First a high school classmate tells me his daughter was a teacher at the school in Georgia where the shooting was last week. She was OK.
Then we have a shooter about 20 miles away - Laurel Co. officials provide updates as manhunt for shooting suspect continues
Today school attendance was down. Way down.
From the other side of the Atlantic, I can only share the feeling of fear that the news about the shootings convey.
How powerful is the arms lobby? Do ordinary people carry a gun on their person or in their car?
This is a serious problem that is very difficult to solve. From here I can only sympathise with the victims and hope that one day this will end.
The most powerful lobby on earth.
But it goes beyond the lobby into things that venture hard into politics and that does not belong here on SAS.
And if you think you’ve guessed my position or politics from this you don’t know my green butt! 
Once an alien … always an alien …
Should this be considered proof or guilty as claimed?
On the day of the shooting last week, my 11 year old was essentially SWAT’ed at his middle school.
A former classmate at a completely different school in the same district, signed into my sons account and searched “how to do a school shooting” prompting a law enforcement response to the school and the principle removed him from class and separated him from his desk and bag (rightfully so). They notified me almost immediately of the internet search as well as his personal search, and I quickly ensured the safe was locked. I was there in 3 minutes as the school was down the street.
My son was in tears pleading he did not search how to do that and was also unaware of national events. The cops were super professional and treated him with dignity but also took zero chances. After a few minutes of searching the principle noticed there was zero use of his laptop that day, and in another 20 minutes they located the location of his last login at a different school and the cops took off across town to address the core problem. The last officer to leave, thanked my son for being resilient and strong during the investigation and for telling the truth.
We know the kid that did it now that we know the school the login came from, and this kid is definitely on the spectrum but I think more of a lack of boundaries, than a real risk to life safety.
I am just letting everything calm down before I start asking the hard questions about account security, physical security, and if they did something to send a message to this child, the last thing I need to do is start poking around.
It will not help things by going Ray Velcoro from season 2 of True Detective on someone’s parent.
If/when I have kids, they’re going to be spending some time overseas living like the rest of the world. I want to say some very unkind things about our kids keeping all the nuances of neuro-atypicality - but this sort of things has zero excuses and I strongly believe it starts at home - keeping all the nuances of rearing and social upbringing aside - also big tie-ins to health as we’ve previously discussed, which has major bearing on cognition and everything else.
Prayers of Forbearance for those affected,
T_T
Keep in mind a lot of the things people are shocked and stunned by in the modern era, happened generations ago too, we just have forced access to traumatic stories and events, and it does not help that we empower that kind of information by supporting it with advertising.
Back in the day, you had to open a national newspaper to find out about tragedy 4 states away, assuming you read that far into the paper. Today advertisers are rewarded by plucking your strings of compassion/outrage/fear/etc. in exchange for your eyes on their ad.
My wife for some reason worries about we/me dying in a plane crash, but does not think twice about driving her car across town to go the mall, go shopping, or do other mundane things despite the risk of death being immensely higher.
I have a friend who will not go to the beach because 1/4 of a million people died in the 2004 tsunami. He lives in Myrtle Beach SC, and I shake my head and ask why he has not moved to higher ground in 20 years if his fear is real. He has never left the United States. SMH.
There is something about modernity that has its own set of issues that allows for expressions of individualism which are highly detrimental to everyone else directly. In the pre-modern world any such notions would be wrought with your own tribe slinging you up for a beating or worse and this fear would, perhaps keep people from going off the rails.
But this is all mired in language and only points to a fraction of the circumstances necessary for things to work the way the way they do and some of it ventures well into non-SAS territory.
Suffice it to say there are circumstances which are within the confines of guardian control (and perhaps loosely at best considering all the inputs that go into the making of a person) that should be highlighted.
There are no easy answers.
One could wonder if Chicken Little witnessed a meteor strike the earth before he proclaimed the sky was falling?
We all have our own fears and awareness of them.
The number of bizarre auto accidents in NH and ME is becoming epidemic.
How many cars hitting toll booths does it take to make you paranoid, and when you reach that point, how much further until you see a conspiracy.
I try to have faith in most people being good people. I am losing that faith in the people of the United States.
The Laurel Co. shooter is still out there!
I can’t understand why the Guard hasn’t been called in to help search.
The guard is not well trained in investigative or detainment searches, only in pure body volume like looking for a missing child or putting a human on a street corner for placation of civilian fears. I am certain there are other LE branches at the regional, state and federal level that will find the suspect and keep a strong case or neutralization with minimal spill over.
Most people are still good, we just are entertained by the bad ones more and the media will give us what we want for money. We have moved from Americas Funniest Home videos of stupid people doing stupid things, to police body cams of the same stupid people doing stupid things, and now news cycles of morons in groups thinking they can do side shows in neighbor hoods, taking over national parks and capitals when they throw a temper tantrum about something. Same level of stupid, different access to watching it.
Remember, it has always been easier to sell fear, than to sell competence, knowledge, confidence, or hope.
I assert if you turn off your phone/TV and just go walk around in your community, you will see the Americans you have been looking for, because there is no clickbait or SEO, IRL.
I live within walking distance of the center of our town.
Protesters of all sorts act out there. Usually in small groups because most people could not care less about their causes.
No matter which fringe they are on they are at least borderline loathsome. They often include members of our city council.
We are too well educated and affluent to behave in a manner which differs from online.
I feel sorry for your son having to go through this experience. I’m sure it was scary for him especially since he had done nothing wrong. Sending good thoughts to both of you as you work your way through this.
Something from another perspective-- I happen to personally know someone who brandished a weapon at the police. He didn’t fire the weapon, just brandished it. That’s still no excuse. There was a standoff and the police finally took him down by firing rubber bullets at him. Fortunately there were no casualties to anyone else in this incident. That was a few years ago and the aftermath of that incident is still unfolding.
The media have reported that the young man in Georgia had an awful home life. That is sad but it was not reason to take his anger and frustration out on others. He’s only 14 and his life is over.
@oneida_books I’m watching the KY interstate search closely. Given his texts before the event and terrain, my bet is that he “finished the job” in a difficult location. Searchers are watching for buzzards.
@VTR that is a whole nightmare, for you and your son. I’m so thankful that the school folks and LEOs were cooperating to actively investigate and got the facts straight quickly, but the LEOs were so right to praise your boy for handling a very scary thing. It sounds like the other student needs some additional structure and will hopefully get the help he needs.
You can’t “reason” with someone who has reached the point of not valuing their own life. He felt his life was over before doing what he did.
What’s the motive and reason that these things keep happening?
I’m in pain and no one knows it. If I do this terrible thing, everyone will notice and others will share in my pain.
If doing good things was covered with the fervor that the heinous acts are covered the status quo might change.
Flip the nightly news from having 28 minutes of death, despair, conflict, hate, etc and just 2 minutes for a single positive story (Inspiring America on the NBC broadcast).
Sadly I don’t think it is possible because we seem to be hardwired to react more strongly to anguish and conflict than anything else. We’re drawn to it like moths to the flame.
I think this is the best possible outcome being he was exonerated, and learned at a young age how remaining calm and asserting ones self intelligently in a stressful environment is valuable in life. (I will fully share with him his 4th and 5th amendment rights when he gets closer to grasping those concepts.)
He is my rock star kid that held everything together when someone at school got knocked unconscious. He remained calm and got help while other kids freaked out screaming and did nothing at age 7.
Not really, and I apologize to everyone if I gave the impression that he was pulled from class at gunpoint or anything. He knew he did not do it from the moment they pulled him from class, and talking to law enforcement he knew to be honest, not lie and make things worse, and most importantly that his parents would be there to help him no matter what, even if it means I/we have to put our hand between his head and the back of the police car door.
He won’t. Sadly we don’t do anything to children when it comes to crime, we also don’t hold parents accountable for the broken humans they created either accidentally or by malfeasance. I would be happy with an apology letter/announcement and perhaps suspension to pick up trash at a local park for a few hours. He is 11 years old and already quite awkward, so I also want to balance not making him more awkward from this whole thing.
I don’t know how the police interaction went either, so the corrective actions may have been baked into the cake as they say.
We can only hope! I have to wonder though given the fact that he didn’t kill anyone if he would go to those ends.
That assumes one hung around to find out. If I were to do such a crime, my portable tracking device… oops, I mean “personal handheld computer”, would be the first thing I would remove from my person, after the weapon used in said crime of course.