Multiple deaths, including children, at Connecticut school shooting

Courant also says many of the shootings took place in a kindergarten classroom. That's right before the unaccounted-for item, although it doesn't say they're the same classroom.

 

This picture haunts me.

You'd think we'd be so inured to school shootings that they failed to arouse any passion. But this one is really sticking with me. This picture is part of the reason. Maybe it's because I have a first-grader and a fourth-grader who do lockdown drills. That shouldn't matter in my outrage meter more than other school shootings, but I guess right now it does. And it did every before hearing the toll.

It's also pre-depressing me that I know there's going to be the same screeching that there is after every shooting, most of it coming from gun nuts -- not pro-gun people, but gun nuts -- who are going to tell you, me and Bob Costas that it's too son to talk about guns, that doing anything about high-powered weapons and who possesses them is about hating freedom. And it makes me wonder -- is the cost of freedom being paid by soldiers sent overseas into battle? Or do we pay the cost of freedom with innocent, unsuspecting lives who end up at the business end of some loony's gun?

We haven't had a reasonable discussion about guns, mental health and doing something about mass shootings before, and I doubt we're going to have one now. So instead of a substantive discussion that might provide solutions that balance gun rights with the freedom to not be shot in school, my kids can look forward to more lockdown drills.

 

I don't know if that's true. Not across the board. There are terrorists who would like to explode a nuclear bomb in Manhattan. They don't. Because the barrier to entry is too high. Of course, body armor is a much lower barrier to entry than all of the steps it would take to explode a nuclear bomb. But you'd be amazed at what even highly motivated individuals let stand in their way. On a much smaller scale, yesterday a friend was telling me about some easy ways to read the New York Times online for free. I said, "I'll just pay the $20."

I'm not advocating concealed carry in schools. All I'm saying is that I'm willing to begin looking at the entire issue with a completely clean slate. I don't want to work backward from my intuitive solution - which is gun control to the absolute possible extent allowed by the Constitution.

 

If only the kids had been armed...

 

And as I have CNN on in the background, it says the guy had a bulletproof vest on. And four guns.

 

So there goes body armor as a barrier of entry ...

 

For this individual.

 

One report the shooter was the father of a kid at that school.

 

Yeah, I think everyone's first guess is custody dispute.

 

yes, because five year olds with AK47s tend to be excellent marskmen

 

Rt@johnmillercbs: Officials have a potential second shooter in custody in elementary school shooting

 

A pact between two pals who saw themselves as screwed in custody disputes?