Several Killed in Amish School Shooting

The lackof conscience and morals today

I'm not trying to play Devil's advocate or take some self-aggrandising high road as a "moral crusader", as one of my friends just harshly accused me, but how does the fact that this was an Amish school make the tradegy any greater? The only difference is that it's more vulnerable to media sensationalisation. How is this any worse than if a bunch of little black girls in inner-city Philadephia had been killed the same way? If anything, the media attention surrounding this almost undermines the fact that this sort of thing happens all the time, but we're just more likely to dismiss it when it happens in an environment where we've come to expect it.

Hurting people hurt other people!

students today are frustrated and very angry. I know this because I have taught in high school for many years. You do your best to try and reach them, but sometimes is is futile. There are too many violent video games and no parental respect for education; too many teenagers are left home on their own without supervision. The parents blame the schools and badmouth teachers at home. No one wants to accept responsibility. That is why this is my last year teaching.

I think the world is getting to be a scarier place every day. My kids are grown now but I worry about street violence, work place violence, and home invasion for them and about all kinds of violence for my grandchildren. And I pray a lot. A couple of weeks ago in our area, in the daytime, a manager at Taco Bell was shot by a robber. That scares me a lot because my 23 year old son works at Taco Bell and works nights until 4 a.m. It seems like nowhere is really safe. And everywhere we go, more and more security measures are being added until it feels like we are in an armed camp. At the Y we can't even use the bathroom without being buzzed in. I don't have the answers but I have plenty of questions.

people dont kill people, guns kill people.

Soren Rask, moral crusader, you make a very good point.

I think part of what bothered me about this shooting was not that they were Amish, it was that it happened to a school that had no connection to their attacker. As of right now, I dont think anyone has tied the gunman to the school. Most of the school shooting victims in general are innocent....

Soren is right, it is a school, they were children. The fact that they were Amish should not come into the discussion except to say that these children were being raised in a world that is known to be anti-violent and they met their death in one of the most violent ways possible....by another human being. It is simply another senseless act of violence. And Emily, I heard someone report that the shooter WAS Amish...whether that is true or not will be discovered in the next few days. As it is, he was still a very disturbed man to kill innocent children in the way in which he did.

What a horrible thing to happen. It's bad enough that this person felt such desperation that he needed to do something, but to center out these young, innocent girls is disgusting. Wish they would find some way to get a better control over people using guns.

Couple points. I know how stupid this may sound, but if you have lived around old order Amish and seen Amish girls of this age in the type of garb that they wear it would tend bring perhaps a greater emmotional reaction to the deed. The other thing about this is that the publicity is extremely ironic and serves no purpose -- Amish children, at least the ones that I lived near and dealt with for about three decades are not angry children, the media frenzy is going to serve no worthwhile purpose since the media stories will not reach the Amish community except through the Amish papers, and these people are about the most non-violent people that I have ever encountered.

Among the many things which upset me about these tragedies, and there
are many of them, is that the more often they happen, and are sensationalised,
the more malcontents will target schools. But the media will always heighten
school sieges, therefore they'll become mainstream and more of them will happen.
I can't see any way out. Perhaps someone ought to educate TV editors, and
thereby, in the long run, save innocent, young lives.

Such incidents are always a terrible tragedy. We just had one in Montreal two weeks ago. It is becoming more and more prevalent and one really has to wonder why.

There are laws governing hand gun purchases. I have a copy of the form and no where does it ask "are you carrying a grudge" or "do you intend to lose your mind".
It does ask if you have every been declared mental unfit. 20 years is a long time to hold a grudge. I think we need to wait to see what else was in the suicide note before we catorgize this shooting tragic as it is.

People with guns kill people. Let's be realistic.

I was born in Lancaster County and its so sad to see this happen. I worry everyday about my kids in school. It seems now that this could happen anywhere.

There are so many illegal guns on the street that harsher gun laws are not going to accomplish much. And to say that video games are to blame for this is a load of crap. I am sorry, but have we forgotten a common known thing called "personal responsibility." I have played many of those games and to say that they can train you to be an assassin is insane. When is it that we are going to stop blaming everyone and everything else and finally take the initiative to hold those who act out accountable for there own actions.

how can you argue that someone is not brought closer to potentially shooting someone by shooting thousands upon thousands of people in video games? But i dont think the answer is tightening media laws or manipulating media any more than it already is so as not to give so much attention to these crimes - it has to be gun control. The shooting in Canada - MArtha J - do you have any stats about gun control in canada and the US and correlations to gun violence?

He is one sick dude.

Ah, yes, personal responsibility....
Amish - peacable folk......
children - undeserving of this violence.

Human beings need to rethink their nature, and try to control the violent tendencies. Gun control is essential. No one ever ran into a building and killed 7 people with a knife.
Those who believe in the right to bear arms, and I DO!, must realize that proper licensing and waiting periods are not infringing on their rights. Background checks in many cases would keep the guns out of the hands of very troubled people.

Sad, sad, sad.

Although I agree that this is a tragedy, regardless of where it happened, the fact that it was an Amish community is relevent. Since it was a one room schoolhouse, this means that if all 11 girls die, this would literally wipe out all the girls within this age group in the entire community!!
The news said that the shooter chose this school because of easy access, and it was 3 miles from his home. It did not say he was Amish.
I think what hurts the most in most of these shootings is 1. Parents having to bury their children, and 2. When the shooter kills himself, the family's usually do not learn the "why" behind their child's death.
This community deserves our prayers.
I just heard that Congress cut money for school security by 20% last year. At a time when we are protecting our ports, airports, and President, why are we not protecting our children????? Why are they not worthy of the financial help to protect them? I will bet the Congress hasn't cut their security money!

For one thing, both of the Columbine shooters had been on SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) drugs -- which have also been linked to cases of mothers killing their own children. But the mainstream media news won't report this -- because look who provides all their ads: the drug companies. Then look at it from a criminal's perspective. Where would you make your attack, other than a place without guns (public schools) or violence (Amish schools)? But government schools are based on violence -- kids are forced to attend, and taxpayers are forced to fund them. If we want to reduce violence there, we need to get government out of school. Hold every person accountable for his or her actions. And look at the abuses of No Child Left Behind -- military recruiters get access to kids, and quite a few have been harassed and assaulted. Punish the criminals, and protect our basic human rights of (armed) self-defense. Because not knowing who is armed, is the best deterrent against crime and criminals!

Well, shoot! When I was a kid we shot BB guns out of the window at squirrels. And my Dad took us over to the Rod and Gun Club to practice skeet...but well, I can see this is rather different, of course. But what I am saying is kids had availability to guns back then as they do now, but the world is a very populated place. The times are different now.

I watched this story unfold today, could not bring myself to post up and article on it, perhaps too shocked at what I was watching.

I agree with the sentiments. If this kind of tragedy can happen in a small rural Amish school house, it can happen anywhere. Further, what kind of a grudge 20 years old could cause anyone to take out their rage on innocent children?

I rated you a 10 because this is exactly the sort of thing we MUST discuss, and you led us into it in a helpful way. Good work.

A society, like an individual, can be possessed.

When we allow ourselves to be hypnotized and spoon-fed trash by immature and irresponsible media producers, we lower our spiritual vibrations - we may even sustain injuries in our energy fields - "holes" - and thus allow parasitic entities to take residence and drain us. Look at our society - full of holes! The standard-setters for education are working for the "phony self" rather than the Authentic Self - they're working to undermine the will, instead of to awaken the Will-To-Good. How is this done?
1.Teaching-to-the-test: expecting nothing more than regurgitation of material facts, which may or may not be Truth. Facts are appearance-related. Truth is related to Original Source. Facts can incite or discourage. Truth always encourages and heals.
2.Society allowing immature media producers (TV, Movies,Internet, Tabloids, Billboards, Radio ads, etc) to promote materialistic greed/violence and sexual "fixes" [addictions] to all within reach. No limits for immature, irresponsible media producers. These limits should be coming from inside the producers themselves - so something has disabled them, has blocked their maturity, and something is blocking and draining the maturing of our society. Blocked maturation - with no mature role models for youth - is often so frustrating that rage results.
3.No initiations for "Fire Medicine" (Fire Medicine includes sexuality as well as weapons-use). Think about it: there is an epidemic of child-soldiers on the planet, carrying an incredible array of automatic weapons - and there are no masters to initiate them into the spiritual responsibility of warriorhood. If they were all put through martial arts training first, they would never be allowed to touch a weapon until they'd mastered a lot of practices requiring respect, self-discipline, endurance, and so forth. We treat our young people - all over the world - like spiritual garbage, when we hand them weapons without Masters to initiate them.

Heart Breaking!

it is very terrible, and senseless and shocking because it is amish, I have never heard of it before.

We just had it happen in montreal, I wrote two stories here on gather about it. It couldn't happen in Canada and as I walked by.

The slaughter of the French Albigensis was done with knife and sword.
Julius Caesar slaughtered the Gauls at Cenabaum with knife and sword.
And, in the UK a madman with a Samurai sword ran amok in a church
in Thornton Heath, South London (Google BBC articles) a year or two
ago. If there's a will to massacre innocents, a way can *always* be
found. Chemical agents on the Japanese underground?

Gun control helps here in the UK, that's common sense. But promoting
decency and good community relations helps more. Ghandi stopped
the massacres on both sides, Hindu and Muslim, by fasting. How many
statesmen could achieve such a feat today?

It is terrible, senseless slaughter. What is disturbing is the victims are carefully chosen to sensationalize the event. The perpetrator of this dastardly act must have had an eye on the power of the media and the amount of adverse publicity that it will generate.

Schools now need protecting. I remember when Bob Geldof wasn't
that famous, his band sang about Brenda Ann Spencer's shooting
at a Californian school in 1979. I was young then, but I imagine
that such incidents were relatively rare back then. Now they happen
all the time. American schools now need permanent security.

The US government is thinking about it, but incompetently!
[1] What's the probability of a suicide bomber in a school? (Perhaps Zero!)
[2] What's the probability of a nutter with a gun in one? (100%)
I rest my case!
http://www.schoolsecurity.org/terrorist_response.html

You get a lovely Ten... Yea For you!!!! :)