If we lived in any other era in U.S. history when there's wasn't a mass shooting every week how this wouldn't be considered one of the greatest mysteries of all time:
https://newsweek.com/las-vegas-shooting-three-unanswered-questions-5-years-tragedy-1748137 The Vegas shooter killed 58 people and to this day there is no known motive for the attack. Imagine if the same attack occurred fifty years ago. The attempt to understand the reason would be on par perhaps with understanding the details and the reasons for the Kennedy assassination. Now, it's just another shooting headline. Yet I still wonder why did it happen.
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Hell, if those are alien UFOs trying to observe what’s going on down here we don’t need to shoot at them. One look and they’ll high-tail it back out of here.
The first one I remember as a teen:”The University of Texas tower shooting” (1966) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting - They were rare in those days. It garnered much more attention and public outrage than what today’s incidents do.
And from today’s WSJ: “We aren’t going to erect fortresses around our campuses,”said Kristen Roman, chief of police at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s about finding that balance, what tools do we see as necessary, what tools do we see as reasonable, and what are the resources that campuses have to procure those and implement them.”Chief Roman said her team weighs the costs and benefits of having an open campus embedded in a community, and securing facilities appropriately. In addition to surveillance cameras, some universities use facial recognition technology, track students’movements with GPS software and monitor their messages on social media for warning signs of potential violent actions. Some use weapons detection systems at stadiums and have installed panic buttons in classrooms, and use acoustic sensors to detect the exact location of a gunshot …
Just very sad.
The proponents of “guns for everyone” overlook that a certain % of the population (any population actually) suffers from mental illness. And, obviously, in a free society not everyone can be evaluated in this regard. So unfortunately these episodes will go on … and on … And public places will in time become “less public” as barriers both symbolic and concrete are erected.
There is also a bit of the conspiracy theorist in me that thinks the FBI knows the motive for the Vegas attack and for some reason isn’t disclosing it. That is unsettling in a different way.
Several live within an hour drive from Michigan State; and may even know someone who has attended, although I'm not aware of any of their family members attending university anywhere.
Not one mention of the events at MSU Monday evening in their posts.
I/we know of several who were, in harms way, but escaped any confrontation. However, the parents were beyond worry until having phone contact.
Also, that the greater East Lansing area, including all business and residential areas were within the targeted area of the main campus.
I received notification of the event about 20 minutes after the start. I monitored Lansing police scanner channels until the 'end' of the shooter.
DAMN !
As I recall, the perpetrator was an otherwise seemingly “normal” individual. A person of wealth.
What is it about our society that puts us so far out “in front” of other countries in the amount of random carnage? I suspect it’s the very thing that made us great, individual liberties, along with the personal wealth necessary to purchase these weapons. And, oh, of course the 2nd Amendment as courts have interpreted it. But I wouldn’t argue if you said it runs much deeper.
Off the Record, our excellent PBS state political discussion from MSU’s WKAR TV devoted their entire 30-minutes to the MSU mass shooting, weaving in nicely the Oxford Michigan school mass shooting from late 2021.
However, PBS’s follow-up Friday night program, Washington Week in Review apparently found the story not worthy of mention. Plenty of discussion of Trump, balloons and Biden’s medical exam. But not a word regarding the assassination of a number of MSU students on campus while engaged in nothing more sinister than the act of learning. For shame.
Refreshing that not every presentation of political information has to be evil; with yelling and screaming about the details, but a civil discussion.
Thank you, Tim Skubick.