Another major school shooting today ... Newtown, Conn

I would strongly suggest you would be far better off to focus on guns rights...

January 3, 2013
A Desire for Normalcy as Sandy Hook Students Return to Class
By PETER APPLEBOME and MARC SANTORA

MONROE, Conn. — The children’s desks are the same. The pictures and drawings completed weeks ago are hanging on the walls. And the students’ backpacks — left behind as they fled in terror three weeks ago — are once again tucked into classroom closets.

As students from Sandy Hook Elementary School returned Thursday for their first day of class since 20 first graders and 6 faculty members were shot dead at their school in Newtown, Conn., every effort was made to create a familiar welcoming environment.

But, it was not the same school. The Sandy Hook Elementary the children had attended is closed and likely to remain closed for some time.

Instead, classes were held some seven miles away, at the former Chalk Hill School in Monroe, which was transformed over the holidays to a “very cheerful and nurturing” elementary school, said the Newtown school superintendent, Janet Robinson.

School officials said that by bringing the furniture, artwork and backpacks from the old school to the new school, they were trying to make the transition as seamless as possible.

Beyond the aesthetics, workers also had to change a middle school to an elementary school. That meant changes large and small, like raising bathroom floors to accommodate smaller children and lowering paper towel dispensers within reach of smaller arms. “At one point there were 80 people in the building, cleaning up the building,” Ms. Robinson said on Wednesday. A larger staff has been assigned to the school, she said, including mental health professionals.

And for all the effort made to make the school feel like home, the one thing that was missing and could not be replaced were the people who were lost.

Like Dawn Hochsprung, the principal who was killed while trying to stop the gunman, Adam Lanza, after he blasted his way in on Dec. 14. Sandy Hook’s former principal, Donna Page, came out of retirement to run the school.

There are also reminders of just how much the tragedy affected people outside this small New England community, including homemade snowflakes sent in from well-wishers looking for a way to express their solidarity.

“There are snowflakes from around the world there,” Ms. Robinson said.

Even local residents who did not have a child in the school Thursday felt the weight of the moment. At the Demitasse Café in Sandy Hook, where white paper hearts from around the country hung in the windows, Chris Maurer said that as he was driving Thursday morning, he noticed one or two bus stops where children would normally be waiting to be picked up, but were empty.

“You think you’re O.K., and then something happens and it all comes back,” said Mr. Maurer, whose five children attended Sandy Hook Elementary.

Beth Umiacke, another diner, said, “Today is going to be a very hard day for everybody.”

On Wednesday, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy toured the refurbished school, which had been closed because of declining enrollment. Students and parents were also invited to see the building and their teachers Wednesday before a normal schedule was resumed on Thursday.

“They have been so excited to see their teachers,” Ms. Robinson said.

While the goal was to help the children resume as normal a routine as possible, the classrooms in the new school were not set up to exactly mimic those in the old building.

“Teachers were creative in setting up the rooms, and some of them are very different,” Ms. Robinson said.

Around town, as buses picked up children from familiar stops, there were signs that for all the desire for normalcy, there was still some anxiety. Two police cars were parked at the local high school as stepped-up patrols made the rounds at other schools.

Given all the attention on the new Sandy Hook Elementary School, the authorities said there would be increased security to ensure that there were no problems.

“I think right now it has to be the safest school in America,” said Lt. Keith White of the Monroe police.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/nyregion/sandy-hook-students-return-to-class-in-new-building.html?hp

I strongly suggest you actually try focusing on the topic of this thread--which was a massacre in an elementary school.

As I recall, this thread has been about gun control from the very first post

Read through the initial posts--it was the "gun rights" group that really veered the discussion in that direction.

First it was gungasnake talking about the Nazis,

and then BillRM immediately began talking about other ways of killing people, which is about as irrelevant as you can get--the people in that school were killed by gunshots.

As everyone had ask you over and over and over how is one manner of attacked worst then another???????

Obviously, a gun is a killing machine

Senator Dianne Feinstein,

I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.

I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

We, the people, deserve better than you.

Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston
Cpl, United States Marine Corps
2004-2012

BillRM wrote:

As everyone had ask you over and over and over how is one manner of attacked worst then another???????

Why are you banging on about this?

Americans aren't serfs.

The following letter, written by U.S. Marine Joshua Boston and headlined “No ma’am.,” was posted in the CNN iReport on Dec. 27 with the included note from the producer and photo. It has struck a nerve with many and is being circulated around social media venues like Twitter and Facebook.

Quote:

Senator Dianne Feinstein,

I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.

I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

We, the people, deserve better than you.

Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston
Cpl, United States Marine Corps
2004-2012

You missed my point--it was the anti-gun control group who veered the discussion away from any real discussion of the tragedy in that Connecticut school.

If you want to discuss the 2nd Amendment, and what's meant by "the right to bear arms", fine--go start a thread about that.

Probably because other people keep banging on about "gun deaths" as if it made some sort of difference that they were killed with a gun as opposed to some other way.

That is a more-than-valid subject in a thread about gun control

Americans elect their representatives to serve Big Business, and to frequently tell them that they live in the Greatest Country in the World.

Did you post any pictures of the victims killed in that school in Connecticut?

Is she proposing some sort of registration?

Yes indeed, everyone should refuse to register their guns. Would be the height of folly to comply.

I'm sure the NRA would block any such attempt to pass a registration law, however.

Sandy Hook tragedy hits close for Notre Dame's Spond, a Columbine grad
By Brian HamiltonTribune reporter
January 3, 2013

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- At Columbine High School, Danny Spond wore jersey No. 4. When he arrived at Notre Dame, the linebacker made a switch with a very specific meaning in mind: He picked No. 13, to honor those lost in the mass shooting that took place at his home town's high school when he barely had started school himself.

"So that's who I play for," Spond said Thursday, during the Irish's morning media session before the BCS title game. "I knew who had gotten me to this position and who had supported me. Without a doubt, that was Columbine. I wear the 13 with pride."

And so the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, spurred some profound, if not acutely clear, emotions in the senior from Littleton, Col.

Spond was only in second grade when 12 students and one teacher died in the April 20, 1999 rampage at Columbine, and thus his perspective on such an event and its immmediate aftermath is a bit blurred.

His perspective on the emotions involved, and the rebuilding of a community, is not.

"I can't express how horrible an event that is," Spond said. "Going through that -- I was a younger kid -- and my family going through that and my community, it's something that is unspeakable. It's hard to explain, to even put into words. I don't have much to say about it, other than the fact that time will heal. It did our community, and I know it will theirs."

Columbine High School was remodled after the shooting but Spond said, even years later when he attended, the history filled the hallways. It was inescapable, really, but in some ways only because it adhered a broken town.

"It brought the community together and really built an area that takes care of each other," Spond said.

There's no advice Spond has for the people he doesn't know in Connecticut. There's no real way he can empathize with that level of pain. But as a member of one community wracked by tragedy, he guesses he knows how it will go for another.

"There's no way I could ever tell you I know exactly what they're going through," Spond said. "I don't think anybody can. But I obviously express much remorse, and obviously we have all our prayers with them. It'll get better."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/chi-sandy-hook-tragedy-hits-close-for-notre-dames-spond-a-columbine-grad-20130103,0,2192940.story