Another School Shooting

[pineapplemike]

14-year-old in custody after shooting at a California high school
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/11/us/calif ... ots-fired/
Authorities say they are trying to figure out why a 14-year-old boy went to his former high school Friday morning and began shooting a semiautomatic rifle shortly before classes were scheduled to begin.
A 15-year-old male student who was struck in the shoulder by gunfire was in surgery Friday afternoon but expected to recover fully, officials said.
The shooting happened on the campus of Highland High School in Palmdale, California, around 7 a.m. PT, even as some students still were arriving at school.

Sort of disappointed this school shooting didn't gain any traction, Highland High class of '07 suckas

Middle-class school or what?

Yeah decent school, better than the other high schools in town atleast. No one was ever shot while I was there, but a kid got stabbed with a box cutter once. Good times

[SuburbanFarmer]

10 shots? A freshman?

Betcha this was to get his ex’s new boyfriend.

[Fife]

I attended my daughter's high school graduation last night. Easily in the top-5 days for me, so far.

Today is just another tough day.

The Best Explanation for Our Spate of Mass Shootings Is the Least Comforting

On another terrible day, I hate to introduce even more pessimism, but when we discuss mass shootings, one of the first questions we ask is the simplest and also the hardest to answer. Why? Why does this keep happening? Those who advocate for gun control have an immediate answer — the prevalence of guns in the United States. Yet guns have been part of the fabric of American life for the entire history of our republic. Mass shootings — especially the most deadly mass shootings — are a far more recent phenomenon.

Writing in 2015, Malcolm Gladwell wrote what I think is still the best explanation for modern American mass shootings, and it’s easily the least comforting. At the risk of oversimplifying a complex argument, essentially he argues that each mass shooting lowers the threshold for the next.

. . .

While early reports are often wrong, there are indications that the Texas shooter engaged in behavior that sounds eerily like the Columbine shooting. We’ve seen reports of a trench coat, of the use of similar weapons, and of explosives — all hallmarks of the Colorado massacre. When I think of Columbine, I think of Gladwell’s essay. There are young men in the grip of a terrible contagion, and there is no cure coming.

[MilSpecs]

I attended my daughter's high school graduation last night. Easily in the top-5 days for me, so far.

Congratulations!

[Okeefenokee]

I attended my daughter's high school graduation last night. Easily in the top-5 days for me, so far.

Today is just another tough day.

The Best Explanation for Our Spate of Mass Shootings Is the Least Comforting

On another terrible day, I hate to introduce even more pessimism, but when we discuss mass shootings, one of the first questions we ask is the simplest and also the hardest to answer. Why? Why does this keep happening? Those who advocate for gun control have an immediate answer — the prevalence of guns in the United States. Yet guns have been part of the fabric of American life for the entire history of our republic. Mass shootings — especially the most deadly mass shootings — are a far more recent phenomenon.

Writing in 2015, Malcolm Gladwell wrote what I think is still the best explanation for modern American mass shootings, and it’s easily the least comforting. At the risk of oversimplifying a complex argument, essentially he argues that each mass shooting lowers the threshold for the next.

. . .

While early reports are often wrong, there are indications that the Texas shooter engaged in behavior that sounds eerily like the Columbine shooting. We’ve seen reports of a trench coat, of the use of similar weapons, and of explosives — all hallmarks of the Colorado massacre. When I think of Columbine, I think of Gladwell’s essay. There are young men in the grip of a terrible contagion, and there is no cure coming.

Public schools seem to keep producing school shooters.

[Fife]

The state (coercion) is leading us straight down the crapper to the sewer, and death.

I happen to have decided, at great cost, to live in a district where I was able to get my child though the process, as of yesterday, without the worst symptoms of the cancer that is eating up our children. It was a delay that I got that not many more parents will get to enjoy.

Coercion is violence. We all know this. Violence is death.

[C-Mag]

Public schools seem to keep producing school shooters.

Hadn't thought of this put so directly. +1

We should question why kids shoot up their own schools. They don't often shoot up their own churches or shopping malls, or other places they are associated with. Why is there so much anger and violence directed back at the schools.

[Kath]

I happen to have decided, at great cost, to live in a district where I was able to get my child though the process, as of yesterday, without the worst symptoms of the cancer that is eating up our children. It was a delay that I got that not many more parents will get to enjoy.

Congratulations. Do you feel she got a good education?

[Fife]

I happen to have decided, at great cost, to live in a district where I was able to get my child though the process, as of yesterday, without the worst symptoms of the cancer that is eating up our children. It was a delay that I got that not many more parents will get to enjoy.

Congratulations. Do you feel she got a good education?

Thanks.

She got a good turn, I think, given the restrictions of the system, and the restrictions of my time resources. I am very happy about the school district I chose for her.

Under any circumstances, her education is just beginning. I've tried to give her a better understanding than I had of that idea when I was 18.

[Fife]

The Meme War is a real war. Maybe the only war that matters.

After Texas school shooting, how can we inoculate ourselves against the next one?

Memes can be about anything, from popular jokes all the way up to big complexes of self-replicating ideas, like Nazism, communism and most religions. People believe them, and spread them, and become increasingly resistant to entertaining critical thoughts about them. Some are benign and even beneficial — like many of the germs that live in our body, they may even help protect against more dangerous memes. Others are dangerous, and can ruin or even end the lives of those infected by them, or the victims of those who are infected.

Which brings me to the topic of school shootings. While these mass shootings aren’t increasing and are even trending down, they seem to be becoming almost a ritualized form of behavior: Bullied/ostracized kid arms up, targets his/her school and kills people, often starting with the tormentors, leaving social media manifestos behind.