The Newtown Ct shooting A dark day in our history

[mrerick]

At GRNC, we've been looking into the impact of the 1996 Federal "Gun Free Zones Act".

Starting with the first mass shooting in 1968 at the University of Texas, we counted the number of school related incidents through 1996; then counted the number from 1996 to the present.

Since the implementation of the Federal law, the number of incidents at schools has risen about 5 times; the number of deaths has risen about 3 times.

Violent criminals seems to choose slaughtering children at schools because it is a path of least resistance. For a period of time, there is likely to be nobody to stop their actions.

We now know that when the first person at the Oregon mall shooting showed up with the ability to stop the criminal, the criminal committed suicide. That appears to be what happened at Sandy Hook.

States are allowed to preempt this law with their own rules, and Connecticut allows people with Connecticut Concealed Handgun Permits to carry on school campuses with the approval of local school officials.

The characteristics of the viscous Sandy Hook School attack (multiple unnecessary shots into victims, including the criminal's mother) seems to reflect conditioning, probably from first person video games.

This is a true story... A few years ago, a friend of mine (who is a school guidance councilor) asked a student what he wanted to do as a career. The student told him that he wanted to be a NYC police man. When my friend asked him why, he said, "so that I can shoot people". Taken slightly aback, my friend asked him why he didn't consider a career in the military where he could also shoot people. The student told him that it would be much more exciting on the streets of New York City...

I think that all the conditioning of artificial violence in the media and in video games is certainly contributing to this problem, especially with marginal and unbalanced youth.

Marc