(Illustration: Police escort children away from Sandy Hook Elementary School, December 2012, found here. And a shooting Tuesday at a high school in Oregon was the 74th such event since then).
This is one freaked-out-crazy country. Terror in its real core is home grown, and the nutcase gun people have allowed the deep end to swallow up and choke any semblance of life. Pop off a couple of rounds just to see what hits.
Yesterday, another saga in America’s continuing love-fascination story with gun violence amongst the young:
“I was by the gym and I heard a shot. I wasn’t sure it was a shot, but I went to the main entrance and teachers were yelling, saying, ‘You have to get in, there’s a lockdown,’ ” Elizabeth told the local station.
“I thought I was in a dream.
“I thought this only happened in movies. I was just shocked.”
Indeed, a most-violent impact for the start of classes at Reynolds High School in the Portland, Oreg., suburb of Troutdale, as a kid with a rifle shot another kid before apparently killing himself in a school bathroom. A teacher was wounded.
However, this the deep-seated clincher: Anderson confirmed a report that another person had a gun at the school. Anderson said that a second person was taken into custody but that the person was not involved in the shooting.
Are guns the new show-and-tell?
And the continuance: “In a scene that has become all too familiar…” the opening lines off the USAToday video report on the shooting.
Crazy how creative the latest insanity from the end-result of guns, guns and more guns — schools are the new war zones as new, ingenuous devices are innovated to safeguard children: The 5/16-inch thick rectangular pad resembles nap-time mats from kindergarten. But these are equipped with backpack-like straps so users can put in on and duck.
President Obama delievered some hardcore remarks on gun-nutism just a little while after the Oregon shooting, and didn’t pull the punches.
Via Aljazeera:
“We’re the only developed country on Earth where this happens,” the president said. “And it happens now once a week. And it’s a one-day story. There’s no place else like this.”
…
“The United States does not have a monopoly on crazy people.
“It’s not the only country that has psychosis,” Obama said.
“And yet, we kill each other in these mass shootings at rates that are exponentially higher than any place else.
“Well, what’s the difference?
“The difference is, is that these guys can stack up a bunch of ammunition in their houses.
“And that’s sort of par for the course.”
…
“I am prepared to work with anybody, including responsible sportsmen and gun owners, to craft some solutions.
“But right now, it’s not even possible to get even the mildest restrictions through Congress.
“And we should be ashamed of that.”
Reports from the shooting before this particular shooting — Seattle Pacific University in Washington state, and some background:
The man charged with killing one student and wounding two others at a small Seattle college last week had stopped taking his medications because he “wanted to feel the hate,” and he detailed his plans in a handwritten journal for two weeks before the attack, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
“I just want people to die, and I’m gonna die with them!” Aaron Ybarra wrote the day of the shooting, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said.
Satterberg released new details of the allegations as he filed charges of first-degree murder, attempted murder and assault against Ybarra, 26.
Satterberg is seeking a sentence of life in prison.
Nutcase nation — just like climate change, banks that are too big too prosecute, and so-forth-and-so-on, guns are the illusion of America.
Jon Stewart said it Monday: “It’s like America has a dog that’s always shitting inside the house, and we solved the problem by getting a brown rug.”
Roses and caskets seem to go together — sad.
(Illustration out front found here).