Oxnard shooting victim has died

Please tell me it hasn't come to this
Students grieve, parents worry, police explore possible motives in classroom shooting

Investigators are cautious about proclaiming a motive in a shooting Tuesday at an Oxnard, California junior high school. The victim, Lawrence King, age 15, has died.

The Associated Press reports that King had been under the care of the county's foster care system, and lived at a center for abused and neglected children. Meanwhile, he remains on a ventilator while his family decides whether or not to authorize organ donation.

Whatever the motive turns out to be, the underlying question remains as to what the hell has happened. I went to school in a fairly safe place. It was a Jesuit school. We didn't pack heat. In fact, school security worried less about the established gangs and more about wanna-be gangstas who thought they had something to prove. And since none of these were among the student-body, it was not an everyday concern.

Nonetheless, I went to school in Tacoma, a city wracked over the years by gang violence. We were accustomed to hearing about it in the streets, and occasionally in the form of beatings and stabbings in school hallways. It is hard to envision the scene when a fourteen year-old walks into a classroom and puts two into a fellow student as two dozen classmates watch in horror. How, exactly, does this come about? What is at stake?

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The face of grief: Jocelyn Salinas, 13, weeps for a friend.
(Image: Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times)​

This world has gone and drug us along and
Nothing's the same, and it will never be again.
It's never gonna be the same.

And all these lives that make no sense,
All along we cry in our defense.
All of us go down slow,
Then we rise again.
But just like the tide on the sea,
We lower and rise again ....

(Floater, "Endless II")​

____________________

Notes:

Saillant, Catherine and Steve Chawkins. "Student shot in Oxnard". Los Angeles Times. February 13, 2008. See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oxnard13feb13,1,7688402.story

Associated Press. "Official: Shooting Victim Brain Dead". SFGate.com. February 14, 2008. See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/02/13/state/n173105S00.DTL

See Also:

LATimes.com. "Oxnard school shooting". See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oxnard13feb13-pg,1,440424.photogallery

 

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How many more columbines before Gun Control ? Those that believe that gun control is a form of government intrusion, Tell that to this boy.
We here in Australia have not had a death in ages.

 

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Hope itself lies bleeding

Well, that's a tough question. For some reason, I think we're supposed to get an answer soon. Except that the Court may actually duck the broader question and simply rule on the D.C. statute in question.

What really hurts this time is that this one might be for ridiculous reasons. As if gang violence wasn't stupid enough. As if backlash against bullying wasn't enough of a mess. And, I suppose, there is the occasional random insanity.

But this ... this might be for something as stupid as homophobia. Look, we can't stop every crime from happening. There will always be the occasional psychopath. But the rest, we need to figure out what the hell is going on. Dylan and Klebold? Maybe if we had done something about the melodrama of the bullies and snobs versus the misfits. Gang violence? Oh, shit. Everything is screwed up about that. But, theoretically, we can alleviate that sort of violence. Homophobia, though? Please tell me it hasn't come to this. Tragedy hurts. Stupid tragedy ... well ... the kids just don't need this.

It's a really weird thing to sit here and stare at the screen and hope someone has a "good" reason for murdering someone else.

I mean, a "good" reason? What the hell does that even mean?

That picture breaks my heart. There's a few in there. One of Jocelyn's mother trying to "cheer her up". Another of a mother smiling because she finally gets to see her son. The kid, though ... he's barely holding together. Some of the faces are those of shock. And some show a true grief.

And what will anyone tell Mariah Thompson?

Sometimes we look down on faith. But a certain faith has shattered. If this was random sociopathy, you tell her that some things you just can't predict, and thus cannot prevent. And our sacrificial lambs are laid to rest because that's just how it goes. This doesn't seem to be so random, though. And it might be for supreme stupidity. With the gangs, sometimes, a kid scared for his life would just cap someone, and that was bad enough. Dylan and Klebold cracked, and lashed back with incredible ferocity. But this? When the empowered kills the vulnerable? These kids may well have just seen the face of evil. And nothing will ever be the same for them.

I mean, I'm begging the midnight sky that there's another reason. Anything, as long as it hasn't come to this.

"Don't let them get to you," she said. That's a good kid. And now she's seen the face of hatred. Now she knows that it doesn't matter, because if they want to get to you, they will get to you.

Hope itself bleeds right now. And those wounds hurt. I've felt hope bleed before, but that ... that was a fucking paper cut compared to this.

 

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I hope you get an answer soon too.

We can't exactly say, "well, he wouldn't have died, If we'd just bothered to ensure that people can't buy guns this easily, You know, It's just to much paperwork" But it does contain a small element of truth. The way we have it here in Aus, is you can own a gun if you've gone through a background check, the rifle/gun is not automatic, and you have a legit reason for owning it.

This is needless. Do we know how he got the gun ? Aren't there lots more cases of school shootings in the US than any other country ? (if Bowling for Columbine's any indication). Although, yes, shit happens, but shit doesn't have to needlessly happen.

I agree, She's a good kid, If someone vulnerable feels that they can trust you and you don't betray it, You're a good kid. Like you say, She saw the face of evil,her and many others like her will not be the same, (those that knew the victim).

We could sit around and continue to say it was a tragedy and wring our hands, but apathy in the end will win over. Unless someone steps up to the plate. I'm not sure if any of the presidential contenders have instituted gun reform, No offense, but I feel safer down under.

 

But what gun control?

What gun control would have stopped this? We're a nation of 300,000,000 spread over nearly 10,000,000 square miles. There are over a quarter-billion guns in the United States. I'm not sure what, implemented when, would have had an effect. If, for instance, it turns out this gun came from an otherwise "responsible gun owner" (stole his dad's, or bought a street piece stolen from a responsible gun owner), what can be done? We're founded on Revolution. The Constitution isn't going to get rid of guns anytime soon.

Whether this is homophobia, general bullying, or some wild-eyed claim to self-defense, or pretty much anything short of genuine, pathological psychiatric dysfunction, part of what we need to figure out is why. As the gun glorifiers remind, "Guns don't kill people; people kill people". To take their point to heart, we must realize that if the shooter hadn't gotten a gun, he would have stabbed or bludgeoned or garroted his victim to death°.

So the question more urgently, as I see it, should examine the reasons why people kill one another. Firearms have served the country reasonably well through history. Most of our gun-violence troubles extend from government prohibitions (alcohol, then drugs), and cluster around poverty. Crimes of passion, for instance, are likely to occur anyway. Certain stupid "accidental shootings" that should have been prevented ... well, the problem is that negligence has, for a long time, gone unpunished°.

What makes this crime different from others is that it doesn't appear to be a victim lashing out at aggressors. Rather, it appears to be an aggressor escalating to a new level. This doesn't make sense to me. And if—if, if, if—it turns out that homophobia is the multiplier, it's going to be very hard for civil rights advocates to not point to this case and say, "Do you see what it gets us?"

Regardless of homophobia, though, we must figure out what was important enough to kill for. And that is an interesting question. "Is our children learning?" asks the infamous question. Yes. And this is what our children is learning. And it's not the gangsta rap, or television and movies. These are values that children learn, or fail to learn, at home.

And in the case of homophobia, they can learn it from the Bible.
_____________________

Notes:

° stabbed or bludgeoned or garroted — A curious thing about the school system that seems to still hold true: if the perpetrator had walked into class and simply tried to strangle or beat the victim to death with his bare hands, and failed, the victim, as well as anyone who tried to stop the beating, would have joined the perpetrator in being punished. That's an old tactic of American schoolyard bullies. Especially since, at least for my generation, parents didn't necessarily care why a kid was in trouble. Seriously, even I've been through it before. There are plenty of kids whose parents have spanked, grounded, or otherwise punished them for the crime of being assaulted at school. And, hey, send the victim to detention, and often he's suddenly surrounded by the bully and fellow aggressors, who are regulars, so the torment continues.

° negligence has, for a long time, gone unpunished — In the 1990s, there was a case in Oregon City, Oregon, in which the parents left the five year-old in charge of his three year-old daughter. The little girl disobeyed, so the boy went upstairs, got the loaded rifle from under the bed, and shot her to death. Local prosecutors buckled to pressure and refused to file negligence charges for either leaving the weapon accessible or leaving the children alone. The DA's office didn't want to be seen as persecuting Mormons. There is actually a litany of stupid incidents I drag out from time to time. It seems to me similar idiocies are prosecuted more often of late, but it's amazing what turns out to be "nobody's fault".

 

Tiassa, in following challanger i have some recomendations that come from my own countries experiance

1) Gun control
2) GUN CONTROL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3) do i have to say it again

4) universal health care
5) PROPER mental health care
6) a system that actually helps those who are being bullied and those who are doing the bulling

Im tired of watching incidents like this and having people say there is nothing that can be done, we need guns, we dont want universal health and mental health care, and "boys will be boys"

Would it surprise you to learn that there ARE no security guards at australian schools?
That dealing with violance in the yard is the teachers responcability to catch and then the principle and the parents.

Would it surprise you to learn that i can only think of ONE school shooting that has happened in Australia and that was at monash uni when adam was still here?

If you actually catch these people and either stop there behavior (if it was hatred related) or help them (if they are bullied or depressed) you wont HAVE these problems

Im begining to think the US is a lost case, that the sooner your sociaty falls the sooner it can be fixed. Half the problems you have seem to come from the bill of rights especially the second amendment

 

Go tell it on the mountain

Sure. Say it again. Say it as much as you want.

Many gun advocates in this country would call me a fascist for my policies, which include mandatory safety education for all owners/shooters, registration of all firearms, owner liability for every round discharged from a registered—owned—weapon (in other words, there are no accidents), and, if I didn't despise the insurance industry so much (there are a couple other issues, too), mandatory liability insurance.

Nonetheless, even if I got my way, I cannot say those measures would have prevented this shooting.

Thus, I reiterate the question: What gun control would have stopped this?

I don't have an answer for it. I mean, perhaps my policies would change owners' attitudes about what constitutes "responsible gun ownership", but that's a long process, and it's tough to build the argument that those changes would have somehow prevented this shooter from obtaining this firearm and shooting this victim.

Amen. It's a hard case to make to my fellow Americans. In my time, compassion toward mental illness has come about largely in response to people's proximity to it. Once they see it in someone they know and love, Americans tend to liberalize a bit on such issues.

Not at all.

Indeed. Just to reaffirm, though, the hatemongers need our compassion and help, too.

The problem doesn't come from the Bill of Rights. It comes from a lack of good faith among Americans, which problem can be generally attributed to two interrelated paradigms infecting so many of my countrymen: the poison that we call Christianity, and the poison we call Capitalism. Both advocate greed mitigated only by political calculation. That is, the only tempering of greed comes from the need to create an appearance that one is not greedy. From the outset, good faith is undermined. And that corruption seems to infect everything.

 

for the first the thing that would protect people from guns is BANNING them. Only farmers should be even allowed to keep guns on there own premise, hunting will become illegal anyway and sporting shooters can keep theres at the sporting club. Even the police don't bring there guns home here, they are locked up at the police station until they sign on and go out on patrol

As for the problems inherant in the US system i agree but i would go one step further, and thats your fear and hatred of your own goverment. As long as goverments (especially goverment departments) are feared why would people who want to make the country a better place for ALL go into public office. Think about the police, here the MAJORITY of there work is so called comunity policing and mental health. Not to kill mental pts (although that happened way to often in victoria) but to help them.

I mean read the speach i posted of kevin Rudd about the aborigional population, tell me ONE of those things that in the US wouldnt be critised as being to socialist? Even the right of the country is there to help people (because if they didnt they would be thrown out of office)

Goverment is about more than roads, foreign affairs and the millarty. Hell even the millarty is about more than killing foreigners. They are there to be used in natural disasters as well. I dont agree with everything that our goverment does and i CERTINALLY dont agree with the libs much but even they would never abolish medicare or social secruities. Until you start trusting your goverment your not going to get the help from them you deserve and until you get that help your not going to trust your goverment so i dont see anything but another civil war fixing this problem

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Right. And have fun storming the castle.

Perhaps it's a blunt explanation, but you live in a country that voted to retain the Crown. We took up arms and expelled the Crown in part because we didn't get a vote.

Furthermore, our gun owners frequently assert that a well-armed populace keeps a government in line. This is traditional wisdom in the U.S. dating back to, well, the revolutionaries.

And, while the government is well out of hand these days, can you imagine what it would be like if the population wasn't so thick with angry, undereducated, well-armed citizens?

Again, it comes back to good faith. To judge by your words, your government generally isn't dangerous to its citizens. Ours is.

Banning guns would be a long and very bloody process in the United States. Seriously: Americans will fight until they've spent their last round. And they still won't give over. Not on this. Maybe that would amuse the hell out of some of our neighbors on the planet, and I do confess I wonder what it will take to set this country ablaze from sea to shining sea. But I don't think it's something the human species really wants to see. The ripple effect would cost lives abroad to the point that we could call it a culling of the herd. I'm not prepared to endorse that outcome.

 

In the end i guess it comes down to how much people are willing to pay. If your willing to pay in lives every week then the rest of the world will look down on you and nothing will ever get better. In the end you will be the next 3rd world and we will be debating sending in peace keepers to keep you in line. If your not then the first step is political and it requires RADICAL political change. You have to go from a goverment you fear to one you trust (im not talking about trusting politions but rather trusting departments). I have no idea how to get your country there but thats what the destionation is. Its like the problems with aborigional wealfare, they have been neglected for so long very few people can see a solution even in there own sociaty but everyone knows it has to be achived, I see your whole sociaty that way. How do you fix the basic structure of a whole sociaty? I guess it has to start with a political solution. I could sugest the first step is to ban political donations and pay for election campaines out of the public purse. That way you could have more confidence that the politions are acting for the public good rather than the corprate good, then you need people who HAVE the public good in mind when they run for public office rather than using it for a steping stone for coprate life. I would also sugest that the office of president be made compleatly ceromonial like our head of state is and move towards a parlimentry system where politions can run for more than 2 terms so LONG term solutions to problems are possable

Now is any of that likly in the US???
I dont know, i see your whole sociaty as a form of depression and i have no idea what the SSRI will be

 

One of the problems I'm having with the gun-control argument right now is that this isn't the time for it.

When we know more about how this crime came about, there might well be a discussion to be had. But we might also be facing a strange circumstance in which the shooter went to great effort to steal the gun from what even I would call a responsible gun owner.

The Second Amendment won't be changed without good faith. To the other, with good faith among the people, there would be no need to amend the constitution on that point.

This is a psychological, a moral, indeed a spiritual crisis among the American people.

One facet of the solution is what I would call "Operation Rainy Day Women". Obviously, getting high won't solve everything, but the people really do need to get irie. One of the best ways to radically interrupt a cycle of perspective is with drugs. I highly recommend copious marijuana and mild doses of psilocybin.

 

Gun control won't solve anything. When a POS murderer wants to get a gun it's easier than getting milk at the corner store in many places. More people should have guns. If they did they could stop pukes like this who think it's ok to kill innocent people.

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Check the stats. In the areas where they have the highest rates of guns (concealed, with permits) they have the lowest gun crime rates.

It starts with the parents. Discipline and proper upbringing would make sure a person NEVER thought it was ok to kill an innocent person.

And when some POS starts shooting like the POS today in IL, someone with a concealed gun could have taken him out after the first shot. 16 other people would have been spared.

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Tiassa what about the other sugestions i made to fix your whole goverment?

Your other option is as sandy sugested to fear EVERYONE and shoot everyone who might look like harming you. At that point sociaty ceases to exist anymore anyway so why the fuck bother?

 

Not true. You only shoot someone who is already shooting or attempting to shoot. Check the stats. I'm serious. Concealed licensed guns save lives.

 

of corse sandy, so does BANNING guns and having a decent social secrity system, universal health care system, social housing and a half decent mental health system

How many murders do you have a year?
We have less than 30

 

and highest gun deaths

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7246003.stm

Again.

 

Challenger78 was the aussie on there you?

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if it was i agree with you 100%

 

It would be irresponsible to assume gun control is the answer in the resolution of violence when both hate and uncontrolled emotion are the true source of incidents such as this. There is no way to remove all that may be used as a weapon in the heat of anger or the vicious cycle of revenge. It would be far more beneficial to teach our young how to control their emotions and the meaning of tolerance and compassion. For a child to believe murder is an appropriate action to settle a dispute one must wonder at their reasoning and the important information the child was lacking in order to make an informed decision. Children do not think beyond the deed, they cannot without direction. Maybe instead of “what if”, the question of “what then” should be addressed early in life. As children, my generation, (around the time the wheel was invented) was directed by what is now defined as child abuse along with the religious factor. Both answered the “what then” through the threat of a swat on the back side and through preaching eternal damnation or at least a long stay in purgatory, in other words, community involvement and consequences. Community involvement, morality and compassion should not be pulled from storage with our holiday decorations once a year and served sparingly . . . rather is should be served as a staple in our daily life from birth.

 

That seemed a little low to me so i did a search on murder rate with google just covering australia and turned up the following as the first result...
Buyback has no effect on murder rate
And also:-

It's a few years old however 256 is considerably more than 30, where does 30 come from?