MaryO
Platinum Member
Re: Shooting in Newtown, Conneticut Elementary School
There are many factors, not the least of which is lack of facilities for mentally ill and disturbed children. This was something I fought daily when I was a School Resource Officer. I saw children who were mentally disturbed and a danger to others, some of them as young as 7 years old, but when I would try to have them removed from the school or find them help, it was almost non-existent. Our society doesn't want to believe that young children can have criminal intent or be dangerous and so we bury our head in the sand until they are older and they refuse help or it's just too late and they turn our like the shooter here. Until we improve these types of services we are not going to move forward.
I heard a statistic that this is the 41st school shooting since Columbine. 41 and counting. I nearly fell over when I heard that. If someone wants to kill, the instrument of death can be many different things. I don't know how any law can prevent someone who wants to kill from doing so. How do we eliminate this desire to kill?
What changed in society since I was a kid? This just didn't happen when I was youngster. My wife thinks it psycotropic drugs that are prescribed for kids. I don't know so I won't comment. Seeing the pics of those kids, and indeed just thinking about it...their poor families especially..the tears just flow out.
I just don't know what can be done. Games for kids have unspeakable violence. Perhaps they should make video games where if you kill someone, unspeakable bad things happen to the killers. They are reinforcing the wrong message. That's just one little thing out of hundreds of factors that result in this.
There are many factors, not the least of which is lack of facilities for mentally ill and disturbed children. This was something I fought daily when I was a School Resource Officer. I saw children who were mentally disturbed and a danger to others, some of them as young as 7 years old, but when I would try to have them removed from the school or find them help, it was almost non-existent. Our society doesn't want to believe that young children can have criminal intent or be dangerous and so we bury our head in the sand until they are older and they refuse help or it's just too late and they turn our like the shooter here. Until we improve these types of services we are not going to move forward.