Allyson Wendt
I am glad, when all is said and done, that I am human enough for my heart to break over the killing of innocents. I'm glad that so many other people are, too. I just wish the man with the gun was as in touch with his humanity.
I find my mind wandering to other tragedies happening right now all over the world, and my heart breaks fresh every time.
What an amazing thing empathy is, so much a part of being human. I just shared a meal with my family and am grateful.
Mark Piepkorn
Better gun control is part of the solution. Part of it. And this is political.
Banning guns entirely isn't an option and, in my opinion, wouldn't be right. The text of the Second Amendment: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Something always gets overlooked: the words “well-regulated.”
Today is exactly the day to start talking about gun control. And to not stop talking about it until some sanity is introduced into the current madness.
Every time a mass-casualty shooting happens, there are people who self-righteously moan about how a tragedy is being politicized, and that those who are very appropriately angry are being insensitive.
Anger is a legitimate part of grief, and I'm not so simple that I'm only capable of feeling one emotion at a time.
I'm pissed off. And I'm not wrong to be pissed off. And I'm not going to be quiet. Other people can grieve however they want.
Steve West
“Mental illness.” This is a term I'm seeing thrown about a lot these last few days.
I hope we'll take a minute to define that term. I spent years in school and in clinical and research work grappling with the notion, and I ultimately left a career in psychology because the term was so subjective and applied indiscriminately.
So when a culture takes solace because a violent person is deemed “mentally ill,” what are we really saying?
A huge number of Americans have or are taking antidepressants. That's medication for major depression, a mental illness. So, arguably, two thirds of us have at some point sought out treatment for depression and are, by extension, mentally ill.
Now does it matter if this shooter was “mentally ill”?
Studies also show that so-called “mentally ill” people (in particular, people afflicted with schizophrenia) are no more violent (and arguably less violent) than the rest. So does that explain what happened in Connecticut?
We can talk all day long about what made that whole event happen. And some parts will be true, while others will be nothing close to the truth.
Meanwhile, we live in a culture that aggrandizes, encourages, and makes available tools of destruction that anyone - mentally fit or ill - can use as a means to quell internal demons or destroy external innocents.
I would caution us to define our terms in this discussion, which is a worthy one. But to seek comfort by making this shooter “not like one of us” is a canard.
The most difficult part of this discussion is that he was too much like us to ignore. And that is where the conversation has to begin.
Joe Milliken
I'd like to extend some love to all teachers and others who work in our schools. One doesn't think that as a teacher you could actually be risking your life to teach and guide our youth, but sadly, this is the case in today's society. So thank you, teachers and staff, and be safe moving forward.
Linda Kohler
When my husband passed away, my friends prayed for me. I know this not just because they told me, but because I felt it.
For weeks I felt buoyed up by their prayers - they were like a lifeboat keeping me afloat above an ocean of sadness.
So I believe in prayer. I believe there is something we can do to help the families and friends of the children who died in Newtown, Conn.
“You are in our prayers” is more than just a nice thing to say when words fail. Prayer turns us to the source of real comfort, divine Love, a powerful, healing presence. “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people...” (Isaiah 40:1).
Phil Innes
President Clinton said the number was 75,000. That's the number of murders the average student would watch on television before graduating high school. That figure did not include computer games.
Can you watch 75,000 murders with no effect? What would you say is the effect?
We have known this Clinton statistic for a dozen years, and we have done nothing to change the content of what is freely available to anyone on television.
That's one thing about American society.
Another one is that in the rest of the world (with one exceptional region), if you are angry, disaffected, and feel dispossessed, the thing you cannot do is legally pick up an automatic weapon and kill people with it. Elsewhere, you write slogans, get drunk, or command attention to yourself by some form of protest.
Our society has known this for more than a dozen years, yet we have done nothing.
The exception to being able to protest your pain are suicide bombers in the Middle East who wish to recreate the 12th century. In America, people the same age commit suicide by role-playing the gangsta or the outlaw shoot-'em-up scenario, as seen on TV and on a computer near you.
Nothing much happens in media culture to deglamorize gun culture. I am reminded of an old Dylan line about a tragedy: “But me, I expected it to happen.”
So it's not just guns, it's the culture of guns, and if things stay the same, then what expectation do we really have? Is it about time we bit the bullet?
Howard Prussack
Our so-called leaders have already had their nuts shot off by the gun lobby. Will this time be different?
We seem to ask this every time it happens. The circle of pain from this shooting is so wide: parents, siblings, grandparents, neighbors, et al. The list of those affected goes on and on.
When will we stop allowing our children to be killed so that a few yahoos can fire off their semi-automatics and pretend they are brave?
Our founding fathers must be sick of hearing that they would allow this murder in their name. There were no semi-automatics when the Second Amendment was written.
Steve Fortier
In the race to break the story, some media outlets caused another tragedy. A man whose brother just killed 27 people, including their mother, was portrayed, with images taken from his Facebook page, as the killer.
Ann Bedichek Braden
I live in Brattleboro, but my parents live in Newtown, Conn. With two young children, I can't think about the affected without dissolving, shattering, completely failing to function.
But I want to function. I want to be able to do something about this.
So instead, I'm focused on the 7 million teachers and school professionals who have gone back to work on Monday and on the millions of parents that have put their children back on the school bus. They will keep going.
I have so much love for them and so much resolve that the status quo (for both mental illness treatment and gun control) be upended.
Laurie Bayer
I was hoping I'd wake up this morning and it would all have been a nightmare. But it's still real.
Deborah Lazar
While I agree that gun control could be a path to a solution toward fewer gun related fatalities and accidents, I see a huge problem: help for the mentally ill and their families.
Could this single mom have been able to prevent this tragedy with some kind of intervention?
Having seen what happened with last year's murder at the Brattleboro Food Co-op, I ask: Do these kinds of acts happen because of mental illness? Was there anything standing in the way of the family of the shooter getting help?
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and victims of this tragedy.
David Longsmith
This tragedy lends a certain perspective that is shocking to our realities. Imagine living under threat of bombing by drone or subject to collective punishment as a society. Our lives are tremendously special. All lives. Each one. No matter where.
Mary Barber
So why does the average citizen need a submachine gun? An Uzi?
I remember many years ago when one girl was killed by a nut who had purchased the gun at a yard sale in Vermont. (Or maybe a couple of young kids.)
That is crazy. Why do we allow for the sale of guns at yard sales and online? Why would anyone with any sense of logic not want a law preventing that? It is absurd.
Vermont is a state with no gun laws so we are very much a part of the problem.
I have been involved in three lockdowns in a Vermont school that involved guns. It is a frightening experience.
The statistics that I've seen don't show much difference between gun and drunk-driving deaths. But we do have laws against drunk driving, so why is there such a resistance about tougher gun laws?
I for one am getting sick and tired of hearing of these mass shootings, and I am tired of being afraid to be in public places because everyone gets to carry guns.
Colby Dix
While I would never claim that my mind was stable, tonight my head was unable to stray from the Newtown event for long.
I played music, and I played well and I gave as much energy as I could - from too far away, I know.
But to everyone affected, the immediate, the distant, and to all of you who are moved to near tears or beyond at every mention of it, I am with you, and you with me.
Jonathan Power
As I stared at all the scared little faces during our practice lockdown at my school this afternoon, I can't help but think that such horrific incidents will not cease until we as a human society can look soberly and honestly at the world that has been built, why it has become what it is, and how we can make it better.
Prudence Baird
I read that the shooter's mother, Nancy Lanza, “legally owned a Sig Sauer and a Glock, both handguns of models commonly used by police, and a military-style Bushmaster .223 M4 carbine.”
At the very least, a new barrier to gun ownership should be the presence of a mentally ill person in the home - not just the gun owner, but others who live there and have access to the guns.
And why the heck did a kindergarten aide have so many weapons?
Daniel Kasnitz
Mental health is the bastard third cousin of the medical establishment. And even less than that to insurers. Babbling about prayer and guns, while ignoring the actual problem, is a paragon of myopic self-obsession.
For those who think that prayer is the answer, I question the efficacy of that approach, as all the prayer in the world did not prevent this tragedy. It is time to get our heads out of our speculative world views and into concrete, effective treatment of these issues.
Whatever side of the gun issue you might favor, I think the real discussion and the elephant in the room is mental illness. We love to pretend that it barely exists and does not happen to “us.”
This shooting is yet another wake-up call to take mental illness seriously - deadly seriously. Unless the root cause is treated, the arguing about the methodology of its lethal expression will remain a huge, divisive distraction.
Now is the time to come together and agree to treat mental illness. This is not the time to get stuck in a highly divisive argument that is quite secondary to the root cause.
Dorothy Grover Read
I'm sorry. Guns do kill people.
We have to take an exam to drive a car for public safety, so should it be for owning a gun. If you are not a wacko, if you have not committed a violent crime against another, then you will have full right to go hunting or keep a handgun in your home.
Ben Briggs
My babies are asleep in their beds. I just watched them both sleep for a while and kissed them for what seems like the 100th time tonight. My heart aches for those who can never do that again.
Beverly Greer Langeveld
I'm sure God's heart was the first to break in Connecticut, followed by far too many others throughout the state and country. Hug your children extra tight tonight.
We can sit and shake our heads, wring our hands, and proclaim that the world has gone crazy. Or we can do something positive to show that we still believe in the overall goodness of mankind and not let the actions of one mentally disturbed person take the light out of our days.
Jade Harmon
Each time the horror and grief threatens to wash over you, push back at it with a wave of love as unrelenting as the sea.
Billy Straus
The mental-health piece of this puzzle is much harder to decode than the more tangible and obvious issues related to our lack of adequate gun legislation.
How is it that we are propagating a culture where this kind of disease festers, unchecked to the point that it erupts in massively destructive ways, again and again?
I felt the President's words Sunday night in Newtown were poignant and meaningful. Only time will tell if this horrific tragedy might, in some way, yield a real turning point for our country, a chance to recalibrate how we engage with those whose view of the world might differ from our own.
And while it's impossible to know for sure exactly what impact legislative changes around gun ownership might bring, we will never know if we do not at least try.
Regardless of where one stands on this issue, no rational person can argue that we do not have a problem with the role guns are playing in our society. Some will surely view more regulation as a personal affront. And I understand that in one sense, if for no reason than we have a 250-year-old habit of viewing guns as inextricably tied to the founding of the country.
But if we are a nation made up primarily rational, thinking grownups (and I do believe we are), it is incumbent on us to now acknowledge what is broken and to take definitive steps to begin to stem the horrific damage in which we are all complicit.
I do feel hopeful that we are on the cusp of real and meaningful change.
Cal Glover-Wessel
There are some things I really can't understand.
Usually, when I hear about some person doing something horrible to someone or a group of someones, however appalled I might be, I can at the very least understand why the person did it, though the reasoning might be horribly skewed.
But this - this is meaningless, senseless. Some people - I don't even know, can't handle the world.
But this is still a problem of people. I need to make this clear (again): Violence is always a problem of people, regardless of the tools they use. There is someone twisted behind that tool, every time, and that is the issue we f-ing need to address.
Caitlin Adair
I have spent the better part of the weekend in shock and grief at the slaughter of innocents in Newtown, Conn. Shock and grief over the killing of children and dedicated teachers, yes, and at the fact that our culture, the country I call mine, has been unwilling to take any meaningful measures to stop the carnage that is repeatedly perpetrated on innocent and unsuspecting citizens, many of them children.
We as a nation have, up to now, been powerless, held hostage in effect, to a lobby that consists of those who make profit from the sale of weapons allied with those whose irrational fear causes them to fantasize about being safe from attackers if they have deadly firepower in their possession.
I am not against hunting. I am not against the need for self-defense. I am against private ownership of semi-automatic weaponry.
Every one of the horrific massacres perpetrated in recent years against our unsuspecting citizenry has involved semi-automatic weapons, the kind that shoot many bullets with one touch of the trigger. One touch, many bullets.
Each of those 20 kindergarteners was killed with a minimum of three automatic rifle rounds, with up to 11 high-powered bullets entering the body of each child.
Eleven blasts. That is why there were no survivors.
What have we created? What are we unwilling to stop?
With this last shocking and near-to-home massacre, can we finally say no to those who profit from insanity?
Are we as a nation, mature enough to actually protect our homeland?
Yes, other nations have had tragic school shootings, but other nations, in the wake of those shootings, have put stricter gun-control measures in place so that high-powered weapons are not easily obtainable by the momentarily insane, emotionally disturbed young men who are inevitably the killers of innocents.
We must stop this insanity. We must ban semi-automatic weapons.
JudyNan Berger Tharp
Every time my son Danny and I part, we kiss each other, and it is “the rule.” I have prefaced it sometimes with the reminder that you never know if it will be the last time, and one must not be too hurried to share love.
Tim Johnson Arsenault
I cannot begin to comprehend the world in which we live. Hugs to my family, and friends. This one is tough to take, but we'll get through it.
When dealing with tragedy, it's very tough to be the one bringing you the information, but on the whole, I can only pray my efforts do more good than harm to people's lives.
Liza King
We are all being touched by today's events, and we are all reacting differently in our heads and in our explanations. But the part that's being touched, the heart - it's all the same thing.
If we can remember that, possibly there's hope.
Shannon Herrick
May we all do the good work to find the peace and love within ourselves and broadcast it fervently.