Deadly School Shooting in Santa Fe, Texas

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1. lneasbitt says:

   May 18, 2018 at 12:11 pm

   I live 30 minutes southwest of Santa Fe, TX and witnessed officers stopping traffic and speeding by me on the way to the scene around 8am. The shooter was a student at Santa Fe High School and a football player. He was seen in a trench coat with a shotgun, not an AR-15, and began shooting in the art room. I’m not in support of AR-15s or shotguns. What I am in support of is parents being more involved in their children’s lives. I have a former colleague that works at this HS, and he reports this HS is riddled with gang members and what he calls “thugs” who experience little to no involvement in their lives from their parents. Santa Fe is a very small community.

   Reply
   • BackAgain says:

     May 18, 2018 at 1:18 pm

     A thug without a gun cannot inflict as much damage as a thug with a gun. It is quite disingenuous to blame the parents for the overall economic situation and for easy access to firearms.

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2. Gary Turetsky says:

   May 18, 2018 at 12:36 pm

   We will do what we always do – say prayers, have televised town halls, hear from Trump and the NRA that we need to arm teachers, and then hope against hope that the next school shooting doesn’t happen for, at least, a while.

   At times like these I turn to Mark Twain for wisdom, if not comfort:

   “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to”.
   – Following the Equator, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar

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3. BackAgain says:

   May 18, 2018 at 12:42 pm

   Considering questions like https://www.quora.com/How-many-private-school-or-charter-school-shootings-have-there-been one might think maybe there is something bigger is lurking below the surface. Are these shooters really lone loonies?

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4. Joe says:

   May 18, 2018 at 12:50 pm

   It’s horrible and unspeakable that these massacres continue and we (as a nation) cannot muster the will to do anything substantive or meaningful. Instead, we get morally bankrupt vultures like Oliver North blathering about gun rights and the 2nd amendment.

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5. retired teacher says:

   May 18, 2018 at 12:50 pm

   The easy availability of assault weapons and a young populace with a greater amount of depression often due to stress or social media is not a good combination. We need to revise our gun laws and offer more supports to young people.

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6. Charles says:

   May 18, 2018 at 1:39 pm

   “The song remains the same” – Led Zeppelin

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7. BackAgain says:

   May 18, 2018 at 1:47 pm

   The news is not on the Wikipedia front page. Why? Here are some comments from those who were either for or against promoting the news to the front page:

   Oppose: business as usual. 
   Weak Oppose: Mass shootings are just so common in the US that I can’t see posting them unless there is something that sets them apart from all of the others.
   Oppose. Sadly, it is just another day another school shooting in the USA.
   Oppose. Yet another mass shooting in a country where such things are (sadly) common. I’ll be willing to reassess if unexpected details emerge, but right now I’m not seeing anything that makes this one so exceptional that it merits an ITN blurb.
   Oppose. Yet another school shooting in the US, I am not surprised, the death toll is notably low and these are starting to become commonplace as one user above notes. Despite common belief, It will likely have no long-term impact, similar to most of the other shootings in recent years.
   Oppose – Let’s just accept it’s become a part of the ingrained culture nowadays like taking out the garbage or going to the supermarket.

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8. The blame game says:

   May 18, 2018 at 2:25 pm

   Why is it that we always need to blame someone. In this case people are blaming the parents, people in other cases blame the school, blame the teacher, blame the police….when will we blame the kids…oh I guess they don’t know anything right. Children are given easy passes for almost anything they do these days and the boneheads keep looking for someone to blame.

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   • dianeravitch says:

     May 18, 2018 at 2:55 pm

     Blame easy access to guns. Children should not have guns. Neither should anyone who doesn’t have a permit.

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9. joe prichard says:

   May 18, 2018 at 2:59 pm

   I located a 2016 demographics page….77% white, 19 % hispanic, .07 black. that distribution did not happen by accident. I would not hold my breath waiting for an usual amount of complaint regarding the NRA. There should be some….

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10. Lloyd Lofthouse says:

    May 18, 2018 at 3:48 pm

    The NRA will find someone or something else to blame and then push the “fear” button that “liberals” want to take their firearms away from them. The NRA and the Alt-Right (Bannon types) want all the deplorables that support Trumpism to crawl out of their cesspools and vote in the midterms.

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    • dianeravitch says:

      May 18, 2018 at 4:03 pm

      I want to take their guns away from them. This kid in Texas who killed 10 people took his father’s guns. His father should be held criminally responsible.

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      • Lloyd Lofthouse says:

        May 18, 2018 at 4:08 pm

        From Newsweek:

        When Kids Pull the Trigger, Who is Responsible? Not Gun Owners, the NRA Says

        “It had not been hard for Tiller to get the gun. The weapon belonged to his father, and the boy had found it right where he thought he would, stored in an unlocked closet, loaded.” …

        “Just 14 states have negligent firearm storage laws, or statutes that mandate adults take precautions to secure their guns in such a way that children cannot access them. But of those, only four states (Florida, California, Massachusetts and Connecticut), along with the District of Columbia, allow for felony charges.”

        http://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/21/when-kids-pull-trigger-who-responsible-507656.html

      • retired teacher says:

        May 18, 2018 at 5:25 pm

        Conservatives are always making a case for personal responsibility. Parents should be required to have guns in a locked gun cabinet for the safety of their children.

      • Duane E Swacker says:

        May 18, 2018 at 6:24 pm

        I can’t agree with the father being held criminally responsible.

        I believe that the killer is 17 years old. In this country a child can signup in the military to kill, maim destroy others at the age of 17*. He should be tried as an adult and given the maximum sentence.

        *The unspoken truth of the matter is that this country is awash in death, destruction, violence and it all starts at the top of the society, the government and its military might. Why do we not expect these massacres to occur when that death and destruction has been with this country since the beginning and having completely dominated society since WW2. Reap what ye sow, eh!

      • Jon Lubar says:

        May 18, 2018 at 9:39 pm

        Duane, if my kids have a party at my house, even if I dont know about it and someone gets drunk and dies as a result, I the homeowner am held responsible. The house is my property and my responsibility to control vis a vis what goes on there, just as it is the shooters dads responsibility to maintain control of his firearms. Properly secured, even a thief couldn’t use them for evil. Want them for,protection? Unlock and position them after you get home, lock them back up when you leave for work. There’s no excuse for leaving them lying around like an umbrella. Firearms are in a separate class of things that demand a greater degree of responsible handling.

      • Norwegian Filmmaker says:

        May 18, 2018 at 11:23 pm

        retired teacher,

        There are no more conservatives. There are only extremists who live in a new wild anarchy-ridden west.

    • KrazyTA says:

      May 18, 2018 at 6:15 pm

      retired teacher: the searing hypocrisy and double standards of con artists are like zombies that keep coming back from the dead…

      Yes, personal responsibility is the ticket when denying help to the desperately needy…but when a father’s guns are used by a son to commit mass murder, well, then it’s perfectly obvious that not only does the father bear no responsibility whatsoever, he is [hold onto your hats!] the real victim in all this because people are going to blame him. Boo hoo hoo!

      Yes, school “choice” is a natural, nay sacred, right…until it comes to communities choosing to adequately support and fund their neighborhood public schools. Then they’re unjustly denying top administrators and owners from making six figures salaries and seven and eight figure profits. Oh the pain of it all!

      People should refrain from criticizing the powers that be and holding them up to ridicule using questionable language and humor. After all, those in positions of power and authority can’t do their jobs if people don’t take them seriously. On the other hand, when those same self-proclaimed ‘better sort of people’ use the same type of questionable language and humor on their critics…hey there you PCPPers [PoliticallyCorrectPolicePatrolers] that form mobs aka Whine Patrols need to back off and get a sense of humor. Lighten up already!

      🙄

      What a shameless cowardly bunch…

      😎

      Reply
11. jscheidell says:

    May 18, 2018 at 4:01 pm

    Diane,

    Authorities say Pagourtzis was armed with a shotgun and a .38 revolver that belonged to his father. They believe those weapons were legally owned by his father.

    AR 15 not noted at this point. School shooter not an NRA member.

    Reply
12. Roy Turrentine says:

    May 18, 2018 at 10:51 pm

    For once, this matter is not in the particulars. His gun, where it was kept, his mental instability, if he had any of that, all of these are particulars that take us away from the fact that we have instantly (over a very few years to any historian) become a society where some portion of the citizens strike out at others with as much force as they can muster. We have become a society where some of us ignore the needs of others. We have become a society where individual desires seem to tower above societal needs.

    Where will this all go? I fear for the destination. We need rational thought, understanding dialogue, and self sacrifice. This is the fuel for an engine that propels the nation into a future. All else gums it up.

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13. wgersen says:

    May 19, 2018 at 6:48 am

    What will we do about it?

    Let’s look at the record in LA: we’ll build perimeter fences, install sophisticated door locks, hire more SROS, install more cameras, and require students to wear uniforms. https://wp.me/p25b7q-28D

    What kind of publicly funded facility has secure perimeter fences, sophisticated door locks, armed guards, interior surveillance cameras, and requires those enclosed to wear uniforms? This is not the schooling I experienced nor is it the schooling my children experienced. It is likely the schooling of the future, though, if we insist on trading the rights of individuals to own guns for the rights of children to attend school without fear.

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14. Ponderosa says:

    May 19, 2018 at 11:21 am

    It seems to me that many people cling to guns because of paranoia about the government. One part of the solution: teaching what government IS…and teaching it well. This takes years of dedicated coursework. Unfortunately teaching pseudo-skills is the vogue these days; the really important work –like fully illuminating our democratically-elected government –is neglected by our schools.

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    • Threatened Out West says:

      May 19, 2018 at 11:28 am

      While I teach these things year after year, with the hope and praise of what our Founders built, it’s very hard to not get cynical when watching what our “elected” government is today. I don’t teach that to the kids, but I sure feel it.

      Guns, of course, are NOT the answer, but watching Congress essentially turn into a department of the Executive branch, destroying separation of powers, and presidents getting more and more powerful, and Congress abdicating its responsibility to be a check on the Executive, and knowing that this is NOT how it’s supposed to work, is depressing.

      Reply