10 Dead in MN

I like first heard about the shooting later in the day when I flipped to some CBS news channel...and they were talking about it but missed some of it therefore missed some details and so I went online to find out more and I went to sites like msnbc.com and cnn.com and none of them have anything about a school shooting.

So I was like wtf and thought it was made up or was a joke or something....I was just really confused about why there wasn't more media coverage on what appeared to be the next Colmbine.

Anyways there was more on teh news about the the next morning.
 
I don't think money should be an issue but it often is sort of. I mean I have family that are teachers in some not TOO bad areas and they hardly spend any time TEACHING they spend most of their time managing problem students. Why the hell are those students there??

I was educated (elementary school) by Jesuits. They told my parents flat out, they use corporal punishment and if I got out of line they would take whatever steps were necessary to insure my education and the education of my classmates, and they also guaranteed that I would make certain grades. These were some hard as rocks teachers and they didn't take crap from anyone. A few we genuinely feared - but we all behaved, and we all learned. Today you could never do this.

If you ask me, if you have a problem student that has no interest in going to school, you should put him in either reform school if he's young or give him the option to enter the military if he's older.

There's another problem at play as well, and this goes in line with compulsory education. In this country we only educate based on the premise that after highschool (primary school for our friends in other countries) the student will be off to college. Well, guess what - a lot of kids are not going to college. So what have we done in an effort to be fair and politically correct? We have completely wiped out andy semblance of trade training in primary education. There was a time when, if you knew that college wasn't an option, high school was still a training ground for life. You learned how to be an electrician or a plumber or a secretary or a carpenter - all trades which earn their practitioners a good living by the way. Today that is no longer the case. So, if you have a class of students who know they are not going to college, for whatever reason, their classes have no purpose and the teachers are simply babysitting them until graduation.

Not good....

Matt
 
Not to detract from the serious subject, but can't we just blame Marilyn Mason and Eminem like before? Why not South Park too? Of course that's a Joke, but man...these kids these days are just flippin' out left and right. I'm not for child abuse or anything, but a good old fashion butt whooping *MAY*....hence I said *MAY* help when their younger....but when their 15, 16...and the teacher gives them a *timeout* (Which in my highschool was sort of like a room with chairs where you went and just SAT there. No sleeping, talking, eating, etc. Literally, it was a *timeout* for "big kids"). I just don't think these methods are all that effective. Has anyone seen the previews for *Nanny 911*? OMFG....parents HAVE to get involved a little more....or ALOT more!! ~reservoir~
 
I don't know what happens in schools anymore, It's been too long for me and when I did attend, school shootings would have been viewed as science fiction. I have no kids in school so chat like this and whatever the media offers are what I know. It seems to me though that money and or the school system are only partly to blame. The promlem seems to be in the mental health of the children attending these schools and for that we have to look at parenting (as mentioned before) or lack there of and what these children are up to when not in school. It seems to me that normal well balanced kids do not shoot up their schools. These kids have problems that stem from things I am untrained to recognize, but if asked to guess I would submit the following. The lifestyle we live today has both parents working to make ends meet and quite often bringing work home with them to meet the challenges in todays marketplace. In these situations we have produced the latchkey kid who is left to his or her own devices when returning from school to the home environment. When a parent does return to the nest, they are many times too caught up in the maintenance of running a home to be much invlolved with the children. Children are farmed out to the electronic baby sitters, computers and televisions. Here is where the kids are given or programmed with their moral codes and sense of identity. We don't have to look long and hard to see where, if left unattended, kids could get the wrong messages that may cause them problems with social interactivity. When the parents do have time for the children, the quality time they intend is riddled with the guilt they feel for not being able to spend the time, resulting in parents trying to buy off the situation with gifts,,,More violent computer game purchases or bad choices in movie rentals. The whole scene is a vortex leading to final destruction of the familly unit due to drugs, suicide or the unfortunate school schooting episode. The familly unit is in decay in many homes across North America, and this decay is oozing out into the mainstream of society like a poison...That's my theory for what it's worth. Though pretty general I realize, there are many more contributing factors that I could cover until my CPU dies
 
I didn't read the entire post, but since I'm from MN and will be going to school 10 minutes from where it happened I'ev been following it.

It was actually the Security guard not a student. He killed his father/grandfather who had been a cop his whole lief, took his bullet proof vest and weapons then headed to the school where they have footage of him "stauking the halls for people" and recordings of 911 calls neither of which have been released as of yet.

Very scary to think of, we had a guy threaten to bomb our school, he even had plans on where is his bombs would be to take out the most people...needless to say we didn't have school for a number of days and at that years graduation, every one was searched at the door and there were k-9 units and undercovers everywhere and I'm from a school with a graduating class of 87. My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected.

L8R
Buck
 
Man, so many tings to mote on with this thread. First off what happened is very tragic, extremly sad, and very frightening.
I was asked to go down to cover this situation, , I am only a three hour drive from the location, but could not for various reasons, I am somewhat perplexed by the lack of attention this is getting. It is the biggest shooting in the states since Colimbine, and it seems to me that it is getting buried. Why, because there was no one there to catch the imediate after math and chaos, dare to say because it happened on a reserve, or simply because of the isolated location? I am not sure, but very curious. The people who asked me to go down, sent a total of seven people, and even they (CBC) are not giving it near the attention I thought they would.
As for the parenting aspect of this whole situation it seems this kids past was rather sad, but sad does not make a rampaged killer. There is more to this story. As for growing up alone, I spent most of my childhood on my own, parents split apart and working, now I had some issues with the situation, but aside from a bit of pouting on y part, things did not turn me into anything that remotely transgress into that form of agression.
Now I read that the police actually interviewed this kid last year for suspected rampage on his school, now if this is the case I would think that anyone that hade routine contact with this kid would be very careful with him in reagards to firearems. Now how did it come about that his grandfather let his gard slip to this kid enough that a suspected planner of an event like this got to his weapons, that is just insane. Just can not seem to see how that happens. I am sorry if this is too political, and yes I am on my way down toi live in Minnesota, but guns, handguns that is, are way too easy to get in the states, and way too easy for the wrong people to have access to. Handguns are made for one thing, and one thing only, to kill people. They serve no other purpose! Do not giver me the protection arguement, because if no one had one, there would be no need for you to have one to protect yourself. Rifles I get, people hunt, much harder to go on a rampage with, and do not even get me started on why you need semi automatic weapons. Society does not need th grief that these so called toys, or hobbyies create.
I feel for anyone remotely involved in this tragedy, or any other involving guns. When is it going to stop.
 
I'm with Mino on this whole thing. Well put. I try to be the best parent possible, and this incident will give me even more resolve.

For those interested in a deeper look into this fellow, I've dug up some pretty amazing stuff for your character studies.

Firstly, here are all of Google's news links:

http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&gl=us&ncl=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/daily/graphics/minnesota_032305.html

Here are his posts in the forums mentioned: Goto the News section to the thread "LNSG condemns modern society in school shooting" and about halfway down youll see a link to his posts. For some reason the direct link doesnt work.

http://www.nazi.org/community/forum/index.html

And here is his Yahoo Member profile:

http://profiles.yahoo.com/verlassen4_20
 
This is trully sad and frightening, of course, but... you know, this is really some messed up ****, like HorseFilms said.
Why is it that in the past few years it's been happening more and more often? Parents blame it on videogames, movies, music artists, anyone but themselves. As if the movies 20 years ago weren't even more violent than nowadays, as if today's bands weren't singing about same old **** as bands 20 years ago... Video games? If the kid is sick enough to take what's happening on the screen of a friggin game as inscructions to follow in rl, then it's not the game's fault, it's just a matter of time when he goes off... Where has the discipline, parenting gone?

Now to something that's worrying me even more... Why is it that this kind of stuff is only (or mostly) happening in US?
"The death toll made it the nation's worst school shooting since April 1999..." - this quote from CNN alone might be more frightening than the case itself. They now have an almost official name for this... "School shooting". I graduated school here in Moscow 3 years ago and I have never ever experienced or even heard about any shooting at educational facilities here. Never. Why is it so? Is it the free access to the guns in the States? Because I have no idea how to get one here, nor have I ever felt a need to. Is it the lack of proper education and, once again, discipline? They say we have "old school", outdated in the light of "children rights" tendencies and stuff, education here and I can see where they're coming from. But if it means not having to worry about the kids shooting the teacher one day then I guess it's the type of education to go with.
I really don't know what to think... This is just not right... some... messed... up... ****...
 
I was listening to NPR last night (yeah, imagine that - here is a little anti-commie, politically-incorrect me, listening to what's arguably the most liberal radio in the US. What's up with that?)... anyway - as I was hearing the various commentators trying to take a pulse of this thing, it struck my that every single one of them was trying to figure out what 'factors' played a role.

And then I remembered something from the theory of chaos: No matter how precisely you measure a dynamic system with a high sensitivity to initial and boundary conditions, there will always be an unpredictable outcome.

So - I am starting to think that's precisely the thing - human society is a chaotic system by nature (don't let your politicians convince you otherwise). Like the weather system, we can only 'guess' what it's gonna be like in a couple of hours. Temperature, pressure, humidity, local topography, solar flares, ..., you could go on. We don't even know the basic variables that play role. He was trying to be accepted into a neo-Nazi group - where did that come from? Personally, I'd attribute that more as a trigger than the fact he had access to a gun.

I am just rambling here... I guess the point is that anyone with quick answers of the 'Marilyn Mason' or 'NRA' type is most likely wrong.
 
Prarieboy,

I've tried to think of a million was to address the point that you've brought up in an intelligent manner to bring up some issues that might not be apparent on the surface, both constitutionally and in the real world. But I can't think of a way to do it without this getting into a political discussion that we both know is verboten here (for good reason). All I can say is this issue, like most facing society, is more complex than what you have stated. If you're going to maintain such passionate views, you might want to really research it.

Matt
 
Today's NYtimes goes into a little detail about the kids background. He had a pretty tough life and there was no one to catch him before he fell through the cracks. Not justifying what he did, but like has already been brought up, bad parenting, no parenting, and no support will screw a kid up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/national/23shoot.html

You have to register to login to the article. It's free.
 
Please folks, if this thread becomes a gun control/NRA type debate, I'll have to shut it down. It is possible to discuss social problems without getting political--at least for awhile. :happy:
 
Matt
It was not an uneducated or unresearched view, but that is as far as I will go with that for obvious reasons. I just find it odd that it is not mentioned! I knew I was going over the political lines, and for that I am sorry, it just something that worries me far too often.
 
Prairieboy said:
just something that worries me far too often.
Click to expand...

I share your concern. I don't own any guns. I know several people that are responsible gun owners. They keep their stuff locked up and out of the reach of children. Then I know a couple of others who should never be allowed to own guns because they leave them lying around, handle them while drunk, etc. It just comes down to responsibility in my book.
 
Yeah, I've read a few news articles that go into some detail of the kid's life and background. However, I can't help but feel that his soul gets some sense of satisfaction knowing we are all desperately trying to learn more about him. Kinda like he's now getting the attention he couldn't get in life (albeit negative).
 
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