A Prayer

[patfromlogan]

By Max Lucado, sorry if it's just a paste, but wtf can I add? Well I can add that it's fucking crazy to live in a country where it's more difficult to adopt a pet than it is to buy a gun. Would it be too much to ask that it be as hard as buying a car? Or how about allowing only one gun a month to be bought, to reduce illegal dealing? Or should we restrict the sale of high-capacity magazines? And what kind of back ground checks? Anyone right out of the looney bin?


Dear Jesus,

It's a good thing you were born at night. This world sure seems dark. I have a good eye for silver linings. But they seem dimmer lately.

These killings, Lord. These children, Lord. Innocence violated. Raw evil demonstrated.

The whole world seems on edge. Trigger-happy. Ticked off. We hear threats of chemical weapons and nuclear bombs. Are we one button-push away from annihilation?

Your world seems a bit darker this Christmas. But you were born in the dark, right? You came at night. The shepherds were nightshift workers. The Wise Men followed a star. Your first cries were heard in the shadows. To see your face, Mary and Joseph needed a candle flame. It was dark. Dark with Herod's jealousy. Dark with Roman oppression. Dark with poverty. Dark with violence.

Herod went on a rampage, killing babies. Joseph took you and your mom into Egypt. You were an immigrant before you were a Nazarene.

Oh, Lord Jesus, you entered the dark world of your day. Won't you enter ours? We are weary of bloodshed. We, like the wise men, are looking for a star. We, like the shepherds, are kneeling at a manger.

This Christmas, we ask you, heal us, help us, be born anew in us.

Hopefully,
Your Children

[slamdunc]

By Max Lucado, sorry if it's just a paste, but wtf can I add? Well I can add that it's fucking crazy to live in a country where it's more difficult to adopt a pet than it is to buy a gun. Would it be too much to ask that it be as hard as buying a car? Or how about allowing only one gun a month to be bought, to reduce illegal dealing? Or should we restrict the sale of high-capacity magazines? And what kind of back ground checks? Anyone right out of the looney bin?

It is fairly easy to buy a gun even through a legal, legitimate firearms dealer. In this, the most recent act of terrorism and / or insanity, the shooter stole the weapons from his mother / victim.

We can limit the quantity of firearms someone can purchase within a specified period of time; there is always a way to get something if you want it bad enough. The same goes for high-capacity magazines (supply vs demand).

All FFL dealers run a database check on potential purchasers. This includes criminal histories, orders of protection (domestic violence), to determine if a person has been an inpatient at a mental health facility or has been determined to be mentally retarded. No amount of safeguards will weed out all of the nut-jobs trying to arm themselves. The world is a crazy place; knowing this, I still cannot accept that these acts of violence are just part of life.

[TheMightyMcClaw]

Didn't Jesus promise to put an end to wickedness and sin?
What a fucking slowpoke.

[sweats]

A Prayer

Violence has been with us always and will forever be.

We human beings have a tremendous capacity and ingenuity for harm. If we want to destroy badly enough, we will find a way. All of us have a dark part of ourselves. Freud called it Thanatos. The death force. Some cannot or will not contain it.

[It is Fake]

Terrible tragedy.

Terrible analogies.

[RandomTriangle]

You don't need a gun to hurt children if you really want to.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2...ck-school.html


im not saying that incident was AS bad, just saying where there is a will there is a way

[sweats]

A Prayer

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/s...h/index_1.html

1927, a lunatic kills schoolchildren. Unfortunately, there is nothing new under the sun.

[Dickhead]

I can't imagine what the parents of those children are going through. This is a horrible tragedy.
And unfortunately, people are going to use this to try to push gun control. I'd much rather have teachers being able to carry concealed. Some evil lunatic deadset on hurting innocent children isn't going to worry about legally obtaining weapons if he's planning do something as despicable as what happened yesterday. But if teachers were encouraged to carry concealed weapons, these kinds of tragedies could be avoided, or at least minimized. That or armed security guards, but I'm sure that most schools don't have the budget for this.

[Devil]

Like most people, it kills me to see this happen to children. As protective as I am of my gun rights I would give them up in an instant if I honestly believed it would make my kids safer. When it comes to my family I put my money where my mouth is and I don't put my pride or personal welfare above them. Ever.

I sent more money to the NRA yesterday. That's how I feel about that.

[Vieux Normand]

Are children the world over abused, tortured and killed with rapid-fire regularity all over the world? Yes.

Is this unusual, given that the young of most living species never see adulthood? No.

Our expectations, in the industrialized world, are out of sync with long-established norms outside of it.

I'm not saying this to be either flippant or disrespectful. I'm just suggesting that the world has never been a nice place for younglings of any kind. Not ever.

[TheMightyMcClaw]

You don't need a gun to hurt children if you really want to.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2...ck-school.html


im not saying that incident was AS bad, just saying where there is a will there is a way

The key difference being that no one *died* in the China stabbing.
Maybe because it's way harder to actually do someone in with a knife than with a gun. Just maybe.

[It is Fake]

Yeah in that one. We like shooting people they like stabbing:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-in-China.html

Make note that the article references many incidents that happened within a month.

[Omega Supreme]

Charlotte Bacon, 6 Daniel Barden, 7 Olivia Engel, 6 Josephine Gay, 7 Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 6 Dylan Hockley, 6 Madeleine F. Hsu, 6 Catherine V. Hubbard, 6 Chase Kowalski, 7 Jesse Lewis, 6 James Mattioli, 6 Grace McDonnell, 7 Emilie Parker, 6 Jack Pinto, 6 Noah Pozner, 6 Caroline Previdi, 6 Jessica Rekos, 6 Aveille Richman, 6 Benjamin Wheeler, 6 Allison N. Wyatt, 6 Rachel Davino, 29 Dawn Hochsprung, 47 (principal) Anne Marie Murphy, 52 Lauren Russeau, 30 (substitute teacher) Mary Sherlach, 56 (counselor) Victoria Soto, 27 (teacher)

Here. Now pray.

[patfromlogan]

I have.

It seems one side is saying arm the teachers and there's nothing really wrong with the US of A; it's like the nutty 60s California religion,we just breed crazies so we need more armed teachers and 'good' folks carrying, to protect us. The others (me) look at a country that's leading the world in murder, rape, women on psycho drugs, divorce, obesity, suicide, addiction, incarceration and (by a LOT) military spending and see a sick nation that does and creates evil, where 10,000 a year go down with bullets and where no one gives a rat's ass that drone bombing has already killed more than 170 children in Pakistan.

It's a it's a spiritual illness that won't be cured with gun control, better mental healthcare, prayer in fucking schools, or more guns.

Here's a post by John Calvi, a Quaker healer/massager who works with 'normal' trauma victims and torture victims.

"Regarding the school shooting, I just want to say that in 30 years of helping people to heal from trauma, I've never seen a more difficult grief than the loss of a child. It is quite simply the worst. All these parents will now spend lifetimes hoping for good days, that will come later. Grief is not to be rushed, ignored, cheered up, or feared. No explanation holds meaning for now. The seeking for them will be long term. And anyone helping them will need much patience. The rest of us are afraid to imagine what it might feel like, of course. And those of us who knew gun violence or the threat of it early in life are filled with memory and old feelings of terror. I hold these question out to ponder - how do we stop passing the bad penny? Why is America in need of this healing more than any other country?"

[patfromlogan]

Charlotte Bacon, 6 Daniel Barden, 7 Olivia Engel, 6 Josephine Gay, 7 Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 6 Dylan Hockley, 6 Madeleine F. Hsu, 6 Catherine V. Hubbard, 6 Chase Kowalski, 7 Jesse Lewis, 6 James Mattioli, 6 Grace McDonnell, 7 Emilie Parker, 6 Jack Pinto, 6 Noah Pozner, 6 Caroline Previdi, 6 Jessica Rekos, 6 Aveille Richman, 6 Benjamin Wheeler, 6 Allison N. Wyatt, 6 Rachel Davino, 29 Dawn Hochsprung, 47 (principal) Anne Marie Murphy, 52 Lauren Russeau, 30 (substitute teacher) Mary Sherlach, 56 (counselor) Victoria Soto, 27 (teacher)

Here. Now pray.

This is Victoria Soto. She hid her first graders in the cabinets and closets after hearing the gunfire. When the shooter came to her classroom, she told him that her students were in the gym. He then gunned her down and moved on. She saved the lives of all of her students.