3 years now since sandy hook.

[JSt0rm]

http://news.yahoo.com/data-visualizations--3-years-after-sandy-hook-144954917.html

Did we learn anything? Have we changed any laws?

 

[Bubbleawsome]

Is it too hard to make it a nonpolitical thing and just remember the event respectfully?

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Is it too hard to make it a nonpolitical thing and just remember the event respectfully?

Hi, and welcome to P & N. You must be new here.

 

[JSt0rm]

Is it too hard to make it a nonpolitical thing and just remember the event respectfully?

So what do you suggest?

 

[woolfe9998]

Can anyone think of a more terrible crime in US history than this? I almost never get palpably upset when I read news stories about crime because it is all so common place, but in this case I couldn't even read any more about it after the first article, for several days. Maybe it's because I have a child of my own.

Anyway, I'm not so sure that the emotion arising from such a terrible event like this is the best climate to make policy decisions. In California, we ended up with an over-broad three strikes law which applies to non-violent felons because everyone was so upset over Polly Klaas at the time.

If we need more gun control, it would be because we can prove it is actually effective. Nothing about the tragedy of Sandy Hook proves anything one way or the other about that.

 

[yh125d]

Can anyone think of a more terrible crime in US history than this? I almost never get palpably upset when I read news stories about crime because it is all so common place, but in this case I couldn't even read any more about it after the first article, for several days. Maybe it's because I have a child of my own.

Anyway, I'm not so sure that the emotion arising from such a terrible event like this is the best climate to make policy decisions. In California, we ended up with an over-broad three strikes law which applies to non-violent felons because everyone was so upset over Polly Klaas at the time.

If we need more gun control, it would be because we can prove it is actually effective. Nothing about the tragedy of Sandy Hook proves anything one way or the other about that.

Easily, OKC bombing was worse in every quantifiable way.

 

[woolfe9998]

Easily, OKC bombing was worse in every quantifiable way.

Yeah I wasn't thinking about that one. Since that too involved numerous children, I would probably agree. However, there's something personal about killing children from up close, when that is your intention. In terms of impact, number of people killed, etc., OKC was worse. But planting a bomb in front of a building then driving away seems less personal to me somehow than blowing away a 4 year old who is right in front of you begging for her life.

 

[BoberFett]

Yeah I wasn't thinking about that one. Since that too involved numerous children, I would probably agree. However, there's something personal about killing children from up close, when that is your intention. In terms of impact, number of people killed, etc., OKC was worse. But planting a bomb in front of a building then driving away seems less personal to me somehow than blowing away a 4 year old who is right in front of you begging for her life.

My girlfriend and I were discussing this the other day. She (a fervent Democrat and hater of all things GOP) doesn't understand why killing seems to be viewed as worse when it's a child.

168 people killed in total, 19 of whom were children, and her recollection of the news was that it focused excessively on the fact that there were children in a day care facility in the building that were killed.

What is with the fetishism of children? Do other countries value children above adults? Is a dead child worse than a dead adult?

 

[yh125d]

Yeah I wasn't thinking about that one. Since that too involved numerous children, I would probably agree. However, there's something personal about killing children from up close, when that is your intention. In terms of impact, number of people killed, etc., OKC was worse. But planting a bomb in front of a building then driving away seems less personal to me somehow than blowing away a 4 year old who is right in front of you begging for her life.

It's more personal for sure, so you could certainly argue that the Sandy Hook shithead was more deranged than the OKC shithead. I certainly wouldn't disagree. I don't want to be mistaken as comparing soldiers killing in war to murderers, but sort of proof of what you're saying is how typically soldiers will feel more distressed or perturbed after having to kill someone in close quarters, vs shooting a guy from 100 yards away. It must be easier for an AC-130 gunner to pull the trigger to kill 3 guys in a technical than a guy on the ground to open up on them with his rifle. That example taken to the extreme of a psychotic murderer, would suggest that one would have to be more psychotic to shoot 20 people point blank than to plant a bomb that will kill 20 people.

Not to read too much into your reaction regarding Sandy Hook - because tons of people might feel he same if asked - but I think that is indicative of how a lot or even most people think about a lot of this stuff, particularly when it comes to comparing two things with body counts associated. On a human level it just feels more wrong for 20 kids to get killed, than the same amount or even a few more adults to be killed. I don't necessarily disagree, but I think we could all agree that theres probably a line at which they are even.

I agree with Mr. and Ms. BoberFett. It helps being a single atheist with no kids though. I think most people would say that Sandy Hook was worse than V Tech or Fort Hood because most were children, but I'd say VT/FH were worse due to body count.

However I would for example say that a mass murder at a retirement home would have to have a significantly higher body count for me to consider it worse than one at a school.

 

[DrDoug]

My girlfriend and I were discussing this the other day. She (a fervent Democrat and hater of all things GOP) doesn't understand why killing seems to be viewed as worse when it's a child.

168 people killed in total, 19 of whom were children, and her recollection of the news was that it focused excessively on the fact that there were children in a day care facility in the building that were killed.

What is with the fetishism of children? Do other countries value children above adults? Is a dead child worse than a dead adult?

Do you and your girlfriend have a kid (or kids)? If not then I can understand your POV. Many parents view children as the future and the last thing a parent wants to see is their future being destroyed. Parents believe that their children should survive them and carry on into the future.

There are other reasons too but this one is the big one for people like me.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Yeah I wasn't thinking about that one. Since that too involved numerous children, I would probably agree. However, there's something personal about killing children from up close, when that is your intention. In terms of impact, number of people killed, etc., OKC was worse. But planting a bomb in front of a building then driving away seems less personal to me somehow than blowing away a 4 year old who is right in front of you begging for her life.

Yeah, I tend to agree. I guess it's a personal matter of how one defines what is awful. Certainly 9/11 was the crime of the greatest magnitude ever perpetrated on US soil (assuming one views it as a that, and not an act of war), and OKC is right up there as well, together with the Bath School bombing (an oldie but a baddie). That being said, there is something distinctively horrific about Adam Lanza shooting 26 people, including 20 second-graders, in person. It really beggars belief.

Personally (this is obviously a personal matter), I find the callous murder of children more haunting than the murder of adults, because children are intrinsically defenseless and innocent compared to adults. To me there is a level of depravity involved in the murder of children that surpasses the murder of adults.

 

[woolfe9998]

My girlfriend and I were discussing this the other day. She (a fervent Democrat and hater of all things GOP) doesn't understand why killing seems to be viewed as worse when it's a child.

168 people killed in total, 19 of whom were children, and her recollection of the news was that it focused excessively on the fact that there were children in a day care facility in the building that were killed.

What is with the fetishism of children? Do other countries value children above adults? Is a dead child worse than a dead adult?

Only someone who has never had a child would wonder about that. Which is not a criticism, just an observation.

The fact is a child has a lot more life ahead of him or her than an adult and yes, that to me is an objective argument for why it is worse to kill a child. Ever wonder why when someone who is like 90 years old passes away, people will say, well, he got to live a long and full life and then they don't feel so bad about it. The reverse is true for children.

Also, children by nature are defenseless and that makes the crime even more cowardly and grotesque.

 

[BoberFett]

Do you and your girlfriend have a kid (or kids)? If not then I can understand your POV. Many parents view children as the future and the last thing a parent wants to see is their future being destroyed. Parents believe that their children should survive them and carry on into the future.

There are other reasons too but this one is the big one for people like me.

Only someone who has never had a child would wonder about that. Which is not a criticism, just an observation.

The fact is a child has a lot more life ahead of him or her than an adult and yes, that to me is an objective argument for why it is worse to kill a child. Ever wonder why when someone who is like 90 years old passes away, people will say, well, he got to live a long and full life and then they don't feel so bad about it. The reverse is true for children.

Also, children by nature are defenseless and that makes the crime even more cowardly and grotesque.

No, she doesn't have kids. I do, and I still agree with her.

While I can understand your points, that child worship has definitely transformed into something twisted in this country. "Think of the children" can be used to get just about anything you want (except gun control it would seem) and helicopter parents have perverted half of the upcoming generation into brainless, helpless, useless adults.

 

[yh125d]

Only someone who has never had a child would wonder about that. Which is not a criticism, just an observation.

The fact is a child has a lot more life ahead of him or her than an adult and yes, that to me is an objective argument for why it is worse to kill a child. Ever wonder why when someone who is like 90 years old passes away, people will say, well, he got to live a long and full life and then they don't feel so bad about it. The reverse is true for children.

Also, children by nature are defenseless and that makes the crime even more cowardly and grotesque.

I've never really cared for this logic in any argument. It disregards the human capability to emphasize with others, and assumes that first hand experience must always take precedence over logic or reasoning made without first hand experience.

Understand though that I'm not saying that you're wrong that the life of a child has greater inherent value than the life of an adult or even that I necessarily disagree with you, you very well may be right. However if I'm wrong and a child's life IS more valuable, I'm not wrong because I am not yet a parent. I'm wrong because a child's life DOES have more value than that of an adult.

 

[brianmanahan]

when children get killed, they are losing more potential life

thus, a greater loss from an actuarial standpoint and from a future potential standpoint

also most people tend to value the innocence of children unless they are cold and heartless

 

[woolfe9998]

No, she doesn't have kids. I do, and I still agree with her.

While I can understand your points, that child worship has definitely transformed into something twisted in this country. "Think of the children" can be used to get just about anything you want (except gun control it would seem) and helicopter parents have perverted half of the upcoming generation into brainless, helpless, useless adults.

I agree with you about the whole "think of the children" line of reasoning as it applies to things like, say, censorship of television or video games. However, thinking that murdering a child is worse than murdering an adult is a qualitatively different thing than that. Children are more resilient than people think, meaning that if they accidentally run into porn while trying to access disney.com I'm pretty sure they'll be fine in their life. Being murdered, not so much. Also quite bad if they have to witness their friends or classmates murdered right in front of them, then survive.

 

[woolfe9998]

I've never really cared for this logic in any argument. It disregards the human capability to emphasize with others, and assumes that first hand experience must always take precedence over logic or reasoning made without first hand experience.

Understand though that I'm not saying that you're wrong that the life of a child has greater inherent value than the life of an adult or even that I necessarily disagree with you, you very well may be right. However if I'm wrong and a child's life IS more valuable, I'm not wrong because I am not yet a parent. I'm wrong because a child's life DOES have more value than that of an adult.

Perhaps you misunderstood my argument in the quoted passage. I wasn't arguing he was wrong from an intellectual standpoint for not being a parent (which BTW apparently he is anyway). I was arguing that the instinctive emotional reaction to an event like this may well be different depending on whether you have a child or not. If you have a child, you can imagine something like this happening to him or her. For that reason, you may not even wonder about why we're having a worse reaction because it's children, because you're thinking, if I was the parent, I would be devastated.

If anything, it's probably easier to have a detached and rational discussion on the topic if everyone involved is a non-parent. I just think the non-parents are more likely to be asking the questions he posed to begin with. A parent doesn't wonder, because the reasons are emotional and therefore implicit. Which is why I said only a non-parent would wonder about that. But there, I wasn't implying he was wrong. It was in the next paragraph where I made the argument for why I think he's wrong.

It probably wasn't that clear in what I wrote so no big deal.

 

[Zaap]

No, she doesn't have kids. I do, and I still agree with her.

While I can understand your points, that child worship has definitely transformed into something twisted in this country. "Think of the children" can be used to get just about anything you want (except gun control it would seem) and helicopter parents have perverted half of the upcoming generation into brainless, helpless, useless adults.

Children are by default, innocents. They can't at all be said to be responsible for situations where they could be killed by some maniac (adults are responsible for their own whereabouts and situations moreso... although they can be innocents as well).

Also, obviously snuffing out a child's life is worse because they haven't lived long enough to have anything close to a full life... a child murderer is robbing the most vulenerable of the maximum potential.

And as others have said, if you have kids...

Only a soulless bastard of the worst stripe wouldn't value their children's lives over their own. I'd sooner lay down my life than see my kids lives cut so brutally short. That's not heroic or anything, it's the sentiment of any decent parent IMO.

And all this said: I do hate it when people make lame political hay over tradegy involving children, such as using and exploiting the victims of Sandy Hook to push for more dumbass gun control, etc.

 

[woolfe9998]

Yeah, I tend to agree. I guess it's a personal matter of how one defines what is awful. Certainly 9/11 was the crime of the greatest magnitude ever perpetrated on US soil (assuming one views it as a that, and not an act of war), and OKC is right up there as well, together with the Bath School bombing (an oldie but a baddie). That being said, there is something distinctively horrific about Adam Lanza shooting 26 people, including 20 second-graders, in person. It really beggars belief.

Personally (this is obviously a personal matter), I find the callous murder of children more haunting than the murder of adults, because children are intrinsically defenseless and innocent compared to adults. To me there is a level of depravity involved in the murder of children that surpasses the murder of adults.

For one reason or another, I look at politically motivated terrorism as being its own category of crime, where everything else I think of as "common crime" more or less. This is probably why I wasn't considering 911 or OKC. It's isn't that they are equally, less or more bad. It's just that in my mind it's like apples and oranges.

But yes, I agree about Sandy Hook. If he had planted a bomb on school grounds and walked away, even had more children died than in the real case, it would still have been a horrible and upsetting crime, but for some reason the manner in which this happened just got into my gut in a way that other crimes have not. I just don't understand how he goes through with this plan once he actually gets into the classroom. How can he stand in front of small children who are terrified, possibly begging for their lives, and pull the trigger, over and over again, while they watch their friends bleed and die, knowing that they're next. Damn, that is just cold, cold, cold.

I guess I have always assumed, rightly or wrongly, that most sociopathic killers have at least a tiny conscience such that there is a line they won't cross. What Lanza did here suggests no line whatsoever. It's sociopathy in its purest form.

 

[yh125d]

Perhaps you misunderstood my argument in the quoted passage. I wasn't arguing he was wrong from an intellectual standpoint for not being a parent (which BTW apparently he is anyway). I was arguing that the instinctive emotional reaction to an event like this may well be different depending on whether you have a child or not. If you have a child, you can imagine something like this happening to him or her. For that reason, you may not even wonder about why we're having a worse reaction because it's children, because you're thinking, if I was the parent, I would be devastated.

If anything, it's probably easier to have a detached and rational discussion on the topic if everyone involved is a non-parent. I just think the non-parents are more likely to be asking the questions he posed to begin with. A parent doesn't wonder, because the reasons are emotional and therefore implicit. Which is why I said only a non-parent would wonder about that. But there, I wasn't implying he was wrong. It was in the next paragraph where I made the argument for why I think he's wrong.

It probably wasn't that clear in what I wrote so no big deal.

Points well taken and agreed. Sorry for misunderstanding your intent.


I also agree on excluding 9/11 from the discussion since it started out specifically as "crime". While OKC is commonly referred to as a terrorist act, since it was domestic and without any significant anti-American motivation I consider it more closely related to mass murders than "real" terrorism

 

[Ns1]

Events like Sandy Hook are exactly why we need to ban Muslims from entering the country.

 

[shortylickens]

http://news.yahoo.com/data-visualizations--3-years-after-sandy-hook-144954917.html

Did we learn anything? Have we changed any laws?

Murder is illegal.

Why didnt that guy stop murdering if its against the law?

 

[Moonbeam]

Children are by default, innocents. They can't at all be said to be responsible for situations where they could be killed by some maniac (adults are responsible for their own whereabouts and situations moreso... although they can be innocents as well).

Also, obviously snuffing out a child's life is worse because they haven't lived long enough to have anything close to a full life... a child murderer is robbing the most vulenerable of the maximum potential.

And as others have said, if you have kids...

Only a soulless bastard of the worst stripe wouldn't value their children's lives over their own. I'd sooner lay down my life than see my kids lives cut so brutally short. That's not heroic or anything, it's the sentiment of any decent parent IMO.

Why I love Zaap

And all this said: I do hate it when people make lame political hay over tradegy involving children, such as using and exploiting the victims of Sandy Hook to push for more dumbass gun control, etc

I think this is what is normal when people didn't get the opportunity to lay down their lives. They still want to protect children. You are just have a different idea of what should be done.

 

[LegendKiller]

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/what-kills-kids/

 

[DrDoug]

No, she doesn't have kids. I do, and I still agree with her.

While I can understand your points, that child worship has definitely transformed into something twisted in this country. "Think of the children" can be used to get just about anything you want (except gun control it would seem) and helicopter parents have perverted half of the upcoming generation into brainless, helpless, useless adults.

No, that's just your opinion. My opinion is that parents who do not value the lives of their children more than themselves or other adults really don't care much for kids in the first place. I note that this is probably the case for you as you express that half of the upcoming generating are already failures.

There is no worship here, it's called love. Something you seem to lack.