You're saying the Newtown tragedy was faked? That's one of the most offensive comments I've read here.

Peace to folks. Your pain is our as well.

....and their unimaginable loss.

Piggie - you tell the families who lost their kindergarden age children that limitations on assult weapons would be "for nothing".

or staff? Small point...just curious.

Yes, this is a terrible tragedy, on many levels. Many, far to many, were killed. This is always a sad event. Its sad that it keeps happening again and again, with nothing changing. Its sad that politicians will use a tragic event like this to forward their own agendas. Banning assualt rifles would not have stopped this. He didn't buy it. He stole it. From his mother, but still stole it. Criminals will always have guns regardless of how many laws you pass.That has been proven the world over. I mourn for these kids and teachers, but what about the others? Was there a national day of mourning with lowered flags for the dead from Sandy? A week later, they were old news. Next! What about the soldiers being killed in needless wars? Barely mentioned. Our Ambassador and staff? No mention at all. Certainly no official day of mourning. I am very leary of an administration that will ignore many many instances with more loss of life, yet snap to attention and race to offer his deepest condolences for a small act of violence, tragic, but small in comparison, but that serves his agenda. Shame on these politicians. This is a horrible event, but grandstanding to push your agenda is worse. In my opinion.

This tragedy sickened me to the point I couldn't even watch/listen to the news. It was troublesome driving down the road with the children in the car and having to keep flipping the channel because my elementary school kids didn't need to hear about this incident. They shouldn't be made to fear going to school because of irresponsible reporting all over the place.

This was the most painful thing I've seen take place in the US EVER!

I still believe in our constitutional rights, 2nd Amendment, because the only people the government has ever kept guns from successfully are the law abiding citizens, never the criminals. In fact, government is more responsible for giving guns to criminals than keeping guns away from them.

I wish we could keep this type of incident amongst adults and not have it blasted to our children across the nation on every media outlet. Elementary school students should never have to question if they will live or die on any given day because these incidents happen in other parts of the country.

Kpawsuh, I gave you a thumbs up for your post even though I disagree with some of it. What I liked about your post was you seem to be thinking deeply and that is actually rare for posters. A lot of times people parrot political party rants.

I agree that there are vastly worse tragedies happening all the time. Tragedies of this magnitude, in terms of number or deaths, happen every day to our soldiers and to innocent bystanders in war in Afghanistan for example. We eat crap in this country, we get fat, and we don’t know why because the media isn’t reporting that corporate lobbyist own the food supply. One has to look to obtuse sources these days to even learn what food should be. You won’t find it in a school lunch. Our children think it normal to own a big screen tv and an arsenal of video games. Orders of magnitude more school children will die of obesity and cancer than will ever die from schoolyard shootings and yet people are scared witless over guns in schools.

So far I agree with you but I think you got one aspect wrong. This shooting is a big deal and people should be concerned. I could be wrong of course. I don’t think the media is covering it because of the numbers of dead. I don’t think we have a national day of mourning because of the number of dead. I think people are shocked to the core at the brutality and senselessness of the whole thing. I know I am. I disagree with a lot of things Obama has done but I think he did the right thing this time by speaking to the country about this. I think the flags should be at half staff. Not because the number of dead is high. The old punk “Strangers die every day” doesn’t apply here. People are shocked at this violence because the victims were so innocent and the motive so strange.

This sort of violence strikes fear because we haven’t developed ways to process the risk and that makes us scared. The risks you spoke of like the war in Afghanistan are certainly worse but we have coped with war for millennia. For better or worse, psychologically we are prepared for all the stuff you talked about. Ambassadors get killed sometimes because we need diplomats even in war torn countries. We applaud their courage but their deaths don’t strike fear at our core. We have coping mechanisms that allow us to feel safe even if we are not. Note, that coping mechanisms against fear don't actually have to work; they just have to be in place and make us think they work.

We have not built a set of mental safeguards for the sort of insanity that happened in Newtown. It could happen here and there is no way to see it coming. We tend to think nobody will kill us because nobody has a motive to kill us. That mental safety net changes when some nut starts killing people for no apparent reason. The shooting in Newtown was a form of terrorism that many people don’t know how to process. That the criminal probably didn’t intend it as terrorism doesn’t matter.

His actions struck terror.

While I agree that more people will be killed by doughnuts than guns, nobody fears a doughnut. Perhaps we should.