The deadliest school massacre in US history was in 1927. Why its aftermath matters now.
Lenore Skenazy
Quartz
12/15/2012
In the end there were 38 children dead at the school, two teachers and four other adults.
I’m not talking about the horrific shooting in Connecticut today. I’m talking about the worst school murder in American history. It took place in Michigan, in 1927. A school board official, enraged at a tax increase to fund school construction, quietly planted explosives in Bath Township Elementary. Then, the day he was finally ready, he set off an inferno. When crowds rushed in to rescue the children, he drove up his shrapnel-filled car and detonated it, too, killing more people, including himself. And then, something we’d find very strange happened.
Nothing.
No cameras were placed at the front of schools. No school guards started making visitors show identification. No Zero Tolerance laws were passed, nor were background checks required of PTA volunteers—all precautions that many American schools instituted in the wake of the Columbine shootings, in 1999. Americans in 1928—and for the next several generations —continued to send their kids to school without any of these measures. They didn’t even drive them there. How did they maintain the kind of confidence my own knees and heart don’t feel as I write this?…
The article continues at Quartz.
Also at the site, A Newtown native: “My hometown doesn’t belong to me anymore.”
…If Columbine is any indication, the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary will likely be the main if not the only thing that people think of when they hear the word “Newtown” for decades to come. This is eminently understandable, but I can’t help but feel angry about how unfair it seems as well. Because there is more to my hometown than one horrific shooting, and I want people to know that. I want them to know about the Labor Day Parade and the General Store sandwiches, about Newtown High School soccer and the $2 movies at Edmond Town Hall, about how we put a giant flagpole in the middle of a busy four-way intersection that everyone seems to both love and hate at the same time. I want them to know that St. Rose of Lima isn’t just a place for candlelight vigils but for weddings and baptisms, and I want the Times to know that the adjectives “wooded” and “bucolic” don’t begin to do my town justice…
Here is video of Charles Krauthammer reacting to the horrific Newtown, Connecticut School Massacre that took place on Friday. Krauthammer said a good place to begin in trying to analyze it is with a “good dose of humility. . . this is the problem of evil, and it’s been struggled with forever . . . “
“I Live With A Son Who Is Mentally Ill. I Love My Son. But He Terrifies Me “ This is a chilling story of a mother desperate to prevent her son from becoming a danger to others.
Update 2: Criminal Psychologist: Every One of These Episodes Is Proceeded By Undiagnosed Mental Illness
Dr. Alan Lipman, “The fact is, the facts are, as in Aurora, as in Arizona, as in Virginia Tech, as in virtually every case the Secret Service studied of these kinds of events… Every one of these episodes is proceeded by an undiagnosed, untreated, mental illness.
H/T American Power Blog in an excellent post.
Update 3: Sandy Hook: Chronicling the idiocy on all sides
Updated
