donna723
Well-Known Member
I heard from my friend who lives in Danbury and thankfully none of his family members were involved. This school is just 15 miles from his home. But he said that this horrible event has just cast a pall over that whole area, people just walking around dazed from trying to take it all in and trying to make sense of it.
I won't take a hard stand on the gun control controversy either because honestly I can see both sides of it. Of course NOBODY needs assault weapons except the military and law enforcement. And I can understand people feeling that they need a weapon for personal protection for themselves, their families and their homes. Like Janet, I spent many years living in an isolated rural area where you would feel quite helpless without some kind of weapon available, even if you just use it on snakes. But certainly guns are way too easy to obtain in this country and are just as easy to get for the "bad guys" as they are to the responsible citizens who just want to protect their families. There are no easy answers.
I spent 24 years working in the prison system among these "bad guys" and I can assure you that if these people want guns, they WILL get them, even if they are banned and the responsible citizens are forbidden to own them. And from working there, I can also assure you that there are some people in this world who are truely EVIL, people who are just so "broken" that no amount of counseling or mental health care can fix them. They are almost like mutations. It does no good to try to understand the things that they do because they just don't think the same way that the rest of us do. And sometimes these people go home! I can't tell you how many times we have seen people who were truely. severely, dangerously mentally ill, one pill away from psychotic, who are released and on their own in society - no one to make sure they take their medications or get to appts. or to monitor what they do. They're out there and that's frightening. Our mental health care system is a shambles and there is no place for these people.
But these school shootings don't seem to be coming from these guys, it's usually the younger ones. Maybe some of them are like our "broken" inmates but at an earlier age? It's easy to spot a kid with bizarre behavior from severe mental illness or the ones with constant problems with the law or ones with severe drug or alcohol issues. But it always seems to be the "quiet ones", the ones who seem unlikely to do something like this, the ones flying under the radar. So how do you prevent these things from happening? I don't think we really can. Certainly tighter gun control and a complete overhaul of our mental health system would help, but sadly I don't think it would prevent it completely.
I won't take a hard stand on the gun control controversy either because honestly I can see both sides of it. Of course NOBODY needs assault weapons except the military and law enforcement. And I can understand people feeling that they need a weapon for personal protection for themselves, their families and their homes. Like Janet, I spent many years living in an isolated rural area where you would feel quite helpless without some kind of weapon available, even if you just use it on snakes. But certainly guns are way too easy to obtain in this country and are just as easy to get for the "bad guys" as they are to the responsible citizens who just want to protect their families. There are no easy answers.
I spent 24 years working in the prison system among these "bad guys" and I can assure you that if these people want guns, they WILL get them, even if they are banned and the responsible citizens are forbidden to own them. And from working there, I can also assure you that there are some people in this world who are truely EVIL, people who are just so "broken" that no amount of counseling or mental health care can fix them. They are almost like mutations. It does no good to try to understand the things that they do because they just don't think the same way that the rest of us do. And sometimes these people go home! I can't tell you how many times we have seen people who were truely. severely, dangerously mentally ill, one pill away from psychotic, who are released and on their own in society - no one to make sure they take their medications or get to appts. or to monitor what they do. They're out there and that's frightening. Our mental health care system is a shambles and there is no place for these people.
But these school shootings don't seem to be coming from these guys, it's usually the younger ones. Maybe some of them are like our "broken" inmates but at an earlier age? It's easy to spot a kid with bizarre behavior from severe mental illness or the ones with constant problems with the law or ones with severe drug or alcohol issues. But it always seems to be the "quiet ones", the ones who seem unlikely to do something like this, the ones flying under the radar. So how do you prevent these things from happening? I don't think we really can. Certainly tighter gun control and a complete overhaul of our mental health system would help, but sadly I don't think it would prevent it completely.