Today's shooting is horrific. I hate to say that children's lives are worth more than adults but it hurts and stuns me more that at least 18 children have passed from this shooting. Obviously there is no information on who the shooter was or what demented mind reasoned this out but I cannot image a rational person wanting to hurt random children.
Here we are in 2012 where there was a Akron shooting at a batman theater and a shooting at a Sikh temple, the high profile shooting of an NFL player and now a shooting at an elementary school.
I thought this must be the worst year but I quick google search showed that there were even more in 2009:
March 2009 - a 28-year-old laid-off worker opened fire while driving a car through several towns in Alabama, killing 10 people.
March 2009 - a heavily-armed gunman shot dead eight people, many of them elderly and sick people, in a private-owned nursing home in North Carolina.
March 2009 - six people were shot dead in a high-grade apartment building in Santa Clara, California.
April 2009 – An 18-year-old former student followed a pizza deliveryman into his old dormitory, and shot the deliveryman, a dorm monitor, and himself at Hampton University, Virginia.
April 2009 - a man shot dead 13 people at a civic center in Binghamton, New York.
July 2009 - Six people, including one student, were shot in a drive-by shooting at a community rally on the campus of Texas Southern University, Houston.
November 2009 - U.S. army psychologist Major Nidal Hasan opened fire at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas, leaving 13 dead and 42 others wounded.
Link for data
In fact 2007, 2008 and 2009 have had five and six mass killings culminating to 2009 with these seven. People are blaming the economy but during the worst of it 2010, there was only one shooting and 2011 also only had one shooting. Perhaps an election year is a more attractive year to gain more attention (which sounds horrible).
Is it time for gun control? I'm assuming that if the 2007, 2008 and 2009 spree didn't result in a change to our gun rules, I doubt these will. I doubt we can ever become a country that doesn't allow guns but perhaps we can create stronger rules to gaining a gun.
I have friends who hunt, we are in Texas, who saw that bullets and guns in general are being hoarded these days because they believe that the gun rules will change.
We need to protect innocent people and the most innocent, the children, should be our first concern.
My prayers to all those who were affected by this shooting. Both those who lost children and those who's children survived and will relive this day over and over again.
“We were in the gym, and I heard really loud bangs,'’ said the boy, as he stood shivering and weeping outside the school with his father’s draped around him. “We thought that someone was knocking something over. And we heard yelling and we heard gunshots. We heard lots of gunshots. We heard someone say, ‘Put your hands up.’ I heard, ‘Don’t shoot.’ We had to go into the closet in the gym. Then someone came and told us to run down the hallway. There were police at every door, there were lots of people crying and screaming.'’ NYT
