America is experiencing a surge in gun violence

Comment on the lawsuit of Daniel Defense, a 19-year-old boy in a nearby classroom, and a gun dealer in Uvalde, Texas

The parents brought the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday, to make sure their children were well cared for. The 9-year-old hid in a nearby classroom with other students.

The school was the scene of a shooting on May 24, where 19 children and two teachers were killed.

Daniel Defense decided not to look at the cost of marketing to families and communities in Texas, because they didn’t want to do anything about health and well-being of Americans.

Days before the shooting, the complaint notes, the Georgia-based company tweeted an image of a toddler holding an assault-style weapon with the caption: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Firequest International, Inc., a company which makes accessorytriggered systems, which are like illegalbump stocks, sells them to untrained civilians in Uvalde, according to the claim. These types of devices allow semi-automatic rifles to fire quickly.

According to a legal document, the background check of the Uvalde school shooter was clean, but Oasis Outback sold him the guns and bullets knowing he was suspicious and dangerous. The store owner and his staff didn’t act on their suspicions and notify law enforcement.

The statement from the district Attorney’s office said that Devlin obtained the gun through a straw purchase. Straw purchases occur when someone buys a gun for another person who is legally ineligible to buy one.

“What Happened in Uvalde”: A Police Officer’s Suicide Caused by a “Dangerous Environment”

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, including Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the district police chief at the time, and Mandy Gutierrez, the school’s former principal, failed to act and created a dangerous environment for the plaintiffs, according to the lawsuit. Theattorney told CNN that his client will not be commenting on the litigation.

UvaldePD retreated after making an attempt to break into the classroom. The scene remained ‘active’ and active shooter protocol required Uvalde PD to pursue the primary goal of stopping the killing and gunman no matter how many times it takes,” said the claim.

The suit also faults Lt. Mariano Pargas, the city’s acting police chief on the day of the massacre, as well as two other companies, claiming defects in their products were factors in the response to the shooting. According to the claim, the radios used by first responders were unsafe because they did not have warnings about failure during normal use.

“The school was closed and the doors were locked,” Sack told CNN affiliate KMOV. The security staff did a great job of identifying the suspect who was trying to enter, and immediately notifying other staff and making sure that we were contacted.

“What happened in Uvalde was an unspeakable tragedy that we condemn in the strongest terms,” Schneider Electric spokesperson Venancio Figueroa III told CNN. We cannot comment on pending litigation at this time.

All but Pargas and Arredondo didn’t respond to CNN request for comment.

What if I didn’t know I was gay? How did I find myself? “Incredibly frustrated with her feelings of failure” Revised by F. Freud

A previous version of this story had an extra lawsuit in it. The person’s name has been removed from the complaint.

I asked the 14-year-old if attachment was confusing. I start crying and feel worthless and then tell myself that I don’t need to get attached to anything because it’s going to change. But then I think of the changes coming and I feel exhausted before really knowing what I want.” She is so articulate about herself, more than I could have been at her age, or even twice her age. She has a capacity for probing and that makes it hard to understand the source of her confusion.

Her identity felt attacked by what felt outside of its scope: What if she was gay? What if she was more like her parents than she thought? Did she feel more like an American or did she feel closer to the country where her parents came from? Why couldn’t she do the things she most wanted to and seemed to give way so easily to things she didn’t want to do? The questions were posed through actions such as sex, drugs, failing to do her work, and also an internal attack on her sense of self.

Freud thought that adolescence was the optimal time to separate, as adolescents confront the realities of adulthood for the first time. The age group has a greater risk of getting swallowed up by their families or being flimsier in group psychology than anyone else. Adolescent crisis, he wrote, “may also be looked upon as an attempt at cure” that “ends often enough in a complete devastation.” One is only properly psychiatrically ill on the other side of adolescence, which seems to shuffle us into various forms of neurosis and psychosis. Most psychotic breaks occur over the course of a few years.

“I looked in the mirror and I couldn’t recognize myself,” a 17-year-old patient explained to me after going to the emergency room for an episode of extreme depersonalization. After her breakdown, she was afflicted with anxiety and panic attacks, which led to her diagnosis with irritable bowel syndrome. I’ll call her by her first initial, too, A. After a couple of years of therapy, A. gained some ground articulating the desires that scared her and were causing diffusion.

Where is the Safest? Where are the kids going? When violence and drugs start to tear up neighborhoods, and where are kids going to school

They were all murdered in the place that should be the safest: where kids go to school. The recent classroom rampages show that nowhere is really safe. That’s why millions of parents often drop their kids off with a nagging fear about whether their school is next. And it’s why a generation of kids has endured active shooter drills that will mark them – just as children halfway through the last century dived under desks in duck-and-cover practices in case of atomic warfare. The danger comes not from a foreign nuclear rival, but from within.

I find myself trying to allay teenagers’ inner voices, slow down their rush to action, give room to their anxiety, and buy time to explore what are invariably complicated feelings about themselves and their world, without believing I have any answers. Shouldn’t we enjoy a country full of aggressive, blaming speech, a preference for quick solutions, and the reduction of real impasses to superficial actionable items?

The CNN Opinion series titled “America’s Future Starts Now” invites people to share how they have been affected by the major issues facing the nation, and experts to give their proposed solutions. The views expressed in these commentaries are the authors’ own. CNN has more opinion.

American voters worry a lot about weapons and violent crime, they still do, according to polls. These issues certainly stick with Kathy Pisabaj, of Chicago, who was 19 in 2018 when she was shot by a stranger and nearly died.

“We believed that if we stayed away from gangs, we would not get hurt,” she wrote. “Gun violence continues to tear apart communities and devastate lives like mine every single day.”

I grew up in the Tamarind Avenue corridor of West Palm Beach, which is notorious for poverty, drug abuse and violent crime. It’s just a few miles from what was the “Winter White House,” or Mar-a-Lago.

Fourth, we liberals haven’t adequately pursued approaches to reduce firearms violence that have nothing to do with guns. Curbing lead exposure in babies appears to have an effect on crime 20 years later. Violence interrupters working for initiatives like Cure Violence can sometimes break cycles of revenge shootings. Youth programs like Becoming a Man help as well by producing more mature young men who do better in school and are less inclined to settle an argument by reaching for a .38. Research finds that even better street lighting and the conversion of vacant lots into green areas seem to reduce shootings. Counseling and intervention strategies reduce suicides, which constitute a majority of gun deaths.

The Inner City Innovators: A Nonprofit Creating Mentorship Programs, Anti-Violation Workshops, Community Engagement, and Community Engagement to Combat Crime and Gun Violence

The emergency shelter where I worked had a graveyard shift. My cousin, then 28, was a maintenance worker at a local nonprofit. Together, we went on to create Inner City Innovators, a nonprofit with three initiatives.

Our Hope Dealer mentoring program is one of them, and combines individual and peer-to-peer mentorship, leadership development, community service and social-emotional learning. We prioritize giving youth (13+) someone to talk to.

And then through community engagement activities we walk the streets to let the community know we’re here. We respond to shootings when youth are involved, hoping to connect with families to support them and reduce retaliation.

Our goal is simple: to keep every young man in our program free and alive through age 25. Most offending starts around 13, and 25 is when they say the brain is finished developing. We wanted to capture and stabilizing them when they were known to struggle the most.

We don’t want to just keep them alive physically. They want to live on and we want to keep them alive. We introduce them to yoga and other experiences outside of the home. You think that every place is like that when you are born and raised in a poor community. We want to inspire them to do more.

Lack of education, poverty of community, brokenness of home – those aren’t sources of shame. Those are sources of power. I’m hoping that they use these things to make better decisions in their lives.

They are given the freedom to be involved and lead. Challenge a young person who has been through hard times and they want to stand up and show you they’re capable.

We can’t stop everyone from shooting each other. But of the young men who’ve been involved in our Hope Dealer mentoring program and have firearm charges, most stay on the path we put them on and leave activities that require picking up firearms behind them.

Ricky Aiken is the founder and executive director of Inner City Innovators, a nonprofit based in West Palm Beach, Florida, that combats crime rates and gun violence by empowering and inspiring inner-city youth through mentoring programs, anti-violence workshops and community engagement. This piece was inspired by an interview with CNN.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the alarming incidents of violent crime in Philadelphia. I discussed how crime affected my two children and the city’s record-breaking homicide rate.

A college classmate of my son’s was murdered during an attempted carjacking. My daughter is a physician. In the eight months since I wrote that piece, circumstances haven’t changed.

During a home invasion, my son’s friends were robbed at gun point. My daughter was upset that I wore the Apple watch while walking to dinner because she thought I would be mugged.

America has a crime problem that is very much in the thoughts of people who live and work in high crime areas and those who care for them. Even if crime polls lower than issues like inflation or abortion among voters’ concerns, no one should underestimate the potency of crime as a political issue.

At this point in time, the most important thing that can be done to address the crime problem is for local District Attorneys, mayors and council members to publicly back law enforcement officers and allow them to do what needs to be done to restore order. In too many police and district attorney offices across the country, there’s a lack of Morale which leads to high turnover and left untrained and understaffed police officers and prosecutors.

Illegal guns on our streets are more of a problem than ever before, and Mayors throughout the country are dealing with it more and more. The upcoming election will help determine if we can prevent the slaughter of our babies in our school classrooms with common-sense gun reforms.

It’s long past time to address the blatant lawlessness in communities across the country. There is no reason we can’t do it. It requires political will.

We Know It’s Hard to Know, but We Can’t Tell It When You Are Getting It: A Policy Report on Gun Violence in South Carolina

Charlie Dent served as chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and also chaired the House Ethics Committee. He is a CNN political commentator.

This is the magic of local government. We can build strength for change quickly and effectively. We can bring people together to have conversations about our communities. We can offer hope to our neighbors who seek a safer world, free of violence.

With our hands tied by preemption laws, which allow state laws to preempt what local governments can do, and the challenges of South Carolina’s deep red political climate, we’ve had to get creative and develop relationships across the spectrum of viewpoints around gun violence to be successful.

The fight to end school shooting in the country has changed due to the decision of the appellate court. It’s rare for adult gun owners to be charged in relation to school shootings because parents of shooters have a constitutional right to own a firearm, and most states don’t have laws requiring gun owners to secure their weapons when children are in the household. The principle that no child kills itself in a vacuum might be key to creating legislation to stop parents from buying guns for children who are a threat to themselves and others.

When the state doesn’t act against gun violence, we have fought back by making it a violation for domestic violence offenders and children to carry guns. Increased violence prevention outreach was done to intervene with those who may be at risk for engaging in gun violence.

South Carolina is third in the country for guns stolen out of vehicles and I lead efforts to pass a law requiring citizens in the city to report lost or stolen guns within 24 hours.

Stop Shooting a Kid who Shoots: Why Gun Violence isn’t Just for Kids: A Roundup of State Crimes in Columbia, South Carolina

Aditi Bussells, who holds a PhD in public health, is the city councilwoman at-large in Columbia, South Carolina. She is the first South Asian woman to be elected to local government in the history of South Carolina.

Two years ago, a 4-year-old boy was shot and killed while he slept in Kansas City. LeGend should still be alive, and so should the thousands of other children, particularly Black and brown youth, taken too soon by gun violence in our country.

In Kansas City, we have made significant progress in housing access. Funding from the new Kansas City Housing Trust Fund will create nearly 500 affordable housing units and a bond measure to go before voters next month, should it pass, will generate thousands of more affordable housing units. Zero KC is a plan to end homelessness in our city in five years.

In 2020, my administration sued Jimenez Arms, a gun manufacturer that supplied guns to felons and allowed illegal guns to flood our streets and cause significant harm to our community. But the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives conducted a deficient investigation before granting a new license to the operators of Jimenez Arms. Because of ATF’s refusal to act, we sued the agency, too, and eventually shut down Jimenez Arms, keeping their weapons of war off our streets.

If you care about your kids’ lives, vote in this fall’s elections. If your candidate cannot ensure your children will be safe at school every day, or ensure you’ll be safe going to the grocery store, question whether they are the best candidate for your community.

Keeping people in our cities alive is more important than anything and is not about rhetoric. If people and kids are dying preventable deaths, we are failing.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/12/opinions/gun-violence-crime-solutions-roundup/index.html

What Happened to a Gunshot Survivor? Mental Health Disorder and Alcohol Dependence in the Aftermath of The Second Mass Shooting

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is elected in the middle of the year and he chairs the US Conference of Mayors Criminal and Social Justice Committee.

A loved one isn’t unscathed. The family members of survivors who were not shot saw a 12% increase in mental health disorders, despite the fact that they did not get shot themselves.

In addition to the physical injury survivors of gun violence face a significant increase in mental health disorders. Depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and more are included in the former. Alcohol and drug misuse is related to addiction to the pain killers used to treat gunshot wounds.

These effects persist at least a year after injury. While the world has moved on – at times to the next mass shooting – survivors are still learning how to walk again, battling demons to go outside again and suffering through their personal, slow-moving tragedies out of the public eye. This is not the tip that moves people’s attention.

What we can do to protect ourselves from the effects of gun violence and crime: a self-defense instructor for the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office

Almost a third of US adults believe there would be less crime if more people owned guns, according to an April 2021 Pew survey. However, multiple studies show that where people have easy access to firearms, gun-related deaths tend to be more frequent, including by suicide, homicide and unintentional injuries.

The voice of the business community is important for public health. Indeed, the private sector has been a partner in public health before, from addressing the tobacco epidemic, to combating the opioid epidemic, to expanding health insurance.

Young people are increasingly spending their dollars on businesses that represent their values. There is a growing demand for change in the wake of the gun violence, and companies that take action may be better off than those who don’t.

I’ve worked at the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office for 35 years. I started as a young officer and moved up the ranks. Over the years, I’ve worked as a self-defense instructor, trained officers on firearm safety and ran the corrections training academy for the Sheriff’s Office.

We are less accurate in a crisis situation, because we have to complete many hours of firearm training prior to being certified. I’m 95% accurate on a good day, when I’m stationary in front of a target. In addition to introducing loud noises, sirens, darkness of night, lots of people, and someone running at me, my skill level will go down. And the likelihood that I, or any trained officer, will hit something we don’t intend to hit goes up. This has been known in law enforcement for decades.

In Ohio, anyone 21 years of age or older can carry a firearm without a license because of the state’s policy of not requiring a criminal record check. I don’t have to watch over who carries a concealed weapon. I revoked 200 concealed carry permits last year from those charged with crimes such as domestic violence or assault. Now, I can’t do that, and those 200 people can conceal carry without the benefit of law enforcement oversight.

There is a chance for Ohio residents to decide on age limits for purchases of firearms and for those who carry concealed weapons.

What we’re now concerned with is our own training, how to work around this flawed legislation and how to keep ourselves safe. We will keep an accounting of what goes wrong, point out what could have been prevented and pay attention. We’ll continue to fight to rescind this law, and we’ll continue to offer and encourage licenses and training.

He renewed his call for an assault weapon ban that had no chance of passing in a Democratic-run Congress, and he said that they had to do something to stop gun violence.

Family of a Shooting Teen, James and Jennifer Crumbley, at a High School: A Search for a Shot and Missing Energy

Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey is a lifelong Cincinnatian, a 35-year veteran of the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office and the first woman elected to serve in her position.

The teenager accused of killing four students and wounding seven others at a Michigan high school is expected to plead guilty Monday.

He could be sentenced to life in prison without parole after pleading guilty to terrorism and murder. At the time of the shooting, he was 15.

James and Jennifer Crumbley are accused of failing to secure a gun and ignoring the mental health needs of their son before the shootings. Besides the deaths of four students, seven people were wounded.

The parents have pleaded not guilty to charges that they should not be held responsible for what their son is accused of doing.

The trial for the parents was initially scheduled to start on Monday, but was delayed because of winter weather. The Crumbleys are in jail at a county jail.

A 19-year-old gunman opened fire at a St. Louis high school and killed two people, including the student Alexandria Verner

Bolden said that the teacher crawled over and asked for assistance to move her lockers so they wouldn’t get in. We heard glass breaking and gunfire outside the door.

Alexandria Verner, one of three students who died, was remembered by her Clawson Public Schools Superintendent Billy Shellenbarger as “everything you’d want your daughter or friend to be.” Anderson and Fraser both graduated from high schools in Michigan in 2021, where they were killed.

When a 19-year-old gunman opened fire at a St. Louis school Monday, killing two and injuring several others, he was armed with a long gun and nearly a dozen high-capacity magazines – enough ammunition for a “much worse” situation, police said.

There were locked doors and a quick police response which helped prevent more killings at the high school.

“This could have been much worse,” police Commissioner Michael Sack said. “The individual had almost a dozen 30-round … high-capacity magazines on him. That’s a whole lot of victims there.”

Her father said that Alexandria was looking forward to her Sweet 16. Kuczka was looking forward to retiring in a few years, her daughter told CNN.

Jean K. Sack, 21, and Alexandria N. Allen-Brown, a student of Central VPA High School, Michigan, killed during a shooting

The man died during the gunfight with officers, Sack said. He graduated last year from the school.

The prosecutor who just heard the guilty plea of a teenager who killed four students last fall in Michigan said that she was not surprised to hear of another school shooting. “The fact that there is another school shooting does not surprise me – which is horrific,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said.

Alexandria was an outgoing person, liked to dance, and was a member of her high school dance team, according to her father.

Her friend Dejah Robinson said the two were planning to celebrate Halloween together this weekend. “She was always funny and always kept the smile on her face and kept everybody laughing,” Robinson said, fighting back tears.

Alexis Allen-Brown was among the alumni who fondly remembered Jean Kuczka’s impact on her students. She was kindhearted. She was very nice. Allen-Brown said that she always made you laugh even when you were not trying to.

In her biography on the school’s website, Kuczka said she had been at Central VPA High School since 2008. She said that she believed that every child should be given a chance to learn.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/us/st-louis-school-shooting-tuesday/index.html

How a student confronted a gunman in St. Louis, Texas, a school shooter, and the rest of the school community

Seven other teens were injured, some with gunshot or graze wounds. One had a fractured ankle. The police commissioner said that they were in good shape.

“When he entered, it was out … there was no mystery about what was going to happen,” the commissioner said. He entered in a violent manner after he had it out.

Adrianne said that she and her classmates thought it was a drill until they heard the sirens.

Adrianne told KSDK that the class stayed put until students saw their assistant principal come up to one of the classroom’s locked windows. We all had to jump out of the window after the teacher said to come on.

Math teacher David Williams told CNN everyone went into “drill mode,” turning off lights, locking doors and huddling in corners so they couldn’t be seen.

After widespread controversy over the delayed response in confronting school shooters in Uvalde, Texas, and Parkland, Florida, Sack said responding officers in St. Louis wasted no time rushing into the school and stopping the gunman.

The phone calls came in from people hiding in different places, so officers fanned out to look for students and staff who were in the building.

Sack said that the team was able to quickly get to the school to do a secondary sweep of the building, because they had been together for a training exercise.

How do we learn to look for change? A former FBI agent and profiler who studied school shootings, says the key is to look out for changes in behavior

MaryEllen O’Toole, a former FBI special agent and profiler who studied school shootings for over 20 years, said the general public doesn’t know what to look for.

According to the past president of the National Association of School Psychologists, the key is to look out for drastic changes in behavior.

For some, it’s increased outward behavior. I think that we will see an increase in grievances. An increase, possibly in anger. We will see an escalation in difficulty managing their emotions,” Reeves said.

There are still changes, but they may be starting to withdraw. “They’re no longer interacting with groups of friends. They’re starting to spend more time on the internet.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/us/school-shootings-warning-signs-red-flags-xpn/index.html

When does a gunner go to war? Why do terrorists come to the rescue? A representative of the O’Toole crime counterexample

“I’ve seen it in nearly every case. She said that leak is specific because the shooter is talking about what they will do before they do it.

“They’re typically done because the offender is really excited about what they’re going to do. Some people say it’s a cry for help … if they’re discovered beforehand, then they could be used for that purpose,” O’Toole said.

For those who are bent on violence, they plan it. They think about it. They fantasize about it. They are ready for it. And all of that period of time in which that is done, that’s very pleasant for them. They enjoy it.”

An Open-String School Shooting in Oakland, Michigan, Revealed by a Teenage Missing School Student During a First Grade Football Game

A few days before the 2021 school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, the 15-year-old suspect posted a photo of a gun on Instagram with the caption: “Just got my new beauty today. Karen McDonald is the prosecutor in Oakland County.

By itself, that post isn’t a cause for alarm. Michigan residents under the age of 18 can possess a gun.

The morning of the shooting, a teacher found a drawing by the suspect depicting violence and phrases such as “the thoughts won’t stop help me,” “blood everywhere” and “my life is useless,” the prosecutor said.

Even if a troubling social media post or disturbing comment doesn’t indicate a threat, it’s worth telling a teacher or school official because others might have additional concerns.

The faculty and students need to know what red flag behaviors are and how to report them.

She said that they aim for prevention based on knowing warning behaviors, how to spot them and how to use appropriate intervention in a compassionate way.

Regardless of how students report concerns, those messages should be actively monitored, and the information should go to a school threat assessment team, according to best practice recommendations from the US Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center and US Department of Education.

The core team “should include an administrator, at least one school mental health professional (school psychologist, school counselor, school social worker), and a school resource officer (SRO)/law enforcement,” Reeves and colleagues wrote about behavioral threat assessment and management in K-12 schools.

When we do threat assessment, it is the place where we find out about abuse in the home. One parent is sitting in jail after being arrested for domestic violence. Or the one grandma that was their caretaker who they loved just died. Now they feel that they have nobody,” Reeves said.

“If an individual makes a threat but it is found to be not true, low level, or transient, then law enforcement will not likely need to be directly involved. School personnel can work with the student and parents by implementing a problem solving and/or conflict resolution process,” Reeves and her colleagues wrote.

“However, if the threat is legitimate and mitigation actions need to be taken, an SRO/law enforcement officer may become engaged in a consultative or direct role. Any reports of weapons, threats of violence or physical violence must be reported to local law enforcement.

The Effect of Parent Intervention on Student Violence at the School: a Case Study of a Student at the Guidance Counselors Office

The guidance counselors office was where the student told them that the drawing was part of a video game he was designing.

“It’s a very low bar for a school to search a backpack or a locker,” CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig said. The Supreme Court knows that is reasonable suspicion, which is very low.

It is some of the least reliable information you can have. You need to get more than one source to corroborate what this person is telling you, said the former FBI special agent.

She said you should look for anything else that might suggest that this person is having violent thoughts. It is necessary to speak to the parents, teachers and the law enforcement to determine if there have been any reported incidents at the home.

The team of psychologists wrote that consequences should be implemented only after careful consideration and that they should be coupled with supportive interventions.

The student of concern who is being supervised at school will be less able to carry out the act of violence at home because they won’t have time to conduct research and prepare for the act.

“We need parents to be more aware of what is happening in their child’s life and what they may have in their possession. We need students and school staff to report, but we also need more parents at home to help when their child is struggling.

The Saint Louis Public Schools Chief said that they are not only reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also gun safety.

“It’s the totality of all those behaviors. So one person may know about leakage. One person may know that he has access to a gun. One person might report a concern about the same student.

Reeves said students are often in the best position to notice red flags – whether those clues are on social media, in the classroom or outside of school.

The 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting: A Crucial Test of the American Conspiracy Theory and Political Polarization in the 21st Century

The massacre of 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut school in 2012 was the worst school shooting in US history. It was also a pivot point that marked the start of a new era in misinformation and political polarization.

Robbie Parker, a father whose public statement after his daughter’s death was mocked by Alex Jones repeatedly, testified in the conspiracy theorist’s recent Connecticut trial about a run-in with a man on the other side of the country who followed him through city streets, yelling that his daughter’s murder had been a hoax.

Among the Sandy Hook fathers’ relatives who have faced death threats, the one whose civil case against Jones is still pending is Leonard Pozner. In 2017, a Florida woman was sentenced to five months in federal prison after a series of threatening emails and phone calls to Pozner.

The US has surpassed 100 mass shootings in 2023, a disturbing milestone that underscores the grave cost of inaction in Washington and state legislatures across the country.

After the massacre, right wing conspiracy theorists immediately speculated that it was staged to distract attention from a larger conspiracy to take away guns from the public. The United States was fertile ground for those lies to spread because most Americans were on social media and their trust in the mainstream media had fallen.

Though the implications were horrendous, some of the videos were widely shared, including by establishment figures in media and politics – an indication of how politicians would increasingly boost misinformation in the years to come. One conspiracy video was viewed millions of times by the one-month anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.

Ordinary Americans have been targeted far beyond those who have been associated with crimes and tragedies. Conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic and the safety of vaccines lead to harassment of nurses and hospital workers. And election workers across the country have found themselves targeted by mainstream politicians and others pushing false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

We have also seen a direct connection between conspiracy theories and violence. The mob that stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 was motivated by the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory and a disinformation campaign shouted from the White House.

The outrageous false beliefs that disqualify them for national politicians have become a litmus test for some of the Republican contests. There are doubts about Sandy Hook, as well as about a teenager who survived the school shooting in Florida who was insulted by the member of the US Congress.

Conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns have become a tool regularly wielded in political disputes, including in the debate over guns. The nominee for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a Justice Department agency that has been without a permanent head since 2015, was derailed last year by a campaign of misinformation about him and his family.

Evidence in the mother of Ethan Crumbley told police she was afraid of his mental state when he bought a gun, and that she had no fear

Prosecutors in Michigan disclosed more evidence in recent court filings they say shows the mother of Oxford High School shooter Ethan Crumbley knew about his unhealthy mental state when the parents bought him a gun last November.

“You know my biggest fear was that he was gonna turn the gun on himself,” Jennifer Crumbley, his mother, said in the back of the police car after the shooting, according to one filing.

The quote was included in a filing from Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald that opposed the parents’ latest effort to appeal their bond that has kept them behind bars for over a year.

Prosecutors arrested his parents after accusing them of giving their son easy access to a firearm and ignoring signs he was a threat. The parents were arrested days after the shooting in a Detroit warehouse following a manhunt after they failed to come to court for their initial arraignment.

In the court filings, the prosecution says Jennifer Crumbley told law enforcement she hadn’t looked closely at her son’s disturbing drawings in school the day of the shooting.

However, screenshots of Facebook messages included in the court documents show she expressed concern over the drawings to her husband, saying things like “Call NOW. Emergency,” the court filing states.

The case was heard at a preliminary hearing in February, where a judge ruled there was enough evidence to go to trial in January 2023.

In the Michigan case, the appeals court acknowledged that holding parents accountable for their child’s crime is precedent-setting, but the judges said the unusual and unique facts of this mass murder require that prosecutors be allowed to make the case for doing so.

Motion to Set Bond or Release the Crumbleys on Electronic Supervision Against a Criminally Incriminating Complaint in Detroit

The Crumbley’s filed a motion last week asking for the court to set lower bonds or release them on electronic supervision.

The motion states that the prosecution has advanced an inaccurate narrative to make the Crumbleys sound like they were fleeing prior to their arrest.

They were arrested December 4th after sleeping on an air mattress in the studio. A search for the couple ended at a Detroit industrial building less than an hour’s drive from Oxford, after they missed their scheduled court appearance on the day of their charges. CNN shot exclusive video of the arrest.

The motion states that the Crumbleys sold their home to pay legal fees and because they decided it wouldn’t be safe to stay there. They have a place to stay if they are released on bond.

They argue they are not threats to the community because their son is in custody and their guns were seized by law enforcement.

The judge did not have the authority to rule on the bond issue because of the appeal. The parties in the case are under a gag order, unable to communicate with the press.

An Elementary Teacher in Virginia Lost in the Action: The First Grade Teacher who Shooted at a School, and the Principal of a Newport News School

In her first interview since the incident in Virginia, the first grade teacher said she thought she had died when the student pointed the gun at her.

Novah Jones, who was located in a different classroom, said she heard an announcement saying “lockdown, I repeat lockdown,” while they were doing math. “I was scared … it was like my first lockdown and I didn’t know what to do, so I just hid under my desk like everybody was.”

The teacher wounded in Friday’s shooting, whose injury was initially described as life-threatening, was listed in stable condition by Saturday, according to the Newport News Police Department.

James Madison University identified the teacher as Zwerner, despite neither the Newport News public school district nor authorities naming her.

The police Chief said during the news conference that the boy was taken into custody after the shooting because it was not an accident.

There had been an altercation between the teacher and the student, who had the firearm, Drew said. A single round was fired and no other students were involved, he added.

Drew told CNN that the students were evacuated from their classrooms and taken to the gymnasium with counselors and officers after the shooting.

Novah said she had trouble sleeping the night of the incident because she was worried that he would come to her house with the gun.

Novah is one of numerous children to grapple with the trauma of a shooting at school. Shootings in US schools, while still rare when compared with other incidents of gun violence, have become far more common than they are in any other country. In 2022, there were at least 60 shootings at K-12 schools, according to a CNN analysis.

As the investigation continues, the elementary school will remain closed Monday and Tuesday to give the community “time to heal,” Principal Briana Foster Newton said in a statement.

Two days before the shooting, the student allegedly “slammed” and broke Zwerner’s cell phone and cursed at guidance counselors, which led to him being suspended for one day, according to a legal notice sent to the Newport News School Board by Zwerner’s attorney that also informed officials about the teacher’s plan to sue school administrators.

Authorities are “working diligently to get an answer to the question we are all asking – how did this happen? We are also working to ensure the child receives the supports and services he needs as we continue to process what took place,” Jones said.

We Are Not Here to Stop Assaulting Black Hole Buyers: Why We Haven’t Solved Our Guns

Third, liberals have focused too much on banning assault weapons rather than on the whole panoply of interventions that may help. What we call assault rifles probably account for fewer than 7 percent of guns used in crimes and only a small share of suicides, and they have repeatedly proved difficult to define. California banned assault weapons, for example, yet manufacturers promptly designed and began selling California-compliant weapons that are almost the same as those that are banned but are technically legal.

Even if the Senate were able to get a new assault weapon ban through it, there wouldn’t be much effect on the 20 million or more rifles already in circulation. The sale of assault weapons was unaffected by the ban from 1994 to 2004, and may have been counter productive because they were turned into icons of American manhood. More assault rifles are in the hands of private people in the United States than in the armories. We liberals have become champion marketers for the firearms manufacturers.

Fifth, we haven’t been as evidence-driven as we should have been. One problem with gun research today is that it’s frequently pursued by people with strong agendas, either pro-gun or anti-gun. Liberals sometimes leap on poorly designed studies if they support our conclusions, in ways that discredit our side. The liberal impulse has sometimes also been to delegitimize all policing because of a history of racism and abuses; in fact, law enforcement contains multitudes, and some police strategies such as focused deterrence, targeting those most likely to use illegal guns, have reduced violence.

The day brought the familiar futile anger over the tortured politics of gun control and splits among Americans about firearms that mean that – even after more senseless deaths – nothing will be done.

How a Family’s Crast Should be: Michigan State Superintendent Dana Nessel’s Only-in-America Moment After a Mass Shooting

“And unfortunately, as it turned out, the answer is no,” Nessel said. “We couldn’t get our kids through college without subjecting them to a mass shooting at their school.”

On Tuesday, Slotkin met survivors and family members from Michigan State, which is in her district. Or we don’t care about it because it’s frightening or we have to do something about it.

When she dropped her children off at Michigan State a year-and-a-half ago, Dana Nessel thought it will be a miracle if their four years there are free of incidents like this.

Monday’s killings led to a heartbreaking only-in-America moment, when a young Parkland survivor counseled stricken Michigan State Spartans on how to process their nightmare and what they would experience in the years ahead.

In 1999, 12 students and a teacher were killed in the shooting at the Colorado high school, and in 2007, 32 people were killed in the Virginia Tech massacre.

“How is it possible that this happened in the first place, an act of senseless violence that has no place in our society and in particular no place in school,” asked Jon Dean, superintendent of Grosse Pointe Public Schools. It touched our community twice.

It is trite to write that after a mass shooting, politicians in Washington still do not respond with real measures to stop it from happening again.

Firearms reform activists will hope that the Democratic sweep of the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature in Michigan will open the possibility of significant changes to the law – but gun politics remain treacherous for lawmakers in swing states who want to cling onto power.

At a county executives conference in Washington, Biden decried mass shootings as a family’s worst nightmare and said it was happening far too often in this country.

Michael McRae’s Bitter Moments: When a Son Gets More and More Bitter About Killing His Mom, His Father May God Save His Son

Republicans in Washington don’t spend much time on trying to spend huge amounts of money on mental health services. In the states, Republican governors and Legislatures are relaxing gun laws in a way that makes it easier for people with bad intentions to get guns.

Michael McRae said that his son began to change after his wife died. “He was getting more and more bitter. Angry and bitter. So angry. Evil angry … He started to allow himself to go. His teeth were falling out. He stopped cutting his hair. He looked like a wolf man.”

When Shooting Happens: The Michigan State Student ‘Oldly a Spartan’s Voice’ Revisited

There are red flag laws that could be used if more pro-active action were taken by loved ones and others who believed in gun rights and control. Katherine Schweit, a former FBI senior official and active shooter expert, said people who see relatives deteriorating mentally need to act.

“We have to follow through, we have to report stuff,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper. The terrorist events in the United States have been prevented by the ability to see something, and say something. The same thing has to be done for these types of situations.

This could save lives in the future. But it’s too late for three Michigan State students who will never graduate, or their fellow Spartans whose college years are now stained by the plague of gun violence.

The community at Michigan State University is mourning the students killed and still reeling from the hours of terrorism that took place earlier this week as investigators try to understand why a lone shooter targeted the school.

Thousands of students, faculty and staff came together to honor the three students who were shot to death on Monday night by gathering around a rock that says ” Always a Spartan.”

The governor told the crowd that they wouldn’t have to live like that. “We shouldn’t have to subconsciously scan every room for an exit, go through the grim exercise of figuring out who our last call would be to.”

The grieving crowd was told by the governor that the campuses, churches, classrooms and communities should not be battlefields, and included students who had also lived through another mass shooting at a Michigan high school.

At the Wednesday vigil, Tom Izzo told the students to show their emotions, as they process the tragedy.

The Michigan State University Mass Shooting Tuesday night (Monday, April 21): A Second Gun and a Charged Amarmed Shooter

The note made threats to other schools in New Jersey, as well as the ones hundreds of miles away. Police there said there was no longer a threat after McRae was found dead.

The note – which claims McRae is the leader of a group of 20 killers – also has a list of targets that includes a warehouse, an employment agency, a discount store, a church, and a fast-food restaurant, law enforcement officials who have access to the note told CNN.

There is no credibility to the claims made by the murderer that he was the leader of the team and that the businesses were warned, law enforcement officials said.

FBI profilers are analyzing a letter that may or may not have connected the shooter to his locations according to law enforcement officials. The locations are targets or have grievances in the note, officials said.

The felony case against him never went to trial. Instead, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor – possession of a loaded firearm in or upon a vehicle – in 2019 and spent a year and a half on probation, the Ingham County prosecutor’s office said Tuesday.

At the federal level, a misdemeanor conviction does not preclude someone from buying a gun. But in Michigan, “the charge under Michigan law is either a low-class felony or high-class misdemeanor,” the state attorney general’s office said.

The law enforcement source told me that McRae would purchase two guns in Michigan in 2021. The source said one was a Hi-Point 9 millimeter pistol, and the other was a Taurus pistol.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel – who has two sons at the university left shaken by this week’s tragedy – told CNN it wasn’t clear yet if the weapon used in Monday night’s incident was purchased legally or not.

Something needs to change after someone with mental health issues, or someone who was illegally possession a gun, was able to get a weapon.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/us/michigan-state-university-mass-shooting-thursday/index.html

Mass Shooting in Michigan State – Remembering Evange, Verner, and the Three Dead Shooting Students Alicia and Erice Anderson

The speakers remembered the three students who were killed in the shooting. They remembered their smiles, their kindness, their sense of humor and the dreams they had.

Anderson was studying to become a doctor, her aunt Chandra Davis posted on Instagram. “How is it that she was in class doing what she was supposed to be doing and yet and still her life was taken by a coward who clearly didn’t understand the devastation he was about to cause my entire family,” Davis wrote. Parents shouldn’t have to bury their children.

The statement from the Michigan Alpha Chapter of the fraternity said that Fraser was the president. He was a leader and great friend to his brothers, the Greek community and people on campus, according to the frat.

Billy Shellenbarger, the school district’s Supt., said that Verner was everything he would want a student to be.

The organization said that the time away from work for her family, and the long recovery road ahead will place both anEmotional and Financial burden on her family.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/us/michigan-state-university-mass-shooting-thursday/index.html

A Spartan Student’s Story of a Black Hole: Jasmin Devlin is charged with felony murder and reckless endangerment

“There will never be a return to normal. This event has changed what that will feel like for us forever. But that’s okay,” Kovach said. Spartans come together in times of need, it is one thing that I love about them.

Michigan State Police provided security at the vigil to allow the university’s police to grieve, the department said, adding, “We are all healing together.”

A group of students were riding the bus with the 6-year-old who showed them a gun and bullets. The school secretary was made aware by the group of students that there was a gun on the campus.

The child brought a gun to Joseph K. Gotwals Elementary School on February 9, prosecutors said.

Jasmin Devlin, 30, turned herself in Tuesday and has been arraigned on charges of felony endangering the welfare of a child and reckless endangerment for failing to secure a firearm in her home, the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release. I don’t know if he currently has an attorney.

These early signs should be helpful in stopping mass shootings. The parents did not heed them. The day before the Oxford shooting, a school administrator called James and Jennifer Crumbley because their son was allegedly looking at firearms ammunition online during class. His mother told her son that he was not mad at him. You have to learn not to get caught.”

Marvin Ray Davis, 58, of Nash County, North Carolina, is charged with misdemeanor improper storage of a firearm to protect a minor

Her bond condition requires she not have any contact with children while she is out of jail. There will be a preliminary hearing on February 24.

In North Carolina, Marvin Ray Davis, 58, was charged with a misdemeanor count of improper storage of a firearm to protect a minor after an unloaded 9 mm handgun was discovered in a 6-year-old’s backpack at Fairview Elementary on Tuesday, according to a news release from the Rocky Mount Police Department.

The department said that Davis was not related to the child but lived in the same house. He was released on a $4,000 bond and will appear in court on March 1, the release said.

CNN tried to contact Davis, but it was not certain if he had an attorney or not. CNN reached out to Nash County Public Schools.

The situation should be emphasized to all gun owners that their weapons are secured in a safe way so that they won’t be used by children. “This was a preventable situation,” he added.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, America reached the grim number by the first week of March, which is a new record time, and a definition similar to CNN’s.

“There are real solutions and tools – including bans on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines – available now that can make a difference, but only if our elected officials act to implement them,” he added.

The Small Arms Survey found that there are about 120 guns for every 100 Americans. No other nation has more firearms for civilians than us. About 39% of US adults live in households with guns, while one-third own one, according to a November 2020 Gallup survey.

How Gun Violence Arises During the 2022 Florida Florida Mass Shooting Season: Sens. Maxwell Frost’s Generation Z Embedded on Capitol Hill

Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, the first member of Generation Z elected to Congress, centered his 2022 campaign on ending gun violence in the US, finding support among young voters who grew up as part of the “mass shooting generation,” as he calls it.

“We’ve seen these things and been wondering our whole lives as young people, in high school, middle school and elementary school, why? Why is this happening? Why didn’t we fix this? When he won the Democratic nomination, Frost stated that he would run for president.

That CNN poll, which was conducted a few weeks after the mass shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, found that 58% of Americans believed stricter gun control laws would reduce the number of gun-related deaths in the country. That was up from 49% in 2019 and similar to the 56% following the 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

Mental health challenges grew throughout the pandemic and violence increased, but an analysis from researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that guns made those incidences significantly more deadly. Between 2019 and 2021, all of the increase in suicides and most of the increase in homicides was from gun-related incidences. The gun suicide rate increased 10% while the non-gun suicide rate decreased.

But until lawmakers on Capitol Hill reflect this majority, further gun safety legislation appears out of the question as the deadly cycle of violence continues.

A bigail teacher shooting newport news virginia nbc: “Your kids need to go out of there” says Savannah Zwerner

“I remember him pointing the gun at me, I remember the look on his face,” Abigail Zwerner told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie in an interview that aired Tuesday, more than two months after the January 6 shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News left her hospitalized with gunshot wounds to the hand and chest. “I remember the gun going off.”

The bullet “went through my left hand and ruptured the middle bone as well as the index finger and the thumb,” Zwerner told NBC, before striking her in the chest.

“I was terrified,” she said. My first reaction was that your kids need to leave. This class is no longer a safe one. I just wanted to get out of there.

Indeed, Zwerner – who NBC reported could not get into details about what occurred prior to the shooting due to the potential litigation – is dealing not only with physical injuries, but emotional ones, too.

According to CNN affiliate WTKR, the child who allegedly shot Zwerner will not be charged.

The family of the boy with an “Acute Disability” said in their statement that he was alone at school on the day of the shooting and that a care plan required a parent to attend with him. The statement said they would regret their absence on this day for the rest of their lives.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/21/us/abigail-zwerner-teacher-shooting-newport-news-virginia-nbc/index.html

The Newport News Shooting: The Last Moment of Laura Toscano’s Expulsion from Richneck Elementary, Los Angeles, in the Memory of her Mom and Dad

She told NBC that there are days when she can’t get out of bed. I can get out of bed and make it to my appointments on some days. I try to remain positive when I have gone through something like this.

She said that the support from her family and strangers is hard to comprehend, but that it was deeply appreciated and inspiring.

The fallout from the incident was swift, drawing harsh criticism from parents and leading the school board to vote to oust Superintendent George Parker III. Richneck Elementary’s assistant principal, Ebony Parker, resigned two weeks after the shooting and the principal, Briana Foster Newton, was reassigned to another school, though the district did not say where.

CNN was told by the school district it could not comment on whether anyone else was aware that a gun was on the campus, because of an ongoing investigation.

I am following the prosecutor in Newport News to see if they charge anyone in this case.

“My job is to hold those accountable that I can hold accountable,” Toscano said, “and I’m going to do that. She is going to be dealing with this for her whole life, physically and emotionally.

“I’m not sure when the shock will ever go away, because of just how surreal it was and you know, the vivid memories that I have of that day,” she said. “I think about it daily. Sometimes I feel like I have nightmares.

The Denver Shooting at East High School: The Student Described by the Mayor as an “African American” Student and a Denver Historic Landmark

The shooting at East High School was reported at about 9:50 a.m., and police and medical responders arrived on the scene “very quickly” to find two adult men with gunshot wounds, Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas said.

“We are looking for the suspect,” Mayor Michael Hancock said. “We will find that suspect, and we will hold that suspect accountable for his actions this morning in placing everyone in danger and certainly wounding the two staff members who were doing their job and trying to keep everyone safe at the time.”

The student described by the mayor as a African American juvenile with an afro and wearing a hoodie with an “astro” on it, should be looked out for. The student should be considered “armed and dangerous and willing to use the weapon, as we learned this morning,” the mayor said.

The mayor said another student was taken to a hospital because of an allergic reaction. Paramedics were already in the building for that incident when the shooting occurred and so were able to immediately treat those wounded, Hancock said.

The largest and highest-performing comprehensive high school in Denver is East High School, which has 2,500 students in 9th through 12th grades.

The high school is located in the City Park neighborhood of the Colorado capital and is considered a Denver Historic Landmark for its architecture in the Jacobethan Revival style. The school website states that the clock tower on the school is very similar to Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

Denver Public Schools will be doing a controlled release of students once police allow. Students who commuted themselves, those who ride the bus and those who are dropped off by their parents will be escorted to their cars and held on campus until the bus arrives.

A Judge’s Opinion on the Case of Crumbley, an Obscured Child, and a Parent Who Has No Right to JUSTICE

In a written opinion filed Thursday, a panel of judges for the state’s appellate court acknowledged the possible precedent-setting nature of this case – holding parents accountable for a child’s crimes – but called the situation unique and unusual.

“We share defendants’ concern about the potential for this decision to be applied in the future to parents whose situation viz-a-viz their child’s intentional conduct is not as closely tied together, and/or the warning signs and evidence were not as substantial as they are here,” wrote the panel.

The opinion said that the main concern has been diminished by the fact that Crumbley’s actions were reasonably foreseeable.

The judges cited text messages from the months before the massacre, in which Crumbley told his parents he was experiencing paranoia, and that a demon was throwing objects around the house. He sent his mother another message, asking if she could at least text back. The opinion states that his mother didn’t text back that day and that he was riding horses with James.

Crumbley also told a friend that he believed he was having a mental breakdown and asked his parents for medical help but that his father told him to “suck it up” and his mother laughed, according to the opinion.

Michael Riordan wrote that the case was exceptional due to the fact that Crumbley was struggling with his mental health and contemplated violence even after his parents gave him a handgun.

“Our legal system does not, nor should it, criminally punish people for subpar, odd, or eccentric parenting, or require that children be deprived of any instrumentality that otherwise is legal to possess and use. Riordan believes that parents do not believe their children will commit violent crimes. The unusual case is before us. EC was extraordinarily troubled, yet defendants nonetheless provided him with a handgun and, despite having discrete, disturbing evidence that EC contemplated harming others, did nothing when confronted with that evidence.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/us/crumbley-parents-oxford-school-shooting/index.html

Ethan Crumbley and his family are fighting for causation after a grand jury decision ruled there was sufficient evidence to proceed with a trial

The Crumbleys can appeal the Michigan Supreme Court decision which ruled there was enough evidence to proceed with a trial.

The parents of a teenager who shot and killed four students at Oxford High School in Michigan in November 2021 are set to stand trial for involuntary manslaughter after an appellate court last week rejected their contention that the charges have no legal justification.

The murders would not have happened if the parents hadn’t purchased a gun for Ethan Crumbley or if they had taken him home from Oxford High School on the day of the shooting, when staff became alarmed about his extreme drawings, the appeals court said.

“Whether a jury actually finds that causation has been proven after a full trial, where the record will almost surely be more expansive — including evidence produced by defendants — is an issue separate from what we decide today,” the court said in a 3-0 opinion.

Attorneys for the parents insist that what would happen that day was not foreseeable. They acknowledge that bad decisions were made but not ones that should rise to involuntary manslaughter charges.

Judge Michael Riordan said parents don’t need to go to court for subpar or odd care of their kids. He said the evidence against the Crumbleys is more serious.

“The morning of the shooting, EC drew a picture of a body that appeared to have two bullet holes in the torso, apparently with blood streaming out of them, which was near another drawing of a handgun that resembled the gun his parents … had very recently gifted to him,” Riordan said.

Resolving the Nashville School Shooting: Why Shooting a Child in a School isn’t the First Choice of Minority Shootings

The parents’ lawyers declined to comment Thursday, citing a gag order. They’ll likely ask the Michigan Supreme Court to review the case, particularly because that court had ordered the appeals court to hear arguments.

A human chain of children, shepherded by police officers, bolted from the school hit by a tragedy. It was Nashville who joined the list of cities known for their mass shooting epidemic because of its low price for high-powered firearms.

Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all nine years old, were gunned down by a shooter armed with two AR-style weapons and a handgun, two of which police said were bought legally. They should have left Covenant School for the day before the police released their names, but they did not.

Firearms are the leading cause of death in American kids aged 1 to 19, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation based on 2020 data. While schools are not usually the target of guns, they are increasingly vulnerable due to the fact that a lot of guns claim children in violent neighborhoods.

Revealing another tragic web of gun violence consequences, Beasley later told CNN’s Erin Burnett that she had arranged to have lunch with a friend whose son was killed in a mass shooting at a Waffle House in Antioch, Tennessee, five years ago, who called her to let her know her living son was in lockdown in a Nashville school because of Monday’s mass shooting.

At the White House, President Joe Biden diverted from remarks at a previously scheduled event highlighting the role of women in small business to address yet another school shooting.

“I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapons ban. It is time to make more progress, according to Biden. The president knows it’s not possible in the current Congress because Republicans are in charge of the House and Democrats are still short of votes in the Senate. A call for action by the president has become a ritual of mourning, more so than a plea for political coalition building. Biden will be doing something similar very soon.

One of the top Senate Republicans, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, quickly tamped down any ideas that the deaths of three small kids and three adults who looked after them would make any political difference. Cornyn said they have gone about as far as they can go unless someone identifies some area that they didn’t address.

Cornyn expressed distrust in Biden’s remarks, despite his previous role. The president is coming back and forth with the same tired talking points. He is not providing any new ideas or solutions. I think we should consider them if he does, but so far, I haven’t heard anything.

The Texas senator also encapsulated the reality, frustration and limitations of the guns debate. He said that such bans would affect “law-abiding citizens” adding, “I don’t believe those law-abiding citizens are a threat to public safety.”

Cornyn is right that most Americans who own such firearms never infringe the law, use their weapons recklessly or much less launch mass shootings. But at the same time, some of these weapons designed for the battlefield have the capacity to cause enormous carnage in just a few moments. The assailants that open fire with them in schools, shopping malls or bars have sometimes been law-abiding until their attacks.

American’s priority is the rights of which they are concerned with. Is it those citizens who own such weapons who use them, even as a small segment of them use them to wreak havoc and murder? Is it not the victims of gun crime, like the kids and adults that were killed in Nashville, who had their rights taken away in a few seconds of terror?

The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a hero of the conservative movement, wrote in the Heller opinion in 2008 that it was permissible for the government to regulate firearms while remaining faithful to the Second Amendment. He wrote that the right secured by the amendment was not “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

The Republican Party has made a move to the right, and this position has long been overtaken by it.

This lack of any common ground on an issue of deadly importance parallels the wider disconnect in a politically polarized society that increasingly lacks a common cultural understanding.

Young kids going to school on Tuesday may not go home until later in the day because of political paralysis, but most of them will come home on time.

The fact that yet another school shooting took place within days of this decision, as three children and three adults were killed Monday at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, only underscores the urgency of finding ways to prevent these tragedies.

White boys and young men who are used to being in the school are most likely to shoot a school. The Oxford shooter is the same as every other shooter. The facts about this person are well known.

In their recent opinion, judges cited text messages that the perpetrator sent his parents months before the shooting demonstrating paranoia and delusions. Similar warning signs were found in 85% of school mass shooters, and only 22% of them were suicidal. More than 90 percent of school mass shooters communicated plans to their friends in advance of the shooting, and a high degree of planning took place before the shooting. There are allegations that were at play here as well, as more than 70% of all school mass shooting had a history of childhood trauma.

James Crumbley purchased the weapon for his son four days before the shooting, using his son’s own money. He was taken to the range by aJenny to practice. The court testimony shows that the perpetrator hid his gun in his school backpack and retrieved it from an unlocked container in his home.

A Mother Who Did Something Right with Their Child and a Gun For Their Child? The Case of the Crumbleys in Highland Park, Illinois

They may be overwhelmed by their own problems, prone to bouts of anger and neglectful of their children’s needs. They cannot provide a stable environment for their children. Children who grow up in such environments may suffer from early childhood trauma that can lead to a host of psychological and behavioral problems later in life. Criminal prosecution is not in the interests of these parents. The screening of trauma and school-based mental health may help identify the children in these families who need early intervention.

The second type is parents who sense that something is wrong with their child but don’t know what to do or who to turn to for help. Several of the mothers of perpetrators we’ve interviewed fall into this category.

But then there are parents like the Crumbleys, who did more than just not asking for help. They were told something was not right with their child but chose to ignore warning signs, allowing future violence by giving easy access to a gun.

Even though they knew their child had a history of violent behavior or mental illness, they did it. For example, the father of the 2022 Highland Park mass shooter is facing criminal felony charges after agreeing to sponsor his son’s gun license after his son was accused of threatening to kill his family and after his son attempted suicide with a machete. The father has pled not guilty.