School Shooting

6 people shot at a high school in Seattle, Washington: Another tragedy with little to no response from a public grown inured to the horrors of daily gun violence.

On Thursday, 50 Democrats, 16 Republicans and 2 independents opposed the conservative effort, while 29 Republicans and 2 Democrats supported it. Gun control supporters needed 60 votes to block the conservatives.

Throughtout the gun control legislation process, when it came to the General Assembly drafting policy, Newtown's State Rep. (and proud ALEC member) Dan Carter went out of his way to stress the need for "bi-partisanship." So much for that.

Seattle police are tracking down the history of a nonfunctional missile launcher that showed up at a weapons buyback program. The single-use device had already been used. It’s a launch tube assembly for a Stinger portable surface-to-air missile.

Officials of a town near Newtown, Connecticut are renaming a local school for a resident killed in the massacre there and hailed as a hero. HoneySpot Elementary School in Stratford will be named after 27-year-old Victoria Soto who died trying to shield her students from the gunman inside Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The shooting occurred about 9 a.m. at Taft Union High School, a community of fewer than 10,000 people amidst oil and natural gas production fields about 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

These people want no restrictions whatsoever on gun purchases, ammunition or magazines. They don’t want to hunt deer or protect their families; they want to have the capability of taking on the Marines. When they say they want to “take our country back” by “Second Amendment remedies” if necessary, they aren’t talking about having a voter registration drive.

The heavy and immediate emphasis on gun laws stands in contrast to the social media conversation following the Tucson and Trayvon Martin shootings. While each of these events had its own tragic elements, the issue of gun control was inherent in all of them. But, the volume and intensity of the discussion in the Newtown case far exceeded that of the Tucson or Martin shootings.

22 children were hurt by a knife wielding man at Chenpeng Village Primary School in the Henan province of China last Friday, the same day as the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. What's the difference? 20 children died in Newtown, all the stabbing victims lived in China.