Posted on 02/16/2018 5:37:05 AM PST by Kaslin
"Enough is enough!" "This can't go on!" "This has to stop!"
These were among the comments that came through the blizzard of commentary after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County. We have heard these words before.
Unfortunately, such atrocities are not going to stop. For the ingredients that produce such slaughters are present and abundant in American society.
And what can stop a man full of hate, who has ceased to care about his life and is willing to end it, from getting a weapon in a country of 300 million guns and killing as many as he can in a public place before the police arrive?
An act of "absolute pure evil," said Gov. Rick Scott, of the atrocity that took 17 lives and left a dozen more wounded. And evil is the right word.
While this massacre may be a product of mental illness, it is surely a product of moral depravity. For this was premeditated and plotted, done in copycat style to the mass killings to which this country has become all too accustomed.
Nikolas Cruz thought this through. He knew it was Valentine's Day. He brought his fully loaded AR-15 with extra magazines and smoke grenades to the school that had expelled him. He set off a fire alarm, knowing it would bring students rushing into crowded halls where they would be easy to kill. He then escaped by mixing in with fleeing students.
The first ingredient then was an icy indifference toward human life and a willingness to slaughter former fellow students to deliver payback for whatever it was Cruz believed had been done to him at Douglas High.
In his case, the conscience was dead, or was buried beneath hatred, rage or resentment at those succeeding where he had failed. He had been rejected, cast aside, expelled. This would be his revenge, and it would be something for Douglas High and the nation to see -- and never forget.
Indeed, it seems a common denominator of the atrocities to which we have been witness in recent years is that the perpetrators are nobodies who wish to die as somebodies.
If a sense of grievance against those perceived to have injured them is the goad that drives misfits like Cruz to mass murder, the magnet that draws them to it is infamy. Infamy is their shortcut to immortality.
From the killings in Columbine to Dylann Roof's murder of black parishioners at the Charleston Church, from the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando to the slaughter of first-graders in Newtown, to Las Vegas last October where Stephen Paddock, firing from an upper floor of the Mandalay Bay, shot dead 58 people and wounded hundreds at a country music festival -- these atrocities enter the social and cultural history of the nation. And those who carry them out achieve a recognition few Americans ever know. Charles Whitman, shooting 47 people from that Texas tower in 1966, is the original model.
Evil has its own hierarchy of rewards. Perhaps the most famous man of the 20th century was Hitler, with Stalin and Mao among his leading rivals.
Some of these individuals who seek to "go out" this way take their own lives when the responders arrive, or they commit "suicide by cop" and end their lives in a shootout. Others, Cruz among them, prefer to star in court, so the world can see who they are. And the commentators and TV cameras will again give them what they crave: massive publicity.
And we can't change this. As soon as the story broke, the cameras came running, and we watched another staging of the familiar drama -- the patrol cars, cops in body armor, ambulances, students running in panic or walking in line, talking TV heads demanding to know why the cowards in Congress won't vote to outlaw AR-15s.
Yet, among the reasons gun-owners prize the AR-15 is that, not only in movies and TV shows is it the hero's -- and the villain's -- weapon of choice, but in real life, these are the kinds of rifles carried by the America's most-admired warriors.
They are the modern version of muskets over the fireplace.
Another factor helps to explain what happened Wednesday: We are a formerly Christian society in an advanced state of decomposition.
Nikolas Cruz was a product of broken families. He was adopted. Both adoptive parents had died. Where did he get his ideas of right and wrong, good and evil? Before the Death of God and repeal of the Ten Commandments, in those dark old days, the 1950s, atrocities common now were almost nonexistent.
One imagines Nikolas sitting alone, watching coverage of the Las Vegas shooting, and thinking, "Why not? What have I got to lose? If this life is so miserable and unlikely to get better, why not go out, spectacularly, like that? If I did, they would remember who I was and what I did for the rest of their lives."
And, so, regrettably, we shall.
The parent in charge of this Huntsville kid actually had this in a locked case, and the kid figured out the way to remove the hinges...replacing the Ritalin with fake pills.
We can go down the whole list. That Vegas shooter? He was given mood-altering drugs back in June...about a hundred days prior to the shooting.
But why limit this to shootings or guns? Why not cite the machete attack in Austin, Tx...May 2017? That guy was on Zoloft.
That Florida State shooting in Nov 2014...three folks wounded before the cops shot the shooter dead, the kid was on Wellbutrin, and Seroquel.
That 12-year old kid who shot off rounds at the school in Sparks, Nevada...Oct 2013....killing one teacher, wounds two students? On Fluxetine at the time.
You want another non-gun episode...how about the murder at the school in Sudbury, Massachusetts in early 2007? That 16-year old stabbed another kid with just a kitchen knife. For several months, that kid had been on rataline.
We are all looking at this mess as strictly a gun problem or a evilness issue, not recognizing all these non-gun deaths are in the mess, and that a lot of these people (not just teens) are using prescription drugs.
The hysteria from the left attempting to make this about AR15s.
Let’s say all AR15s are confiscated, which is impossible, but for the sake of argument. The next tragic school massacre will be with shotguns. Ok, ban them, then it will be long rifles like bolt action guns which will be characterized as “those mass murdering sniper rifles”, otherwise known as a deer rifle. Ok,,,banned. Then multiple handguns, even revolvers... and we are then at NO guns, which is what the left really wants, but are too dishonest to admit because they are liars...
-there will still be the evil suicidal mass murderer, who will just use the middle eastern bomb vest.
Same body count.
How about we deal with the sick bastards out there with the evil to start with.
You are right, but it is true that many of these adolescent shooters were on prescription stimulants for ADD and ADHD, as well as other meds to let them sleep.
Bttt
I see, so it's the prescription drug manufacturer's fault that a kid pried hinges off a locked box not sold to the kid by the drug maker, is that it?
Coincidence is not causation.
For instance, you might have been wearing blue colored pants when you rear-ended your car into the guy in traffic in front of you, but banning or regulating further the wearing of blue pants will not enhance public safety or be a suitable excuse for you in court to account for your moving violation.
One more time:
If one fails to take prescription medicines as labeled and as instructed that is the fault of that person to comply with instructions for safe use of the medication, not a problem with the medication itself.
Violent and abusive people have been around since man was first placed on this earth. Did the thought ever occur to you that there are violent, mentally ill people out there, who happen to abuse medications, and that they simply are violent and mentally ill by nature - whether they are medicated on not?
FReegards!
“I remember one such teacher and he was pushed over the edge by a student in another class. Teacher got fired.”
When I was in school, such a student got swats, then more swats, then they called the juvenile officer and he went to the state reformatory.
You did *not* want to go to the reformatory.
This is the same justification used by Communists, Facists, Marxist and your run of the mill progressive.
I believe you're indeed on to something.
Time to get back to basic common sense & values.
How many of those 4000 +++ kids in that school had had interactions with that kid over the past 10 years???
The kids today think that ‘snitching’ on someone is wrong...so how many of them will have it on their minds for the rest of their lives about ‘what they COULD have reported’???
The kids are thinking that it is ‘the kids vs the adults’ and they don’t tell their parents or another figure of authority about the kinds of trouble this kid was causing for a VERY LONG time.
His neighbors also are guilty. They have video of him shooting BB gun at cats & chickens.
Cops had been called to that home over 38 times in the recent months. How far does a kid have to get off the rails before something is done.?
The refusing to seriously go after this kid for all these months will weight heavily on all those who knew he was trouble. Cops-—neighbors-—other students.
They all have a part in this.
Now-—they all want to blame guns for the problem. There are millions of guns in the USA in the hands of millions of Americans that have NEVER caused a problem.
An engineer takes a brand new train of the racks in Washington State because he apparently didn’t get a training run before the inagural run.......
Are we banning trains??/
A road rage incident leads to a massive pile up....
Are we banning autos?
Kids are killing people by tossing rocks/cement pieces off bridges over highways....
Are we banning bridges? Highways? ROCKS???
Spin this all you want, snowflakes, but you cannot ignore that MANY people knew this kid was trouble. The furthest punishment he got was MULTIPLE expulsions.
I spent 4 years in high school in a small town in Wisconsin. I do NOT remember ANY kid getting expelled. Punished? In detention? Yes-—Expelled? NEVER.
The more I stand back I look at all of this crap, the more I blame Social Media.
YOU must ‘change the world”. I hate that phrase. 6 year old are not going to change the world when all they want to do is make a living singing, dancing & playing with an inflatable object.
You have to BE SOMEBODY !!! You already are somebody-—altho at a young age, that somebody is still growing into a hopefully better somebody.
Kids today are not allowed to just be kids & have a childhood.....They are placed into situations where bullying & cyber bulling is rampant.
IF someone bullied a kid when I went to school, it got stopped fast. In a number of ways.
Teachers have no control because they have no permission to rule over unruly kids. Show ANY kid that they can misbehave without any consequences & I will show you an outlaw in the making. The older they get, the less they can hold a job & the less worth they have to the community.
There were kids in school when I was there that sometimes pushed the limits, but they found out in very short order that those limits could NOT be pushed without consequences.
The worst kid in one grade turned into one of the best cops the town ever had-—because he had already done so many of the things the current crop of kids tried—he was always one step ahead of them. He got straight—and he got others straight later.
Don’t want to ‘snitch? You are part of the problem——NEVER part of the solution.
Social media is a vehicle but the lack of self discipline came first. The rest of society with self discipline doesn’t use attention seeking mediums.
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