All-purpose gun legislation thread

This is just fucking devastating.

So I dropped my kid off at school an hour and a half ago. I’ll be dropping him off at high school for the four years to follow. What I want is to go and pick him up now, but I know this is irrational. As irrational as the idiotic fear Conservative politicians use to motivate people about immigrants and terrorism.

I can tell you, first-hand, that this shit affects kids. They express fear about going to school. Our job as parents is to modulate this.

The fact that we have to, is insane.

Thanks NRA.

-xtien

Has your son talked about it with you? With my older girl only in Kindergarten, my daughters aren’t really aware of this yet. It just kills me that it’ll come up someday and I don’t know when.

I want to make a snide comment about this situation, but it’s just born out of endless frustration and exhaustion in regards to this shit.

When I stopped by a convenience store I saw the news break on CNN. It was a terrible feeling. Not horror. Not shock. I just kind of wanted to hang my head and sigh as yet another senseless killing of schoolkids gets reported. Here we go again.

This country has a sickness and I’m so frustrated by the lack of political ability to address it.

Well we all know this will keep happening again & again. It’s just a matter of where and which kids die.

Yes. Many times.

One time his school was on lock-down because a local celebrity had a police action involving guns near his school. Another time, back when he was in 2nd grade I think, they had to go into lockdown because some weirdo climbed the fence and school security thought he was armed. I happened to be on campus for that one. Good times.

So yes. He has talked to me about it and I find myself at a loss for what to say. I can’t just say, “It’ll be okay. You’ll be safe.” Because we know that’s not the case, categorically. And as a teenager, he knows it’s a hollow promise. What I can do is try to modulate it by explaining the actual percentage of this violence in the larger numbers. But that’s like explaining to someone who has a fear of flying how much more likely they are to die in a car accident than a plane crash.

So I honestly don’t know what to do.

Anyway, I’m sure this Texas jerkwad was part of a well-regulated militia.

-xtien

I’m sure Paul Ryan will have the proper words for this latest shooting.

Damn, I’m sorry for you and every parent that has to have that conversation. Odds are obviously long against it happening in one particular school. So as a parent, I know that it’s very unlikely my daughters will have to face it directly, even though there’s always a very real chance it could. But I feel for all the parents that will pay the ultimate price for America’s obsession with guns and it just breaks me. And these incidents don’t really seem to be slowing down so it’s going to continue to be an everyday fear across the country.

I’m seeing a few news sites saying the suspected shooter has been identified as this kid by law enforcement:

Somewhat unrelated, but the lockdown mentality probably makes our children more fearful in general, but that’s not going to change until brick and mortar schools go away in a few decades.

Too bad he didn’t join the Marines a year earlier.

My kids have yet to go through the school system (oldest in K now, younger not at school age yet), but the oldest already has active shooter drills in both pre-K and K.

The high school they’ll be attending was evacuated this current school year due to bomb threats (pre-Parkland).

Now that you mention that, I do know that I had a brief talk with the older one about drills in their school. I believe she said they had a drill just in case bad people come into their class. But it rolls off of her as she doesn’t really know what that means yet.

Yep. Can’t believe how she only looks up to make brief eye contact and a grim smile as she says, “No…”

Sad but true… that’s a laughable question.

Yeah, I was just reading about one that happened Wednesday that apparently didn’t even break into the public consciousness. In Dixon Illinois a 19-year old former student brought a semi-auto rifle (apparently not an AR-15 variant) to school with the intent of crashing the graduation practice that was going on at the time. The school resource officer (cop) confronted him before he actually shot anyone (though he did fire a few rounds), which caused the guy to flee. The officer gave chase, the guy fired on the cop (missing), and then the cop shot him. The suspect wasn’t critically shot, so they took him into custody.

In a saner time, that would have been a pretty big deal. Now it’s might make it onto page 10 or so.

I did see that story in Facebook, where the original Chicago Tribune story was gussied up and re-shared by some pro-gun website. It met the accepted guideline of a good guy with a gun (even better, a Hero Cop!) being the only thing that was needed to stop a bad guy with the gun.

Governor says 10 dead, 10 wounded.

This is beyond insane that we keep having this happen and nothing is ever done. Nothing substantial. I don’t wish this on anyone, but why can’t this happen to a major NRA backing politician’s child or something that will actually get them to give even half a shit about trying to change things.

That doesn’t matter though. If the kids of an NRA backer were to die in a school shooting then that NRA backer would spend more money to get teachers armed, etc. It’s NEVER the gun’s fault.

One of the wounded is the mom of a friend of a friend. Not sure if she was a teacher or just happened to be on campus for some reason. I don’t really know anything about her but it’s weird to have connections like that pop up.