as our young people bleed and die.
3
Dear Republicans, It would be great if you valued all human life, as much as the unborn rather than NRA dollars. Your highly restrictive abortion laws give you the platform through which to claim to protect the sanctity of human life, but your lack of action sensible gun control legislation shows that you care not about life, after the first breath is drawn. How many kids have to die in their schools before we as a nation do something.
8
Mitch McConnell,
How about rather than stubbornly continuing to let it languish and die, you resuscitate the House gun restrictions bill that's patiently awaiting a Senate vote?
How about you stop pretending you're just waiting for Trump to tell you what kind of bill he won't veto?
How about you show the NRA, and the rest of us, that you can't be bought?
How about, with the outsize power you have courtesy of having been voted into office by a mere 806,000 people, you finally do something decent for 327 million Americans?
If you won't, how about if good Kentuckians prove in 2020, as they did earlier this month when they chose a new governor, that they're not afraid to replace an incumbent with a Democrat?
8
Inexplicably, the 'thoughts and prayers' messages Twitter tweeted by members of the U.S. Congress following each mass shooting, do not seem to be solving the problem of gun violence in America. Go figure?
4
Alas, the USA is the only “civilized” country where school shootings are becoming a regular occurrence. To lead the world BY FAR in this category is something really to take national pride in!!! I’ll retire to Bedlam!
2
Why is the US the only first world country that has to have active shooter drills for our children?
4
Place criminal liability for future crimes on anyone who sells a gun. Watch how careful everyone becomes about gun sales.
7
I was raised in the US. Now, I would NEVER raise children in the US. This is unconscionable. The NRA & lobbies need to go. The US is quickly falling behind the rest of the world on all accounts. Very sad.
4
More violence normalized. Heartbreak America.
2
When Republicans are voted out of office we can start enacting common sense gun laws that will slow down the slaughter.
3
Take God out of the school, teach our kids right or wrong is relative, and presto school shooters.
1
I think because of defensive evolution, we are programmed to focus on those things that can cause harm, and hence, the attention we pay to school shootings. But look at these events through the lens that there about 50 million students in our schools each day, and it is not difficult for those students to get hold of a gun.
Sure, one shooting in a school every century would still be one too many, but when we consider the potential for shootings when there are 50 million could-be shooters, we have to conclude that our schools are remarkably safe places.
When I hear about a school shooting, I grieve for those affected, but I do not see a threat to school as safe places.
If I had children in school, I would seek to have them opt out of lock-down drills. These drills serve to make students believe that becoming a victim of a school shooting is a probable event.
1
There have been over 30 school shooting attacks this year; at least 12 people have been killed.
Would you seek to have your child exempted from school fire drills as well? Fire fatalities in schools are very rare.
Would your child just stay in their seat or wander the halls while the rest of the school goes into lockdown? Would they do the same during fire drills while everyone else exits the building?
Many gun control folks profess that it is the guns. Others profess that it is the mentality of young males. Others point to externalities, like video games. Yet others focus on mental health. But the facts vary widely in these case and addressing any single factor is likely to result in a partial solution at best.
The problem with these views is that the guns used are widely different and may be legally owned or not. The specifics behind every shooting vary -- shooters are of all different mentalities. And, as to externalities, not only is there a lack of causal linkage, but shooters' playing of video game widely varies. And mental health issues are so widespread that they don't narrow things down.
At the risk of stating the obvious, all school shootings happen at schools. Many target particular students. Some are random. But all start the same way -- weapons are smuggled into the school. My understanding is that covert weapon scanning is still in the research stage and current proposals are extremely expensive. And no doubt, the NRA opposes. For all I know, it may be far off into the future. After all, if we could successfully scan for weapons, our military would be much less at risk. But if there were unobtrusive effective scanning at our schools, the problem would be greatly diminished.
2
michjas
Or we could do as Japan does and highly regulate murderous guns and bullets and have just 12 gun deaths per year instead of 12 gun deaths every four hours.
But who needs public safety when a national shooting gallery warms the cockles of the right-wing's hearts ?
12
I am a retired teacher who left teaching when asked to carry a gun in my classroom.
I decided that if I have to stop my lesson on iambic pentameter to stave off, possibly, a school shooter, then I am in the wrong profession.
My training is to teach, not pack a loaded weapon. My job is/was to teach students about the beautiful literature of life, not confront the mentally ill who, through social media and other platforms (are you listening, NRA?), succumb to the idealization of killing as a means of self-identification and realization.
I am heart-broken for the students and parents forever changed by this madness of school shootings. But I can't change it.
This problem is societal, and can't be fixed by a teacher trying, ironically, to teach the likes of "Intimations on Immortality".
32
You know that this country has normalized gun shootings when another shooting at a school leading to the death of children is not the top news event of the day. Reform can only come when there is outrage and the realization that this is not normal. As a pediatrician in the area, I will now be left to treat the aftermath of this devastation. Kids will present with anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, and other somatic complaints because no child or teenager should ever be expected to process tragedy such as this at their age. Please do not normalize these shootings. The disaster that is Washington will be there tomorrow. These families need to know that the entire country shares their outrage that this has happened again and we will not give up until things truly change.
16
Perhaps it's time to look at where these shootings are happening and maybe we van figure out the why.
Going back as far as Columbine, most, if not all, shootings occured in suburban or rural schools.
Maybe life in the suburbs with strict social requirements to "fit in" to a defined group creates outcasts, and parents don't or won't help assuage these kids feeling of loneliness, and kids are too embarrassed to talk about isolation or being bullied for being socially awkward, or any number of other things. Kids are cruel, and limited in scope of the world, and often see what is happening to them as what their lives will always be like.
Kids in dense, urban areas seem to make a better go of it, and the diversity might make it easier to find one's tribe.
There is sort of an assumption that when an urban couple has kids, it's time to move to suburbia, assuming that it's better for their kids to have a yard, a mall, a "good" school, etc. It's looking like it's really the opposite. Kids in cities have a plethora of social and cultural opportunities not available to kids in the conformist suburban culture.
8
@Roberto Shootings that make the national news are in suburban and rural schools. Shootings by kids in urban areas take place everywhere but in school because those schools have long had metal detectors and disputes are settled in neighborhoods with crime rates akin to war zones.
Today's shooting was a slow Saturday night in Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, St. Louis.....but the ongoing violence in those neighborhoods is not politically useful so they don't matter.
@Roberto: These shootings happen because of the easy availability of guns, period. Tackle the guns with strict legislation.
4
Kids in dense urban schools typically have much more school security: fences, cops, metal detectors, and only one entrance. Kids are just as miserable everywhere.
I went to elementary school in West Hollywood in the 80s. Even then there was a 12 foot fence around the entire school with only a single gate. I went to junior high and high school in the LA suburbs where w could wander off campus at will. They finally built a prison fence around the high school because gang members were coming on campus and starting fights.
I am a retired teacher who left teaching when asked to carry a gun in my classroom.
I decided that if I have to stop my lesson on iambic pentameter to stave off, possibly, a school shooter, then I am in the wrong profession.
My training is to teach, not pack a loaded weapon. My job is/was to teach students about the beautiful literature of life, not confront the mentally ill who, through social media and other platforms (are you listening, NRA?), succumb to the idealization of killing as a means of self-identification and realization.
I am heart-broken for the students and parents forever changed by this madness of school shootings. But I can't change it.
This problem is societal, and can't be fixed by a teacher trying, ironically, to teach the likes of "Intimations on Immortality".
3
@Katherine — And neither can it be fixed if society increasingly depends on schools and their teachers to fulfill roles that are more parental than educational, while at the same time cutting local and state funding to districts, paying educators a barely living wage, and generally undermining public education as a whole. If we expect teachers to be the answer to troubled kids, then the very least we can do is show our appreciation by showing them all respect, and by telling our legislators to act accordingly.
If money can be found to send teachers to the firing range, surely it’s there to combat gun violence and mental health crises among our young people. Our priorities are seriously skewed.
4
How right you are, and how sad you made me.
When I was in high school there were tough kids who were bullies, and wimpy kids who got picked on, and it wasn't all singing and dancing like the musical, but never, ever, in our wildest nightmares, did we imagine that we would have to face anything like this.
A student drowned once, and an elderly teacher died, but death was a an alien concept. Drills to hide from a killer would have seemed crazy. Tragically, it's a fact of life now, and there isn't any turning back.
2
@dutchiris — And it used to be that parents could see their children off to school in the morning, fully expecting to come back home in the afternoon. I’m sure that was the case today with the moms and dads of these latest victims.
The only thing that will change this situation is time. The time it will take for the new generation to take over. The kids being born now will be the ones to put this issue to rest and put in sensible gun control.
Until then, nothing can or will happen. The best one can do is prepare, drill and try better to to ID mental health issues.
The courts are locked on this and there is not a will in the electoral college driven population to make any change the 2nd Amendment, which requires 37 state legislatures, Congress and the President to revise.
1
I am a retired teacher who left teaching when asked to carry a gun in my classroom.
I decided that if I have to stop my lesson on iambic pentameter to stave off, possibly, a school shooter, then I am in the wrong profession.
My training is to teach, not pack a loaded weapon. My job is/was to teach students about the beautiful literature of life, not confront the mentally ill who, through social media and other platforms (are you listening, NRA?), succumb to the idealization of killing as a means of self-identification and realization.
I am heart-broken for the students and parents forever changed by this madness of school shootings. But I can't change it.
This problem is societal, and can't be fixed by a teacher trying, ironically, to teach the likes of "Intimations on Immortality".
The gun industry makes billions by convincing some people that gun ownership makes them "safer." Of course, the exact opposite is true. Gun ownership puts both the gun owners, and all of us, at greater risk of injury and death.
8
Go to where this teen got the gun; go to where they all get the weapon. Often, they are in the home and perhaps not locked up. I don't know if this is the case. Either way, with such incidents, let's make the owner of the gun liable for such terrible, tragic incidents like this.
3
This gun violence in all forms needs to be addressed and not someday.
If guns made you safe this would be the safest nation on earth and we are far from that.
4
So here we go, again. Yada and yada.
1 The House is blue, and even in the Senate there are plenty who would vote for . . . What?
2 Enforcing existing laws would really help. Anyone trying to really enforce them? Be serious.
3 It is always pointed out that shooters are almost invariably males. True. But it also appears to be true --- and please correct me if I am seriously wrong on this point --- that a marked percentage, perhaps even a majority, of shooters are either in school or closely related to educational institutions. Is it too heretical to suggest that perhaps our schools drive our youngsters bonkers?
Just a non-partisan thought.
1
I was scrolling through the NY Times on my phone around lunchtime today and a thought entered my mind, "we are about due for a school shooting". And then I saw it. I am feeling so nauseous. So helpless. So hopeless.
1
The right to life is more important than the right to own guns.
Period.
Let all responsible adults vote for gun safety in the next election - National, State and Local. Put your greed aside for our kids' safety.
6
I have questions- how did this student get access to the gun?
Was it his parent's gun? He is too young to purchase it.
For most of the school shooters that are underage, I have the same question. Are these irresponsible parents not locking their guns up securely?
I would go and check back on every school shooter's home and see if they had safes or gun locks, or if they left them out or in a drawer for these kids to do these terrible things with them.
3
When I got the news notifications this morning I looked at it, sighed, and kept scrolling. I’m 24 and so, so tired.
7
Reading the list of mass murders, which of perpetrators have been actually brought to justice? Answer: none. And that's the reason we'll see more and more of these killings.
1
And I can only hope that when Congresspeople go home for their Thanksgiving recess, they get told by the voters that whether or not the Ukraine had to wait a few days for their weapons delivery is of a lot less interest to the American voter than gun control legislation at the federal level, infrastructure, Nancy Pelosi's "beautiful DACA children" for whom she has done nothing, and the government is running out of money again, but don't worry, the Ukrainians and their frankly doomed call for independence will be staunchly defended by the House as an excuse to deal with nothing else.
1
"Enough is enough"
"Thoughts and prayers"
"We need sensible gun laws"
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Nothing will ever get done. Americans just need to accept this simple fact. This will be an ongoing occurrence for the rest of our lives.
That is just how it will be.
The medical deductibles, depending on the coverage, could range between $1000-5000 per person. This does not include the monthly premiums which can be as high as $700 per person or $900-1200 per family.
Rehab, therapy, x-rays, emergency visit, anesthesiologist, etc. all need to be paid out of pocket.
Great country we live in, isn't it?
The victim's families will have to go into debt because their child was shot at a public high school in the United States of America.
1
As long as MEN have access to guns. This will continue
Why don’t we acknowledge this fact
4
The right to own a gun, is more important than the right of US citizens to be safe from those with guns. The right to be able to kill, is more important than the right to life, freedom and liberty.
2
In the eight shootings in U.S. schools since this past January, we must not ONLY consider the 29 children who were actually shot.
We must also remember the shock, the trauma, and the horror of the 9,186 children who today attend the eight schools where these shootings happened.... and that's just since January.
[shootings from NYT article & approx school enrollments from wiki]
1
Big time to start a movement
# no guns without psych clearance
My vote is in
Two advantages : People will not be killed at the most safest places in the world and also people will still be able to purchase guns for safety
@Radhika
This is not Minority Report. There is no psych test that can tell what someone will do in the future.
How telling and sad it is that school shootings have become so commonplace that it is no longer the lead story. By tomorrow it will be old news, forgotten.
1
How’d he get the gun and ammo? Who taught him to use it? Those people should be held accountable .
3
@Mike Patlin Local media are saying his father was an avid hunter. The parents divorced a few years ago and the father died a couple of years ago. I'm guessing his guns were not disposed of or at least locked up.
The suspect hasn't been identified yet we knonw today is his birthday and his age?
How is that possible?
2
@dimitri Not really a mystery. They know who it is but haven't released the information yet. Ironically, probably because of needing to notify the family first...
Be patient. You will learn it all, if you haven't already.
These school shootings are now so common that this one was well down the list of top stories in this digital edition of the NYTimes. I we have gun nuts in comment section claiming that if it can happen in a very gun restrictive state like CA then gun control advocates will take all the guns. So crazy. Obviously this kid did not buy the gun but how his parents or someone he got it from obtained it and cared for it is an issue. Also restrictive gun laws in one state like CA can have little affect when some bordering states like Arizona and Nevada have lax laws.
2
Another mass shooting in the U.S. at school and let me guess nothing, absolutely nothing will change. Those unfortunate children were killed or injured and those who saw it happening need more than thoughts and prayers, they need action.
1
An absolute disgrace that we continue to fail our children by not instituting the strictest gun control laws. Shame on us all.
2
I blame republicans and trump. If California were permitted self-rule and if Democrats were elected to office, sensible gun control could be enacted and this shooting would never have happened. Trump & Moscow Mitch must be very happy tonight.
2
Watch the PBS documentary, “The Path to Violence” where you’ll learn about the Safe Schools Initiative.
I believe these school shootings are related to our nation's narcissism epidemic. I remember the world moving from typewriters to computers to websites and chat rooms. Chat rooms were social. The web enabled us to learn. The advent of smart phone cameras, social media, dating sites, porn sites, etc., were game changers. Children need time and attention. Many parents are glued to phones, concerned about status, or updating their social media. They probably make little eye contact with their offspring on any given day. The sensitive, unstable children can't hack it when their parents pay them no attention, negative attention, or are outright abusive. Yes, it's about guns, but it's also sometimes about living in a narcissistic family in a narcissistic society. I grew up in a narcissistic home, but the society itself was not narcissistic. There were role models for me out in the world. Not today.
3
@dga
Really? It's smart phones and porn? They did it?
What about the gun? What about the bullets? If they weren't there, the kids would all be alive, wouldn't they.
1
Another one for the GOP trophy case.
2
Meanwhile -- we have a President who brags about shooting a man on Fifth Avenue and getting away with it, who is a role model for millions of Americans.
4
What kind of world do we live in when innocent school children get murdered by senseless gun violence and this doesn't even make the 'fold' (prominent position) on the home page?
How does a 16-year-old get a hold of a .45 semiautomatic?
2
@Allison
The 16yr old got the gun because it was there, and he wanted it. Because it is there.
If he wanted beer, he'd get that, or dope, he'd get that. They aren't legally available to him, either. But he wanted the gun, and there it was, because they are just everywhere.
It's the guns.
1
Unless and until America puts children first, guns will continue to rain bullets onto our sons and daughters...
1
Another proud day for the Guns R' US crowd .. their vision for America.
3
Saugus means "Be Safe" in Lithuanian.
i can't help to wonder, exactly,
why this one happened?
and i also can care less, of what the 'illuminati'
do to the victimization, and promotion of their own
ideas, and political genre of what they think ,
should be known.
what matters are these KIDS,
and WHY.
and i would like to know, the REAL reason for it. :)
~peace
thomas :)
5 people shot (6 if you include the teenaged shooter) but the NYT doesn’t consider this a mass shooting. Why not? Because “only” 2 died. The other 4 don’t count because they survived, apparently. Just because a bullet enters your body doesn’t mean you got shot, according to the Paper of Record.
If the NYT wasn’t so interested in appearing “balanced” and instead interested in reporting facts, they would be talking about the fact that there have been over 425 mass shootings in 2019 so far, with 6 weeks to go.
2
This is not news anymore, school shootings are happening in this country so often that people are getting used to this violence.
I feel sorry for all those parents and the school children in this country. Is there any other country on this planet where schoolshootings are happening as this country and parents are constantly worried about the safety of their kids everyday
No politician seems to care whether Democrat or Republican, they want to keep the second Amendment as if it came from god. Remove guns from everyone just like what Australia did.
1
Is it illegal to publish his name, photo and background??
1
@Tom Bandolini Patience, please. They just found out. They probably have to notify his immediate family first. You will get your chance to see his picture.
The freedom to be randomly massacred by an angry male with no coping skills in a country with no serious gun laws is flourishing in Republistan.
"Drop dead, America !"
"Free-DUMB !"
GOP 2019
2
sorry to be crass but- who cares, right? I mean we love our guns, everyone is innocent, no one could have done this, not my kid, mental illness, lone gunman, etc. Right? Nothing to see here, unless it's your kid, then- how could this happen??? sob and weep (rightly so). Yeah the kid was a little off, but who would think? I mean guns are easy to buy, easy to transport, easy to steal, or borrow. My kid was always upstairs in his locked room, doing who knows what. Off with his friends. out buying a gun? Never. Not my kid. We're good people. My kid is good. Ok so our family had a few issues, but who doesn't? and this can go on and on and on... and it will. We're in the Wild West again. Each to his own revolver, or semi-automatic, nowadays. No need for more regulations, just arm everyone, teachers and everyone. Right? So where were those good teachers? sorry I'm so angry but haven't we seen this before?
4
You - EVERYONE who lives in the USA and lets this go on and on and on - have a "terminal" disease. Whatever side of the aisle you identify with, make all the excuses you want: You. Are. Sick. to let this happen over and over again. Shame!
7
@Letsfindout I so agree with your sentiments. It needs to be said.
@Mrs_I : Only the parents who have lost their young grieve more than I. Not only does the Emperor have no clothes, innocent C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N are being murdered over and over again. The shining light at the top hill is actually a funeral pyre coming from a country that WILLINGLY cannot/will not protect its young. Make America Humane Again.
3
How long before it comes to light that the perpetrator was a deeply troubled individual, who was demonstrating some of the classic warning signs that have presented themselves in many of the shooters? When will schools and police begin to take these issues seriously?
We are experiencing a deterioration of mental health in our younger generations that is unlike anything that has been seen before. We desperately need to adapt and change our gun laws accordingly (or actually start enforcing them). How all 50 states still do not have universal gun laws is a mystery. There also needs to be a form of mandatory removal of firearms from the homes of individuals who are suffering from documented mental health disorders--not just the owner but any member of the household.
Addressing mental health crises and/or disturbing behavior in our youth should be a critical focus, as our schools are clearly not taking the issue seriously enough. If we axed needless administrator positions with their accompanying bloated salaries, perhaps we can invest in providing our youth with adequate help.
8
Personally I think the reliance on social media and staring at a smart phone all day long is a contributing factor to the decline in Mental health of teens and young people. I have no studies to back this up, but I know using social media is addictive and it is like solitary confinement when your social like is online.
1
As a school counselor intern/LPCC trainee (licensed professional clinical counselor) in California, I urge you not to conflate mental health illnesses with gun violence.
It’s misguided to assume that those who are managing mental health illnesses are more likely to commit violent crimes. Mental health illnesses are not the leading factor in mass shootings. NO mental health diagnosis in the DSM-V lists mass physical violence as a symptom.
Yes, mental health issues appear to be on the rise for the vast majority of young people.
Yes, schools, especially in California, ARE increasing access to mental health care for our students. It’s only slow going because our federal government makes it so.
Blaming mental health for gun violence further allows politicians to avoid gun reform.
4
And nothing will change.
Shame on America.
37
To a carpenter, the solution to every problem looks like a nail. Every time another mass shooting occurs, the first question asked is motive; as if there could possibly be a reason which explains the slaughter of innocents. There is no motive. Americans shoot each other simply because they can. To those who revere the 2nd Amendment as holy gospel, the solution to every problem looks like a bullet. Got a grievance? Shoot thy neighbor. Please stop. Please stop accepting anarchy to justify your irrational, constitutional fear of tyranny. Peace, order and good governance is possible. Give it a try.
35
Went too post on an ABC site. Still banned. But I did read(allowed to that I guess) that Murphy and Blumenthal were on the Senate floor apparently at the same time on a gun rant when news of the shooting came in.Can they do that?
https://abcnews.go.com/US/shooting-reported-high-school-los-angeles-area/story?id=67010044 Down by comment section. Within minutes once again anti gun factions are going at. I guess it's called strike while the irons hot and people are worked up.
So when do we start feeling free?
15
You are free. Nothing is stopping you from living your life and doing what you want to do.
This affects none of that. So I'm not sure what your question even means or how it relates to the situation.
@Chad Uselman I think he means feeling free from feeling scared all the time, and feeling free from having to look around to see if there's an active shooter in your midst. Nowhere in America is safe.
1
When will America change its gun laws to prevent yet another senseless shooting? Time to change the laws on gun ownership!
13
The culture cannot be changed. We have been violent in a deadly manner since 1600s
1
This happened in a state with the most restrictive gun laws in the nation by a student.
Stricter gun laws will never stop these things from happening. Period.
1
@Chad Uselman
Every time this happens, I hear people trotting out this asinine "argument." And every time, I get more and more infuriated with the utter stupidity of it.
Just keep burying your head in the sand, and ignoring the obvious reasons why a society absolutely saturated with easy-to-access firearms is also a violent society. I'm sure glad it makes YOU feel better...
This student assassin obviously could not purchase a gun by himself (well, in this country, as per republican promiscuous license to get weapons at will; anything goes, I guess, to our horror). So, how about investigating the possibility (probability?) of parental neglect, leaving arms unsecured and at kids disposal, a 'crime' in and by itself? For now, what a disgrace, and suffering, for the families affected. The only common denominator is the profusion of guns...and our 'macho' demand of resolving our differences by shooting each other. Sad!
9
We as a nation have abdicated our responsibility to protect our children from gun violence. We have all failed. When elementary school children were gunned down in cold blood, and the country collectively sighed and did nothing, we failed. There is so much we could do--expand background checks, close the gun show loophole, ban assault rifles, to name a few--but we instead sit on our hands and do nothing. Nothing. We should all be ashamed. What a disgrace.
23
@Dave oh come on we did stuff like whine on the internet, copy and pastes "vote them out!", made poster boards and bought plane tickets and booked hotels to march in D.C. for no good reason because nothing became of it and we could have donated all that money to a gun-control organization. We thought about calling our rep but eh a week had gone by and whatever.
We did lots!
Hey! Why all the doom and gloom? At least this wasn't an official "mass shooting." Maybe it's because we are finally starting to get our act together when it comes to gun control!
Yeah right.
6
"“It’s the world now,” he said. “The world now is weird.”"
No, darling, it's just the US and the people who don't want to vote for gun control.
23
The gunman fired a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol in the quad of the school just after 7:30 a.m. and ... there were no more bullets in the gun when it was recovered.
The Guns Over People party and their National Terrorist Association sugar daddies would have preferred that the murderous gunman would have had an AR-15 with a hundred-round magazine or two and a bump stock instead of a little pistol.
Vote for public safety on November 3 2020....not for a right-wing national shooting gallery.
22
They (NRA and GOP) are still awaiting that “good guy with a gun”.
He does not exist and does not have the answer.
1
@Socrates But what are you doing for the fight against all that besides this?
“It’s the world now,” he said. “The world now is weird.”
This is NOT the rest of the world! THIS IS U.S.A. ONLY
25
As this murder by another teenager with a gun, Senator Cindy Hyde Smith argued on the Senate floor AGAINST background checks. Her argument 'for the people- here:
https://mobile.twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/1195057733810061312
3
I guess the shooter must have been part of the well-regulated militia?
20
Trump wants all our neighbors to be able to make their own guns at home on 3-D printers. Only the courts are stopping him. Link to NYTimes article below -
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/3d-printed-guns-blueprints.html?searchResultPosition=1
2
"It’s the world now,” he said. “The world now is weird.” That's the truth young man.
2
Let him die slowly in pain, alone and without treatment . He deserves nothing - no charity, no empathy, no notoriety - nothing.Then when gone should be put into an unmarked grave and all mention of hius name should be stricken. We don't need to "understand" him.
4
@lastcard jb I'd bet the teen gunman was thinking remarkably similar things when he planned and carried out the shooting. But his antisocial apathy at least has some science behind it, since the teen brain is still years away from maturity.
3
@lastcard jb I'd bet the teen gunman was thinking remarkably similar things when he planned and carried out the shooting. But his antisocial apathy at least has some science behind it, since the teen brain is still years away from maturity.
@lastcard jb
The American appetite for punishment over rehabilitation and socialization is a big part of why we have so many violent, antisocial men (almost always men) running around out there. The attitude you're displaying here only perpetuates violence and trauma. And the fact that this kid was/is a despicable coward doesn't change that.
1
And the President of the United States, as well as one of the country’s two dominant political parties, apparently believe the solution to America’s virulent epidemic of gun violence and suicide by gun is... more guns!
We’re living in a topsy turvy world. A nation gone mad.
6
Your list does not include the April 2019 shooting in the Poway synagogue.
2
"The suspect [in the Santa Clarita shooting] has not yet been identified."
Good. Let's keep it that way in perpetuity.
3
Sad! Sad! This country just likes a war zone. Republican Senators take too much money from NRA. I guess they would take a action if these victimes are their sons and grand sons. It's time to abolish the second amendament.
4
Let’s go thru the same talking head nonsense.
“Our thoughts and prayers”
“Now is not the time to discuss the issues of....”
More sacrifices upon the voracious altar of the second amendment.
Honestly, nothing new to see here. Next story.
3
Just vote them all out. Conservatives are single issue voters on reproductive rights and guns. Vote them all out, unconditionally, if you don't you will have Guns and worse still, TRUMP
8
What is wrong with the American male? Why are so many of them so set on killing? It's tearing our world apart. They need special help, the sooner the better. The mayhem is just too much.
5
Always blame the gun manufacturers! Never the perpetrators....Always and Forever! W
If I were president I would ban automatic and semiautomatic guns on my first day.
12
Buh, buh, buh...California has the toughest gun laws in the nation.
3
@bfree Tough laws in an individual state do not mean anything when neighboring states have far more lax legislation. Only when tough laws are a national constant will we see any effects.
4
@bfree yes, and as the article says, California can't do anything against guns coming from other states with lax gun regulations.
do you guns-for-everybody people really believe in all this stuff you keep repeating (like this half truth of yours), or you really know the truth but keep repeating lies or half-truths because you like guns and couldn't care less about all the people being murdered with them?
2
This really ought to be front and center on the homepage.
1
This is news? It's the norm in the USA.
Ahab is too obsessed with its white whale.
1
Welcome to the United States of America.
https://www.ammoland.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Senator-Cindy-Hyde-Smith-with-daughter-Anna-Michael-450x580.jpg
The URL above gives a nice photo of Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss, (A-rating from the NRA) and daughter. The family that kills together stays together.
This is the woman who didn’t want gun control-related legislation to go forward in the Senate for fear it would prevent her from her gun to her grandson.
Until people like this stop being elected it’s an uphill battle to sanity and kindness. I’m waitiing for the first person to say it: “Guns don’t kill, people kill”. And of course, ‘thoughts and prayers’.
4
I've posted this before, and it is still sickening.
AMERICA
Go shopping, get shot.
Go to a festival, get shot.
Go to a concert, get shot.
Go to church, get shot.
Go to the movies, get shot.
Go to work, get shot.
Go to college, get shot.
Go to high school, get shot.
Go to first grade, get shot.
22
This is all too much. Needs to be stopped now.
5
And we know what the republicans offer...we have more to fear from the gop than from any foreign terrorist.
7
I had to look for a mention of this shooting on Nytimes. Yeah, we normalized it. Congratulations USA.
Where did this child get a gun? Reporters should find out.
5
Thoughtless prayers, wash, rinse, repeat.....
5
ENOUGH!!!!
4
GOP to NRA: We are very pleased to report we secured the innocent gun from those dead kids.
3
Praying isn't enough.
VOTE.
7
@Pia
I'll go one step further... prayer is useless.
Behold the pale horse
"Here’s what you need to know:
The gunman shot five people before turning the gun on himself, the police say.
A student says he ‘grew up knowing this is a thing that happens.’
A father of two children at the school described seeing students ‘huddled together in tears.’
California has seen many mass shootings in recent years.
California’s strict gun laws can’t keep out weapons from other states.
American school students are all too familiar with the threat of shootings.
Democratic presidential candidates put a spotlight on gun violence."
+++++++++
Here's what you need to know? Other than the 'stats' in the first bullet, all of that other stuff has been well-known for years, and moreso with each successive shooting.
What we really need to know...to understand...and apparently accept is.... we live in a nation whose priorities are completely out of whack. We glorify violence.
More people in our prisons (as % of population) than Any Other Nation.
Spend more on War than next six countries, Combined.
1/3 of all in our prisons have a Mental Illness (gee, what a nice way to care for the sick, eh?)
Your typical Hollywood 'blockbuster' has violence as the main selling point, as is clearly evident in the movies' ads, and where weaponry is purposefully and prominently featured in the ad.
Your typical American driver now owns a private vehicle that is more reminiscent of an army tank (Yukon, Suburban, Denali, Range Rover, Escalade, RAV-4) than anything resembling a car
4
I pine for my two-year-old grandson. What is worse, gun violence or climate change? The world he is growing up in scares me, no it terrifies me. And I know people who vote Republican who honestly don't give a flying-you-know-what about any of this. For a little extra change in their pockets. Shame on them. Shame.
7
Thoughts and prayers...
As an american living in Brussels, literally meters away from the “hell hole” of Molenbeek, I am ceaselessly amazed by my compatriots’ attitude. I thought that Sandy Hook would be the wake up call, but it only seems to get worse. My belgian wife, who is a teacher (in Molenbeek), told me that here in Belgium they don’t even have gunman drills, or even metal detectors in schools...
At some point one must ask oneself if this isn’t one giant Darwinian Award experiment on a national level.
God help us, because obviously nobody else will, even if it means saving our kids lives.
2
Until the children of GOP congressional parents, NRA and gun nuts are ripped apart by gunfire at their prep schools, nothing will change.
Ha, jk. of course they won't care!
7
Shooter is being described by KCRW as a male Asian who’s shot 5 people and then himself.
2
"Tristan Aguirre, a 17-year-old senior, said he was in English class when he heard “some shots,” a situation the students had prepared for in shooting drills.
“It’s the world now,” he said. “The world now is weird.”
+++++++++++
Actually, no...it's not the world now. It's the US now. So long as we say 'well, that's just how the word is now', is to imply we have no power to change the trajectory. Sure, the occasional mass shooting happens the world over, but you'd be very naive, and to have your head in the sand, not to realize that the frequency of such shootings is a very American thing...just like apple pie. And it's up to us Americans, to change that.
231
@Lisa
Jeez, leave the kid alone! Of course he’s a bit bloody mixed up, there was just a shooting in his school.
3
@Lisa, as long as the gun manufacturers keep making money and the NRA keeps (mostly) Republican politicians on that $$ leash, nothing will change.For these folks, money trumps the lives of our kids, I guess. And Faux Fox Propaganda keeps up that drumbeat of false 2nd Amendment ‘rights’. Most of the gun toting fanatics in this country might better spend their time studying English than target practice. They might better understand the phrasing, with the proper punctuation.
12
@Lisa
Yes, it's up to us Americans to change it. Most Americans want responsible gun legislation. We're sick of our kids being mowed down. But, we have opposition in the Republican Party. Even now, in this moment a bill for gun legislation - passed in the House - sits on Mitch McConnells desk. He has refused to put it before the Senate for a vote.
You want to do something? Use your vote. At this point, it's all we have. Get the GOP out of office and let's move forward with common sense laws. Enough is enough. Get the NRA out of our elections and kick the GOP to the curb.
22
I know I'll receive a lot of angry replies, but I want to point out that we are one of a minority of countries that has a 2nd Amendment or the like; and most of the other countries that allow guns have greater restrictions than we do. It is SO past time for a Constitutional Convention to be convened and determine if we really need a 2nd Amendment. It has been the bane of the US for entirely too long ~ we no longer live in the Wild Wild West or need worry about the British coming. IMHO.
34
Sixteen years old - the gunman was 16, and his victims were younger still.
Pete Buttigieg spoke in my city a few months ago, and took questions afterward. One was from a 16-year-old high school student, who asked what he would do to stop school shootings. Buttigieg began with his program points, then stopped. "I remember being 16," he said. "There are so many other things you should be able to be thinking about instead of whether you are going to be safe in school."
Every single person in this country should be able to agree that kids shouldn't have to be thinking daily about whether they'll make it home from school alive. Somehow, though, the politics of guns entangle people in endless arguments that end, time and again, in stalemates - while the killing goes on. All we're showing kids is that adults value guns more than their precious young lives.
19
@Olenska
Just out of curiosity, did Pete say anything of interest or helpful after his admittedly nice bit of sympathy?
1
@John Moniker : Please re-read my comment: Buttigieg began his response to the high school student with his program points; as I recall some of them: universal background checks and gun licensing, putting "red flag" laws in place, banning AR-15-type/assault weapons, supporting legislation to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and people convicted of hate crimes. All of these things I find to be "of interest or helpful," as did I find his "nice bit of sympathy." Certainly the young man who asked the question did - and his opinion matters more than yours or mine.
1
@Olenska Have you called your state rep? Have you encouraged everyone in your life to? Try it and see how many actually do, that should give you an indication of how much this country cares about kids dying at the hands of guns.
There is an emotional toll that we are all experiencing and as long as the NRA have the GOP politicians in their back pockets, nothing will ever change. Everyday something terrible happens and we hear over and over that the politicians are sending prays and thoughts. However we should of moved beyond that concept a long time ago, since unless we act in a meaningful way nothing will ever change.
It is not about taking away guns it is about acting as if we have just a little bit of common sense and empathy .
Ms. Haley said let people heal after the shooting in S.C. by the weeks end there was another shooting. Background checks, carrying concealed weapons we need to stop, think and attempt to save people's lives vs destroying them
3
Now we have a 16-year old boy who wanted to highlight his last birthday and end it all by stopping other teens from reaching their 16th birthday. He thus far has succeeded in doing so for 2 victims. I pray that there will be no more from those who are wounded.
And I sincerely hope that there will be no copycats, but given what we have come to see as normal, there is no guarantee of that not happening. Those families of the deceased and families of all other victims over the years should not have empty chairs at their tables on Thanksgiving. And survivors’ families should not be saying thanks that their sons and daughters survived.
I am running out of words to express my anger, sadness, helplessness, and disgust at those who have the power to do something about this but refuse to do so.
13
@LT
until metal illness, violent movies and video game are addressed nothing is going to change. kid and young people see glory in the shooting of other.
don't blame the gun, blame the user. Have all the background checks needed, people who are law abiding are willing. but actual do something with the unlawful user, no bonding out , long tough sentences and the death penalty.
One factor rarely discussed when it comes to school shootings is the shooter's mental health and what if any medications the person might have been taking.
Personal privacy may me a factor here but there is a proven link between some medications and violent/suicidal thoughts.
from CCHR "With antidepressants, there are now nearly 100 drug regulatory agency warnings from ten countries and the European Union alerting prescribers and patients to the drugs' adverse effects, including hostility, violent behavior and suicide."
Those involved in such shootings should be checked for such meds. What if any psychotropic meds were they taking? What level was in their bloodstream?
The same investigation should occur in the case of veteran suicides.
Psychiatric drugs may be far MORE dangerous than guns.
4
Utterly ridiculous. There is ZERO scientific proof that SSRIs, anti-psychotics, or any other medication causes mass shootings. Millions of people take thousands of medications every day and don’t shoot up a school. You might as well blame violent video games and lizard people from Venus while you’re at it.
In fact, there is only ONE common ingredient to every mass shooting: easy access to a firearm. People all over the world take anti-depressants every day, yet the United States is the ONLY civilized nation that sees this kind of violence. Why? Because we make it so easy to get a gun. This is not hard to figure out.
3
@cynicalskeptic I'd like to know the answer to this, also. I've read varying accounts as to whether all the mass shooters have been on antidepressants or just the overwhelming majority- either way, it needs to be looked at. I have a feeling the pharmaceutical lobby is going to prove worse than the NRA.
@cynicalskeptic : You cite "nearly 100 drug regulatory agency warnings from ten countries and the European Union." How many of those countries have a death toll from shootings that the U.S. does? Irrespective of whether someone is taking "psychiatric drugs" or not, it is ready access to guns makes mass slaughter possible.
2
I am really tired of the 2nd ammendment arguments. The Declaration of Independence also guarantees our unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Let's put the emphasis on life.
19
as a current high school sophomore, this is devastating and disheartening. my generation has protested endlessly and adults are happy to applaud our initiative but at the end of the day nothing changes. i have lived in rural areas, i understand hunting culture and the occasional necessity of weapons but no one in the us needs the kind of gun used in war. mental health is a significant issue facing my generation but of the many friends i know who struggle with depression and anxiety, none have ever been compelled to shoot their friends and peers. the same goes for friends who play video games.
as much as people want to blame things beyond the scope of their control for this horrifying phenomenon, the simple truth is that the government has the power to end this and has had the power to end this for as long as it’s been an issue. the choice to value unneeded guns over the lives of young people is the only thing preventing change.
15
It’s very illegal for a child in California to own a gun. I don’t know what more laws, other than confiscating guns and banning sales, would do about this situation. And we have a Second Amendment. So that is out of the question.
2
@Jake : The U.S. does not have uniform gun control laws. Transport of guns into California from states with weaker gun laws means that access to firearms is easy, irrespective of that state's own efforts to control them. It's the same in Illinois, which is surrounded by states whose gun laws are lax; Chicago's city limits touch Indiana, and there is no way of stopping transportation of guns into the city from that state. The answer is one strict nationwide standard, but apparently, to the NRA-owned Congress, gun ownership is sacred; human life is not.
2
I know, right? It’s not like Amendments to the Constitution can be amended... oh.
1
@Olenska
If it were just gun laws then all of Indiana's cities would be just as violent as Chicago.
Yes, Congress, please pass sensible national gun legislation. But let's also finally have some research into why mass shootings occur. Let's find out why kids are so stressed and isolated, and remove the stigma around mental illness. Let's free up the teachers so they can focus on the students. Let's talk to our kids and find out what's going on in their lives. In short, let's all own this problem and figure out how to fix it together.
3
Things that could be done: Ban Ammunition, failing that mandatory enhanced back ground checks, assault weapons ban, mandate all weapons be kept in a locked safe, mandate weapons locks, limit the purchases of ammunition, ban large capacity magazines, follow through on the SCOTUS ruling allowing the suing of gun manufacturers, anyone convicted of a felony would have their weapons taken from them as a matter of course. There are many, many things that could be done that are being blocked by the NRA and its adherents, including the President. Meanwhile our kids are dying.
2
This afternoon a commentator on MSNBC made the point that the police and other first responders are doing their jobs, teachers and school administrators are doing their jobs, all to protect us. But it is the Senators who are more concerned with maintaining their seats in the Senate who continue to put all Americans at risk.
14
I am a college student. More than once I have been walking through campus or sitting in class when something goes "BANG." Everyone jumps a foot in the air and no one breaths until we are sure it was a car backfiring and not a gun going off. I don't know if gun restrictions are the answer. As an anarcho-communist I hate the thought of us losing even more rights ala 9-11. I do however think we need to do something. I am tired of living in fear. There is a small part of me that is certain that someday I will be involved in a mass shooting and I hate that feeling.
4
Yet another school shooting. Two more dead children, 2 more families who just lost a child to the senseless gun violence in America.
The only way to stop the violence is with strict gun control. The gun lobby and the NRA will tell you otherwise, but they are wrong, and they lie. As long as they control politicians with their contributions, even laws that 90% of Americans agree on, such as universal background checks, will not even get a vote in the Senate.
Republican senators are responsible for doing nothing about gun violence in America. They need to be voted out of office. We need federal laws to curtail gun violence. Guns are the problems (regardless of what the NRA says).
7
"Thoughts and prayers" are not enough. They are hypocritical words spoken by too many people who hold the 2nd Amendment as the centerpiece of a "free and democratic" society. In particular, I await these words from Mr. Trump, the man who embraces violence and the hate to which it is wedded. More innocents, our young, are needlessly becoming victims of the radically unbalanced. They have their whole lives ahead of them, but they instead are controlled by the powerful NRA and those politicians who are in its back pockets. My heart goes out to the dead and injured along with their loved ones. I promise to these folks that gun regulation will be uppermost in my mind when I go to the polls to cast my vote in 2020.
3
The Senate was debating the "Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019" to mandate background check requirements at the same moment the Santa Clarita shooting was happening. Republicans - specifically Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi - blocked the legislation, even after hearing that the shooting in Santa Clarita occurred. The best way to make gun control happen? Don't vote for Republicans.
9
We will have another round of breast-beating, demonstrations and vigils...but no analysis of underlying causes of social anomie that often triggers such despicable behavior.
Yes, the relative ease of availability of guns and glamorization violent video games are among culprits, but there're deeper reasons as well for mass shootings.
Social deviance and truancy now are considered mainstream, while the model of traditional family is considered passe. Everything old is not gold, but social institutions and values that provide stability need to be respected once again.
And, yes, let people be able to speak their minds freely, instead of being made to hide behind the wall of political correctness. It might help decrease the magnitude of the problem.
1
@Albela Shaitan A traditional family structure doesn't guarantee that children will be cherished and nurtured, and children can be cherished and nurtured without a traditional family structure. The problem is that many children are not and many adults have no idea what infants and children need in order to be healthy. Our society is one of alienation and isolation.
Another avoidable shooting; another sad reality of life in today’s America. And we all know the next sequence of events: certain legislators yammering about mental illness; second amendment diehards shouting “Don’t take away my guns”; NRA pushback; a Trump presser at his helicopter promising we’ll see what happens; life and “death” going on as usual. The media will do their due diligence and we’ll have great discussions. Here’s a suggestion: can we talk about not only the human costs, but the medical ones. Maybe we should have legislation drafted that would require the government, along with the NRA, to pay the medical costs in full. Not just immediate hospital and surgery expenses, but the post trauma costs as well. Maybe the NRA will become bankrupt sooner rather than later.
2
It's Primaries time. What are the candidates saying? What are the voters doing? not much of anything re guns.
The world is one race, Sapiens, yet the amount of mass shooters in America vastly outnumbers those in other countries. I wish I had the answer, and unfortunately no one else seems to have it. All we have is screaming rhetoric from both sides inside of a bipartisan panel of smart people who just might attempt to solve this issue. Has the latter been tried? I don’t know of one Republican or Democrat who approves of killing so perhaps it’s time to join forces and offer up some real solutions. Because what we are doing now, which is nothing, clearly isn’t working.
1
To quote someone online- "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a vote." Vote every Republican out of office, than we as a nation, can get sane gun laws.
4
Heaven forbid we ever have a fire at school. Active shooter situations are the new fire drill.
My second and fourth grade kids describe crawling into their cubbies and hiding which they’ve practiced since pre-kindergarten. The entrance to their school 5,894 miles away looks like Fort Knox because of this insanity.
We put man on the moon ... now it’s time to bring him down to earth with a full ban of automatic and semi-automatic weapons today.
6
Gun control will not solve this. As a resident from Utah, guns are common and everywhere. It is common for people to have multiple guns and even a conceal carry license. Yet, for some strange reason, we don't have mass shootings. If you look up "mass shootings in Utah" you get the one (1) that happened 12 years ago. That's it in this century. Now ask yourself why that is.
Rant time:
The NRA doesn't sell guns. It is an organization that promotes/protects guns and gun rights. Most guns are semi-automatic, while fully-automatic guns have been highly illegal for a while now. Criminals don't care about laws, which is why drugs are still around. If you made every gun illegal to buy, criminals would smuggle them, 3D print them, manufacture them; whatever method it may be- they will use it. They are criminals. They do not follow the laws. "Thoughts and prayers" come after the police (who are armed with guns) have dealt with the threat. Once they have protected the citizens by risking their life, they then want to help others. They aren't witch doctors who can bring back the dead, so they do what they can. Oh and the article says "California’s strict gun laws can’t keep out weapons from other states." So why make it harder for Californians to protect themselves from a threat they can't control? Just my opinion, I'm allowed to have one (1st amendment). Plus, I can carry a conceal now too (2nd amendment). But what do I know? I'm only 18.
2
This is so sad, and unnecessary, I cannot imagine the parent's grief. Is it time to maybe give up and consider living in another country? Might that be the answer to the madness that has become America?
1
This tragic, frequent event, will just keep happening until Republicans are out of power. Republicans stop any attempt at gun control, desperately fighting on behalf of the NRA regardless of the wishes of the majority of Americans.
Voting for a Republican is voting for more school shootings.
4
@Dan Stackhouse That last line needs to be printed on bumper stickers and billboards and displayed across the country.
@Dan Stackhouse
It's not just Republicans. Remember the first two years of Obama's first term, when the Dems controlled both houses of Congress? Exactly zero gun control legislation passed then.
As a teacher in Canada of High School students I am so thankful I do not live and teach in the USA. Love visiting the states, but I think my Canadian policy leaders are much more level headed on gun control issues. We Canadians only shake our heads time and time again when these incidents occur south of the border. Get it right,America!!!!
3
Don't normalize this. This is not normal. This is not unavoidable. Call it for what it is, a "mass murder enabled by arms readily available and easily obtainable". Other countries have taken measures and have been very successful in preventing these massacres.
"Thoughts and prayers" doesn't bring them back.
Don't blame videogames or violent movies. The same videogames are sold all over the world. The same movies are distributed all over the world. The difference is the ubiquitousness of all types of guns.
Parents have to live in fear of losing their children in the next mass murder. It doesn't have to be this way. It's not about "freedom". It's about "money". Follow the money.
An "armed populace" doesn't prevent the US government from becoming a tyranny. That's another fallacy.
Buy back and ban all hand guns and assault weapons. Regulate sport firearms, require a licensing test and insurance. Minimize the risk by taking the guns off the street. Otherwise we're just sitting ducks waiting for the next murderer to flip.
1
@JG I don't want to sell back my guns to an entity that never sold them to me in the first place. But you know what, for the low low price of $100,000, I MIGHT be persuaded to sell back one of my older guns.
Unless by "buy back" you really mean confiscation --armed state agents will break down my door, search for and seize my guns. THAT, will bring forth a slightly different reaction from gun owners.
Heartbreaking. Again. Counting the minutes before Trump offers the perfunctory "thoughts and prayers"...
2
Is the easy availability of guns a problem ?
Of course !
Now imagine what it will be like with the latest bit of tech "progress", 3-D printers, when anyone can make a gun at home with plans available on the internet.
And one does not even have to imagine how the internet guarantees that any individual so inclined can have the power to control the news (and, consequently, lives) of 300 million Americans and a big chunk of the rest of the world by going out and shooting up a bunch of people. All it takes is one in ten million to give us a steady diet of carnage. Or a group wanting to "publicize" its agenda. And every article, tweet, comment, posting, retweet, etc. merely serves to feed into the sense of power and control that says, "Hey, watch how I can make you pay attention to me, to do what I want! Bang, bang, bang!!"
Of course for those who prefer not to go out "in a blaze of glory" but prefer serial mayhem, armed drones and self-driving cars should do the trick.
1
@Steve Fankuchen I admit I don't understand much about 3d printing but you can't explode a bullet in a plastic gun. I don't really understand how this would work?
As a parent of teens, I’m disgusted and fed up with nothing being done about these school shootings.
Why don’t we all just admit that nothing is being done and nothing will be done in the near future to protect citizens against guns and stop wasting time and pretending otherwise.
2
Despite the fact that Senator Bernie Sanders called for "common sense" gun-safety legislation, he voted against the Brady Bill.
1
This is a public health epidemic. Stop this madness.
2
Thank you to the gun manufacturers and their spokespeople in the NRA for making these monthly US massacres possible.
A special thanks to Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and the rest of the NRA bought GOP politicians, who abet these mass firearm shootings, through their refusal to enact meaningful gun controls.
By their lack of morals, or ethics, or civic duty, the firearm manufacturers, the NRA and the GOP make all this monthly carnage possible. And we sheep continue to their slaughter.
2
Most of these assailants are angry suicidal young males.
Often, they injure and kill others, and then themselves
Or they shoot others to provoke the police into shooting them
Stringent gun laws will bring about a thriving black market
Background checks do not reliably predict future violence
Do you have any recommendations likely to be effective ?
1
@Thomas I am not saying the rest of your username
I got a good one. Let’s do Medicare for all, so these mentally ill kids can get the treatment they need. And by the way, don’t you think it would be a lot harder for these guys to access a black market, making it a decent idea?
I would like to see every member of Congress who has failed to act against gun control charged and indicted as accessories to murder. Their prison terms would be for life without possibility of parole.
I would like to see these shameful, greedy elected representatives stew and cower in fear as they go about their kitchen chores, visit the exercise yard, stand in line for meals.
Rather than work to protect the public, and assure the safety of children, these cowards much prefer to offer protection to the NRA in exchange for financial contributions. One wonders where their allegiance would be should children offer them many hundreds of thousands of dollars?
The desire for some kind of retribution is overwhelming but I don't know what would hurt these people the most.
3
@N.Eichler I made a mistake - the above should read 'who has failed to act in favor of gun control...'
I came from India where a billion people live and where students go to schools often crowded and with very few resources. Friends and families are the social network. Everyone has them and everyone helps what little they can in their neighborhoods. We argue and debate but we never shoot each other. Likewise they are many other countries all over the world. We can learn from them. It seems America is just not good at everything.
3
I don't know what the federal government could do to stop this, but I am very pessimistic anything will happen. I am willing to bet that even if someone went into a school and killed children of senators that still nothing would be done, since taking action would be weighed against the possibility of losing an election.
3
Tougher gun laws are certainly needed but sadly, the current state of American culture is very much the bigger problem than inadequate gun legislation. How did it get to this? What is making people hate each other in America? It is today a country that is anything but United. It is a country of people who hate each other to the point that they are breeding youth who hate to the point of committing murder...to just shoot and kill anyone in sight.
Politicians who seek to divide the country into factions for their own political gain pitting citizens against citizens are not Making America Great Again. They are working to destroy America while claiming to be patriots.
These horrific shootings will not stop until American leadership puts down their weapons of hateful rhetoric, stop lying, stop looking to vilify those who think differently and start to embrace unity, respectful values and love of fellow human beings... actual love of the country instead of phony patriotism which in so many cases has become nothing more than a cover for hatred.
Everyone should take a minute this evening and look in the mirror and ask themselves if after nearly 3 years of MAGA, how great do you think America is today?
3
We are turning into a violent and irrational society. We need a serious cultural revamp . America has to rethink its culture, it’s values and its place in the world and rethink what life is all about.
5
Dear Donald J. Trump,
Remember you said you were about to offer "tremendous" gun safety legislation to Congress as Mitch McConnell requested? He wanted to hear from you before moving forward. The House passed gun safety legislation in February that Mitch has sat on, not even allowing it on the floor for discussion.
So Donald, you're a dollar short and a day late. Another mass shooting has happened. Please don't suggest only "thoughts and prayers" yet again. Failing to do anything substantive has been your m.o. from way back when you were a private business person. It's heinous that you fail to "make a deal" with Congress to protect Americans from more mass killings as President.
Impeachment is too kind a punishment for your ineptitude as POTUS. Americans will continue to demand our Congress be the check and balance to you as the Constitution intended. At least the Democratic House passed two gun safety bills in February. McConnell's Senate has done nothing with them, enabling your ineptitude. We will all cheer and applaud as Trump boards Marine One for the last time like a disgraced Nixon did in 1974.
Signed,
We The People
1
Ok, let's pray, hold a candle light vigil and wrap this thing up, folks.
2
Gun buyback programs have had amazing turnout in cities like San Jose for the past 2 years. Can't change the federal laws?, maybe the CA government should host statewide gun buyback program in the meantime. Do something, do anything!!!
Again. No gun control. Yet Congress can organize Impeachment hearings and their defense in less than a week. More lives cut short. I pray that our law makers -- so many have children too -- reach into their hearts and come together for solutions...in as much time as both houses can organize an impeachment. Shame...shame.
1
We’ve lost our sense of normal. Last night my local tv news showed a video of a “school resource officer” at a high school doing some impressive dance moves with the cheer squad, while wearing his full gear. The story was presented as something sweet (the kids out on a farewell event for him). It was one of those upbeat news packages, meant to show a “we can all get along if we try” moment. But the guy was kitted out to fight off an armed assault. He was dressed for war, dancing with a bunch of teenagers in a high school gym. I thought it was sickening. Yet neither of the news anchors commented on this being an odd thing. What is wrong with people?
A couple months ago a kindergarten teacher told me about her school going through the armed intruder training. She had to train her five year olds to hide from someone trying to kill them. They are barely out of their toddler years.
2
Let’s make the Republicans and Mitch McConnell own this. Let’s make sure they never forget all the blood on their hands. Call. Tweet. Email. Write. Do it so much they can’t ignore us any longer.
2
This is absolutely ridiculous. No student (no person, honestly) should feel the terror of not knowing if you’ll be the next person shot. It’s just so frustrating that students are growing up possibly expecting and waiting for it to be them or their school. I was in Paris, at the stadium, during the 2015 Paris attacks. I know what it’s like to be in the middle of that fear and confusion, not knowing what’s going on and what’s going to happen. Nobody should have to experience that, especially not children. While I understand that any kind of strict gun control won’t mean there’s no more gun violence (realistically, our country’s too large and our history with guns too ingrained) that doesn’t mean that stricter laws can’t have a positive and lasting effect on the safety of our citizens.
2
I’m in high school now reading this. How scary this is to be sitting in class wondering if the same will happen to our school. We need gun reform now.
6
Once again, America got an F on the subject of Safety for our children.
Once again a tragic day but don't worry nothing will change. Some outrage, some sadness and some disappointment will be expressed for couple of days and then we will wait helplessly for another tragic day like today.
These politicians particularly Republicans are in the deep pockets of the Gun lobby and as long as they are in power, nothing will happen to the abundance of these guns and easy availability of these guns.
2
Another shooting. We don’t care. If we cared, we would do something about it. But then we would have another Civil War.
1
“It’s the world now. The world is weird”. I’m sorry but it’s very decidedly not the world now, it is the USA.
2
All students must boycott schools on the same day. That would forced the lawmakers to their knees. It will game the upper hand in gun control.
1
One student said, "It's the world now...the world now is weird." I beg to differ...when I was in high school in the late 50s racism, lynchings and discrimination were rampant and accepted in this racist society, As a black person, I've always thought the world was weird...I use the same doctors, eat the same food have the same needs as white people but they openly kill me and mine. I recall a white man telling me once "that's different." So no, the world is not any weirder than it always has been. It's still weird...just a different kind.
2
We are a joke of a nation. Our complacency with these matters show our true colors.
2
Can one of these events have a lasting effect and immediate reaction by the American Government for a change. Yes it happens all over the world but no where near as often as in the States, guns shouldn't be banned but can someone at least bring up the idea of changing the laws to something similar to what Canada or some more forward thinking European countries laws are.
No child should have to say that these drills and shootings are "just part of life now". Guns should be locked up when they are being moved, handguns should not be allowed to be carried in your purse and everyone who wants to own a gun should have to go through a course and background check similar to what Canada offers, IT WORKS!!!! Yes you can still own a gun, just make it more controlled and see what happens. Don't let another shooting disappear into the background. I'm 100% biased as I live in Canada, but the proof is in the stats and the fact that I have never and will never hear a child from Canada say that shootings are just part of life now. Wake up America!!!
1
I have heard some teenagers comment this is just the world today. I would like to make sure that children in the United States realize, this is not the world today. This is America, and it’s adults are truly failing them.
I hope your guns are worth it.
3
The possession of firearms on school property is illegal!
3
For what purpose? He could have carried old ladies across the street, or cleaned up the park, or gone into the military. Now he will set in prison for the rest of his life. No new sports car, no girl friends, no nights out at the ball park. A warm body that could have done good gone to waste. Terrible. For those who suffered, my condolences.
In the second amendment we need a militia.
We have an established militia. Only those license should use guns. Thanks to farmer justice Scalia we have guns to assassinate each other.
One vote on the supreme court decision, to change the gun laws, where we allow each other to assassinate each other. And we only need one more vote to change the gun laws by the supreme court.
1
Apparently, too much is never enough.
2
Let the arms industry be, quit complaining, and please please, for the sake of all future billionaires, offer your children up to gun manufacturers and stop being so glum.
God wants gun manufacturers to have multiple houses, cars and unimaginable wealth. Your children? Phtthh. Who cares? Please just get real about this already. Get your priorities straight.
America needs to stop pretending that its children matter. Everybody knows they don't. Perhaps we could start selling off our children too and make even more money? I know, slavery is reprehensible, but if the slaves are only our children then what's the problem?
We'll start the process by harvesting the children of the elite schools of Texas where more people than average believe in the cause. A good kid should at least get you ten or twenty grand you would think. It will be an economic win for all! At least think about it.
I'm waiting for the NRA and the gun advocates to explain once again how if only the victims had been armed, the shooter would have been quickly dispatched. This nation is so pathetic in so many ways. Do nothing and expect things to get better.
2
@rwan Can you explain it to me how 16 year old acquired a gun in a state with the strongest gun laws. He is also too young to drive out of state to get a gun. He has also then carried it to a school property where possessing a gun is illegal. Clearly, people do not care about the laws both buying guns to commit crimes and selling those guns illegally. Are you going to ask criminals to do background checks when selling guns illegally?
1
Let’s not forget that besides all the gun laws, there is a failing school system where our kids go to everyday for 8 hours. Schools are so big in space and numbers that many kids fall through the cracks whether it be academically or emotionally. There are not enough staff members in a school to attend all of the emotional and academic needs of kids these days. Things are moving at such a rapid speed today not to mention Social Media-which I am sure must have had something to do with this situation.
2
I hope that the manufacturer of the weapon(s) used are held criminally liable for this incident. We had hope that the Sandy Hook massacre. would force the beginning of tough gun regulations in this country. Where are the politicians hiding? Some refuse to condemn the president for his actions and will remain silent again. Moral outrage doesn't change behavior and law.
12
"During her tenure, she told MSNBC, the House of Representatives passed four pieces of gun control legislation that have yet to be taken up by the Senate."
And there you have it. Thanks Mitch!
33
@confounded
Not that I'm not for gun control legislation, but would ANY of them have prevented this kid from acquiring a gun? If he's like every other school shooter of the past, the definitive answer is no.
The tacit problem is that this is not a problem you can sue away.
Way too many kids are alienated in school and in their communities. It is far too acceptable to treat people poorly, to bully them, to denigrate them.
Worst of all, this pervasive attitude never leaves room for people to re-examine their actions and behaviors. It's victim blaming to even consider the possibility that anyone but the shooter bears any responsibility. That's why it will never change.
Back in 1997, when Larry King was on CNN, he interviewed Tina Turner as she had just moved to Switzerland permanently.
He asked her why she left the US.
She said that people in the US are very mean. That's even more true today than in was in 1997. All you have to do is travel around other countries to realize just how utterly mean and passive aggressive Americans have become.
There is no sense of genuine sense of community, of respectfully disagreeing with people, or cutting people some slack when they're obviously having a bad day.
This tragedy is just another example showing that open campuses are no longer possible. No one can freely enter the White house or Capitol Hill without a security check and we need to protect our children just as well.
Bring in the National Guard until security walls around schools with and doors that don't open unless you've gone through a metal detector are installed in each and every public school!
5
Soon expect a statement from President Trump that the problem isn’t a gun problem but a mental health problem. So, Mr. President, where are your proposals to spend more on mental health programs?
16
You ask a president who ostensibly has mental health problems.
2
As most crimes involving guns, including this one, are committed with concealable and easy-to-reload-or-swap-out handguns, I am not sure what these gun restrictions might have done.
Maybe it is time to stop selling new semi-auto firearms altogether. Gun owners might be on board once they realize their current guns might get a lot more valuable. If someone wants a gun for self defense, they probably want it to be empty by the time someone trying to attack them gets close enough to grab it.
I just think of how yet another group of students, their friends, their families are all now walking around with PTSD that they will carry with them forever. Soon, very soon, America will just be a country of the walking dead ... survivors or family and friends of survivors of mass shootings struggling to unsee the blood, the gurneys, the shots fired, the unending screams.
7
What on earth does it say about where we are and who we are when my first thought was “one, well, that’s not as bad as it could be.” I’m a parent. If the one is YOUR child, it IS as bad as it could be.
55
im old enough to remember when columbine was so shocking, so terrifying, and so unbelievable that it was all anyone could to talk about. just as 9/11 was a landmark turn in our history regarding terror threats in this country -- heck, we changed the very way we fly on airplanes and behave in airports -- columbine should have been the landmark event that turned our attention to gun safety measures. instead the NRA and gun lobby won out. these intervening 20 years of mass shootings testify to results of these horrendous decisions.
505
@melon307
So true, we could go to school without fear of a gunman opening fire on us as we went about our school day...nor did we fear being body-slammed, handcuffed, and hauled off to jail by a school resource officer because we talked back to a teacher or didn’t comply fast enough with the officers command.
School children are under siege from shooters and those hired to supposedly protect them. No matter the school district, good or bad neighborhood, school children live with fear on a daily basis. The bomb drills of my grammar school days — the 1960s — seem quaint in comparison to what kids contend with today. We are failing them in so many ways.
19
@melon307 The war against guns in this country is already over. The people who love guns more than lives have won. It's been that way since Sandy Hook and Newtown.
But sure, keep blaming the individuals and mental health (as if everyone who's sad or depressed is at risk to take a gun and murder folks) and not the culture and industry that allows public shootings to happen with this frequency in this country and only this country.
27
And if not Columbine then surely the slaughter at Sandy Hook should have led to massive changes.
25
Where have all the flowers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one.
When will they ever learn?
Pete Seeger wrote the song in 1955.
Obviously, they have never learned.
Politicians put their jobs ahead of lives and the welfare of our country, among other things.
Vote them out. Every one.
53
Vote out the ones who are in the pocket of the NRA including Trump. And vote for those who want to ban assault weapons.
1
@Steve Ell It's oh wow a song quote. Didn't see that one coming.
Call your reps y'all and give them an earful. Show up to town hall meetings when they come home and yell at them in person. All this regurgitation every time we have one of these is great and all but literally does nothing.
Maybe our elected leaders would finally take action on this issue if the suspect had used a vape pen as his weapon of choice.
41
@Scott M
More pointedly, if the gunman had been suspected of selling loosies, the authorities wouldn't have allowed him a peaceful moment. But he's a sixteen-year old, and has managed to get hold of a deadly weapon? Nothing to see here, folks - keep it moving. I'll studiously avoid broadcast news tonight, as I don't want to hear or see any weak-as-water official spouting their shopworn sentiments. By Saturday this will have been eclipsed by some other horror, who knows where.
1
What constitutional right protects vape pen ownership?
@Rachelle Lane The 5th and 14th Amendments.
And so it begins.
Thoughts and prayers.
Rinse and repeat.
34
Vote for Democrats--it is the only action that will lead to sensible gun control. Mitch McConnel is up for reelection, and ousting him and taking over the Senate would immediately allow debate and action on gun control. McConnell has blocked any discussion, any attempt to grapple with America's love affair with the NRA.
84
@JP
Virginia was flipped in part because candidates ran on gun measures. It’s pretty clear where the republicans heads are at, they will ban nicotine vaping, under the illusion that it’s killing children, really...it’s pretty clear, legal vape cartridges weren’t killing people, “fake” cartridges are to blame. It’s simple, vaping has been around for a decade, yet nothing like the current lung illnesses have occurred. In fact, the UK has had exactly zero lung illnesses, vaping isn’t marketed to kids, it doesn’t have the presence on social media, the vape cartridges don’t contain more nicotine that what a pack of cigarettes contain. That’s because they believe in a thing called regulation.
But in this country we’ve enshrined an amendment that allowed well armed militia to keep an bear arms, mainly because we didn’t have a standing army, the National Guard, didn’t exist. But that has morphed to mean that untrained people can run out and buy a firearm that was developed for the sole purposes of killing people, the AR-15. A vast majority of people buy a gun because it gives them a warm fuzzy feeling, it fills them with a false sense of security, most untrained gun owners, run the very real risk of killing a friend or family member. More people have died in a single day from gunfire, than vaping ever has, yet it’s more important to ban vaping because 25 people dying from vaping, is just 25 to many.
2
@JP Even if Democrats pass restrictive gun laws, we still have 390+ million guns legally in circulation. Millions more already held illegally. How do you put that horse back in the barn?
The feds can't confiscate them all. They can't pay to buy them all back and people are not going to voluntarily turn them in.
Passing more restrictive laws, bankrupting the NRA and gun manufacturers won't work. That would create more people who violate laws, a larger black market where guns are not tracked and sanctuary states and groups that will defy federal laws with impunity just as some do federal immigration laws.
I wish I had a better answer but its anything but simply vote for Democrats.
1
Thanks for the reminder that the House passed a bill for background checks in February. 9 months ago. For all the people whining that the Impeachment inquiry is theater and the Democrats should get back to work? Here's some of the work. Languishing in the McConnell led Senate where everything goes to die.
109
Why does a comment section open up after every single gun related tragedy? It accomplishes nothing. The Second Amendment is not going to be repealed. The NRA is not going out of business. Guns are as American as apple pie.
1
@sharon5101 - Why don't liberals just join the NRA and at the next election for their president, put in Michelle Obama? Only 150,000 voting members decided who the last president of the NRA was going to be.
Liberals complain everyday about how powerful the NRA is yet for $1,500 (far less during sales) one can become a lifetime member and have voting rights. There are only 5 million members total and only about 2 million have voting rights. For 3 billion dollars, you could buy 2 million memberships at full price. Bloomberg could easily fund this with chump change.
1
Would you so blithely say that if, god forbid, it was your child?
2
What part of a well regulated militia do you not understand Miss Second Amendment?
2
The shootings happen, continue to happen. Our lawmakers do nothing. And even the very day it happens, this story is not at the top of the page in the Times. Just another day at school....
This has to stop.
11
The House, controlled by the Dems, voted in a bill 9months ago that the GOP controlled Senate is sitting on. Across the country GOP state lawmakers block gun legislation brought by Dems. Don't say no is doing anything when its one side that does nothing.
1
@northeastsoccermum
You are absolutely right - I should have said - the Republican lawmakers. Thanks for noticing that.
Based on the recent Supreme Court ruling RE Sandy Hook, let the families of everyone affected, including for psychological trauma, sue the manufacturer of the weapon.
We will begin to see a sea change then...
27
Your sad roll call of California shootings only goes back to 2013. You don't even mention Santana (2001), which killed 2, injured 13, and traumatized many more in San Diego County (some of the traumatized survivors went on to become my university students.)
Coming on the heels of Columbine, Santana certainly seemed like a big deal at the time. Everyone knew it by name, as they know Sandy Hook and Parkland now. What does it say about us that the list of recent shootings is just too numerous to go "all the way back" to 2001?
13
Thoughts and prayers for the members of Congress who enable these shootings — there must be a lot of angry parents.
8
Two days ago SCOTUS allowed the Sandy Hook families to sue the gun industry for advertising allures of owning a military style weapon. This once again open up more hurts. Every blockage to common sense gun control hurts and have traumatized our nation.
I am wordless and I am struggling not to let hate and anger win over my sense of self.
There is massive corruptions in so many areas of our nation and world and the view voices such as George Kent or Bill Taylor or any male or female that speaks truth to power runs victim to massive lies and denial campaigns.
Please media stop covering the White House. The administration only deals with layers of voracious untruths.
If a politician can be fact checked several dealing in untruth that stop the camera!
Please please we have more than past the rubicon. We are in a disaster free fall and our lives and the lives of the future are at very great risk.
11
While this shooting was going on, Senate republicans were blocking gun legislation today. They're soo concerned about the US citizenry.
35
@Lady4Real it's strange that you blame them when they're literally doing that their constituents voted them to so. Be mad at the gun lovers who vote and give to the NRA and the gun control people who don't vote, don't donate to anywhere, don't call their reps when this happens and just whine on the internet.
I fail to understand why a student or anyone else may enter a school with a firearm or other weapon. In Israel all people entering public facilities are searched for weapons. This system works.
8
@BJM - I'm trying to imagine a school putting every kid through a weapons search before school. I remember going to visit a friend for lunch and went to meet him where he worked, a federal building. It took me 15 minutes to get through the front door because I was wearing Carolina jump boots with a steel toe. I told the guys that they are military issue. They knew but still made me unlace them, take them off, and then run me through the scanner again, and I got to lace those dang things up again. I never went back to his office.
Israel is not as big as my state (Washington) and my state is not considered a big one. I'm picturing a nearby middle school and how long it would take to go through every single backpack, every single pocket. and every single band instrument. Do we pull the tuba apart to make sure no weapon is inside?
If I wanted to get the kids at said school, all I would have to do is wait for school to start and just mow them all down waiting in line to get in through security because some idiot like me wore military issue boots to a federal building.
Could you take a moment and explain how Israel does this for schools? One thought I have had is to eliminate the need for packs/instruments by giving each student two sets of textbooks - one stays in a locker at school and the other at home and the same for a musical instrument. Then, kids would not need to drag things back and forth and there would be less to check.
26
We have an understandable aversion to turning schools into high security lock down facilities
5
@BJM I've gone through security in malls and train stations in Israel probably a dozen times in the last few years, and the fact is that non-Arab looking people more or less just take off their bag and walk through a metal detector without their bag or person being searched, and Arabs are searched thoroughly. So I don't agree that "all people" are searched.
2
Time to blame everyone except those responsible.
5
The sickness that is guns and gun violence has become a plague. It is beyond me why as Americans we have held guns as some deity and it sickens me to see slogans such as 'God and Guns'. It points to a skewed sense of purpose and importance and guns literally takes the place of humanity, safety, love and kindness. We need a new leader a movement to change this asap.
11
In Wisconsin our reactionary legislature just refused to even vote on a common sense gun control bill including red flag laws. Won't matter how many die.
These men are shameless and the electorate needs to wake up.
24
Honestly, what is the point of covering another shooting ?
This is not news, not in america.
6
Wait, 366 mass-shootings and it is November 14th?! More than one a day! Don't bother joining the Army for combat training. Go to high school in the US.
Unacceptable.
31
"California’s strict gun laws can’t keep out weapons from other states."
This is what I "need to know" about this shooting?
Nothing like a sleazy injection of your political agenda to distort your reporting of an event that is still unfolding...
5
Truth hurts doesn't it?
1
@SD No, they’re reporters stating the facts.
1
@SD How is it sleazy o report the truth? Here in VT the gun laws are rather lax. There is no waiting period just a background check. Criminals from NYC, Philly, & Boston trade drugs for guns. They bring the guns back to their respective cities. This is another mass shooting. Perhaps this kid got the gun from home who knows but the fact remains unless federal laws are enacted this will keep happening. Until then let's just keep on offering thoughts and prayers because that is working so well. By the way your concern for guns over the parents who had their children killed today is appalling.
1
Hopes and prayers coming your way from the SWAMP (DC) but nothing approaching gun control.
This is America
8
I see all these beautiful faces of our young people in this nation, all betrayed by a gerontocracy that has sacrificed them on the altar of the gun industry. A country built on blood and ethnic cleansing seems prepared to sacrifice its youth to regular mass killings to preserve the power of septuagenarians.
21
@malaouna
So tragic and so true..... I'm crying too....
1
@malaouna
Yup. In a nutshell.
1
More innocent blood on the hands of the morally bankrupt GOP. I hope those checks from the NRA help you sleep better.
23
In Ca. they don't search for weapons ,because the liberals don't want to infringe on their personal space.
4
What a horribly insensitive thing to say. We do have metal detectors in many urban schools, and backpacks and purses are searched at nearly every public venue in LA. We would gladly implement more security at schools, but who will pay for it? And many of us would also like to see stronger measures to limit access to guns and ammunition, to mitigate the core threat.
8
@Alan Einstoss Yes, they should implement "stop and frisk" today.
Oh, another school shooting...yawn. Guess I'll go shovel my driveway now.
The "leadership" of this country disgusts me.
11
The headline reads "1 dead and several injured." That's a very slow Saturday evening in inner-city Chicago.
My liberal friends and the mainstream media are outraged when white suburban school children are shot but are silent when far more killings take place among black children day after day. How is this not prima facie racism?
Maybe those Black Lives Matter folks are on to something…
11
Everyone counts but mass murders in schools do get more attention. Despite black people being killed who are innocent bystanders of gang violence or police overreaction or racism most mass shooters are white males who are not economically disadvantaged and target groups they feel aggrieved towards. In the past 50 years shooters have not let whites leave while targeting blacks but they have let men go while targeting the females!
Women are also overlooked targets of gun violence with a number of black and non black women victimized by their husbands, boyfriend, ex’s and strangers. Protections for them are few when compared to the protections and rights of primarily male American gun owners of all races.
2
@Trench Tilghman
There's a gun buyback taking place in Chicago this Saturday on the south side. Apparently, it's not the first one.
Our new mayor is working with many gun violence organizations in the city to put an end to the slaughter. She's investing millions of dollars in developing the south side and infusing economic activity in the areas plagued by shooting. Also, she's asking for help with grappling with mental health in our city.
I support her in her efforts and wish her the best of luck, because she needs it. We all need to live in a peaceful and safe Chicago. Same goes for the whole USA.
2
@Trench Tilghman - I don't see Black Lives Matter marching down the streets of the south side of Chicago. Black Lives Matter could care less about black-on-black killings. Only when a white does it is it worth marching over.
1
“It’s the world now,” he said. “The world now is weird.”
- Tristan Aguiree
From the mouths of babes...
3
The gun laws of California are some of the most restrictive in the US. A 5-year Firearm Safety Certificate, submission of applicant data to the state, and passing a written test proctored by a DOJ Certified Instructor, is required for the sale, delivery, loan, or transfer of any firearm. Handguns sold by dealers must be "California legal" by being listed on the state's Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale. This roster, which requires handgun manufacturers to pay a fee and submit specific models for safety testing, has become progressively more stringent over time and is currently the subject of a federal civil rights lawsuit on the basis that it is a de facto ban on new handgun models. Private sales of firearms must be done through a licensed dealer. All firearm sales are recorded by the state, and have a ten-day waiting period. Unlike most other states, California has no provision in its state constitution that explicitly guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.
So now what, the most restrictive gun laws do you want confiscation of all guns
26
@Leza Yes. Getting rid of private ownership of guns would be a start. Countries were very few citizens own guns have significantly fewer shootings. It's simple math.
47
@Leza
"So now what, the most restrictive gun laws do you want confiscation of all guns"
Yes.
43
@Leza
Make neighboring states do the same! Better, the country!
35
These stories are so disturbing. My granddaughter works not far from the shooting and texted us to tell us she was safe. She was at UC Santa Barbara a few years ago , when a deranged young man killed a number of students. Sadly, this is the world she lives in. The gun laws don’t change. More unstable people will continue to kill and wound innocent people. Everyone will be sad, offer prayers, hold memorials once again. But the government, in particular, Republicans, allow this slaughter to continue by refusing to pass sensible, moral gun laws.
372
The logical conclusion of unrestrained capitalism where an elite buys off lawmakers, who in turn pass laws that prioritize quarterly profits over the public safety, is a society that experiences regular shootings, which always boost sales.
43
He is 16, so he couldn’t have legally bought a gun. And be used a handgun, which is legal in every state. Stop using the tragic deaths of children to attack an entire political party.
3
@SLD Voters. YOU AND ME, could stop this if they would speak up AND VOTE.
5
I have heard many people say that these horrific tragedies occur due to lack of gun control but I whole heartedly believe it is because of our lack of a social fabric in our nation. We have no tribe. We are the loneliest country in the world. Generations are getting lonelier and we can only see more of these tragedies occurring if we don't pay attention to the issue at heart: isolation.
I believe most of these perpetrators carry out these shootings because they had no one to turn to to talk about their problems and wanted to take it out their anger for not being heard and listened to (and loved). If you haven't seen Joker, the film, I highly recommend it because this is exactly why and how a mass shooting begins.
Moreover, I am currently studying in Jordan right now and I can tell you this from their culture: they have their tribe and it is a beautiful thing to witness. Family is first and friends are crucial for their communal ways. I am witnessing firsthand how we can end these mass shootings: hold each other's hearts while we are in our darkest and brightest times and always, always, love unconditionally because I believe all these shooters needed was love and a listening ear. Of course, it is more nuanced than that, but we need to look at our country from the sky and reflect on our culture and what we value.
مع سلامة (in Arabic it means :go with peace")
66
You still need a gun to do it.
28
Perhaps you are right, but flooding such a situation with lethal weapons, as we’ve allowed to happen, is completely insane.
39
@David you are of course right. But I also have to say that love AND some sensible gun legislation would probably go further combined.
15
In the 1970s many high schools in the US had rifle clubs were students would bring their rifles to school and compete in events. Ask, what has changed in our culture that school shootings are permissible. Hint: it’s not the availability of firearms.
13
They all brought AR 15s to school?
6
These clubs are still around. They are highly regulated, and they do not use, and never did, anything like a Bushmaster. And none of the NCAA or Olympic events do.
You might as well argue that you get to have a Gatling gun because Nordic biathlon involves an accurized .22.
@Michael Rifles account for a disproportionately small amount of firearm deaths, ARs even less so. FBI stats show approx. 380 rifle deaths in 2017. And yes our high school gun club used semiautomatic rifles.
1
Like another reader commented,let guns be allowed in Congress. If politicians won't change gun laws, let them live and work under the same conditions they impose on us. To think it's more dangerous to be a kid in school than to be Mitch McConnell. Even as McConnell sits on gun reform legislation,and is reviled by millions, he is safe from gunfire. That's just wrong.
64
Strange, a lot of the prevention measures seem to assume the shooter is someone who isn’t supposed to be at school. Aren’t most of the shooters students? Wouldn’t this be making the security industry profit off a serious problem in an amoral way?
4
The article doesn't mention any of the recent lockdowns at California schools for active threats of shootings that turned out to be false alarms. My children are afraid to go to school and their anxiety increases by the week.
8
They are more likely to be hit by a car. Do your job. No fear.
@rbjd - I grew up in the 60's/70's and was afraid to go to school as well. We practiced duck and cover because we were told the Russians were coming and were going to nuke us. My anxiety got to the point that I convinced a German teacher who spoke Russian to teach me the language just in case they invaded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89od_W8lMtA
The families of all the students and teachers and staff persons in that school have been changed forever by this traumatic event. Our children are being traumatized over and over by school shootings, and by the active shooter drills, and by lockdowns. And I have no answers, which makes me sad beyond words.
6
I don't understand how quickly government acts towards banning or at least considering a ban on vaping due to a few deaths, yet there is complete silence when hundreds more are killed by guns. As a relatively recent citizen, to be honest, the only version of "American Exceptionalism" I see is the perverse obsession for guns.
32
Now, by no means am I a social worker or psychologist yet why doesnt every school in the United States have metal detectors at all entrances. Yes, I understand we are instilling something in the children that we don't want yet to put our heads in the ground like an Ostrich, serves little purpose too. Put metal detectors at all entrances and you will stop this, fast.
8
Because a) we’re too cheap to pay for them and the personnel needed, b) you ever tried to get say a thousand kids through a metal detector every morning? c) a lot of us would prefer not to live in an ever-more policed state, d) NRA and GOA would immediately sue, and their screaming would rise unto Heaven.
The same area; Thousand Oaks, had a mass shooting barely a year ago at Borderline restaurant. Sheriffs there had visited the gunman previous to the shooting. He was an Afghanistan vet who had several incidences involving anger issues; both in the service and after. Law enforcement visited him; and thought he might be a threat. Sadly they did not take action. So here is an example of the idea that we don't need gun control, but only need to identify someone who might "go off". The news here is calling the Saugus shooter a "regular kid". Other than illegal ammo clips used in the Borderline shooting; both of these incidents seem to have been carried out with legal weapons. We don't need to just ban assault weapons; but we also need to seriously pare back on the availability of guns, ammo, and silencers. Of all types. Identifying the young men who might act on their impulses is useless; and a waste of resources.
17
This doesn't even make headlines anymore, it's so common. I feel so sad for American school children. I wish we did more to protect them from this kind of thing :-(
7
NRA rallying cry :
Let things calm down.
Thoughts and prayers should do the trick.
We can’t have meaningful discussions about sensible gun control right now.
Same gibberish .
Different location.
22
All these unnecessary deaths and even more statements of hypocritical sympathy from the Republican Party that along with Trump-Pence have blocked prudent gun ownership reforms supported by >80% of voters. Why? NRA money to the GOP.
OpenSecrets reports that NRA spent $5,122,000 in lobbying during 2017.
GunViolence reports a total of ALL gun related deaths & injuries for 2017 at 61,929 (of which 15,868 were deaths, 2,100 were defensive, and 2,000 were unintentional).
The arithmetic: $ from NRA per death = $323.00
$ from NRA per death & injury = $83.00
Clearly, the NRA and their GOP recipients place a very low dollar value on human life.
MAGA - Making America Gun-toting Again (and at a low cost).
14
Not to take away from this senseless and brutal act but maybe referring to it as “One killed, several wounded” like it was a military attack we should be talking about it as “a person was murdered and several others severely injured”. This isn’t a soldier doing this, nor is this person trained, so we shouldn’t refer to it like we’re reporting from a war zone.
11
Isn’t it weird that President Trump hasn’t made comments on shooting events like this since he’s been elected? At least Obama showed he cared.
14
Should he send thoughts and prayers?
@Waleed Khalid - With all due respect to Mr. Obama, how is singing Amazing Grace any different than offering prayers and condolences? The Dems had full control of the government for two years and did little to nothing to change things. Neither party cares about the citizens.
Another sad day. Another tragic shooting. Another life lost. Another school terrorized. Another community morns. And another day that the President and Congress fail to protect Americans.
It’s the guns!
20
This month's NRA massacre is in a California high school.
Now come the GOP "thought sand prayers" nonsense.
Now comes Trump with his buddy Wayne LaPierre, saying get over it - the 2nd Amendment allows this to happen.
Where will next month's NRA massacre occur?
It is coming to a school, or church, or mall near you.
12
In case anyone posts information suggesting people are getting too worked up about shootings when other things (eg school buses) cause more injuries, remember benefit-risk analysis comes out in favor of buses. The benefits of guns in populated places do not exceed the risks, unlike school buses.
6
As a 19 year old, there isn't a time for me to look back and think "that was a time when everything was normal." This epidemic of mass/school shootings has sadly become the only normal many my age and younger know.
And as a 19 year old, I can only sigh, look around at my peers, and continue my education, hoping one day I won't become another gun violence statistic...
516
@Rudraksh DasGupta .... and vote!
101
This makes my heart hurt.
16
@Rudraksh DasGupta Fellow 19 year old here, and yeah, this was our childhood. We hid in cubbies in elementary school and under desks in middle school. We think about what we might do. We hear the words Run, Hide, Fight constantly. This is our normal. It has always been our normal.
17
So the scourge is back, as if it ever left.
Cue “thoughts and prayers” and “it’s too soon” in three...two...one...
Is the answer making our schools even more like the fortresses that they already are, with all the expense that entails? Do we spend money on alarms, guards, detectors, bulletproof doors, etc., that could otherwise go toward teacher salaries, up-to-date equipment, cutting-edge programs to better prepare kids for the future, as well as making mental health care accessible for all? Or do we at long last have a serious discussion about the pervasive gun violence we have in this country?
What option is, in the long run, more cost effective? Rhetorical question. I know the answer.
Another family’s life changed forever this morning. It does NOT have to be this way.
123
@MDB
As a parent of a daughter who is sitting in a HS classroom as we type, I say yes. Spend the money, turn her school into a prison. New equipment and good teachers don't matter when you're in a war zone. I want my daughter to come home at the end of the day.
Obviously, long-term this isn't a good solution. We need good teachers and good schools and we don't want our children learning in fortresses, but our country is not very good at "long-term" and I'm not holding my breath that our cowardly, corrupt government is ever going to do anything about the guns.
10
Another school shooting...and within a short time officials will be offering their thoughts and prayers while telling us this is not the time to talk about gun control. These same officials never have the time to talk about meaningful gun legislation. Their thoughts and prayers are worthless without action.
249
Unfortunately, we have created a generation of young people for whom mass shootings are not only routine, but have become just one more problem solving option. I’d love to see the NRA apologists in the Republican Party vote to allow concealed carry in Congress. They won’t of course because they’re afraid of getting shot. They’re just not afraid of you or your family getting shot....the very definition of cowardice.
36
I saw this news and thought to myself another one. Here we go again. It’s become so common. People shooting up schools is common. Think about that for a minute. It is our job as Americans to keep this tragic fact in the news. We have to keep the momentum. We have to get loud. We have to get angry. We have to fight. Be so persistent you get annoying. That is how you get heard.
This country is being held hostage by a group of lunatics who prefer scores of people dead, many of them children, to giving us their fantasies of self-defense heroics and insurrection.
69
Millions of guns and an enormous trade in guns, unmatched anywhere in the democratic world, along with these mass shootings, attacks on school kids, and routine, worshipful calls to protect "gun rights" above all. Idolatry.
18
The god of the 2nd amendment is well pleased.
23
Yes we need gun control but in the meantime can’t we get metal detectors at school entrances? Are airports more important than our schools?
12
I’m a retired elementary teacher and principal (43 years)so I’ve gone from open doors to locked doors and sign in and picture passes.
My experience has been just how terrifying the safety drills are for children and teachers, especially in old buildings where doors can’t be locked from the inside.
Many parents and children have trouble believing that schools are very safe for obvious reasons. It’s almost impossible to convince people of this.
For me the most awful times were a bus crash, an apartment building next door that went up in flames, the gym ceiling collapsing due to snow load and having to shelter in place on the first day of school for a tornado warning.
The shootings tear at my heart, just as they do for everyone. And I agree with the feelings about the plethora of guns in this country. Right now I’ve pulled into a rest stop on the highway because I need to cry and barf.
I do appreciate the authors writing about schools being the safest place for children though. They rightly focus on the devastation of the shootings. I just want people to know the truth about the safety of schools.
19
I have heard many people say that these horrific tragedies occur due to lack of gun control but I whole heartedly believe it is because of our lack of a social fabric in our nation. We have no tribe. We are the loneliest country in the world. Generations are getting lonelier and we can only see more of these tragedies occurring if we don't pay attention to the issue at heart: isolation.
I believe most of these perpetrators carry out these shootings because they had no one to turn to to talk about their problems and wanted to take it out their anger for not being heard and listened to (and loved). If you haven't seen Joker, the film, I highly recommend it because this is exactly why and how a mass shooting begins.
Moreover, I am currently studying in Jordan right now and I can tell you this from their culture: they have their tribe and it is a beautiful thing to witness. Family is first and friends are crucial for their communal ways. I am witnessing firsthand how we can end these mass shootings: hold each other's hearts while we are in our darkest and brightest times and always, always, love unconditionally because I believe all these shooters needed was love and a listening ear. Of course, it is more nuanced than that, but we need to look at our country from the sky and reflect on our culture and what we value.
مع سلامة ("go with peace")
17
@David
You are describing a possible motive, and you may be right. But lets not forget it is in fact guns that allow lonely people to massacre others in large volume.
It's probably easier to modify gun laws than it is to modify our "social fabric."
5
@David
You're so right about social deterioration and isolation being the root of such violence.
In which case---and I mean no disrespect to the victims and their families during this particular moment---it is at times like these that I take solace in the fact that America is as peaceable as it is, that there aren't even more eruptions.
As bad as it can be, Americans still remain overwhelmingly peace loving in spirit. We are not Afghanistan, Somalia or Bolivia.
1
Each state's National Guard is that state's one and only "well-regulated militia".
And according to the thoughts of the Founding Fathers as expressed in the Federalist Papers, it it the exclusive role of the Federal government to provide arms to each state's militia.
Finally, other than the 50 National Guard organizations, there is NO other militia anywhere, not even in Texas or Utah.
34
@LarryAt27N Texas has a state guard
1
@LarryAt27N You are incorrect. That is not how the constitution has been interpreted.
1
The House has passed 5 reasonable gun control measures since the Democrats took over after the 18 elections.
Moscow Mitch has had them sitting on his desk.
He’s called himself the Grim Reaper when it comes to taking up Democratic legislation such as protecting the country from Russian election interference
He’s earning that moniker when it come to gun control legislation as well, not as a metaphor but in reality.
188
Can we please have some sensible gun legislation now Mitch? Sick of this happening again and again without a single law being passed.
40
@Dave what law would have stopped this?
Thank you for reminding readers about the long list of mass shootings in just one state. Was it just me or did others read and realize how many we had already FORGOTTEN ABOUT because there are SO MANY? And still people try to blame it on anything but easy access to guns.
35
@Middl3 Child
I wonder if normalizing these events is part of the playbook the “let’s arm everyone” gun crowd. When it becomes normal, there is no pressure to do anything about it. Is that the goal?
2
Students grow up knowing this can happen, and yet they continue to bully and exclude people. I don't think there is enough gun control to stop these kind of events unless we have a change in our culture. People are alienated from each other, we are not connected in community as we are meant to be.
7
@Mine2
So someone somewhere bullied someone somewhere, and this is the response? And for what, exactly, is “change the culture” a euphemism?
3
1) Thoughts and prayers don't stop bullets.
2)This is NOT what the Second Amendment is all about.
3) Political donations from the NRA and gun manufacturers must be outlawed.
4) Federal background checks instituted.
44
Homeschooling might be the answer.
Online Public Education.
The government could auction off the land the schools sit on. The proceeds could pay down the National Debt.
5
I can only imagine you don’t live in a large metropolitan area. Such as, LA or NYC with there wildly diverse populations , and Moms and Dads working two perhaps three jobs to maintain a roof over their family’s heads. @P&L
10
Wait. Didn't Trump boldly work with Congress to enact much stricter gun control laws after the last batch of school shootings? Oh my goodness! I just woke up and was having a dream.
15
“But despite the crushing tragedy of what seems like an endless string of school shootings, schools remain among the safest places for American children...”
Even if true, what purpose does it serve to print this. It will only be used as a talking point to deny the need to take action. I am disappointed that NYT chose to print this.
13
@George Boccia
I kinda like relevant facts and context.
1
@George Boccia However that is factually correct.
1
Lofty idealism, friends, but you are wrong. Reputable news agencies every day withhold information to protect victims, children, child criminals, information of vital national security, and details of ongoing investigations. But please, offer how you think that statement does anything to protect school children or to advance the cause for legislation to prevent mass shootings. No, it simply deflates the need for action on gun violence.
2
The internet says there have been no mass shootings in England since 1996. Why have there been nine in California in just the past few years? Either the proliferation of guns in America has something to do with it or America simply is filled with evil and maniacal people. Something tells me it is the former.
33
Another proud day for the NRA. When will Americans learn that easy access to guns means easy access to gun murder and gun suicide?
Countries with responsible gun control have significantly lower gun death rates. But uninformed Americans still blame the shooter, not the gun.
20
Who will be the first elected official (bankrolled by the NRA, or afraid of being called out by its goons) who will say that “now is not the time” to discuss any legislative solutions?
Who will be the first to offer their thoughts and prayers?
Who will be the first to parrot the cowardly line that any changes would only “hurt the law abiding citizens” who seemingly need their guns?
Who will be the first to hide behind 2A, as if it can never yield to the reality of a gun-drunk society?
Who will be the first to twist today’s event and call elements of it a hoax, or a false flag?
Applying the same responses to each of these tragedies serves to normalize them, and strengthens the gun lobby (plus its financiers in Russia). History may find that if our republic doesn’t survive, that guns from the inside and dirty money from outside paved many roads to its ruin.
Who will be the first...to end our addiction to guns?
17
Between the fires earthquakes and now this for Santa Clarita
You guys need a break
This is a tired refrain but you are in my thoughts
Congress; how much bloodshed will be enough?
Can we remember that the N.R.A. is a non-profit and merit no more attention from our elected representatives than any other non-profit?
They protect the Second Amendment you say?
I'm going with the promise that we are also entitled to Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness.
Note that Life is listed first
22
Sooner or later, this will happen to the children of GOP who cater to the NRA above all
12
Very sad that these types of mass murders have become so routine that I did not even receive a “breaking news” update from the NYT.
14
@Ess By all accounts it is not a mass murder so please don’t distort the truth.
1
@JDK mass murders mean 3 or more. You live in Chicago. You should know this.
2
What's amazing to me is that I found this article half way down the page. We're so used to this happening that it's not headline news anymore?
23
@NYTimes you really need to move this coverage to the very top of your home page please. It is more important than the impeachment circus.
26
@NYCLady
They're both important because they both have to do with irrational readings of the constitution.
2
@NYCLady
....or maybe the extensive coverage of these acts encourages copycat crimes.
1
How many more?
11
Teen male.
Again.
Kills teen girl.
Again.
17
There apparently are four pieces of gun control legislation, initiated and passed by the House, currently being held up in the Senate by McConnell alone.
14
Orinda CA, Oct. 31, 2019: Five people were fatally shot at a 100+ guest house party in an Airbnb rental. Two weeks later, there is no information about suspect(s) or progress in the investigation.
21
I'm pretty sure this is not what the founding fathers intended. Long past time to overhaul the 2nd amendment.
258
You really do not have to overhaul the second amendment. SCOTUS has already sensible gun safety requirement do NOT infringe on 2nd amendment rights, contrary to what very ignorant people and politicians who are on the take from the NRA would have you believe. SCOTUS has now rule gun mrs can be sued. About time. Since one thing this country reacts to is money, every time there is a gun death, the procurer of the weapon should be charged. The seller of the weapon should be charged. The maker of the weapon should be charged. And sued. And shamed. Especially state and federal representatives who continue to obstruct legislation. Every nation has mentally disturbed or suicide prone or simply pathetic people who do these despicable acts. What only we have in the US is a gun pusher industry similar to drug dealing which makes it easy to flood the zone with weapons, many that The average civilian should not have access to, such as semi automatics. Stop coddling these enablers. They are all complicit in these murders.
155
@KH -- Don't hold your breath. Gun advocates will, as usual, claim that the gun had no part in this shooting. "Guns don't kill people," they say. No matter that there is at least one dead child in Santa Clarita, and others that are wounded.
11
@KH Or, revoke 2A altogether. The constitution can be amended, but don’t hold your breath waiting for corporate Democrats to lead the charge on this .
1
Could we add language to the 2nd Amendment that says:
" . . . However, this Right to Bear Arms shall in addition, apart from it's original intention of bolstering this fair nation's security against better armed foreign invaders, possibly be used against many innocent citizens and other people within our borders who are simply trying to pursue happiness" ?
Let's just spell this out a little clearer since it seems we can't do anything else to stem the flow of all the bloodshed. Kind of like a Waiver one agrees to when they are born or immigrate here.
7
This suburban community just north of the City of Los Angeles border is full of families that left Los Angeles for a "safer community".
Nowhere is safe in America. Especially when we have lax gun laws.
57
@PM
Especially interesting when you consider that not one of the California mass shootings listed in the article occurred in Los Angeles.
1
@PM California has some of the strictest gun laws in the country but don’t let facts get in the way of your narrative.
2
@PM
They might want to consider Mexico - 8 school shootings since 2009 - compared to 288 in the US
4
Our children have to live in fear because of the cowardice of the law makers in this country. Shame on them!!!
165
@susan
I agree, but the voters are to blame too. They let their representatives bend to the NRA. Many voters (the ones that love their guns) also don't want any additional restrictions on guns. A lot of these voters won't even bother to check if proposed gun control measures affect them. Their ears are closed to any discussion about gun control. The representatives that do nothing will stay in power because voters don't care about gun control.
21
At what point will I be able to claim asylum from this violent insanity of this country?
39
I have been thinking that same thought for a long while now.
Five dead in Orinda on Halloween should make the list https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/11/13/orinda-police-silent-halloween-airbnb-mass-shooting-investigation/
8
@Zoe McA It did. Orinda, Oct. 31, 2019: Five people were killed and several injured at a Halloween party held at a home rented through Airbnb in the San Francisco suburb.
2
As long as there are ample, unregulated guns in America, this will never end and nowhere is safe.
477
It’s been this way for 300 years, so why has it become a problem only recently? Think about that.
10
Unregulated and regulated alike, we have a tsunami of firearms in America. All our civil liberties have become hostage to a random interpretation of the Second Amendment.
85
@Brad
The second amendment says: "a well-regulated militia". What is well-regulated with those shootings?
24
Note to Congress: Keep the thoughts and prayers, please. DO SOMETHING!
167
The House has passed a background check bill, and the bill was DOA when it got to the Senate - thanks to Moscow Mitch.
6
This is Parkland again, and we seem not to learn the lesson: guns do kill people. So long as the Supreme Court interprets the Second Amendment in an irresponsible way, without regard to its conditional first clause, and that amendment stands on the books, we are doomed to repeat this scenario for the rest of our history.
109
@Wiltontraveler I agree with you but also have in mind that people kill people guns dont
Cue the "thoughts and prayers" NRA apologists.
56
Our children continue to experience death at the hands of the 2nd Amendment.
Guns are not what made us great.
114
Death at hands of the Supreme Court, Congress and the NRA. The only answer is to emigrate.
7
@Yuri Pelham
Where? Do you know of a country that accepts immigrants?
1
@mrpisces Guns are what birth this nation, the fight against a monarch that tried to take our guns so we couldn't fight for independence, it's literally why we have the 2nd and such a strong gun culture.
People should read the history of this nation before they make assertions.
1
The news anchors are talking about how “routine” the police response was. Are we this numb to horrible events like this?
34
Very upsetting to see. No parent should send their child to school to never see them again. Unfortunately this won’t change unless lawmakers take notice. My condolences to those involved.
18
The list is way, way, way too long.
America is a great to live, especially if you love guns more than children.
28
Rest assured, Trump will make sure that absolutely no legislation is passed to stop these mass murders of our children in schools.
But Donald and Melania do send their thoughts and prayers.
78
We are talking about California here. I doubt Florida Man will bother.
7
@JM Yep, and smiles and thumbs up.
7
Please don’t publish the murderer’s name. Take away the attention they get.
53
@Joey Blum
I'm okay publishing the name of the parents who created and enabled this sociopath violent young man.
2
@Maggie, I'm not sure parents should be scolded for creating an infant. However, if they failed to secure guns on their property, and it resulted in homicide(s), then that is unforgivable. Sandy Hook Remembers Mrs. Lanza.
1
@Joey Blum
I want the name of the gun owner, and I want that person arrested for allowing that gun to get into a deranged teenager's hands.
I'm sure our elected Congressional representatives will send their thoughts and prayers.
27