On December 14, 2012, the news media rallied around a version of the facts that was partially false. The major media has a long history of getting the facts wrong as happened in Libya, where Americans were fed a pack of lies to promote war.
This article was based on facts as presented by the news media. Some of the facts have changed. However, the problems and likely causes posed by the article remain intact.
The mother was killed at home by her adult male son. Then the son proceeded to the local elementary school, where he shot six adults, all women, and 20 children, mostly girls, ages 6 to 7. No adult males were killed. There was a clear family conflict that had broken up the shooter's family. Based on results, this shooter had an obvious problem with women and girls. Often boys who witness disrespect for and violence against women grow up to harm women themselves. There is an old saying, "Beat your wife and your son will go to jail." Whatever happened in that family, Adam Lanza is dead, along with his mother, six other women and 20 children, mostly girls.
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And the death toll from the shooting may rise.
When the number one killer of women in America strikes, nobody in leadership in America cares enough to do much of anything to diminish the death or dying. The government doesn't even help with funeral or burial costs.
The buck for the Connecticut shooting stops in the oval office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The President and Congress have set the moral temperature of the country. In America, domestic violence deaths are treated as a personal problem, not worthy of concern. At the same time, our government sets its own moral example by bombing helpless women and children in foreign lands and by locking up children who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In Connecticut, Adam Lanza reportedly shot his mother (a kindergarten teacher) in her classroom, 20 school children, the principal and others. His father has been killed earlier. Adam reportedly was carrying his brother Ryan's identification, making it initially appear that his brother was the shooter. Adam, the alleged shooter reportedly killed himself, ending the shooting spree.
The shooting in a Connecticut kindergarten classroom by an adult male of his mother and her students did not happen in a vacuum. There probably were signs at home. Did watching violence at home immunize the gunman to violence against those unable to help themselves? When wives and children call 911, the police find every excuse in the book not to arrest. Boys who grow up in abusive situations often grow up to abuse women themselves. They learn to resent and hate the helpless, blaming the victims for the crimes committed against them. They get angry and often go on to abuse or kill after reaching adulthood. The victims have nowhere to run as they and their loved ones are much more likely to die if they leave or get restraining orders. Women stay to save the lives of their children and their aging parents - choosing to help others over helping themselves. But the cost to the victims is often watching their sons turn to violence, following an example the beaten and abused mothers are powerless to stop.
Look at the victims in the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. The largest number involved 20 helpless elementary children (mostly kindergarteners), who died along with the woman who had raised, loved and clothed the perpetrator. To most of our society, the helpless are others -- none of our business and we'd rather not know or listen to their screams or care when they die, horribly. Those children, who though the years become immunized to attacks on the helpless, often see violence against women and other children as righteous and acceptable. What has our society and our government allowed to be happen to our kids? Why won't our government help women when they cry out, begging for help for themselves, for their aging parents and their children?
Why did Congress fail to save the Violence Against Women Act? Doesn't violence against the helpless matter to our leaders, anymore? I went to Sacramento and spoke with California's leaders and was told that there are more important priorities than saving the lives of women. Tell that to the parents of the children in Connecticut.
What is with America's priorities? Why are police being sent to watch, arrest and tear gas the 99%? What is illegal about the 99% seeking the democracy guaranteed to them by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Why aren't the police, instead, working to end violence against women and children? Why do the police come up with excuse after excuse after excuse for perpetrators of domestic violence such that the police don't have to arrest them? Why are the police, themselves, engaging in violence against and oppression of the helpless?
Why does Eric Holder think that going after newsmen like Julian Assange is more important than helping to handle the biggest crime epidemic in the United States of America? Why is oppressing and terrorizing American citizens who are protesting for their rights more important to our government than men who beat women and children, men who are powder kegs ready to shoot up hair saloons or elementary schools?
In America's largest state with America's worst domestic violence problem, why has California Attorney General Kamala Harris ignored all her campaign promises by refusing to tackle the issue of domestic violence and by ignoring a request form 70,000 police officers to look into a public corruption scandal related to a situation of domestic violence committed by an untouchable perpetrator from the top 1% (or close thereto)? Would those eight from the Seal Beach Salon be alive today if Kamala had gotten her priorities straight? Would most of the others who have died from domestic violence in California since she took office be alive if she had cared at all to do something, anything, to help domestic violence victims before they wind up dead or even after?
Perhaps, it's time for American leaders to start apologizing to the families of the dead for their own roles in creating situations where violence of this nature is allowed to escalate. Should the members of Congress, themselves, be put on trial for what they did and didn't do that resulted in the shooting in Connecticut?
Perhaps Obama should apologize for his role in showing all of America that it is good policy to drone bomb helpless school children in foreign lands to help oil companies get richer or to give billion dollar bailouts to Wall Street bankers as rewards for throwing widows and orphans out of their homes and into the streets to die. Look at how the homeless are treated in America. The homeless DON"T want to be homeless. They are just like you but you may not have been thrown out of your home YET. Too many citizens without consciences want to criminalize homelessness so they don't have to look at their brothers or sisters who have no place to live.
There is no doubt that something took place in the Lanza family. That something devalued the life of the mother. If it hadn't, the son would not have killed his own mother. What was the father doing when the spree began with his death? Had he grown older and become helpless? Did the son suddenly see the father as having become insignificant and unworthy of life or was the father attacking the boy, setting off a chain reaction? Why was Adam's brother Ryan almost framed for killings? What caused the son Adam to feel his mother and those helpless kindergarten kids were not deserving of life and respect? Something in that shooter's family took place that caused him to devalue life and to devalue the innocent and helpless.
How many more American kids will die before our leaders understand that they need to take care of America's families and teach respect for women and the innocent?
Domestic violence is treatable but not by setting the examples of wars, violence and oppression. How can a government that is engaged in its own violence against the helpless set an example of non-violence?
What can be done to get the American Government to care about ending the domestic violence epidemic that just killed 28 in a school in Connecticut? What can be done to get our government to stop being part of the example of violence against the helpless?
Good luck trying to reform our government as it stands. As domestic violence victims quickly learn as soon as they cry out for help, our government leaders just don't care. Those leaders are ready to let us and our families die. Caring isn't about photo-ops for the President. It's about saving lives. Where were Obama and his public relations tears before those kids died? Maybe it's time we started electing people who really do care.
This is not about guns. Men who engage in domestic violence crimes can always find or create weapons to get the job done. This is a time to save the next set of victims. The next domestic violence related kindergarten slaughter could include your child. Care.
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