I agree, but then what?
Systematically take everyone’s weapons?
How about holding the people close to him accountable?
I don’t like seeing my hometown covered on all the national news stations. 
Several of my coworkers have kids there. As far as I’ve been able to tell, everyone is accounted for. It’s apparently hard for them to get home right now, because of all the activity.
Friends of mine live within walking distance of the school.
I went to high school with the principal. I’m sure he was quite busy today - it took a few hours for anyone to surface on Facebook and confirm that he’s ok.
It’s been a surreal afternoon and evening. It reminds me of the airport shooting just over a year ago - local story, big news. That one faded into the background. I suspect “Stoneman Douglas” will be referenced in the same breath as “Sandy Hook.”
White guy surnamed Cruz. Want to bet that a bunch of Whites will say Cruz, being Hispanic, is not really White?
Some of us find capital punishment not only disgusting but also immoral. What would it accomplish other than feed your blood lust?
What would they be accountable for? He’s 19 or 20. Presumably whatever his past issues were they were not severe enough legally for more severe action than what was taken. Do you want his parents punished simply because they are his parents? How is that sensible?
I think that a big driving force for more support for the measures necessary to reduce these shootings - whether it’s gun control, more availability of psychiatric care for troubled people, or both - will be the emergence of more video recordings of it. I truly think that if people, including legislators, SEE and HEAR these incidents happening, it will make it more personal for them in a way that just reading about it will not. As much pessimism as there is regarding the inertia of tightening gun restrictions, I think enough of these video recordings emerging will indeed motivate some attempts at changing it. I am an owner of guns and a supporter of the general idea of the 2nd Amendment but come on, these conservatives shoot down (no pun intended) even the most MINIMAL attempts at reasonable controls like better background checks. I think they’d be less inclined to do so if they saw videos of these massacres.
In summation: I think the general societal trend of people recording things with their phones all the time, may eventually be what motivates action to be taken on this issue.
His Instagram was captured by the wayback machine.
Um. His name has been released, and if you search his name on FB, it links to the wayback snapshots of it. I dont know if it is ok to post here.
I’m just fed up with everyone close to anyone who does this saying “We never saw this coming, he was such a great guy.” Bullshit.
What’s the point of keeping this pile of shit alive with all the new perks of prison life. Free healthcare, probably better than a lot of people, free internet, free food for the rest of his life. He gets to live for the next 60 years on your $.
Beat the shit out of him, try him and execute him.
Would it make you happier if his name was John Smith or Drew? You seem a little disappointed or something.
Darren Osborne, who has just been sentenced to life for ramming his van into a queue outside a mosque in London was widely reported in the UK media, after asking his neighbours, thusly: “He’s always been a complete cunt”
I’m not being snarky, but public executions didn’t seem to do much to deter things. Beyond that stat]ement, I’m not hijiacking this thread. Perhaps I’ll start another thread about that sometime. It might be worth discussing.
Agreed. But in this particular case, I saw an interview with a witness (CBS Evening News) who said that he knew the shooter since the 6th grade, and called him a “juvenile” (I’m sure from the context he meant “juvenile delinquent”) because he was always getting in trouble with teachers, and trying to be the “cool” kid.
So in this instance, we have at least one statement saying the accused is a turd, not a great guy.
Presuming he goes to trial, is convicted, and imprisoned, he wouldn’t be free though. And if he were to ever be released, he’d be a convicted felon and murderer.
Besides, we don’t practice frontier justice in this country anymore.
I believe you may have misunderstood the post.
Gotta ban them schools.
Clarify for me, then. Hispanic people are generally included under the heading “brown people” are they not? Especially when we are talking about bigoted white people and their hatred of immigrants? Is he a white guy now because he did something awful?
At least three posters in this thread felt the need to immediately label the shooter a white guy, and also before much, if any information was available, just wondering why that’s so important, and how it makes any difference.
The casual racism at this place, directed to anyone white and not left-leaning, is increasingly unpleasant to read. There is zero chance that you’d make similar comments about any other culture or ethnicity, but nevertheless, you feel perfectly entitled to make that slur against whatever white boogeyman exists in your head.
To answer your first question, though, I voted happily for Senator Ted Cruz, and while his ethnicity did not factor into my vote, I’d consider him, just looking at him, to be Caucasian. Heck, even listening to him. I work and interact with many people of Latin American ancestry, who are much whiter than I am—benefit of being so close to Mexico—so a surname of “Cruz” would not mean I wouldn’t think he was “white.” Not that it matters one way or the next, except to the statisticians.
Second question, executing him—provided it’s proven he did these crimes—prevents this piece of filth from committing any more acts of violence against anyone else: prison guards, inmates, or the rest of the population when society deems him “cured.” See Kenneth McDuff, and others.
Finally, while we do not as a rule in the US, punish parents for the actions of their adult offspring, I understand the impulse to do so. This guy did everything up to taking out an ad in the paper telling people he was going to do something like this. His parents were the closest ones to see what this kid was turning into, and it would have been nice for them to put this guy into the system, or hell, take away his Modern Warfare 2 and his Instagram, before he finally snapped.
Punishing his parents incentivizes them to do their job and raise a contributing member of society. Or at least warn us before he loses it. I don’t agree with that point of view, but I sympathize with it.
Because, unfortunately, in our day and age, besides students and postal workers going, well, postal, there’s an increasing threat of Islamic terrorism in both the States and Europe. Seeing a white guy, sans beard getting cuffed into the back of a squad car doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t Muslim—Chechens anyone?—but it makes it less likely. And schools are an easy target for inspiring fear and terror. Compare similar mug shots and other photos of perpetrators of Islamic-inspired violence in the US. There were the Tsarnaevs, of course. Whom we were warned about too…
But your virtue signalling has been duly noted. Good for you! EDIT: Reading back through the thread, I believe I was hasty in snarking at you specifically, Pool. I apologize. The first paragraph is why I bothered mentioning the guy’s race.
With that out of the way, any ideas for stopping this sort of thing, anyone? Hard to get the cops much closer to the scene than stationed at the school, as happened here. And it’d be child’s play to sub a shotgun in for the Smith & Wesson AR he used. Locking up the violent seems like a good start, though it’ll be overinclusive as hell…
How do you tell the difference between a mentally unstable person and a dangerously mentally unstable person? I don’t think it is all that uncommon to know or at least be aware of a few of the former.
What exact virtue do you believe I’m signaling?
There’s not a whole lot that can be done to prevent these things without infringing on inalienable rights. It’s one of the prices we pay for living in a free society.
I saw your edit just now Gray Ghost, I’ll leave it at that.