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10505. arkymalarky - 12/15/2012 6:58:44 AM When Jonesboro happened it was beyond belief on so many levels. And those two boys are free adults today. There needs to be some honest, sober assessment of our mental health system and our gun laws, in addition to our criminal justice system. We keep replaying the same tragedy, and with seemingly increasing frequency. Our paralysis on this issue is inexcusable. All and nothing aren't the only two options when it comes to gun control. 10506. iiibbb - 12/15/2012 7:12:46 AM I want better linkages between these kinds of medical/mental conditions and background checks. It seems like every single shooter in recent months was on someone's radar somewhere.
Just to illustrate how difficult it would be to "ban" firearms.
The pictures below was done in some guys garage with basic tools.
becomes
becomes
becomes
becomes
which shoots like this
10507. thoughtful - 12/15/2012 3:19:03 PM If you want to fix this situation, take action over those things you can control Tend your own garden. Are your negative emotions in check? Are you loving your family members? Loving them enough to listen to their stresses? Helping them deal with their negative emotions? Are you reaching out to members of your community who may be in distress?
I know Newtown, I know Sandy Hook. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. The best thing you can do to see this doesn't happen again is to make sure it doesn't happen in YOUR community, in YOUR family. 10508. iiibbb - 12/15/2012 4:26:47 PM I don't know if I told you guys at the time, but I was at Virginia Tech when that happened. Although it didn't happen in my building, Cho probably passed outside my 1st floor window on his way to that building. 10509. arkymalarky - 12/15/2012 5:29:19 PM As a teacher in a small and close knit community for over 30!years I know that some children and young adults need major help and intervention beyond what anyone they know can provide. There are no real intervention structures in place for those rare individuals. My BRo and SIL have such a student living with them right now because she has nowhere else to live. She was my SIL's student. Her mental issues are diverse and severe and they have ZERO help or recourse except to throw her out. 10510. thoughtful - 12/15/2012 5:36:06 PM I agree, arky, and even if they did have all the resources and help that anyone thought they needed, there is still no way to perfectly predict when someone may go OTT. This fellow had no history of issues with the law or issues with violence as far as we know.
Just like with acts of terrorism, where terrorists can try many times and the defenders have to be perfect every time to prevent tragedy, friends, family, counselors, etc. can try to save someone many times, but only need to miss once to have tragedy strike. If someone is hell-bent on doing harm, they will find a way. 10511. arkymalarky - 12/15/2012 7:29:05 PM True. What really haunts is the people who tried to get help, or whose families did, like the Aurora shooter apparently did, and it just wasn't there. A counselor needs recourse to instigate dramatic intervention where needed, imo. At any point in my career, even in a small community of under 400, I've known at least one volatile student or former student who was not getting serious help he or she needed. Many don't make the news but harm themselves and/or others and make their families miserable, even if they stay out of trouble with the law. 10512. arkymalarky - 12/15/2012 7:37:11 PM Another of my complaints along that line is GPs treating serious mental illness with trial and error meds. 10513. arkymalarky - 12/15/2012 7:38:42 PM That's unreal 3i. I can't imagine what that felt like. 10514. thoughtful - 12/15/2012 10:44:38 PM But of course, in these days of "fiscal cliff" you know that mental health budgets are among the first to be slated for cuts.... 10515. arkymalarky - 12/15/2012 11:33:02 PM And health insurance often covers mental health less. Many pay 50% rather than 80 and many things aren't covered at all. Kids are diagnosed at ever higher rates, but are often only treated with meds and aren't well monitored even then. And some really need to be institutionalized, at least temporarily. Mainstreaming and forced socialization is not for all. IMO our whole approach to mental illness is not improving, at least based on what I'm seeing as a teacher interacting with both kids and their mental health providers.
And schools are vulnerable. I don't know what can change that. 10516. arkymalarky - 12/16/2012 3:28:05 AM When Huckabee was governor, people here had a phrase for him : shut the Huck up. It needs to come back. What a self-absorbed scumbag. 10517. iiibbb - 12/16/2012 3:53:47 AM Message # 10513
The event started for me with an email to a listserv I'm on with "There are gunshots in my building". My friend, who is a professor there, his office was in Patton; he locked his office door like he wasn't there, turned off the lights and got under his desk. We didn't hear from him for several hours.
It is very surreal, and I felt quite detached from the whole thing. I got to my office between the first shooting in the doorm, and the massacre later. Because of the first shooting there was already an elevated police pressence on campus, which I noticed... but they weren't turning people away from campus because it was "only" a dorm shooting at that point. I park in the lot next to Cho's dorm.
I spent the morning deciding when/how I was going to get home.
The biggest thing you come away from an event like this... is how wrong the press gets stuff. How much they like to sensationalize things. And the variety of ways that your friends and acquaintances respond emotionally in ways you wouldn't expect. 10518. iiibbb - 12/16/2012 3:58:03 AM I am always struck by the phrase "I can't imagine".
My problem is that I absolutely can imagine. I live the Connecticut event in my own head with my own son a victim with more frequency than is comfortable.
Couple that with my personality trait of planning for a million contingencies and it's a good thing I disengage a bit when stuff like this happens. 10519. arkymalarky - 12/16/2012 4:44:07 AM As a teacher it always affects my work perspective for a while after something like this, but it passes pretty quickly. I'm very at home on the job, but we've had scares, and a student in Stan's school was expelled this fall because thankfully another student told adults that he had brought a gun and was planning to shoot people at school. What they did with him I don't know. Not enough, I'm sure.
But to go through such a thing it's hard to see how you go about routines after that without constantly looking over your shoulder. 10520. iiibbb - 12/16/2012 5:11:32 AM What you describe is post traumatic stress disorder. Everyone has their limits. Blacksburg, in spite of Cho, is still Blacksburg and one of the finest places to live you could ever imagine.
These things happen independent of place.
Only thing it did to me is make me understand that there are no real answers to tragedy. 10521. iiibbb - 12/16/2012 5:12:50 AM ...As long as neither of my children die before me I'll basically be okay... 10522. iiibbb - 12/16/2012 5:13:41 AM if it were to happen it would probably wreck me for a good while. 10523. thoughtful - 12/16/2012 5:53:12 AM I was thinking about the poor grandparents...they get a double whammy....not only have they lost their grandchild, which is hard enough, but then they have to watch their own children suffer unbearable pain. To me the worst torture is watching someone you love suffer and be unable to do anything about it. 10524. arkymalarky - 12/16/2012 6:02:30 AM That's so true.
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