The Institute (協会)

StelmoCynic says: "See, we need to teach our kids the fundementals of gun ownership and marksmenship."

StelmoDad says: "God saved those kids lives and saved the shooters from becoming murderers."

Life is amazing. BTW, great posts lately. Glad you're back to blogging here.

Stelmo, thanks for the kudos. I'm just trying to imagine what it felt like to be chillin' with your friends and have to dudes bust in and start shooting. Crazy.

Part of me is almost bummed that one of the victims wasn't a carry permit holder who DID know how to aim and fire a pistol. Another part of me is very glad that these JERKS evidently learned their firearm skills from the movies.

I think we're going to see more and more of this kind of thing, because the more we see and hear of it, the more people who feel disenfranchised will think it's a normal and appropriate action for people in their situation. I hope I'm wrong. It could be that horrendous things like this have always taken place nearly every day, and the mass media is just bringing to light what has always been the case. I suspect, though, that people on the fringes get a lot of encouragement from what they see and hear, esp. on TV and the radio. They see how much hurt, anger, and attention it generates, and they want to be the newsmaker, especially if they have nothing left to lose.

When did people stop having the ability to talk about problems? Or at the very least to not take every little thing as a personal affront to "honour." Or whatever. On our local news not long ago, there was a story about a body found shot in an apartment complex around here. A very astute man said that the problem was that now people get upset and just shoot each other rather than using words to deal with things. That, coupled with a profound loss of respect for life and a misguided definition of what it means to be a man create all kinds of situations like this. It's troubling.

Of course, I would expect that throughout history there have been times when this type of behavior was prevalent, there just wasn't a new media to cover it. Or they used swords. You would just think in a day and age when we're supposed to be so civilized and educated we wouldn't shoot before talking. Or think our little disputes are worth a human life.

Drama, there appears to be no indication of prior conflict here--but rather these guys appear to have simply attacked a home because they thought they could get away with it. So I'm not quite sure what talking would have done here.

Be's they naugahydes?

Interesting. I didn't have time to read the whole story. Typically when things like that happen around here its due to some perceived conflict. I made an assumption. So the problem here is that no one taught these kids that other people's lives have value.