i am not heartless so, please don't take this the wrong way. facebook & twitter have been on fire because of the senseless killings of those young, innocent &, unprotected children in connecticut &, i applaud your voices however, i very seldom see the same uproar when lives are stolen from us right in our own backyards because of violence. we're plagued by the gangs & drugs: our community's & schools are infested with & by them. &, the drive-by's still occur. other then a few RIP's on facebook & a little story on the news, that's it.
if i told you that on wednesday, 12 dec, a 15 year old female allen high school student was shot in the leg on 16th & turner (one block from the school) around 2:45pm & is expected to be okay, would you believe me?
http://articles.mcall.com/2012-12-12/news/mc-allentown-shooting-16th-turner-streets-
if i told you that just hours before what happened at Sandy Hook, an 18 year old was arrested in oklahoma for plotting to attack his high school, would you believe me? http://news.yahoo.com/okla-teen-arrested-school-shooting-plot-184243533.html
if i told you that on saturday, 15 dec, a 42 year old man was arrested after firing 50 shots in the parking lot of a busy california mall &, fortunately, no one was hurt, would you believe me? http://news.yahoo.com/man-fires-50-shots-calif-mall-parking-lot-042034513.html
if i told you that on tuesday, 11 dec, a 22 year old man killed 2 people & wounded another before his rifle jammed in a busy oregon mall, would you believe me? http://abcnews.go.com/US/oregon-mall-gunman-identified-jacob-tyler-roberts/story?id=17941415#.UM3ZceTBGYU
would you believe me if i told you that school & mall violence is not just restricted to our country alone?
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/14/15901085-villager-slashes-22-kids-with-knife-at-elementary-school-gates-in-china?lite
this is a time-line of senseless violence since 1996...http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html
& this is another time-line...http://news.yahoo.com/tiimeline-major-shooting-incidents-united-states-185007308.html
while i join those in prayers for the stolen lives & their family & friends, i ask myself, just how in the hell did we get to this point where one person can inflict so much damage at will? nobody can convince me that the shooter in Sandy Hook just woke up friday morning & decided he was going to kill innocent children. he killed his mother first, according to the reports. somewhere along the lines, we either missed the signals, ignored them or, we just didn't care enough to do anything about them.
while we may never know the absolute reasons for what pushed this shooter over the edge, you cannot tell me that in his 20 short years of life that he has always been 'normal'.
&, kill that, 'well, the shooters are all white' thing. remember the dc snipers? a killing is a killing &, in the inner city's, it's black's killing black's, latino's killing latino's, white's killing white's. hell, take a look at chicago youth violence in 2011...http://www.npr.org/2011/03/21/132678405/chicagos-schools-police-work-to-stem-violence
&, this was printed june 2012...http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/26/chicago-public-school-stu_n_1627258.html
&, don't forget all the work-place violence...
good people, the answer isn't stricter gun laws because that only leaves you without one. we need to be able to identify these troubled people sooner & get them the mental help they so desperately need...
