His arm was straight down, the instant they saw the gun they shot him.
I almost forgot about that case! This statement would be laugh out loud ridiculous if it wasn’t so tragic:
“I fired one shot,” Mr. Noor said in court, according to The Star Tribune newspaper. “The threat was gone. She could have had a weapon.”
Seems like the right verdict though I wouldn’t lock him up for that long. Kind of pointless.
The Highlands Ranch shooting is bugging me quite a bit. I grew up about 5 miles from the school, and about 5 miles from the other side of my house was Columbine. Then another 5 miles from my childhood home was a school called Arapahoe High School, which had a student killed in a school shooting about 4-5 years ago. Within that triangle was my High School.
Anyway, last night I took my 5 year old down the block to Kindergarten Orientation night at her elementary school. Prior to that, I had been seeing the pictures like the ones posted above, of 6 y/o’s being escorted to staging areas. Scared, crying , confused.
Instead of listening to my child’s orientation session, I was thinking about what active shooter drills will my child be exposed to in 4 months. How will she process that information? She is happy, extremely extroverted and trustworthy. She hasn’t been exposed to much trauma… how I am going to explain to her that if she hears a gun, that she will be barricaded in her classroom and told me to be silent? Explain that sometimes people kill other people, and even children, for no reason?
Then I began wondering - what is going to happen to this generation of kids? I don’t mean in the acute sense of being a victim of gun violence - but what are these drills, and news reports going to do them?
And yet, as a society - we will do nothing. We learned that after Sandy Hook when 20+ young children were murdered while huddled in a classroom bathroom.
It sucks that we have to deal with our children taking part in active shooter drills, and possibly even being victims of a shooter at some point. But hey, if we implement reasonable gun laws then what will gun nuts jerk off with?
Seriously though, our kids are going to be fucked up on some level from this experience. You can’t train for years for scenarios in which your school is shot up and not be negatively affected by it.
At the kindergarten level, my daughter is taught that it’s a “lockdown” drill, in case there’s a “wild animal loose inside the school, or something like that”. They’ve done them a couple times this year. The whole class apparently hides in a closet. My daughter hates sitting still, or being quiet, so it’s her least favorite thing at school. I’m not sure when she’ll figure out it’s about shooters instead of rabid animals.
Probably similar in frequency to earthquake drills when I was in grade school in California? Or atomic bomb duck and cover drills from earlier? I assume they still do fire drills, but something similar? I’m not making any kind of excuses for anything, but some kind of safety drills would happen regardless. Kids probably internalize this kind of stuff pretty young.
The sad part is, if wild animals, or fires, were killing as many kids in schools as people with guns, the response would be immediate and severe. We’d spend billions addressing the wild animal problem, erect multiple levels of fencing, redesign our schools, etc.
But since it’s another person with a gun, oh well, price to pay for freedom.
Earthquake drills here in California are a world away from active shooter drills. I’d rather have them do an earthquake drill every damn day than ever have the necessity of preparing for a fellow or former classmate from blowing them to pieces.
Fuck gun culture.
Articles coming out of the Colorado shooting are heartbreaking.
Kids are expecting to be killed at school now. They are not even particularly surprised when it is actually happening to them=
As the father of a three year old I find this whole situation enraging/depressing beyond description.
From Denver Post article:
“To read words scribbled in the dark by your child who really believes it might be their last day is unnerving on a whole new level,” said Anderson via Twitter. She didn’t want to talk on the phone because she kept her son home from school Wednesday, wanting to shield him from having to hear retellings of that traumatic day.
This is fucking heart-wrenching. Jesus fucking Christ. How do you come back from that as a 5th grader? Or a 3rd grader? Or a pre-schooler?
I really, really hope the school district is bringing in some serious professional help for these kids. Even with that, I suspect many of them will be significantly impacted throughout the life, including some probably having clinical PTSD. That said, a lot of refugee kids have going through some traumatic shit on same level as this and gone on to great things. Being impacted doesn’t have to mean a ruined life.
LET’S GET RID OF THE FUCKING GUNS
Extremely well regulated.
That’s some hobby. I prefer collecting GoG games that I never end up playing
That guy probably just uses them for hunting.
Well, you know the NRA response: he should have had a gun in his hand, instead.