omg. kids.

KNS now says 27 dead including 18 students: (link...)

It's my hope the conversation won't only turn to the typical gun control argument, but also the state of mental health in this country and what role closing places like Northshore is having.

Sick.

msnbc now says 18 children and 8 adults.

Unimaginable tragedy. God help the families and the town.

I heard the news while reading Noam Chomsky's latest interview.

And it's a pretty crazy country in a lot of ways. It's a super-religious country, way off the international spectrum. There's no country in the world like it. These people were mobilized and that's part of the base. It has always been a very frightened country, way back to colonial times. There's a big sector that thinks, "They're coming to get us," whoever "they" are - maybe the UN, or the government or somebody; it used to be the Indians and the slaves. So you have to have guns, and you have to defend yourself. It goes way back in American history. So those are people who are mobilized: kind of a nativist, frightened population, which is quite substantial.

How can we produce anyone, regardless of mental stability, that would sacrifice children in this manner? What is wrong with America?

We're not supposed to express thoughts about the country's easy access to guns until enough time has passed for us to resume our lust for awesome weaponry.

The problems boils down to lack of resources to truly provide some type of background check to ensure that the person purchasing the weapon and the necessary ammunition truly has the mental capacity to appreciate values and structure in a modern society. In these hard economic times, gun dealers are like any other business, hustling to make the sale and while the necessary background information may have been clean as a whistle, where is the guy asking the question, what does a 20 year old need with a semi-automatic firearm when he cannot purchase a pint of beer and the corner bar?

This should be a topic near and dear to the citizenry of Knox County, we had the first student - student shooting in Tennessee at Central High School several years ago and the first teach - administrator shooting at Inskip a couple of years ago. Campbell County gets the award for the first school shooting in Tennessee when the Bartley kids gunned down a principle and wounded a couple of assistant principles.

In all of these shootings, deep and sever psychological issues permeated the individual(s) initiating these shootings. In situations like Columbine and now Newtown, shooters parents need to be able to say "Hey my kid has lots of personal problems" without retribution, I need some help here, and get the kids the help to get them through whatever means are available.

If you are a parent and you have a child that is well rounded, well spoken, has lots of friends, is never alone, knows right from wrong, good from bad, belongs to a solid youth group, club, or organization, doesn't smoke, drink, or engage in unnecessary sexual relations and really doesn't want to, attends a church regularly, and has a value structure in place that they appreciate and are motivated to do something with their life besides play video games, watch the ipad, or listen to the ipod, fall on your knees and count your blessings.

Obama made a moving statement, fighting back tears.

Think Progress compiled a timeline of mass shootings in the US since Columbine.

An interesting statistic included:

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.

Obviously, something needs to change with our gun laws. I know my teabagger SIL truly believes the meme that if someone at ______ (insert scene of massacre) had a gun, the massacre wouldn't have been so bad. :P~

I don't see that as very comforting to the parents that lost their children today.

My sister passed on this petition at Whitehouse.gov. It already has over 31,000 signatures.
Immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress.

The goal of this petition is to force the Obama Administration to produce legislation that limits access to guns. While a national dialogue is critical, laws are the only means in which we can reduce the number of people murdered in gun related deaths.

Happy signing.

Hey John...
War is over, we don't need your help
America's making war on itself
War is over, we don't need your help
America's making war on itself

Six hundred and seventy six thousand
Will go down in the streets of America
With a bullet in the next 20 years
20 years, these bitter tears
In a business of bitter tears

More body bags than Vietnam...

Teachers all over the world are a large, loving family. There’s an unspoken sense of intense closeness we feel collectively when horrific events happen to our students or to one of our own. These thoughts prompted me to write to the students in my special education class of education majors. I want them to internalize the pure impulses of our fallen colleagues that defy the shallow reformy notion of competition and creative destruction. Truly educating them is not about increasing test scores or “merit” pay but empowering them to stand up to those who tie success to dollars. We must teach children to deal with the powerful edu-dilettantes (yes, that includes Kevin Huffman, Jeb Bush, Arne Duncan, SCORE, McIntyre, K-12, The Milkens, and Achievement Inc. profiteers) who tie fear, threats, and meaningless stats to education policy or we will lose a generation of potential teacher-heros.

Hi Students,
I don’t have the words to express how deeply saddened I am about the terrible tragedy that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Fri. If you learn nothing else from our class, I hope you realize the immense courage and commitment it takes to teach all children in our public schools. Every day that you walk into your classroom you become the first protector and nurturer for your students. The principal and teachers who died in that horrible rampage exemplify the pure soul of great educators unmotivated by money, power, and prestige. No one is talking about their VAM scores today. I’ve attached a link to a teacher blogger from NJ who eloquently writes about his pride in choosing the teaching profession:

(link...)

Remember: Teaching is not rocket science. It’s HARDER than rocket science.

I am reposting here this link from facebook. I found it quite powerful and enlightening. How do we as a nation address the mental health issue as described by this mother?

Personally, I don't get enough background from that link to feel certain whether the child is mentally ill or the mother is reactionary and domineering?

One thing I do feel certain about is that four children being raised by one single mother isn't the best possible family structure for parent or children either one, there being only so many hours in the day to give to each of one's offspring.

Adam Lanza was a son of divorced parents, too, of course. I also read somewhere over the last couple of days that his brother Ryan said he hadn't spoken to Adam in "a couple of years?"

The comment caused me to wonder whether that were Adam's "fault" or whether possibly the entire family, to include its grown children, was a bit fractured?

I'm having some difficulty discerning chicken from egg, much less which came first...

One more thought on that link: I do note, of course, that the child described therein, Michael, pulled a kitchen knife on his mother.

However, I had to wonder what other dramatic interactions between parent and child might have preceded that one, and more to the point, which of the two parties might have provoked them?

It occurred to me that since the child who is the subject of the link has clearly been heavily medicated by his (stressed-out?) mother and lived under the threat of her institutionalizing him for years, maybe his pulling a knife on her is not a particularly surprising response from an adolescent increasingly aware of his own vulnerability to cracks in his mother's psyche?

Maybe we should perceive the act as one of self-preservation on his part?

Not set on this interpretation, you understand, just offering it as another viable interpretaion of the link.

I do worry about the skyrocketing incidence of parents--especially single parents, in my personal experience--medicating their young children.

And I still want to understand why Nancy Lanza felt the need to own a semi-automatic assault rifle in the first place?