Sadly, a Thread for Casualties Caused by Gun-Wielding Attackers

[mamselle]

Santa Clarita, CA high school, this morning.

Two have died (one, the shooter, shot himself); three more are hospitalized.

M.

[nebo113]

No big deal.  Life and death in the US of A....goddammit.

[mamselle]

Sorry I couldn't post these articles yesterday:

   https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/santa-clarita-school-shooting/index.html

and

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/11/15/santa-clarita-shooting-saugus-high-school-what-we-know/4197964002/

M.

[writingprof]

Hell yes we're going to create morally preening threads on anonymous message boards.

[mamselle]

Excuse me?

Whether small or large numbers of individuals are affected, those injuries and deaths deserve the respect of acknowledgement and a space for  mourning.

These boards, in previous as well as potentially, present, iterations, have from time to time included individuals who were directly affected by such horrors.

I realized we don't have such a thread here and sought to supply one.

That's not moral preening.

It's providing a place for people to acknowledge grief and receive community support.

Others may just need to unpack triggered responses that come up when such news is aired.

I'm  very glad for you if those are not your needs, but they might be someone else's.

Sneering at them is hardly becoming.

Mercy seasons justice....maybe injustice, too...

M.

[pgher]

I don't really know what to say, and certainly don't know what to do.

Here's what I do know. There was a possible threat at our junior high over the weekend. It turned out to be a misunderstood joke. Today, my daughter, a senior, found out that last year, there were two different incidents at the high school when someone had a gun in the school and was loading it, but was apprehended. This is the first she heard about it. In one case, the person was over 18 and is now in prison. In the other case, the person was a minor and received a two-week suspension from school.

[mamselle]

One of the scary things is the might-have-beens, I agree.

I'm sorry those scenarios came so close to your family--glad they weren't carried out, but the bare possibility is harrowing.

How then do we live?

M.

[backatit]

Our youngest kid's school was evacuated a few days ago. I don't have anything to say other than I am sick of this. I work with Moms Demand Action, and I'm proud of the work they do. I would urge anyone interested in activism to check out this group.

[Descartes]

Hell yes we're going to create morally preening threads on anonymous message boards.

Right - I thought no one was "trolling" on the Fora 2.0 and we were avoiding politics.  I'll have zero qualms about posting my politics in response if we're going to do this.

[mamselle]

I hope writingprof took my reply seriously.

I do think this fora iteration is functioning better.

I take the occasional entry like that as an opportunity to re-set the tone and purpose of the thread, and as a suggestion to just read past that writer's posts going forward.

I have a sort of internal "ignore" function in which I scroll past, glance for anything useful, and go on. (Even a troll might be right once in awhile....)

But back to the issue at hand:   I came to ask if someone could post the link to the Moms Demand Action site in case it's useful.

I can't pick it up on this phone.

M.

[Wahoo Redux]

I remember the typical disenfranchised, violent, quietly disturbed, and psychologically troubled teens in my average American high school in the 1980s, but never once did I fear someone would come in and shoot up my school.

We know now that Michael Moore's 'documentary' Bowling for Columbine is a sham of misinformation, propaganda, and deceptive editing, but the one thing he pointed out is that gun-ownership is not unique to America, the volume of gun violence is.

We've set something loose in our society.

[backatit]

Sure, here you go:
https://momsdemandaction.org/

I actually spend a bit of time debunking myths in my friend group about gun ownership in other countries. My father-in-law is an avid sportsman in the UK, and a long-time gun owner. There is the perception that no one owns guns in the UK, but it's actually pretty common, just tightly regulated. I know quite a few people who hunt and target practice there, and all are fine with the regulations in place, and they are quite puzzled by our attitude towards guns.

[kaysixteen]

Having seen Bowling, I'm wondering if you had some concise documentation, website, etc., that demonstrates your claim about its being deceptive propaganda?

[Wahoo Redux]

Having seen Bowling, I'm wondering if you had some concise documentation, website, etc., that demonstrates your claim about its being deceptive propaganda?

Seriously?  The inaccuracies and misstatements in the film were big news.

These were the ones I was aware of:  http://whatculture.com/film/5-reasons-why-bowling-for-columbine-is-not-a-real-documentary

[mamselle]

NOLA, this morning:

   https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/01/us/new-orleans-shooting-french-quarter/index.html

Two people were critically injured, others less so. There were so many people in the area, nearby police could not identify the shooter with certainty.

Motivation is totally unclear; at first the police thought they were being shot at.

M.