I'm having a very difficult time absorbing the murderous rampage in Connecticut today, as I know we all are ~ for me, part of it is the surreal contradiction between what I was doing while this was happening ~ I didn't want to hijack that thread, but I'd very much like to have a discussion on queenie's comment in an earlier thread that the problem extends far beyond guns/gun control and rests squarely on the overwhelming violence mindset today ~ so, here's the first question: why has violence exploded [no pun intended] into an almost regular event? ~ and the second question: where and how do we even begin to counteract/reverse this mindset?

Sooz

What happened today wasn't a coordinated attack by some group, so I think it erroneous to balme violence in our society. (I do think violence in our society is an important issue that needs to be addressed -- I just don't think it was the underlying cause of what happened today.

Rather, I think the cause of what happened today was mental illness.

Had there not been any guns available, then perhaps he would have gotten into his car and mowed pedestrians down.

The incident today was a violent attack on the mother of the gunman. I can't say he was not mentally ill but this was not a random shooting of strangers like Aurora, Clackamas, Tuscon, or VT.

But to get back to the topic presented, why have we become so violent- I don't know. We are too close together, there are too many people, it is a biological rather than a logical phenomenon?

I don't get your connection of "coordinated attack by some group" with "erroneous to lame violence in our society". I think violence manifests more often, and more destructively, in angry individuals, not goups. And I think a propensity to violence is a form of mental illness.

But this was one person acting alone, so I don't see this incident as being demonstrative that we are a violent society.

If we were asking why hundreds of people are murdered each year in our major cities, that would be demonstrative that we are violent society. But one person acting alone out of 3 million Americans doesn't make that case.

He acted the way he did because he is mentally ill -- and not because of our society.

I liked this editorial. I also agree.

After tragedy in Conn., have we finally had enough?

By Mike Lopresti, USA TODAY Sports6:09p.m. EST December 14, 2012

Much of the discussion in response to all the dead kindergartners in Newtown, Conn., will focus on guns, and rightfully so. If little girls gunned down at their desks don't force the issue, what will?

But it is so much more. What is it about us, that so many pull triggers? This was the act of a disturbed man, but why so many acts, and why so many killers? No new gun control law can answer that.

The psychologists will eventually tell us their theories about this individual and why he picked up weapons one morning and decided to shoot 5-year-olds. If only it was as simple as one madman. Only as infrequent as one grim Friday.

But it's not. You wonder if we have created too fertile a breeding ground for violence. You wonder why the predominant emotion among so many of us so often is rage.

And then you look around, and the way we communicate with one another.

You look at our talk shows that once fostered thoughtful discussion and meaningful debate. Now they value one word only. Attack. Attack. Attack. The more vicious the better, because it sells.

You look at our Internet, and its vast promise of an interchange of ideas. And then see how that promise has been perverted, to where assault is made all the easier by anonymity, and even the media no longer has use for beauty or perspective, because scandal and conflict and heated rhetoric get so many more computer hits.

You look at our entertainment, and note the high body count, where we are numb to bloodshed and blind to its consequences. Where the winner is often the one who kills best.

I look at my own pitifully trivial world of sport. Where proposals for safer football rules are hooted down, because the game might be less violent, and the crowds might stay away.

I look at some of the mail I get. Abusive, brutal language from those furious about a Heisman vote or top 20 pick. If college football provokes such fury, one can only imagine what the real world must do.

If rage and rancor are so much a part of our daily lives, it should not be a shock that gunfire breaks out. It has happened so often, that now when the first reports come, we ask the same questions, dulled as we are by mayhem.

Where? How many? How young?

What terrible questions for a society to have to keep asking itself.

No, our violence-rich culture does not make murderers of us all. But cigarettes don't give everyone lung cancer. That does not make them non-lethal.

The haunting memory from Friday will be of young voices, shrieking in fear. Of parents thrust into their worst nightmare. Of Christmas stockings that will never be filled.

Have we finally had enough? It must not start with just gun control. It must start with us. We've surrendered common civility because something else makes more money, or gets more attention. The result? Many simply live angrier lives.

But a few pick up guns, and go off to kill children who still believed in Santa Claus.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/co ... /1770559/#

IMO why so much violence is in the United States today all one has to do is look around you. Go into your video store and see what games you see, look up the movies at your theaters and see whats showing. Turn on your TV and see what programs are on. Instead of children going outside to ride their bicycles like the days gone by, todays youth are spending hours upon hours playing games that the most killed wins. In talking with three of my nieces who are either high school teachers or counselor they said this killing could have happened in any school in nearly any town. The teachers hands are tied when they see trouble brewing with students because the parents aren't involved enough to help the situation. They say either the students come from two working parents who are too busy and don't have time or they are from single parents who don't have time or they are from 2 parents who just don't believe their son/daughter has a problem and it's all the schools/teachers fault. From all indicationsl, there were some people related to the young man who did the killings here knew he had mental problems..... why didn't somewhere along the line someone do something? Why did the mother purchase said guns and give them to her son if such stories are correct stating she purchased the guns for her son? There are still many questions to be answered but the only shocking thing about the killings that happened today, for me anyway, is it happened in an elementary school instead of a mall or high school. My heart aches for the victims and their families. I have cried several times just thinking about those precious children and this senseless mass murders. I blame society and the "it's not my problem" attitudes of the world today.

But this was one person acting alone, so I don't see this incident as being demonstrative that we are a violent society.

So explain why it happens over and over again in the US as opposed to the other developed countries?
Canada has a fairly violent society (especially out west which tends to mirror the US far more than the eastern part) yet has a death rate due to firearms that is 1/5 that of the US.
Methinks you're in denial.

IMO, it's a cultural thing.
US history has been one of violence since the nation came into being.
Look at all those USians who are considered "heroes". Nearly all of them were gun-toters.
Except for a period of approximately 20 years, the US has been consistently involved in some form of war since 1776.
All that pretty much says that killing and violence are ok and that violence is a perfectly legitimate means to solve a perceived problem. After all, it's government sanctioned.
One of the biggest mistakes Canada ever made was going into Afghanistan. That's when we went from being peacekeepers to being war mongers.

VERY strange that gat would reference a movie just a few days ago that would be cited in an article about the shooting:

School shooting: The price of living in a world where fame and infamy are interchangeable terms

The wisest story I’ve ever read about a mass school shooting is a work of fiction – no accident, I suspect, for it takes distance to see past the horror of such things, not to mention get around the makeshift shrines and the spoken and printed equivalents of the teddy bears which adorn them.

Social media and Twitter, it is certain, will make that latter task ever more difficult.

As mainstream newsrooms around the world geared up the sombre music and reporters lowered voices and dumbed down their language (yes, it is hard to imagine) in order to interview eight-year-olds, so did cyberspace fill up with omgs, fake sites, expressions of sorrow, rumours and ghastly bleatings.

To quote a young man named Ryan Lanza, who may be someone with the bad luck to have the same name as the Ryan Lanza who was first wrongly identified as the latest shooter or who may be the actual brother of gunman Adam Lanza, who complained on Facebook Friday, “So aperently I’m getting spammed bc someone with the same name as me killed some ppl..wtf?”

Either way, this is what passes for social commentary in 2012 — illiterate, petulant, self-referential sludge.

The novel is called We Need to Talk About Kevin, written by Lionel Shriver.

It was first published in 2003, four years after Columbine had set the table and laid out the ground rules for all such events thereafter.

The story is told through the eyes of Eva, mother of the teenage killer, Kevin Khatchadourian, who after slaying his father and little sister in the backyard of the family home — with the crossbow his willfully blind and adoring father had given him for Christmas — set off for school and the nine he would slaughter there in the gym.

As the son told the mother during one of their jailhouse chats, this shortly after the arrival to the prison of the newest celebrity killer, a teen who had slit the throats of a pair of elderly neighbours who complained his music was too loud, the boy’s only modest claim to fame was that the police had never found the couple’s entrails.

“Your friend’s precocious,” Eva said, for here she was trying for impassivity in order to get Kevin to engage. “The missing entrails — didn’t you teach me that to get noticed in this business you have to add a twist?”

Perhaps that’s what Adam Lanza was doing at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., simply raising the ante.

By assassinating children so young they could have hurt and offended no one, he was guaranteeing himself some place in the growing annals of school shootings, as compared to workplace massacres, which as Eva says are really just School Shooting Grows Up.

The book is a series of letters, from Eva to her dead husband, Franklin, most of them written after visiting their son in prison.

As the woman who had given birth to a monster, and the only family member he didn’t kill — she was at work — Eva was shunned and loathed by all in their suburb. She absorbed it all, felt she deserved the punishment, savoured it: She had never really wanted a child and was terrified of being a mother.

The letters trace the strange boy who had always pushed her away, who was so distant, had so few interests, so sardonic and sneakily cruel.

As the phenomenon of such shootings took hold in the American psyche, the Khatchadourians had talked about it at home. The dad once asked Kevin, “Do any of the students at your school ever seem unstable? Does anyone ever talk about guns, or play violent games or like violent movies? Do you think something like this could happen at your school? Are there at least counselors there?”

“All the kids at my school are unstable, Dad,” the son replied. “They play nothing but violent computer games and watch nothing but violent movies. You only go to a counselor to get out of class, and everything you tell her is a crock.

“Anything else?”

I was in Littleton, Colo., 13 years ago. What was almost as horrifying as the carnage — 14 students and a teacher dead, the killers having shot themselves — was the theatre that followed. Students were able to grieve only in public, preferably for the cameras; professionals descended in swarms to help the town mourn; people urged each other to hug their children, as though without the reminder, no one would have thought of it.

Columbine was prophetic in so many ways, and no one has much deviated from the format since. What Eva, in the novel, railed against — “the pleading refrain of why, why, why” — she answered, as best there ever is an answer, a few pages later.

Noting that “Mark David Chapman gets the fan mail that John Lennon can’t,” she says that in a country — I would say world — “that doesn’t discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable. Hence I am no longer amazed by the frequency of public rampages with loaded automatics but by the fact that every ambitious citizen … is not atop a shopping centre looped with refills of ammunition.”

Read more: http://www.canada.com/School+shooting+p ... z2F7zFdv60

I've been trying to organize my thoughts about this and here is what I think....so far.

Yes, our society has become more violent and that violence seems to be demonstrated more increasingly in younger people. Our media, the games, etc. have exposed them to more violence than ever before.

I also agree that with the ever-growing population, our "personal space" has grown smaller.

Take a morning commute on a bus or train during rush hour. You barely have room to breathe and sometimes what you breathe can be irritating as hell. Cologne, body odor, dryer sheet or fabric softener that is strongly scented clinging to clothing. You are usually shoulder to shoulder with one or more people while sitting or standing.

Work spaces have shrunk with so many people working out of cubicles and class sizes have grown in numbers with the physical classroom being smaller, sometimes just a trailer.

For people who are claustrophobic, neither of those scenarios are conducive to calm. For people who are allergic or sensitive to scents and/or claustrophobic it can cause symptoms of panic attacks: racing heart, pounding headache and fear.

Just some things I'm thinking about. I'll discuss the mental illness issue in my next post.

So how would you explain that countries that are far more crowded than the US cope wit the crowding so much better?

Because, oskar, N. Americans value personal space/privacy and the US and Canada were founded on the wide open prairies , where everyone had plenty of personal space. As cities became the "go-to" for jobs and after the demise of "living off the land" and such, they started become more and more crowded like those other countries you mention. Also other countries have been living in crowded conditions for hundreds or thousands of years. It's a cultural thing, I think.

From Twitter (paraphrased): Only in America is owning a gun a relatively inexpensive right, yet having health insurance is an over-priced privilege."

Perhaps if they charged gun owners a monthly fee of $500-$1000/mo. for the right to own a gun, they'd have a lot fewer guns. Just a thought.

Ok, here are my initial thoughts concerning the mental illness issues:

Perhaps we have gone too far in one direction with our desire to make sure everyone is accepted and as such, we have pushed for more and more mentally ill people to be allowed to walk among us. Some of that is based on empathy and as a reaction to the prison-like mental hospitals of old. Some of it is based on the ever-growing number of drugs available to control so many mental and emotional issues.

So, there are several issues at play here with regards to adolescents, teens and young people.

1. IF they are properly diagnosed, they cannot be force fed the drugs they need to take on a continuous basis. Bi-polar disorder is a prime example of this.

2. Is the plethora of ADD/ADHD diagnoses and the ensuing prescribing of drugs partially to blame? I think it deserves some serious studies.

3. There seems to be a trend to prescribe anti-depressants to younger and younger kids.

Which brings me to the last issue:

4. Are we, as a society, depending too much on pills for everything that ails us?

Overweight? Can't sleep? Can't stay awake? Can't concentrate? Feeling blue?..... Take a pill.

Don't get me wrong. I know there are many mental/emotional problems that are greatly improved with medication. I'm saying that it seems the line between stable and unstable has been blurred, all for the profit of the drug companies, the doctors who get kick-backs from them who, along with the hospitals, charge the insurance companies inflated fees for their services.

So, are there more mentally ill people walking among us or are we creating "monsters" by over prescribing these drugs, many that can have violence-inducing side effects, especially in young people?

Because, oskar, N. Americans value personal space/privacy and the US and Canada were founded on the wide open prairies

As I said, it's cultural.
How is it that in the US a bare boob generates more outrage than a mass killing?

Now we'll see which legislators have the courage to step up to the plate.
IMO, this needs to be phrased in a very clear and unambiguous manner.
You're either in favour of killing our kids or you're agin' it. That's it. No equivocation.

Religion?

Power disguised as religion.
Then there's the fact that I don't think a 20 year old in Connecticut was raised in those "wide open spaces", Roseanne.

First of all, Canada has fewer people, so the odds are less that someone will do something like this. Secondly, Canada has tougher gun control laws.

I agree that the United States is a violent society, and I agree that we need tough gun control laws..

What I disagree about is that the U.S.' violent society had anything to do with this incident. The cause of this shooting was mental illness, not a violent society.

The demonstration that we live in a violent society would be to point to statistics that show that high rates of domestic violence, high homicide rates, high assault and battery rates, and the like. One might even single out a particular individual who is imprisoned for, say, murdering some people or even just beating some people up in a bar brawl.

However, this particular school shooting I don't believe is demonstrative of a violent society. I believe it is demonstrative of our allowing dangerous weapons to be readily available, thus allowing mentally ill people to do something like this.

The cause of this shooting was mental illness, not a violent society.

You have evidence of this?

However, this particular school shooting I don't believe is demonstrative of a violent society. I believe it is demonstrative of our allowing dangerous weapons to be readily available.

It's one symptom of a violent society. IMO, people whether stable or not, are being pushed over the edge because of the increase in violence everywhere. It's celebrated in games and movies/tv, flashed over and over in clips on news programs and has pretty much permeated our society.

I don't think there is ONE simplistic answer. Mental health, over-prescribing drugs, celebrated violence, readily available weapons.....all of them need to be addressed.

BTW SciFi, gun (and other) violence is increasing in Canada quite rapidly, especially in the bigger cities. When I came here, it was VERY unusual to read of a gun related death or injury. Just one year ago, a group of young people here were gunned down by a friend. All but one died.

Indeed, Roseanne.
And I do agree that gun controls are necessary.
And to those who equate gun control and gun banning? Go get shot in the head by your significant other using your gun and get back to us. I'm fed up with the dumbass excuses.

Agreed. I was speaking metaphorically, so to speak , and on general terms as a culture.

Space is a relative term, as I pointed out in the crowded transit system, office cubicles and classrooms. When your "personal space" is constantly invaded, it does tend to make you anxious and even angry. As much as we are a socialized species, we need our space. At least, I do.

My "personal space" is in my head though I am rather anti-social by nature.
And never mind the cracks about empty heads.

I deeply believe that some form of mental illness is at the heart of virtually any murder ~ and I deeply believe that any murder is connected to violence ~ for me, there is no way to separate or isolate those dual beliefs ~ and that's what makes this such a complex problem to confront ~ there have been 61 mass murders in 30 years in the US ~ see the Mother Jones' A Guide to Mass Shootings in America ~ what follows is the ThinkProgress timeline of the 31 mass shootings just since Columbine in 1999 ~ 31 mass shootings in just 13 years! ~ we MUST stop focusing on just one "reason" and/or one "fix", and confront the problem as a whole ~ Sooz

A Timeline Of Mass Shootings In The US Since Columbine
By Aviva Shen on Dec 14, 2012 at 3:01 pm

On Friday morning, 27 people were reportedly shot and killed at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT. According to sources, 18 of these casualties were children. This is the second mass shooting in the US this week, after a gunman opened fire in an Oregon shopping mall on Tuesday, killing 2. ABC News reports that there have been 31 school shootings in the US since Columbine in 1999, when 13 people were killed.

The rate of people killed by guns in the US is 19.5 times higher than similar high-income countries in the world. In the last 30 years since 1982, America has mourned at least 61 mass murders. Below is a timeline of mass shootings in the US since the Columbine High massacre:

December 11, 2012. On Tuesday, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts killed 2 people and himself with a stolen rifle in Clackamas Town Center, Oregon. His motive is unknown.

September 27, 2012. Five were shot to death by 36-year-old Andrew Engeldinger at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis, MN. Three others were wounded. Engeldinger went on a rampage after losing his job, ultimately killing himself.

August 5, 2012. Six Sikh temple members were killed when 40-year-old US Army veteran Wade Michael Page opened fire in a gurdara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Four others were injured, and Page killed himself.

July 20, 2012. During the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, CO, 24-year-old James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 58. Holmes was arrested outside the theater.

May 29, 2012. Ian Stawicki opened fire on Cafe Racer Espresso in Seattle, WA, killing 5 and himself after a citywide manhunt.

April 6, 2012. Jake England, 19, and Alvin Watts, 32, shot 5 black men in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in racially motivated shooting spree. Three died.

April 2, 2012. A former student, 43-year-old One L. Goh killed 7 people at Oikos University, a Korean Christian college in Oakland, CA. The shooting was the sixth-deadliest school massacre in the US and the deadliest attack on a school since the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

October 14, 2011. Eight people died in a shooting at Salon Meritage hair salon in Seal Beach, CA. The gunman, 41-year-old Scott Evans Dekraai, killed six women and two men dead, while just one woman survived. It was Orange County’s deadliest mass killing.

September 6, 2011. Eduardo Sencion, 32, entered an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, NV and shot 12 people. Five died, including three National Guard members.

January 8, 2011. Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head when 22-year-old Jared Loughner opened fire on an event she was holding at a Safeway market in Tucson, AZ. Six people died, including Arizona District Court Chief Judge John Roll, one of Giffords’ staffers, and a 9-year-old girl. 19 total were shot. Loughner has been sentenced to seven life terms plus 140 years, without parole.

August 3, 2010. Omar S. Thornton, 34, gunned down Hartford Beer Distributor in Manchester, CT after getting caught stealing beer. Nine were killed, including Thornton, and two were injured.

November 5, 2009. Forty-three people were shot by Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan at the Fort Hood army base in Texas. Hasan reportedly yelled “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire, killing 13 and wounding 29 others.

April 3, 2009. Jiverly Wong, 41, opened fire at an immigration center in Binghamton, New York before committing suicide. He killed 13 people and wounded 4.

March 29, 2009. Eight people died in a shooting at the Pinelake Health and Rehab nursing home in Carthage, NC. The gunman, 45-year-old Robert Stewart, was targeting his estranged wife who worked at the home and survived. Stewart was sentenced to life in prison.

February 14, 2008. Steven Kazmierczak, 27, opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, killing 6 and wounding 21. The gunman shot and killed himself before police arrived. It was the fifth-deadliest university shooting in US history.

February 7, 2008. Six people died and two were injured in a shooting spree at the City Hall in Kirkwood, Missouri. The gunman, Charles Lee Thornton, opened fire during a public meeting after being denied construction contracts he believed he deserved. Thornton was killed by police.

December 5, 2007. A 19-year-old boy, Robert Hawkins, shot up a department store in the Westroads Mall in Omaha, NE. Hawkins killed 9 people and wounded 4 before killing himself. The semi-automatic rifle he used was stolen from his stepfather’s house.

April 16, 2007. Virginia Tech became the site of the deadliest school shooting in US history when a student, Seung-Hui Choi, gunned down 56 people. Thirty-two people died in the massacre.

February 12, 2007. In Salt Lake City’s Trolley Square Mall, 5 people were shot to death and 4 others were wounded by 18-year-old gunman Sulejman Talović. One of the victims was a 16-year-old boy.

October 2, 2006. An Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster, PA was gunned down by 32-year-old Charles Carl Roberts, Roberts separated the boys from the girls, binding and shooting the girls. 5 young girls died, while 6 were injured. Roberts committed suicide afterward.

March 25, 2006. Seven died and 2 were injured by 28-year-old Kyle Aaron Huff in a shooting spree through Capitol Hill in Seattle, WA. The massacre was the worst killing in Seattle since 1983.

March 21, 2005. Teenager Jeffrey Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend before opening fire on Red Lake Senior High School, killing 9 people on campus and injuring 5. Weise killed himself.

March 12, 2005. A Living Church of God meeting was gunned down by 44-year-old church member Terry Michael Ratzmann at a Sheraton hotel in Brookfield, WI. Ratzmann was thought to have had religious motivations, and killed himself after executing the pastor, the pastor’s 16-year-old son, and 7 others. Four were wounded.

July 8, 2003. Doug Williams, a Lockheed Martin employee, shot up his plant in Meridian, MI in a racially-motivated rampage. He shot 14 people, most of them African American, and killed 7.

September 15, 1999. Larry Gene Ashbrook opened fire on a Christian rock concert and teen prayer rally at Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, TX. He killed 7 people and wounded 7 others, almost all teenagers. Ashbrook committed suicide.

July 29, 1999. Mark Orrin Barton, 44, murdered his wife and two children with a hammer before shooting up two Atlanta day trading firms. Barton, a day trader, was believed to be motivated by huge monetary losses. He killed 12 including his family and injured 13 before killing himself.

April 20, 1999. In the deadliest high school shooting in US history, teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Kiebold shot up Columbine High School in Littleton, CO. They killed 13 people and wounded 21 others. They killed themselves after the massacre.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/14/1337221/a-timeline-of-mass-shootings-in-the-us-since-columbine/