3 Dead in Chardon, Ohio, School Shooting

[Oraisteach]

Very very sad.  Yesterday morning a student at Chardon high school, on Cleveland's east side, shot five students in the school cafeteria.  One died at the scene.  Two more have died this morning.  Chardon is a a quiet rural community about 20 mins. from where I used to live.

[Puckoon]

Very sad indeed Oraisteach - unfortunatly however not that shocking anymore, even in a quiet, small rural community. For the life of me I can't see a way to combat it ( a real way - not an "America has a gun problem" response).

[seafoid]

The US could buck up a lot on how it treats mental illness. It would need healthcare reform though. A lot of the people who turn guns on their fellow citizens need competent and affordable medical intervention  long before they pull the trigger.   

[J70]

What about immature teenagers who hold deadly grudges because of bullying and abuse? Some bullying victims kill themselves, but others take it out on their tormenters. How do you monitor for danger signs, especially when school funding is being cut all over the place and stuff like counseling loses out? Access to guns is obviously an issue too, but its one that cannot and will not ever be addressed in America.

[trileacman]

You can't simply fob these off any more. In America the availability of guns to the large percentage of the population is the single biggest contributor to situations such as this. Until gun laws are tightened this will continue ad infinitum.

[Oraisteach]

J70 is right.  A sizeable chunk of Americans, led by the National Rifle Association, cling fiercely to their 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, and they are not going to relinquish that right.

[seafoid]

The whole dysfunction of the prison system is linked to the US's addiction to violence which also feeds into the gun problem. The US locks up more people than any other OECD country. Most of them get no treatment in prison.

I wonder if it goes back to the colonial era. Slavery. Dispossession. Lynching.  You couldn't unleash all that violence and then expect it to go back into the box afterwards.     


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/us/03prison.html

One in every 31 adults, or 7.3 million Americans, is in prison, on parole or probation, at a cost to the states of $47 billion in 2008, according to a new study. Criminal correction spending is outpacing budget growth in education, transportation and public assistance, based on state and federal data. Only Medicaid spending grew faster than state corrections spending, which quadrupled in the past two decades, according to the report Monday by the Pew Center on the States, the first breakdown of spending in confinement and supervision in the past seven years.

[Puckoon]

For want of a better phrase - arguments for changing the gun laws are a dead duck, unfortunately.

[Gazzler]

Another student who didn't like Mondays

[trileacman]

For want of a better phrase - arguments for changing the gun laws are a dead duck, unfortunately.

Doesn't mean they shouldn't be advocated. If they are told often enough the f**kers might just listen some day.

[J70]

For want of a better phrase - arguments for changing the gun laws are a dead duck, unfortunately.

Doesn't mean they shouldn't be advocated. If they are told often enough the f**kers might just listen some day.

As far as politics goes, you pick the battles you have at least a slight chance of winning. The NRA and the Republicans won the gun argument more than a decade ago. No Democrat is going to touch the topic of guns as it is far too engrained in US culture and is a major wedge issue. Which makes the hysteria of the NRA and the right wing a few years back about Obama taking all their guns away even more ludicrous, but I suppose to the talk radio/Fox News crowd it is as good a button as any to push to motivate their paranoid audience.

[Orior]

Another student who didn't like Mondays

Thats what I thought too

[moysider]

Terrible thing to happen but surprising that it does not happen more often when you consider how unhappy so many are in the school system in the 'West'.  Availability of firearms is not the cause of this. It could happen here too. Lack of firearms is not the reason why it has not happened. here.  Just that nobody has got mad enough decided to bring in Daddy' s legally held shotgun/hunting rifle yet. We don t have as many kids as in US - so chances are less- but the system and problems are similar enough.

[mannix]

It's a total lack of common sense. In nyc at least, confrontation is always very close. I have seen a few times where people come to blows for very little, over a shopping trolley,a parking space, cutting line at a cinema etc. it's ingrained, and lashing out is a way of life.
Shooting is the next step.

[Hardy]

It's a total lack of common sense. In nyc at least, confrontation is always very close. I have seen a few times where people come to blows for very little, over a shopping trolley,a parking space, cutting line at a cinema etc. it's ingrained, and lashing out is a way of life.
Shooting is the next step.

... which is where the ubiquity of guns comes into it. It's ridiculous to dismiss without consideration the likelihood that the incidence of mass killings in America by comparison with the rest of the world is unrelated to the rate of gun ownership in America compared to the rest if the world. Availability of firearms may not be the cause of rage incidents, but it is almost certainly the prime contributor to the rate of fatal outcomes to rage incidents. That and the American tendency to see the gun as the answer to problems that other people would approach with a wider range of strategies.