The death count in the Santa Clarita school shooting is now at two:
A 16-year-old student pulled a gun from his backpack and opened fire on classmates at a high school north of Los Angeles on Thursday morning, striking five people before turning the gun on himself, law enforcement authorities said. Two students, a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, died at a hospital.
Emma González, one of the Parkland students who helped form March for Our Lives, tweeted a link to this article in the New England Journal of Medicine this morning:
At the end of an inconspicuous hallway and strategically placed far from the controlled chaos of the trauma room lies a dimly lit waiting area that we in the medical field call “the quiet room.” It is a bland spot; a few soft chairs surround a table that holds a box of crisp institutional tissues. There may be a picture or two on the wall, but generally it is an unassuming room where we physicians tell mothers about the deaths of their children, far too often because of firearm violence.
As we make our way to this room, we recite a careful script; we use words intended to ease this painful first-and-only meeting. The reality is that over the years, we have found that there is no good way to tell a mother that her child has died, especially when the unexpected death might have been avoidable.
We introduce ourselves as the doctor who took care of their child. We take a deep breath, look into their eyes, and quickly break the devastating news — there is no reason to delay. What follows is the visceral, piercing shriek of a mother’s wailing, “Please God, not my baby!” We often weep with these mothers, we sometimes quietly blame ourselves for not being able to do more to save their baby’s life — and when they are alone, as is often the case, we hold them up while they cry.
Two children died today, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives were affected, including the paramedics, doctors, nurses and techs who tried to save those kids, and all the other people who knew them.
feebog
I live a few miles away from Saugus High School. We have close friends who live across the street from the school. The slaughter will not end until we make Republicans a permanent minority and gain a majority on the Supreme Court.
zhena gogolia
Vote for Kamala. She gets it.
https://twitter.com/chrislongview/status/1195046171405963264
Raoul
Once again, with grim gusto: Fuck Mitch McConnell and most definitely fuck the NRA. To hell with the whole Republican party.
But, as Virginia shows us, the NRA is starting to lose. We need to accelerate their losses. Our losses, the kids, the families, the individual suicides and accidental shootings and the premeditated slaughters are too much.
Violence will never be fully tamed, but it need not be fully armed.
Ksmiami
@feebog: the GOP must be put down like a dog- destroyed, smashed into oblivion
Baud
The only way out is through.
Leto
@feebog: I’m in total agreement with this. Republicans, and their monied overlords, continue to hold this nation back. They need to be ground underfoot and consigned to the trash bin of history.
MomSense
I think about this every time my kid goes to school. I’m so sick of this NRA sponsored, state enabled terrorism.
Baud
@MomSense: I’m glad I don’t have kids.
Amir Khalid
I’m astounded that the shrinking minority of Americans who treat firearms as their adult toys would be perfectly happy to see senseless and tragic deaths like these keep happening, as long as they get to keep their toys.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid: A lot of us in the States are astounded too.
narya
I will never forget the looks on my parents faces when they returned from finding out that my sister was never coming home. They had flown overseas, so that long, long return trip was just . . . brutal. I would not wish that experience on my worst enemy.
trollhattan
The WaPo article linked above closes with this doozy.
Nearly a quarter-million kids are as many as would live in a large city.
Roger Moore
The Evangelicals in the GOP claim to worship Christ, but as far as I can see they worship Mammon and Moloch. We need to be more open in saying just that.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
I just do not understand why some a*shole’s right to carry and use guns takes precedence over my right to be safe from a*sholes and their guns. I do not understand why this is never argued in court.
Roger Moore
@debbie:
It’s very simple: the 2nd Amendment (as currently interpreted) guarantees an individual right to own and carry guns. There is no corresponding right to be free from guns. If we want to change this, we need to change the current interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
debbie
@Roger Moore: In that case, we need a separate amendment protecting bystanders and holding gun owners liable for any injuries, intentional or unintended.
Elizabelle
@ ksmiami:
I agree; the NRA needs to be destroyed, and I hope the gun manufacturers get sued — successfully — up the wazoo. Go Sandy Hook parents. But: your language. This is a blog full of pet lovers, and your language re dogs is terrible. Better ways to express yourself, I think.
[Interesting. It did not show up as reply to. That said, this blog is a marvelous work in progress.]
Sab
I just emailed my “prolife” Repub senator. I think I will do this after every shooting. ” __kids dead. My grandkids have active shooter training in school. Yet nothing changes. Thanks, Senator.”
Barbara
I feel a constant low level of fury every time I think about these incidents, but especially the ones that happen in schools. I cannot imagine how cramped and ugly your soul must be to place a higher value on guns than children.
Elizabelle
@narya: I am so sorry, narya.
debbie
@Barbara:
Especially when they’re parents!
Roger Moore
@debbie:
I don’t think we’d actually need an amendment to hold gun owners liable for the damage their guns cause. The 2nd Amendment says you have a right to own a gun; it doesn’t say we have to ignore what you do with it.
debbie
@Roger Moore:
But if it’s not equal to the Second Amendment, which only another amendment would be, it won’t be enforced.
feebog
@Roger Moore:
Which is why I said we need to gain a majority in the Supreme Court as well. The absurd conclusion in Heller needs to be reversed and buried in the dustbin of history.
Barbara
@narya: I am sorry. I find it hard to go there even in my imagination, it is so painful to think about losing one of my children.
Jay C
I’m seeing the usual flurry of contradictory reports online (and little/nothing from MSM media), but the toll may actually be three: as the shooter is reported to have also died from a self-inflicted wound – i.e. he seems to saved his last bullet for himself.
Jay
Don’t forget all the school kids traumatized by news of the shootings, Active Shooter Drills, Shelter in Place and Swarm drills.
that’s like what, 98% of all kids in the US and Territories?
Roger Moore
@debbie:
I was thinking of making a clear civil liability for gun owners whose gun injures someone else. It wouldn’t put people in jail, but it would give the people who have been hurt a way to recover something, and it would give some kind of penalty for gun owners who are negligent (or worse) with their guns. And since it would be enforced by lawsuits by the injured parties, it wouldn’t depend on elected officials for its enforcement.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Jay C: The reports I just read (LA Times, WaPo, etc.) are pretty consistent that the shooter is in the hospital, in critical condition, with a self-inflicted gunshot. Of course, many things will change, again and again, during the next few days.
Omnes Omnibus
@feebog: Yep, overrule Heller and let a common sense interpretation of the 2d take its place and the world changes.
WereBear
To me the Russian bribery money explains so much. The NRA can’t be the only organization with their snout in the trough.
Sab
Every American with two senators. Call them or email them every time this happens. So not ok that I can say “every time” but that is our reality
OzarkHillbilly
I once watched a man blow his brains out.
The sound of him breathing while his brains lay in the gutter behind him, I can’t describe.
I told a man who was checking the wife for a carotid pulse, “She’s gone.”
And then their children arrived. Their screams will haunt me till the day I die. Picking these broken children off of a South Side street corner isn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I’ve never felt more inadequate, more impotent, more…
I am grateful I only had to do it once.
debbie
@Roger Moore:
Not tough enough. I want prison as a consequence.
FlyingToaster
I just want gun ownership to be treated like car ownership; you can’t put a car on the road without insurance, nor should you be able to take a gun out of the shooting range without insurance. You can reduce the amount your insurance costs by good behavior (gun safes, trigger locks, shooting range membership and attendance, etc.), and you’re still allowed to own as many guns as you can afford to insure.
And I think open carry is bonkers. But I’m a Masshole, so, of course.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Jesus. I’m not sure I could ever get past that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@FlyingToaster: Along with training and a license.
OzarkHillbilly
Any common sense reading of the 2nd Amendment is that it is a collective right. If one looks at it in the historical context, it makes sense. @debbie: I’m not sure I have or ever really will.
J R in WV
I may be the only person who feels this way…
But for me:
Works just fine for me. She has common sense and cares about her fellow Humans.
OzarkHillbilly
@J R in WV: Emma Gonzalez is one of my heroes.
tokyokie
My preferred method of dealing with the NRA is investigate the hell out its acting as a conduit for illegal contributions to Republican political campaigns, then declare it an ongoing interstate criminal enterprise per the RICO statute.
Sab
We all need to contact our congress critters and Senators every time this happens,
Horrifying that we can say every time this happens, but we can.
MomSense
Oh, Narya. I’m so sorry. Those painful memories never leave us.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
oh my god. How tragic.
LAO
My brother, a federal agent, was a first responder at Sandy Hook Elementary. At the time of that massacre, his oldest child was 7 years old. It hit him pretty hard. I don’t really think it’s something humans are capable of getting past.
K
Meanwhile at the same time this was occuring in mitch mcconnells graveyard of democracy the thuglicans with lynching lover hyde smith leading the charge thuglican senators were blocking ANY consideration of gun law requiring background checks in the Senate.
Ella in New Mexico
My God, that’s terrible. That you’re able to function at any level (much less being such a wonderful contributor to our little blog here) after that kind of secondary trauma is a miracle and a blessing. You’re a hero.
J R in WV
When you say
You must know that many if not most of your fellow Balloon-Juice commentors have dogs, and love those dogs very much. I’m guessing you don’t have a dog.
Just a couple of weeks ago my cousin’s house caught fire, and his first thought was to save his dog, which he was able to do, at 1:30 am, while in shock at the horror around him. So lighten up on the dogs, which are mostly better than people who would contemplate voting for Donald Drumpf.
JPL
LAO Even if it lies dormant for awhile, it will reappear. There is no way you get past that.
J R in WV
@Ksmiami: This is who I was commenting about in ref to dogs.
There’s something bad wrong with “Reply” commenting so far, I’ve also added a Site Problem record about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: Would you prefer “beaten like a red-headed step-child?”
Dan B
O/T but tangentially related. The Ohio state legislature has passed a bill that allows students to receive a passing grade if their answer to a question has a religious basis in their beliefs. There’s some nonsense about grading based upon substance and rrlevance.
There seems to be a desire to protect ones beliefs from logical examination. The same rigidity seems to underly the gun control debate. The NRA types become enraged with any possible argument that might scratch their beliefs in their freedoms. They want more guns in schools, not less. They want more Christ, not an appropriate discussion of religion.
We seem to be losing democracy because of increasing fear and dogma. Getting gun control passed will not address the fear and dogma.
I was born and raised in the Akron area. We had high quality public schools and top flight scientists. Apparently severe gerrymandering has wrested control of the legislature from the cities. By the time I left the midwest the factories were being moved to southern “right to work” states and then overseas or Mexico.
People in Seattle used to ask me if Ohio was where they grew corn. I replied Factories! Iowa is corn not Ohio. There were factories in every township. They are gone and these small towns are financially insecure. The GOP and MSM ( plus Chritianists ) seems to have persuaded rural folks that liberals stole the jobs.
Sigh.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hell NO !! Beating dog or kids is flat out off the table!!!
J R in WV
OK, it appears that there is no function to delete a comment, in this case I have two copies of a comment and no way to get rid of the second one — so now this one is the second comment, about the inability to delete a second comment.
Dan B
@Dan B: An interesting theory is that gun rights is code for being afraid of black people / racism. I believe it’s also code for hating liberals. It’s quite a depth to dig to uproot the causes of gun violence.
chopper
can you point to where it says in the constitution that you have a right not to be shot? huh? can’t do it, can you? game set and match, libtards.
chopper
beaten like a rented mule? i assume that would offend both animal lovers and that new mule-renting internet startup.
FlyingToaster
@?BillinGlendaleCA: We had a case up here where a local man went through bankruptcy; he was forced to give up his gun license but was allowed to still own his guns so long as they were housed at the gun range he belonged to. They were not allowed back on his property until the whole bankruptcy thing was behind him and he could get his license back. The police lieutenant in charge of licensing for our town kept spot checking the gun range (honestly, I think half of the gun owners in town belong to that range). The local reporting was full of whack-job outtatowners’ comments complaining that his rights were being infringed.
So there’s kind of a precedent for owning an item without being licensed to use it; equivalent to the 15-year-old farm kid who is allowed to drive the tractor on the farm, but not on the road.
itf
With all due respect to mistermix, thousands of lives affected is probably an understatement.
My stepdaughters lost their father in a mass shooting four years ago. Every time I see another one in the news, I worry for them – not just for their safety in their schools, but for the trauma it digs up when they hear about it.
We used to try to warn the girls when we’d see news of another shooting, so they could hear it from us first instead of stumbling across it. We gave up on that a while ago; there are so many mass shootings that it became impractical.
I wonder how anyone can love their guns more than they love their kids.
CaseyL
@itf:
Idolatry. The same thing that activates the God-bothering fetus-loving brigade. They worship guns as items and as symbols that give their lives power and meaning.
Kids are nothing compared to that.
Patricia Kayden
@Raoul: The only way to defang the NRA is to vote for Democrats. Republicans aren’t going to do a thing to stop gun violence. Republicans are perfectly okay with gun violence.
hueyplong
Re: dogs and this site. A speaker at an insurance/legal event I attended in the 1990s told us that in his area (Mississippi) the insurance adjusters at a fire scene were instructed to ask about the owner’s dogs. If they had died in the fire, they paid the claim. If they had all survived, they looked into arson.
I don’t know if that was actually true, but at the time I found it credible. Because only a Trump wouldn’t give a crap about a pet.
From Both Sides of the Pond
@OzarkHillbilly: I have to teach about the 2nd amendment and Heller in my government classes. I point to the oddity of the 2nd amendment, where it explains why we have that right, rather than assuming it is inherent. So why explain the why? My take is that unlike the inherent rights of the 1st amendment, gun ownership was protected as a means collectively (as you said) to preserve the intended end – protecting the inherent rights listed elsewhere. Its purpose has to be explained precisely because it is _not_ an inherent right, unlike the others.
Heller is such a perversion because it insists that whole clauses of the amendment are meaningless fluff, and can be ignored at will. It transformed gun ownership into an inherent right on par with life and liberty, and makes those have to accept jeopardy to preserve people having the easy means to take life from others. All of this from Antonin ‘Originalism is God’ Scalia.
Kelly
I’m not sure how to word this but the aggression against the rest of humankind just rolls of the guys I see with their jacked up pickups, 2nd amendment stickers. It’s kind of a fashion choice and broadcasting “Look out I’m tough”. creeps me out more and more as the massacres pile up.
Roger Moore
@Dan B:
Carrying a gun with you wherever you go is a way of saying that your desires are more important than the rights of anyone around you. Just look at how often gun fondlers use their weapons not to defend their rights but to intimidate people who have the gall to disagree with them. It’s an attitude toward other people that goes perfectly with racism, sexism, libertarianism, and IGMFY in general.
trollhattan
“It’s just a tool.*”
*Something I share with my Precious.
Balconesfault
I don’t know why this particular shooter had a revolver instead of some high capacity magazine semi-automatic.
but no doubt there’s probably a dozen or so kids who are alive this evening because of it.
Ksmiami
@Elizabelle: I’m a dog worshipper – I only meant tat in the (I guess antiquated) American idiomatic way- believe me dogs I hold in much higher esteem than NRA Miscreants
Ksmiami
@J R in WV: I have a beautiful dog – it’s just an old idiom from the 50s
Elizabelle
@ Ksmiami: I figured.
But: no more comments that make us envision dogs in peril/dogs/other animals coming to bad ends. Cheers.
Uncle Cosmo
andy
Can The Tree of Liberty™ die from being bloodlogged?
Lapassionara
There is a right of peaceful assembly, or maybe I am making that up.
Procopius
@Roger Moore, #15: I agree, but bear in mind the only way to change the interpretation of the Second Amendment is to utterly annihilate the Republican Party. Not just decimate them, destroy them. In 50 years or so we will have been able to reclaim the judiciary and have a majority of progressives on the Supreme Court. This is like combating climate change — it’s going to take more than one election cycle. We have to accept that the conservative “judges” selected by the Federalist Society are sincere in their beliefs, cannot be reasoned with, and probably will not commit an impeachable offense (it’s pretty rare to see a judge impeached, no matter how egregious their conduct).
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
The 2nd Amendment right was created in times when the US believed a standing army was an invitation to tyranny, and chose instead to rely on citizens being armed, so they could be called up by a state authority to deal with a security matter. I read somewhere that an early federal law signed by President Washington required eligible citizens to keep a firearm and camping gear in case they were called up.
But states don’t call people up like this anymore, so if anything the 2nd Amendment is obsolete and needs to be repealed altogether. After that, those who need firearms as something other than toys should be required to have regular safety training, insurance and licences as described upthread, and pass a marksmanship test to renew their insurance and licence. Those who don’t need a firearm, no gun for you.
Procopius
@Dan B: Hey, I lived in Akron until I was twelve, when we moved to a suburb of Detroit. I agree, great schools. That report made me wonder how the teacher is supposed to assess the student’s “sincerely held religious beliefs.” There are people who believe you can dring Drano if your belief in the god is strong enough, and they do (not all of them survive — Darwin award). First you’ve got to ask the student what is their belief that justifies the answer given. Then you need to question them to determine their sincerity. So besides being expert in subject matter, a teacher has to be a theologian and a trained interrogator. Grading a single test in a class of 35 students (many classes are larger) would take up the entire school year. Also, what would be the “relevance” of a wrong answer, and how would you judge it?
Procopius
@chopper: How about “beaten like a rug.” I’m so old I remember when we didn’t have wall-to-wall carpeting and had to beat our rugs once a year to clean them. With vacuum cleaners we don’t have to do that any more. I suppose Millennials don’t have a mental image of the act.
Searcher
@Amir Khalid: The Second Amendment existed so that slave States would have State-controlled to protect their god-given right to own slaves.
It’s always, always about slavery.
unrelatedwaffle
We need to stop fetishizing the Constitution, for one thing. Who fucking cares what a bunch of dead slavers crapped out on parchment 250 years ago? It boggles my fucking mind every day. (https://harpers.org/archive/2019/10/constitution-in-crisis/ did a good job on this, the link editing moves the submit button irretrievably out of frame on mobile).
TriassicSands
Two (more) children died today and, as usual, Republicans sent out their thoughts and prayers…making everything OK for the families and friends of the victims.
biff murphy
As always it will be too early for any meaningful legislation to be passed as the GOP instructs us we must go thru a period of mourning and now is not the time… Enough with this game.
I CALL BULLSHIT, again and again and again…
We have got to vote these pigs out.