Again...

[kathyt]

This just breaks my heart. I see trauma all the time, but I just can't wrap my head around it when it is completely preventable. I am so saddened by todays events and for the families of the victims. Hug your loved ones tight and be kind to one another.

 

[Steve5D]

The only way to prevent this type of thing is education.

That won't do it...

 

[Steve5D]

Gays are bad, thus they are forced to hide. Yeah, that has NO effect on a person. Couple that with a growing sense of entitlement (caused by the "everyone is a winner" movement?) of people today. Bad stuff is never our fault, we blame it on something else.

What does homosexuality have to do with this?

 

[John27]

The fact is tragedy happens. We as humans have such a hard time accepting this fact because it scares the CRAP out of us, but I'll say it anyway,

Bad things happen. Sometimes you can't stop it, sometimes we have no control.

It's true though. Ban the guns? He'll make a bomb out of fertilizer and a Ryder truck. Education and psychotherapy for everyone? They'll be so demented they will manipulate the therapist into believing they are having a breakthrough, and plotting to add them to the victim list.

In the end, sometimes, really really bad things happen, and we can debate about what could have stopped it.. or we can just hug our kids, say I love you to our friends, tell a stranger it's okay, and move on. Sometimes we just have to be human, and show the world that we care about them, even if we can't solve all their problems.

 

[Steve5D]

To me, it is dumb to place blame in anyone but ourselves.

Blame belongs on the shoulders of one person, and one person only. I'm pretty sure that person is neither you nor I.

If you want to shoulder some of the blame for this POS going off the deep end, have at it. Just know that, by doing so, you are choosing to not hold him as responsible as he actually is...

 

[Steve5D]

I'm in an exclusive little club. I'm the parent of a child who was directly affected by a school shooting.

My daughter was a freshman at Santana High School, in Santee, California in 2001. Two students were killed by a fellow student.

There were people wanted to blame bullies. There were people wanted to blame guns. There were people who wanted to place blame anywhere they could, as long as it wasn't on the shoulders of the kid who actually pulled the trigger.

At the end of the day, blame resides in one place, and in one place only...

 

[LaFoto]

This is so sad!
I know what it feels like to lose a elementary school-age child only days before Christmas, thankfully I don't know, though, what it is like to lose your child in that violent, senseless manner...

Somehow I just cannot believe that anyone can do something as terrible "just like that", or because he/she played too many cruel video games, or watched too many cruel films on TV, or had access to a weapon.

Things in that person's life must have gone frightfully wrong for a long, long time. A horrible act such as the one that just happened has a story. There is a prolonged period of build-up involved before it "explodes" in this terrible, frightful, totally unjust manner.

And no kind of education, deprivation of access to fire arms, preparation on the side of the victims (who can you prepare for anything as insane as this?) - nothing could have stopped what took so long in its coming. I don't know where in the life of this 20-year-old things went wrong, and I am NOT trying to excuse neither this individual, nor his deed. But I still believe that no one is simply born this bad - something made him lose his mind to this horrible extent.

Probably - if anyone had looked closely, paid enough attention - whatever did go wrong in the attacker's life could have been seen. But it was probably considered as "family business", "nothing I want to get involved in", or "...not too bad".

That's my guessing - what do I know?
I can't even fathom what my niece feels like inside who's severely afflicted by depression and schizophrenia (for example)...

 

[cpeay]

I train for this type of thing a few times a year and pray that it never happens. Four years ago I stopped a car driven by a mad man. He had 11 firearms inside his car with thousands of rounds of ammo. He was on his way to a highschool to take care of a gang problem. After he was arrested and while I was searching his car for more guns, I found his diary. Inside it he wrote about killing gang members at the school he was headed to. He planned to sit on a hill that overlooks the highschool and shoot them with a sniper rifle. My daughter attended the same school. I had never been so frightened before in all my life. I hate to think what would of happened if I did not stop that car.

 

[unpopular]

we'd all like to imagine he was some kind of sociopath.

perhaps what's most disturbing is that in this social media era, we have a record of who he really was. A pretty normal-looking kid with normal looking friends. I blame our healthcare system, something certainly went very wrong here.

 

[Steve5D]

I blame our healthcare system, something certainly went very wrong here.

I blame him, mentally unbalanced or not...

 

[unpopular]

there is a difference between accountability and responsibility.

 

[jkzo]

Really sickening

 

[EIngerson]

Here's a little read about the guy that taught me to think the way I do. Agree or not it's interesting.
Active shooters in schools: The enemy is denial

 

[AgentDrex]

"Stupid cowards, that's all they are. They cannot take responsibility for their lives and need to project their self-hate on to others violently." That's the one side of my thinking and because of my status as a Gemini (seeing two-sides) I see this side of the argument as well, "None of us asked to be born who we are. Some of us were born with the ability to take responsibility. Some of us were not so lucky. If people were born with a mental illness, do we blame them for their actions as a result of that illness? Can we blame the heavily-autistic girl for defecating herself when she doesn't fully comprehend what she is doing? As such can we blame the individual who was born malevolent and doesn't fully comprehend how to be benign?"

Seeing both sides of a door is highly confusing for me. Any ideas about that?

Do we assume this coward was level-headed who went out and killed? Do we assume this person was unfortunately mentally-ill who went out and killed? In my mind, I cannot fathom a situation where a level-headed person would go out and kill like this(unless they were drugged with scopolamine as some of the conspiracy nuts will say. Haven't heard that theory? Imagine a powerful anti-gun lobby secretly hires a clandestine group to target an individual, dope him up with a drug that supposedly makes that person susceptible to the whim of others, give them the suggestion to go out and kill with a gun. They then try to pass legislation that bans guns with public outrage over the incident allowing it to go through unchallenged).

This person was either born mentally ill, somehow became ill during their life or something snapped right before the unfortunate incident. That or they could have been, like I mentioned ,a self-centered, lilly-livered, yellow-bellied, coward, mother-something-or-another!

There's no way we can figure out who it's going to be. So love and help your neighbor to your left and right, whether rich or poor. Do something good for a random stranger at a random time. Like has been said in this thread already, make sure the last thing you say to a loved one each time is that you love and care for them deeply. As I love all of you for allowing me to be here and spout of my sometimes nonsensical meanderings.

 

[EIngerson]

I'll never try and get inside the head of an individual that can commit such a crime. I don't want or care to. I've seen things in my life I wish no other human to see. Especially my sons and my family. If I can shield them from it I will. If not, I want them as prepared as humanly possible, both physically and mentally.

So I guess to answer your question, no, I don't have any ideas about both sides of the door. There's right and there's wrong and NOTHING, no illness or mental disability that will ever excuse what that deviant did.

Life provides all of us with different views on things I suppose. I hope that none of you ever have to deal with a loss like that. Pretty deep for a photography forum.