Morgan Freeman's insight into the recent tragedy

[Karnak]

Place the blame squarely where it lies.  On todays society.

I don't think that is entirely correct.  The vast, vast majority of us would never do such a thing.  Would in fact die trying to stop it should we find ourselves in such a situation.

I do think the 24 hour, always blaring, always looking for ratings news channels do play a role though.  I suspect, strongly, that at least some of these perpetrators are motivated to, instead of just blowing their own brains out as they would have in the '50s and '60s you reference, try to do as much damage in as shocking a way as possible to get their name in lights.  To be infamous when they feel they can be nothing else.

[ink]

media is only putting out what people want to see.....

they are very good at their job....

blaming anything but the individual....and society as a whole....is missing it.


Blaming Society is not saying that all would do it.....but we have become numb to violence...it is in everything...it is everywhere.....it is what we perpetuate in the world...it is what we as a nation are....

[Motherland]

I grew up in the fifties and sixties.  No one would think of doing something of this magnitude.  It wouldn't be thought of as an option.
The first mass killing that I remember was by a deranged ex-marine in a tower in Texas.  That was in the early 60s.
If there were a disagreement at our school it would be taken up across the street in a mano a mano fist fight.  No jerks with guns
or knives.  Afterwards....winner and loser forgot about it.  It was settled.  No one bringing knives or guns into school.  Again
not an option, unheard of.

Place the blame squarely where it lies.  On todays society.

I don't think the reason kids who were bullied shoot up high schools is because they were never beaten up. Probably the contrary

Anyway it's not like school shootings weren't already alarmingly common in the 50s and 60s, whether or not you remember it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States

Interestinly enough, the most deadly attack on a school in the United States, albeit not with guns but with bombs, remains dating back to 1927 when 38 elementary schoolers were killed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

(but this is entirely a modern phenomenon due to a new generation of little brats)

[USAFCAPcTSgt]

Newspapers and news stations have been using this adage since the 50's and 60's.  "If it bleeds, it leads."

Since the end of WW2, the American family has went from the single parent source of income to the multiple sources of income from one or both parents resulting in a slow movement of generational teenage children being left home to their own devises from the 1970's to the present.  Each new generation of has unleashed a more incentive to being materialistic, shallow, and violence accepting.  Some exceptions here and there.

This isn't an issue for gun control, movie violence and video game violence, or drugs to cure mental illness.  This is an issue of ethical teachings.

Do not steal.
Do not lie.
Do not cheat.
Do not covet.




and...



Do not KILL!!!




Basic common sense approach to ethical behavior that all decent people can agree on from all walks of life.

What more can you say?

[mthrockmor]

Philosophical point:

Some see man as inherently good, corrupted by outside influences. Sort of like Tarzan. Raised from an infant by apes yet grows into a nearly proper, Victorian style gentleman without any of the influences associated with Victorian input. He was noble because he was man. Corrupting outside influences, in this case would be guns. If only we had no guns man would not act as such a savage.

The counter view to this is the natural man is inherently evil, or given to selfish acts. The nature then of man is to act in their best interests and we must work to overcome these naturally selfish inclinations. This view is best summed by the book and novel, Lord of the Flies. Noble creatures left to their own devices become a savage tribe, murdering Piggy within short weeks. Think sex, men would love to love all the women of the world yet work to restrain thought and action.

Classic, guns do not kill people, people do. Is as true as spoons do not make people fat, choices do.

Man is inherently selfish, working towards benevolence.

Boo

PS gun control will work as well as the War on Drugs has.

[Motherland]

Philosophical point:

Some see man as inherently good, corrupted by outside influences. Sort of like Tarzan. Raised from an infant by apes yet grows into a nearly proper, Victorian style gentleman without any of the influences associated with Victorian input. He was noble because he was man. Corrupting outside influences, in this case would be guns. If only we had no guns man would not act as such a savage.

The counter view to this is the natural man is inherently evil, or given to selfish acts. The nature then of man is to act in their best interests and we must work to overcome these naturally selfish inclinations. This view is best summed by the book and novel, Lord of the Flies. Noble creatures left to their own devices become a savage tribe, murdering Piggy within short weeks. Think sex, men would love to love all the women of the world yet work to restrain thought and action.

Classic, guns do not kill people, people do. Is as true as spoons do not make people fat, choices do.

Man is inherently selfish, working towards benevolence.

Boo

PS gun control will work as well as the War on Drugs has.

It's easy to say 'it is part of life, get over it', but this is not just part of life, it is the symptom of a very sick society that has been sick for a long time and needs to be healed. You can't just say it's a natural function of man when ours is the only society where adults gun down kids or kids gun down other kids in school with such an alarmingly regular basis.

[Karnak]

Ink, USAFCAPcTSgt,

I see what you are saying, but personal responsibility doesn't work for people who's minds are not with us in reality, who's minds are broken for whatever reason.  This doesn't excuse what they do, but it has to matter to those of us who are living in reality and who's minds do work.  Since we know that personal responsibility has never, through all of history, worked to restrain the insane we have to look to other solutions rather than just preaching something that to those who do these things is nothing but a quiet caress of wind on cherry blossoms compared to the screaming in their heads.

Given that they cannot take personal responsibility, we must.

[mtnman]

Personally, I don't think it's necessarily "society" that's responsible.  

I think blaming it on society is just a knee-jerk easy-route answer, just as poorly directed as blaming it on the weapon the individual chose to use.

Neither is to blame, and blaming either one (or even both) will just lead to frustration, repeats of the event, and in the end there will be no actual resolution.

In reality, the society I live in (good ol' USA) does not condone this behavior.  We don't appreciate it, teach it, encourage it, minimize it, or excuse it.  

In reality, the society is just the sum of the individuals that make it up, and the individuals are just the product of the environment (society) they live in.  The society and the people that make it up, are synonymous.

The people that do these things are not "normal", i.e. they aren't synonymous with the society.  They're a statistically infinitesimal faction within the society, but they most certainly do not represent the society, and the society most certainly does not represent them.  Blaming the greater whole for the extremely rare out-of-the norm defect is insane and irresponsible.  It's going to get people killed.

Since they're not a "normal" chunk of society, they aren't going to be effectively controlled by the "normal" controls (laws, morals, fears, and motivations) that the rest of the society is controlled by.  

Forget the lame-azz easy-route scapegoats (guns, laws, society) and please begin looking for the real root of the issue.  

This tiny faction of nutcases feels tiny, isolated, frustrated, and ignored.  They want fame.  We're giving it to them.

The longer we waste time looking at the wrong things (and using them as leverage for political gain) the more society (and the good folks that make it up) will suffer.  It's time to look outside the box!

[ink]

we as a society completely accept violence....we encourage it....

it is our first reaction.....

obviously this is violence taken to the most extreme and no one in their right mind finds violence against children OK

remember I am a father of 9 kids some are the same ages.....

I grew up in violence yet I always hated it, hated myself for becoming violent....

we are not naturally violent...I don't agree with those that say we are.

Ink, USAFCAPcTSgt,

I see what you are saying, but personal responsibility doesn't work for people who's minds are not with us in reality, who's minds are broken for whatever reason.  This doesn't excuse what they do, but it has to matter to those of us who are living in reality and who's minds do work.  Since we know that personal responsibility has never, through all of history, worked to restrain the insane we have to look to other solutions rather than just preaching something that to those who do these things is nothing but a quiet caress of wind on cherry blossoms compared to the screaming in their heads.

Given that they cannot take personal responsibility, we must.

I absolutely agree, when someone is not in the right state of mind to know right from wrong it is up to us as a society to make sure they do not harm others.........

Newspapers and news stations have been using this adage since the 50's and 60's.  "If it bleeds, it leads."

Since the end of WW2, the American family has went from the single parent source of income to the multiple sources of income from one or both parents resulting in a slow movement of generational teenage children being left home to their own devises from the 1970's to the present.  Each new generation of has unleashed a more incentive to being materialistic, shallow, and violence accepting.  Some exceptions here and there.

This isn't an issue for gun control, movie violence and video game violence, or drugs to cure mental illness.  This is an issue of ethical teachings.

Do not steal.
Do not lie.
Do not cheat.
Do not covet.




and...



Do not KILL!!!




Basic common sense approach to ethical behavior that all decent people can agree on from all walks of life.

What more can you say?

you forgot a couple...but you are dead on correct....

imagine a world were everyone followed 10 simple straight forward perfect laws.

[Guppy35]

I grew up in the fifties and sixties.  No one would think of doing something of this magnitude.  It wouldn't be thought of as an option.
The first mass killing that I remember was by a deranged ex-marine in a tower in Texas.  That was in the early 60s.
If there were a disagreement at our school it would be taken up across the street in a mano a mano fist fight.  No jerks with guns
or knives.  Afterwards....winner and loser forgot about it.  It was settled.  No one bringing knives or guns into school.  Again
not an option, unheard of.

Place the blame squarely where it lies.  On todays society.

Hajo I'm going to disagree with you.  Mass murder goes back to the beginning of time.  This isn't about a school disagreement.  it's about a nut job who killed kids and teachers at a school.  

We can blame society but then we'd have to look at ourselves.  I was all set to rant about TV today and it's influence, then I remembered what a Rifleman fan I was.  And that good upstanding cornerstone of the town shot and killed someone every show and we expected it cause they were the 'bad guys'.   I bet you, like me went around carrying that plastic Tommy gun and playing army as a kid.  We've made guns part of the fabric of who we are, and no one better dare touch that, yet we are surprised when someone who is clearly crazy takes a gun and shoots a bunch of people.

It's insane, and 99.9 percent of us would never ever consider it.  Yet we all have houses with guns in them.  We  watch shows where problems are solved with guns.  We play video games with our kids that involve killing.  We watch sports that involve violence.  We get bombarded with people spewing hate, and we wonder why some mentally ill kid fails to separate fantasy from reality?

We all want to find someone else to blame or some thing, yet we as a society are unwilling to look at the things that may contribute for fear that we might lose what we see as our freedoms.  We'd never go crazy like that so why should we give up anything?   We can't expect to have everything and not lose something at the same time.  And this is part of that.

In the end I think it won't be about guns, entertainment violence, video games or the failure of parents.  It will come down to are we willing to spend the money on a system that looks out for and provides care for the mentally ill and disenfranchised.   We've cut and cut and cut on that and the resources are no longer there.  So those folks get missed and we pay the price elsewhere.

 

[mtnman]

we as a society completely accept violence....we encourage it....

it is our first reaction.....

obviously this is violence taken to the most extreme and no one in their right mind finds violence against children OK

remember I am a father of 9 kids some are the same ages.....

I grew up in violence yet I always hated it, hated myself for becoming violent....

we are not naturally violent...I don't agree with those that say we are.

I don't see that where I live...

While violence to some degree can be seen once in a while here and there, I've never seen it "encouraged" per se.  Being aggressive in sports, or other competitions, sure, but at the same time sportsmanship and fair play is stressed as well...

Violence on TV and movies basically follows the trend of good triumphing over evil; violence against innocents is portrayed as "bad", and while violence is often used to overcome evil, that's a far cry from encouraging anything that would lead to killing a bunch of innocent children.

I can't think of an example where that kind of violence is accepted or encouraged.

I've played violent video games, watched violence portrayed, and seen it in person.  I'm not violent as a result.  Neither are any of the "normal" people I know.

We're not brainwashing ourselves to be violent, or to accept or encourage it against innocents.  I'm not buying that argument, even though it's a common scapegoat.

These nutcase crackpots are not the product or byproduct of our society.  They're a festering defect that threatens it.

[spammer]

Right on Guppy, you nailed it.

Maybe.........Just Maybe........A lack of God in our society could be the problem. Heinous acts of Evil occur because the perpetrator does not believe they have to answer for their actions, here on Earth or the Hereafter. I'm not a Bible thumper guys, but do believe you might have to answer for your evil deeds come judgement day.

We cannot stop Evil or understand it, we can only try to defend ourselves against it.

Eric Holder suggests we have stricker gun controls after selling the Mexican Drug Cartell's over 2,000 Semiautomatic rifles witch was responsible for over 200 deaths including one of our border agents.

Enough said by me on this topic, I don't want to be the one that shuts it down. This is Horrific and can't even fathom the hurt put upon the people directly affected.

I'm praying for the Families affected by this.

[FiLtH]

   I think humiliating them after death would be good. Let any future killer know that his corpse will be stripped naked for all the world to see his wee bits, and let the crows eat him.

[Widewing]

I graduated from high school in 1971. We lived in an upper middle class town on the north shore of Long Island. We had about 2,900 kids in the school, 783 seniors in my graduating class. That year, we had 13 fistfights in the school.

In 2011, the same school, same demographic, had less than 2,200 students (they built a second high school in the middle 70s to reduce crowding). There were 618 seniors in the graduating class. In 2011, they had 92 fistfights in the school.

What changed? Figure that out and you will know why violence has increased. I think that it's very obvious that the culture has changed for the worse...

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The vast majority (85%+) of these shooters were either on or just getting off some physcho medicine like prozac, etc. That is NOT to say that this leads to all shootings but the connection is there. Next time you watch a TV commercial for a mood altering drug they will list possible side effects to include violent and/or suicidal thoughts. Again, I'm not saying this is the cause. Without a doubt many factors involved but it. Is the mmost common connection.

Sad!

Boo

Yes there have been cases down here also where open facility treatment patients just snapped and committed murders. Same kind of an effect can happen with drugs used for people wanting to quit smoking - they're usually the exact same drugs used as antidepressants. My father had to quit his anti-smoking treatment because he started to get bad side effects and got suicidal thoughts.