Shootings, rapes, murders everyday

My guess is because the kids who are suffering now are already 'damaged' whereas these kids weren't (or weren't thought to be)… and people tend to get more upset when the victims have everything to lose. These kids had not only great homes, loving parents, and a community, they also had their whole lives ahead of them. Oh yeah, and they come from a predominantly white area with a median income of $90,000/year.

The first survivor video I saw was of an absolutely stunning blue-eyed blonde dealing with emotions that she probably never would have expected she would have had to deal with, but which some ghetto children have learned to live with on pretty much a daily basis.

The cynic in me says that if this had been an elementary school in the ghetto being shot up by crackheads, nobody would have cared… or maybe they would have, but definitely not as much… I guess because you sort of expect it.

It sounds cold, and I'm definitely not downplaying what happened, but I think that people are like that…

Here's an article:

http://www.southernstudies.org/2012/12/the-realty-of-us-violence-epidemic-beyond-sandy-hook.html

Apparently African Americans are far more likely to be victims of violence-- which means this sort of thing has been happening for quite some time now (maybe not all at once, though) and nobody really cared enough to change the laws until rich white kids were murdered. Imagine all of the lives that could have been saved if things like mental health and gun control had been issues when the problems started in the poor neighborhoods!

I'm seriously trying to picture how people would feel if the faces on the news were black instead of white, and I can't… mostly because it makes me uncomfortable, because I feel like I'm confronting my own racism.

The same could be said for Iraq, Afghanistan, any place with a war going on… as far as we've come, we've still got a long way to go.

 

There's no point orchestrating attacks on schools with poor children

Poor people don't have much political clout. Its the middle class who the cabal of bankers running the US will focus on.....they will seek to as chomsky calls it 'manufacture their consent'

In this case they want to manufacture their consent for the tightening of gun laws

The cabal will hype it all up in their media and they will arrange demos by creating and funding anti-gun protest groups and lobby groups to generate enough political will in the public to stand aside whilst sweeping changes to the law are brought in:

[video=youtube;Vr9NCZP_fbU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr9NCZP_fbU&feature=player_embedded[/video]

 

My guess is a mixture of these...

a) The nature of news reports. It's almost personal, almost intimately voyeuristic in their details. You are 'seeing' the images, the reports, the recollections. Much more comprehensive than, say, seeing a homeless person on the street.

a2) In some ways it's easier to care in a personal, intimate scope rather than with giant numbers; 'statistics'. It's much harder to ignore when there are much similarities between you and the victims* (for Americans, compare Newtown, Connecticut with Libya. That's a whoooole lot of difference.) Whence, empathy is when people are able to care with all sort of people, spreading love to everyone no matter how similar or different are their circumstances and backgrounds and experiences.

In inverse, it is also the reason why some people are trying to push blame and failings upon rape and/or abuse victims even when it happened next door. In fact it may have been the defining factor. Because of the closeness, and the relative similarity, they are trying to create a difference, any difference between the victims and themselves for their emotional security, trying to assuage themselves that 'I have a gun / am white / won't wear short skirts / don't like Twilight / work hard and network hard, I'm going to be safe against the danger of mass shootings / racial violence / rape / sexual abuse / unemployment'. Those are part of human failings.

a3) For some people it satisfies their needs; their egos to share a shared knowledge / experience, or trying to appear moral and/or virtuous, unwittingly making some moral pedestals from the 26 victims to praise upon.

a4) Consider how the narrative about the victims are being woven. The children are brilliant lights of future, the teachers heroic protectors, the mother troubled caretaker. And the media had created and presented such a narrative to its viewers that basically influence their perception, and perception is key. In other words, it can be said that the viewers had their emotions manipulated, but that's also an exaggeration (contrast this tragedy with say, how Kim K's failed wedding is a DISASTUH! The former needed far less machinations to emphasize the tragedy aspect.)

b) Having a child shot isn't something that happens often. Having 26 children shot, even more uncommon.

c) A life is a life and no one deserved to have it taken away from them no matter what, but there are this nuance that children's lives are 'purer' than adults. Our common perception of children is filled with purity; innocence; potentials. In some ways there are these...loss of innocence in that perception, perhaps, that added to the tragedy.

d) Also, most children cannot guard themselves. Those who can gives another tragedy in itself.

e) Most people have children, or know some children. Even childless, childfree people may know a child. This provides more empathy.
e2) Alternatively, it's empathy of a different sort; that people build empathy because of what had happened to them. A family member being raped, abused, killed. At the very least, most people know a family member that died (and the grief it may have caused). It's much easier to sympathize when there's some shared experience.

f) And because mass shootings just happened; it's dissimilar to abuses when there tend to be some context behind (making it easier to detach away). It's part of an adult fear.
f2) Unless the next mass shooting happens at kindergartens and/or nursery, this is one of the WORST case of attacks that can happen.

and other factors I don't know of.

For myself, for some reason reading personal accounts of the victims' families and acquaintances both heightened the emotions and widened the distance. It shows how devastating the ordeal is for them, yet for that same reason it also shows that the people who are dying are real people with their own connection, relationship, heroes...to pretend I'm as sad as the people being left when I barely know them before this tragedy is a dishonor for the victims and the people around them.

*) I can attest to this as a non-American. In my local news, there aren't really much outrage...both in the reporting and the responses. From an Indonesian's perspective, your tragedy in Newtown is as far as the tragedy in Congo, Libya, Pakistan. For some amount of people here, it's actually easier to sympathize with Pakistani because they were Muslim, even though IIRC this is definitely a nonreligious conflict.

 

It's all about gun control. It's a politicizing event.
I can't tell you how many times I've read and heard about Rahm Emmanuel calling for assault rifle bans and tighter gun control law in the past less than a week-- meanwhile, he's practically shutting down the mental health infrastructure of Chicago because it costs too much. I also would agree that if this happened to minority kids in a lower socio economic class we'd barely hear a thing about it--because that demographic does not have as much social or political influence. It's all very gross. I watched Obama talk about it last Sunday when they interrupted some football game to televise his speech. He talked about how the children are with Jesus now and then the camera panned over to a grieving relative. It was the most asinine fodder. For the grief of these families to be broadcast.. Again, it's just gross and exploitive.
I do not trust him. After NDAA I can see him totally using this to disarm people and exert more control to "protect" citizens... And now he appoints Biden to head a task force to prevent mass shootings, saying, "come up with the legislation and i will just push it through.." It's all too reactive. Now we will have more laws to abide by instead of actually looking for the root of the cause..
Or maybe I am paranoid..

 

Here's a debate over this issue of carrying guns

The executive director of Gun owners of America goes toe to toe with Piers Morgan. He argues that the teachers should be allowed to carry guns and he gives figures to support his claim that the states with the lowest murder rates are the ones where people can carry and the states with the highest murder rates are the ones where guns are banned!

Of course in states where guns are banned people then have no defence if a person turns violent with guns (whether due to being 'crazy' or because they have been brainwashed)

Piers Morgan loses the debate and resorts to slinging insults!

Morgan was the youngest person ever to be made editor of the Daily Mail at 28; he was hand chosen for the job by the papers owner Rupert Murdoch (owner of news international incl Fox news). before that post he was running a celebrity gossip column in a tabloid newspaper

he was hand chosen for the job because he proved that he didn't mind airing other peoples dirty laundry and shattering peoples lives. he lacks the ability to empathise. Murdoch recognised this trait which is found amongst psychopaths and hand picked him to be editor for the Daily Mail.

Murdoch was responsible for changing the face of british newspapers by driving down the quality seeking sensationalisim to boost circulation. So he picked the gutter trash pedlar Morgan to be editor so that he could fill the paper with gossip and celebrity rubbish to distract people from the key issues.

So that's Morgans background. Murdoch's paper 'the news of the world' was caught hacking into peoples phones recently and one of the phones hacked was one belonging to the parents of the murdered school child Millie Dowler

One of the celebrities who sued the news of the world was the actor Hugh Grant. Grant has suddenly found himself being insulted in the news and on TV by Jon Stewart the chat show host, who is clearly doing the bidding of the cabal by trying to character assassinate Grant for helping to end the rotten fascist rag that was the news of the world

Morgan denied when questioned in the police investigation knowing anything about phone hacking but was later proved to have lied by the testimony of the famous TV interviewer Jeremy Paxman who told the investigation that Morgan had told him how to hack phones!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...had-taught-him-how-to-phone-hack-7782177.html

Of course Morgan hasn't got in trouble and has found work in the states so he's still working for the rothschild lead cabal who are trying to get gun controls tightened up so that the american public can be steamrolled by the government (controlled by the Rothschilds)

So anyway here's the interview:

[video=youtube;_we43-q7C7g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_we43-q7C7g&feature=player_embedded[/video]

 

Good stuff.

I love these threads because I learn so much... and it's completely relevant.

 

Maybe not, but something else equally bad or worse could have. Imagine some kid who fancies himself a Rambo getting his hands on the teacher's gun(s).

Every action has a great many reactions, many of which can be unforeseeable.

 

I like the idea I heard of having a handful of teachers in each school that are trained, and allowed to carry a gun in the school. This has to be carried out in a quiet manner, so it isn't public as to who is carrying.
Similar to the Federal Air Marshals that fly on commercial airlines. They dress and act like any other passenger. They may or may not be on your flight. You don't know for sure.
The level of uncertainty it puts in the mind of a perpetrator is what helps create the deterrent.

The trouble with having uniformed security guards, or even police on the school premises is they are an easy target to take out first.

 

We need to tackle the issue that the authorities are drugging the population on a massive scale and that the drugs they are giving people seem to be causing a lot of harm. They seem to blur the boundary between reality and non reality; when you throw realistic computer games and movies into the mix then its a recipe for disaster

We need to ask why humanity suddenly needs to be medicated on a grand scale? We need to ask if people are feeling anxious and if so WHY?

We need to ask who is pushing the drugs onto the public so agressively and why?

We need to recognise that a cabal of bankers has taken over our government and is using drugs as a method of controlling the population. We also need to recognise that this cabal are intent on pouring darkness into our world in many different ways to stamp down on the human spirit

They want to crush the human spirit....and if we are consciously aware of that then we can begin to see how they are doing it and we can then resist that and also we can become immune to their actions because we can see through them.....we are no longer under their spell

The news which is owned by the cabal will be all about gun controls....what we need to be asking is why all the drugs? Why all the anxiety? Is our society healthy and if not why?

This needs to become a major discussion in the public sphere. We need to not be afraid to really look at ourselves and our society and ask ourselves some hard questions. is this really working? Are we as a society healthy and happy? If not then why not and what should be done? Violence is a symptom of a problem not the source of it

My suggestion would be to start by getting rid of the cabal who are at the centre of it all....but they won't be saying any of that in the corporate media

 

[video=youtube;HzF_TbmDH5s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzF_TbmDH5s[/video]

 

I dislike talking about gun control because my views may come across as offensive to many people. It is not my intention to judge anyone and im sorry if it come across that way.

Creating more fear is never the solution to resolving fear. I understand that when people feel unsafe and security conscious they become more defensive and they feel the need to protect themelves with weapons that could hurt others. As an outsider, someone living in Australia, this makes no sense to me. It seems like the ultimate irony and contradiction.

Maybe if we all worked on resolving our own fears we could collectively reduce the cultural fear in our societies. An instrument of fear such as a gun will never protect you from your own demons. There are many ways of resolving your fear and 'protecting' yourself- and the answer is always Love.

The astrocities committed and the profit made by weapons manufacturers, weapons distributers and war mongerers is disgusting. Gun ownership feeds this culture. Where is the line, the difference between an individual feeling they need to defend themselves and a nation feeling they need to defend themselves? Countries feeling they need nuclear weapons? These are all facets of the same issue- fear.

I really dislike the words- protect, defend, security, safety. The way these words are used make me sick. I much prefer the words- care, communicate, nuture, foster, support, understand, create and Love.
Rather than being frightened of death and harm, maybe we could nurture an attitude and culture centred around the appreciation and celebration of Life. Sure bad things could happen to you. They certainly will if you think they will happen to you. But good things could also happen to you and they will if you think they will happen. Why not focus on fostering the kind of culture we want to live in rather than trying to avoid what we dont want? The only way to truly conquor your fear of death is to fully embrace life. And once you do this, it becomes clear that there is absolutely nothing to fear.
Basically, rather than trying to avoid fear- embrace love.

 

To effect those kinds of shifts in consciousness people need to reject the source of the negativity: the corporate media and the bankers that produce it

They are pouring poison into our collective consciousness through their media and most people are still hooked into that

This rejection shouldn't be done blindly though because we are against an adaptive enemy. We need to pour light on them and their activities and then walk away from them and everything they do and stand for.

Even after that we still need to be vigilent of them because they would seek to rise again. the only way to stop a future rise is to create a society where the will of the people not the will of the few is reflected

I think leary was right when he said we should: 'Turn on, tune in and drop out'

We need to become more switched on, more aware, more involved in the decision making process of our communities and we need to walk away from the corporatocracy in whatever forms it manifests

 

It's not.

I think people are just addicted to feeling shocked and outraged and butthurt. Society likes to feel like theyre being victimized. They like the feeling of moral superiority it gives to them as they watch it and compare themselves to the freak shooters, and they like the feeling of a call to action for justice and reform that it gives them. People like the feeling of our society being presented with issues that must be solved after steps are taken. Must make us feel like we're doing something. Otherwise, we wouldn't need news at all.

 

People want to know whats going on around them; thats a natural urge for humans

In a modern 'democracy' the most used resource for that is the mainstream news

The problem is that the mainstream news has been taken over by a corporate cabal and it has been consolidated into a small number of outlets so that the corporations weild a lot of centralised control over it

The corporate interests use the news to 'manufacture the consent' (Chomsky) of the public for example stirring up fear and nationalism so that the public will consent to going to war, where the corporations will then make a lot of money

In this case the media is trying to demonise guns so that new legislation can be passed to ban guns. This is being done so that the corporations can usher in the new world order