I try to not be a journalist on this blog, but today makes me get my inner-reporter to kick in and have a mini-editorial. It does however focus on relationships.
My heart goes out to the victims of the elementary school shooting in Newtown Connecticut. The shooting was the second largest massacre in US history. There was more victims than Virginia Tech and Columbine and unlike those who perished, these were young kids! The school was a kindergarten to 4th grade school. most of these children were under the age of 10, young and innocent like it should be. Parents had expected their kids to start school on a normal day on Friday with the weather nice and sunny and a teensy mild for the area.
No parent was expecting a reversed 9-1-1 call today from the local emergency communications bureau to give them the OK to show up to a staging area to see if their kid would arrive unscathed physically or emotionally.
No parent should have been in New York (or even Bridgeport) and going back home to the longest drive in their lives to see if their “baby” was still alive. Remember, these dead were kindergardeners – 5 years old!
MENTAL ILLNESS, DISABLED PEOPLE & THE AFTERMATH OF THIS TRAGEDY
Its going to happen if there is the most secure school system in the world. If the world really becomes ideal or not. Doesn’t matter how old the building is 50, 10 or a 100 years young, or how rigious the polices are or if you have old fashioned CCTVs or modernized IP based security cameras. We are going to have heightened security in the schools, maybe colleges, and maybe the unrelated municipal buildings too.
I have to say this: guess whose going to be the target? Yup if you were going to say the disabled – you’re correct. The zero tolerance on alleged “Anti social” people will be the easiest target. I am not an apologist of the monster that caused such mayhem; however this can be what my mother calls a “teachable moment”. I hate to sound like I’m stereotyping people but these recent occurrences of violence were early to mid twentysomething men with some sort of depression or mental issues, because I have been under high stress, depression and bouts of anger. I don’t like the word “mentally distressed” or “mentally ill” because it hits home to me. Not everyone who is mental is a “monster” and not all mental problems are singular to just mental illness! Depression can happen to anyone whether they have a disability or not. But that doesn’t mean that we should be dissing everyone that has a mental disorder or has an illness, whatever that means.
ZERO-TOLERANCE FOR “DIFFERENT” PEOPLE = NO HOPES FOR FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS FOR THE “DIFFERENT” PEOPLE
This atrocity is making The Puzzling View on Relationships becoming more puzzling.
I don’t think there will be a “teachable moment”. I fear there will be more “profiling” and wrongfully targeting, prejudice of someone that appears to be “mental” that clearly is the opposite and suffers of social anxiety, sensory issues and severe shyness and treat them as a domestic terrorist.
Connecticut Officials dealing with the longest day in the US history in one of the worst tragedies. Image Courtesy: WCBS-TV New York.
If you have read stories in the past about when I was in school, the people in my classroom would give out numbers to girls, and apparently in the “post 9/11 world” it was shunned. This isn’t far fetch. Some crazy people like what happened this morning in the heart of New England, was a domestic terrorist. So when you have wack jobs like him, we are going to be put into the same group. And that 9/11 reference bothered me because I remember the days of New York and the Old World Trade Center standing tall and strong. And the teachers who would use that reference bothered me because I don’t think they knew how much that locale meant to me before, and being painted as a domestic-terrorist-like person.
Good luck trying to pick up a girl if you are “different” unless you want to be put into the same picture of this gunman.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACKS AND THE 20/20 POV
I can’t imagine how you can’t prevent such disaster when the school district has a pretty rigorous system where the school shuts the doors to the public after 9:30, and requires everyone to buzz in that doesn’t have a card and a CCTV/IP-CCTV based security system. You also can’t stop someone that is protected in layers of bullet proof vests – especially when he has a weapon that no one needs for practical use. I hate to say, these things are going to happen, regardless of the security practices, staffing at the local police, DARE officers or school resource officers or SROs. This crap is going to happen.
Law Enforcement locking down a neighborhood after the alleged gunman killed someone at the mother’s house. Courtesy: WNYW-TV (Fox 5) New York
It scares me that people instead of trying to be helpful, and trying to fix issues, its easy to say, lets get rid of gun laws, and allow everyone to carry a concealed weapon, this tragedy is making great cumes for the talk radio stations. It also creates strong call volume for the stations to let the ignorant sound off and to talk down towards the mentally ill and paint a big picture that everyone who is alone, and don’t talk are all creeps and criminals.
Why don’t the world grieve and talk about violence in the media? What about the video games? What about the ease of use of searching for deadly weapons on the World Wide Web? Why are mentally ill people allowed to buy guns? How come the gun stores or conventions not questioning the people buying them?
With that said, my heart goes to the victims in The Nutmeg State.
BACK END OF THE STORY
Newtown is about 60 miles away from New York City and is on the north end of Fairfield County, one of the most wealthiest counties on the East Coast, and while its in a part of Connecticut that is considered “an extension to New York” its very New England. I went by Danbury many years ago and stopped by a little town in Brewster County, New York with similar setup just on the other side of the border. The town in CT is a “bedroom community” where people work in nyc and go home to a town like Newtown.
Another attribute is that people in this village knows everyone and its a tight knit town. that is not to say that anything could happen bad there, easier to say.
I heard this story on the regional news channel and I was hoping it was going to be a scare or a hostage situation. When they broke in to wall to wall coverage, and when the other networks started to cover it, it sadly escalated to a larger incident that later turned to tragedy.
Kids shouldn’t have to go through this especially under the age of 10. These children are supposed to be innocent, and not having to worry about such horrific experience at a REAL young age. And I’m not talking about 15, no a 5 year old shouldn’t be experiencing this stuff.
This event in a small town shows how vulnerable we are and how life is fragile. I’m posting this as I hug and kiss my mother goodnight.