Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Thoughts and Prayers
If you’re not near a television, keep it that way. This is a story where you won’t want or need the accompanying footage. The Hartford Courant is reporting this morning:
Multiple people, including children, have been killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School [in Newtown, Connecticut]
The number of dead is unclear, but there are at least 20 shooting victims. Many of the shootings took place in a kindergarten classroom, sources said.
One entire classrom is unaccounted for outside the school, sources said.
A person believed to be a shooter is dead. Earlier reports of a second shooter are unconfirmed.
ABC News reported through federal, local officials that more than a dozen people, including children, were shot and killed.
Some reports have the number of dead as high as 27. As per usual in these cases, it’ll likely be a while until the details become clear. And in the interim, there will be no shortage of media types beclowning themselves with irresponsible speculation.
I hope that, for a few days at least, we can resist the temptation to shoehorn this in to some broader social or political narrative. Such impulses miss the real point: a little over a week before Christmas, there are parents who forever lost the opportunity to have their children come home because they sent them off to elementary school this morning.
The heart breaks.
Published in General
A terrible moment for all the victims involved and ourselves as witnesses as well.
Hope and prayers for all those affected, and that those wounded recover as fully and swiftly as possible.
Elementary school. Very frightening.
Troy, Troy, Troy, my friend… you really need to check the Member Feed more often.
Heartbreaking indeed. Every parent’s nightmare. God bless ’em and hold them close.
I join your prayer for the innocent, the suffering, and grieving.
For the one who inflicted this tragedy, I think Psalm 11 about sums it up:
When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” 4 The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord is on his heavenly throne. He observes everyone on earth; his eyes examine them. 5 The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love violence, he hates with a passion. 6 On the wicked he will rain fiery coals and burning sulfur; a scorching wind will be their lot.
For the Lord is righteous, he loves justice; the upright will see his face.
Sad….just sad.
My wife has a good heart and is crying over all the new broken families with stacks of Christmas presents for kids that aren’t there anymore. Its shattering my normally fairly rigid self control (internet flame wars excepted).
This is truly awful.
Fox News Channel says 2nd shooter in custody. Take it with as many grains of salt as you see fit.
Hopefully, it’s the person who shot the child killer.
This shooting is affecting me much more deeply than all the others you hear about. I think it is the fact that these were 5 year olds who were the main victims. An entire class of them. I can’t process the evil behind that.
I have three grandchildren in the Newtown schools and thank God they were not involved. I’ve been watching FNC since 11 or so when my husband saw the story at the gym and asked me to get in touch with the children’s mother. Fortunately I was able to communicate with her to be told that the kids are no longer in the Sandy Hook school. My heart goes out to the families of those poor, little innocent children.
BTW I’d never trust CBS for any news story and I’m sure they’re couching this in ‘evil handgun’ verbiage.
Indeed. There isn’t much else to say.
EJ, your son needs to understand this mass murder & you can help him. On 9/11/01, I had to tell my 6 yr old before she went to school; her daddy was supposed to board a flight that morning & did fly for months thereafter. Evil walks the earth & the good guys work to stop it.
In a few hours I leave to pick up my own kindergartener. I’m praying to the Holy Spirit for the right words again.
Mostly, I’m praying for those families.
Exactly… and why is this happening?
Always has been.
I have an 8-year-old in the third grade three blocks away. I have a decision to make about talking to him about this incident. Ignorance is not bliss here. He should know what he needs to do in case some nutjob decides to play copycat.
That said, I have been watching CBS News and Bob Orr and John Miller are doing a yoman’s job in working the phones and reporting. Norah O’Donnell, on the other hand, is an idiot. She has made colorful use of language that makes no sense, i.e. she used the term “execution-style” without apparently thinking about what that means.
She asked the stupidest question that any “reporter” has in the tool box, “How did you feel….”
That said, I have been watching CBS News and Bob Orr and John Miller are doing a yoman’s job in working the phones and reporting. Norah O’Donnell, on the other hand, is an idiot. She has made colorful use of language that makes no sense, i.e. she used the term “execution-style” without apparently thinking about what that means.
She asked the stupidest question that any “reporter” has in the tool box, “How did you feel….” ·0 minutes ago
Why would you watch CBS? :p
My heart is broken for those families, and my stomach is sick at the sight of such evil. Prayers for those families and that community.
Horrors visited upon innocent children have always been one of the great tragedies of humankind. Those who perpetrate them deserve our greatest condemnation as a society.
Agreed.
Do you don’t have to.
Actually, I started to watch local Connecticut television (stream) but they cut to CBS because Bob Orr in DC was getting more information from the Feds than the locals were getting.
And when I turned on the TV, neither the ABC or NBC affiliates in my area were providing any coverage.
I vividly remember watching the news in my 5th grade classroom on April 20, 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered their classmates at Columbine High School, only a little over an hour away from my own school. My heart goes out to all of the kids in the area. As hard as it is to understand tragedies like this as an adult, it is immeasurably harder to understand as a child.
Do you don’t have to.
Actually, I started to watch local Connecticut television (stream) but they cut to CBS because Bob Orr in DC was getting more information from the Feds than the locals were getting.
And when I turned on the TV, neither the ABC or NBC affiliates in my area were providing any coverage. ·6 minutes ago
There’s always Fox News Channel… unless you’re a cable-less Neanderthal.
Actually, in situations like this there is little difference.
Just read where the shooter was a father, 20 year’s old. Now, if this is an elementary school, and we assume that his kid was the youngest possible, a Kindergartner, that puts him at about 5. So… a dad at 15?
Now they are saying that the shooter is the son of one of the teachers.
I can’t think about this. I can’t not think about this.
Perhaps we ought to keep in mind, in our sympathy and shared concern, that parents in Israel face this possibility (although rockets and suicide bombers may be more likely) every morning.