These were the words of a fellow student of Nikolas Cruz and a common theme that surrounds many of these mass shootings. Whether it be the Orlando nightclub, the San Bernardino Christmas party shooting, or Aurora, CO, it seems that many of these mass shooters are known by several people to be on the verge of such horrific actions, yet everyone stays quiet and these very disturbed people are given the space needed to act upon their demons. I even read one account where school officials were well aware of Mr. Cruz and his bizarre behavior and his penchant for fire arms, and if one account is correct, authorities were to be called if Mr. Cruz were to be seen on campus with a backpack. If these accounts are accurate, than there enough warning signs in my opinion to have prevented this.
I grew up in the 70’s in Montana and everyone owned guns, nearly everyone hunted, hunter safety was a school course, and it was a rite of passage to carry your rifles in the back of your pickup. AND THERE WAS NOT ONE SINGLE SHOOTING. I will easily wager a substantial bet that there were a lot more guns on my campus in the 70’s than there are at any campus today, yet not one person was shot in my four years of high school. Were the guns different? No. Is the culture different? Hell yes. One huge cultural difference in my opinion is the level of societal discipline towards children and the “first person shooter” games that so many kids are obsessed with. School officials, administrators, and teachers have abdicated their responsibilities and the inmates now run the asylums. Political correctness, and over emotional parents have handcuffed teachers who no longer can impose discipline and order in the classroom and I have seen this first hand. In my day, if you acted out in class and disobeyed school officials, there were real consequences, and the parents followed through. This level of discipline and order is missing from many kids lives these days and we see the negative societal impacts.
In a free country of 300+ million people and hundreds of millions of fire arms, confiscating and controlling fire arms is a non starter, but of course this is what you will hear every progressive across this nation crying about today. Guns are not, and never have been the problem. The cultural environment our kids are growing up in is the problem, and it needs to be addressed. Had there been some well trained officials on campus with fire arms, this may have been prevented. In fact in this day and age, why there aren’t armed guards on many of our school campuses is beyond me.
UPDATE, By Mark Noonan: Looks like the FBI missed it, too. And as usual for me, I bring up this song on these events. It’ll keep happening until we change.
Blogs For Victory 
And right on queue, Joey Scarborough just stated that “Washington does nothing to protect our kids”….
IT’S NOT WASHINGTON’S JOB TO PROTECT OUR KIDS.
It is our first and foremost responsibility to take care of our own personal safety and success. Never look to anyone else to protect you or be concerned for your health and welfare. If everyone starts from that premise, our society will be better off. Only when you can take care of yourself, can you care for others.
I’ll buy the rest of it, but I’m sorry I don’t buy the ‘video games made them do it’ argument even a little bit.
Yea you’re probably right. Hours and days spent playing realistic “first person shooting games” probably has no role whatsoever. Good call.
Of course video game don’t “make” people do anything..
After the Columbine High School shootings and it was learned that the shooters had played hour upon hour of violent video games, it came out that when Nintendo was getting started what gave it its first boost was a big government contract.
Armies had always had a problem overcoming the innate reluctance of human beings to shoot at other human beings. It is embedded in our subconscious minds. Soldiers who were crack shots on the range could not bring themselves to shoot at humans in battle. When training started to use human-shaped targets that helped a little as at least the shooter had been firing at an abstraction of a human being, and had been able to erode at least a little of that inborn reluctance.
Then when electronic games came along Nintendo wanted to go beyond Pong and other abstract games, and the American military immediately saw the benefit in having games where trainees were shooting at much more realistically human-like targets. This proved to be very effective. Adding in the visceral stimulation of instantaneous rewards in the forms of points, noises to indicate hits and so on, and that innate reluctance to shoot at humans was eroded. Killing humans in a game became fun.
Jump forward a couple of decades to a generation that has (1) grown up “playing” games in which very realistic humans are shot at, with instantaneous rewards that go directly to pleasure centers in the brain via sound and light and verbal congratulations, in which there is great pleasure in watching human heads explode in gore, which (2) has never been exposed to the reality of death, such as from hunting or harvesting livestock, which has (3) never been held accountable for actions and (4) never had to experience consequences for bad actions and you have a recipe for young people who are indifferent to the reality of killing people, who have been taught on a very deep and visceral level that it is fun and that human heads exploding are rewards, and who don’t fear or even understand that such actions will have very severe and painful consequences.
In some young minds, which are not fully developed, there is no real understanding of the reality of death—the violent deaths of others is just a way to experience a series of rewards.
Not all young people who grow up being brainwashed into seeing violent death as fun, as a contest where the goal is to rack up as many deaths as possible, absorb this subliminal message so deeply that they are drawn to enact violent killing in real life, of real human beings. But no one can deny that these games can desensitize regular players to the pain and harsh reality of shooting and death. For young men (for all of these mass killers are young men) who are immature and unstable and vulnerable to influences like these subliminal messages, they can be very powerful.
I have friends who grew up taking their guns to school, and many of them continued to live in rural areas where their children did the same. It was common to see pickups in the school parking lot with rifles in the gun racks in the rear windows.
In the early days of this country, nearly every male was armed from a young age onward.
When children are brought up around guns, learn how to use them, and particularly when they also experience the reality of death from guns as they do when they hunt, they don’t have the same twisted attitude as many people have who have never had the discipline of responsible gun ownership.
I just heard Try Goudy interviewed during the top of the hour news break. “Show me one law that would have prevented this, and I’m on board.”
This mass shooting era that we find ourselves in was a long time in the making, and has a number of root causes. Although ease of obtaining firearms is one of them, evil people are finding that mowing down large groups of people with a vehicle is a viable alternative and every bit as lethal. The Left is either completely ignorant and/or dishonest, or following an agenda that has nothing to do with saving people from dying in mass shootings when they insist that more laws will end this sort of carnage. There are more societal problems associated with a one-size-fits-all mentality than any other cause I can think of. This is not going to be an easy fix, and I seriously doubt that many on the Left will be willing to take the necessary steps to even begin to solve it, because it’s going to take things that have become completely foreign to many, if not most Liberals like responsible parenting for starters.
My dad gave me my first .22 rifle when I was 10 or 11, an old Winchester pump that had originally been used in a carnival shooting gallery. I bought my first nice .22, a Marlin model 60 semi-automatic that held around 15 rounds when I was 13. I used to be an avid hunter of small game but gave it up back in the early 80’s. Over the years I’ve owned several dozen guns, most of which never shot at anything but a paper target or bottles and cans. I’ve never had even a fleeting thought of going out and shooting a large number of people. I have a number of gun-owning friends who have never shot anyone. Two major studies recently in Texas and Florida concluded that people who have a state-issued license to carry a firearm, a number that has grown to nearly 16 million as of last spring, have a lower incidence of gun-related crime than law enforcement officers.
As it seems we are not going to be able to go back to saner times and will have to live with the specter of school shootings, it seems that schools need to take this into consideration.
For one thing, in new buildings I would build, between every two classrooms, a small safe room with filtered air and a communications system, so students in two classrooms could safely shelter in place. I would have reinforced doors to hallways with windows, so anyone inside could see out, and install camera systems so teachers and students in classrooms could see what was happening in other parts of the school. These kinds of camera systems are now readily available and not very expensive.
If every classroom could be locked and secure, if every teacher in every classroom could see what was going on outside those classrooms so students caught in the hallways could safely be allowed into secure classrooms, and if emergency shelters were available to everyone in a classroom if the locked and reinforced doors were not adequate, a lot of lives could be saved. In older buildings where it wouldn’t be possible to retrofit rooms with secure safe rooms between classrooms, reinforced locking doors would be easy to retrofit.
We’ve probably all been in buildings with long hallways punctuated by solid fire doors which automatically close when a fire alarm is set off—they are common in hospitals, assisted care buildings and many large apartment buildings. With modern electronics, it would be easy to have such doors timed so they would shut and isolate segments of hallways and classrooms if activated during times when students would be in class and not moving from class to class. A gunman stuck between two locked security doors and unable to get into any of the classrooms in that segment of hallway wouldn’t be much of a danger.
People would need to be able to get into locked rooms if they were stranded out in hallways, but a simple code on a keypad allowing emergency entry, which could be overridden by people inside if cameras showed a danger in opening the door, would allow for that.
It would not guarantee protection for every student and teacher in every school, but there is no excuse for having to hide under a teacher’s desk when gunfire is heard in a school.
But—and this is most important—–every teacher should be allowed to carry a firearm or have on in a secure place in the classroom if he or she goes through specialized training, and every school should have at least one professional armed guard on duty at all times during the school day.
One thing I have thought about is the sense of many of these shooters that being a mass murderer will elevate them, make them seem strong and dangerous, will impart a quality of manhood that they lack. And we are scolded if we try to explain that these young men are acting the way they do because they feel impotent, because they feel unmanly and are looking for an external source of esteem and an illusion of power and authority and masculinity. So we as a society feed these elements in their damaged psyches, by making them famous and by being ever so delicate in discussing their personal issues. I’ve always thought that eliminating all of the perceived benefits of being a mass killer by refusing to use the killer’s name and by openly discussing psychological elements such as sexual impotence or concerns about impotence, etc. could go a long way toward making this kind of notoriety something to avoid, not seek out. But there is this delicacy when it comes to talking about a disturbed person like this—-it is not respectful, it might hurt the feelings of the family, etc.
Just a note to progressives – those who look towards politicians to solve their problems – WILL ALWAYS BE DISAPPOINTED.
This is an excellent article on the lunacy of liberalism.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/02/trojan_horses_3_liberal_policies_that_secretly_push_open_borders.html
It’s just like their ideas for gun control legislation which will do nothing to actually address the problem.
And then there is this new revelation:
Last fall, a Mississippi bail bondsman and frequent YouTube vlogger noticed an alarming comment left on one of his videos. “I’m going to be a professional school shooter,” said a user named Nikolas Cruz.
The YouTuber, 36-year-old Ben Bennight, alerted the FBI, emailing a screenshot of the comment and calling the bureau’s Mississippi field office. He also flagged the comment to YouTube, which removed it from the video.
Keep this in mind the next time a progressive asks – “when will Washington protect our kids?”
One of the most interesting aspects of the American gun culture is the fact that the primary result of Leftist efforts to “regulate” firearms has been a huge increase in gun sales. Talk about unintended consequences. There were 77,410, 008 National Instant Criminal Background Checks (NICS) for the purchase of firearms during the Bush Administration, a number that increased during Barack Obama’s administration to 157,233,157, or just a little more than double. Obama was clearly one of the greatest gun salesmen who ever lived, but you won’t hear ANYONE on the Left accuse him of contributing to gun violence.
I think the vast majority of gun owners would welcome an honest debate about firearms in America, a debate that focuses on actual facts and not a constant distortion of the facts that is presented by the anti-gun forces of the Left. A good example of this is the claim that there have been 18 school shootings since January 1st of this year. The number varies depending on which news account you read, although it’s incredible how fast the majority of mainstream news sources glomed onto the 18 figure. But then you have a news source that puts a horrible statistic into perspective. You have to ask yourself, why would anyone take something as horrible as what happened yesterday in Parkland, FL, and try to make it sound like it’s an everyday occurrence? I think the answer is pretty obvious.
The last caller to Rush today nailed the root of the gun violence problem. As long as moral relativism is subscribed to by a significant percentage of Americans, gun violence will never be addressed in a meaningful way, much less solved.
Part of the problem stems from the escalating use of “legal” drugs used to combat hyper-activity, ADD, AHDH and depression, which are being pushed down the throats of students by psychiatrists and teachers demanding that parents “do something or else”… It is well known that most all of these drugs will often lower the person’s sense of empathy and reasoning ability. In most every case, the person(s) responsible for these mass shootings have been or currently are, on at least one of these psychiatric drugs.
Add to that the growing use of recreational drugs, the sense of entitlement, the “I want it now” mentality, and anyone else who’s constantly complains of “victimhood”, and intelligent people will understand, the problem of violence and gun use is likely to increase exponentially. Gee, what could go wrong?
We’re now allowing select school administration and local government officials to determine what’s “racially offensive” and then ban it for everyone?
Where do we start? I find BLM racially offensive, along with BET – Black Entertainment Television, NAACP, Black Congressional Caucus, Black History Month, National Action Network, Black Panthers, Urban League, and dozens of other black organizations. And how about those organizations I simply find offensive – Planned Parenthood, United Nations, Rainbow Coalition, Islamic Nation, and the dozens of other institutions actively working to destroy the U.S. and the American Constitution? Bet all of those organizations are still allowed on campus, talked about and promoted within these same schools.
But I think what the far left really wants is not so much to promote those things I find offensive, but to bring about division, dissention and distrust so they can prop themselves up to be the ultimate arbitrator and decision maker. Our real battle is or should be against evil and immoral people, not against whites, blacks, Hispanics or otherwise.
Link to above comment. High Scool bans ‘outdated and racially offensive’ national anthem from rallies.
What the students, and eventually the school administration, are all admitting is that they aren’t smart enough to understand what the lyrics mean. They saw a couple of words they reacted to, and that was all they needed.
These are the words of the verse, in bold, in context with the other lines:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Bless with victory and peace, may the heav’rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”:
Now maybe it’s just me, but I took the meaning to be that prior to the fight for independence and the establishment of “the land of the free and the home of the brave” people like “the hireling and slave” were not equal and had no refuge, not from “the terror of flight” or from “the gloom of the grave”. It celebrates the triumph of freedom, symbolized by the “star-spangled banner” waving over “the land of the free” and the refuge this offers that hireling or slave.
Whiny little ignoramuses that they are, they probably think the Constitution endorsed slavery and therefore “the land of the free” excluded slaves (though not a word in the Constitution referred to slavery even indirectly) and miseducated ignoramuses that their teachers must be they have no idea that the entire NATION was based on the principle that “all men are created equal”.
That is one of the foundational principles of the new nation and its battle for freedom, and “freedom” meant freedom from the tyranny of a Central Authority, in this case the monarchy of England. So yes, the hireling and the slave were created as equal to the landowner and the merchant, in the new land.
So they respond to the dog whistle of the incendiary word “slave” and go howling off in hysterical mobs to demand….well, to demand SOMETHING that they can pretend is meaningful, that makes them FEEL better. It’s all posturing, it’s all meaningless virtue signaling, but in this case what is signals is a sad and pathetic ignorance linked to hysterical overreaction to things not understood.
And it signals a school administration unable or unwilling to be the adults in the room and use their positions to educate.
I went to the web site of this high school and found, in its justification for banning the national anthem ( a justification that was all about being “inclusive” as long as they didn’t have to include people who respect the anthem) and I found this claim:
This verse translated, finds joy in the killing of African-Americans.
Seriously. That the way this student’s mind works.
The poor fool doesn’t even realize how many slaves of the era were not black.
We are at a really really bad place in our society these days. There is a massive divide that exists between those who employ common sense and those who employ a purposeful agenda. MSNBC just gave time to a grieving mother who emotionally wailed on TV admonishing Trump for allowing kids to have guns.
This is mind numbingly irresponsible. The POTUS, regardless of who he or she is, has no power whatsoever to keep kids from getting guns. Congress has no power to keep kids from getting guns, and to even suggest they do is a lie. And to spend three hours on a network TV show claiming that new federal laws will prevent future occurrences is simply designed to serve an agenda.
We need more common sense people and less MSNBC people.
Re: Immigration – Trump has offered a path to citizenship for 1.8 million dreamers – more than any Democrat has ever offered. In exchange, Trump wants to secure the border and protect American citizens.
THE DEMOCRATS OPPOSE.
Proof positive, that DEMOCRATS ARE MORE INTERESTED IN THEIR PARTY AND POWER THAN THEIR COUNTRY.
Let me know when the war begins.
And there is this account:
Disturbing footage has emerged of suspected Florida high school killer Nikolas Cruz doing target practice in a backyard while shirtless and wearing a Make America Great Again cap. In the video, which was taken by a neighbor and obtained by CNN, the teenager can be seen wearing the MAGA cap and socks while pumping off rounds in the yard. The teenager can be seen in the video firing the gun several times outside before securing it in the waistband of his shorts and heading back inside the home. It is unclear exactly when the video was taken but it is believed to have been just months before the deadly high school massacre. A fuller portrait of the shooter is still emerging as he is being painted as a loner who had worked at a dollar store, joined the school’s ROTC program and posted photos of weapons on Instagram.
So this kid was expelled from school 3 times, school officials were aware of, and alarmed about his behavior, and the FBI was aware of his desire to be a “school shooter” – but we are all pretending it’s Trump’s fault??
This just shows the success of Leftist propaganda, as only the Leftist media have insisted that Trump represents white supremacy and maybe this delusional, mentally unstable kid believed it.
Good article for at AT:
Blinded by their own hatred, liberals can’t see that they, not Donald Trump, are responsible for the deep division in the country. Whatever Trump’s flaws, those things that he stands for were never considered divisive in the past. Republicans and Democrats alike once stood together for personal responsibility, religious freedom, national pride, border security, and prosperity for all. And they all stood for the National Anthem.
The emotional divide in this country – the polarization of America – long predates Trump and was seriously aggravated during Obama’s administration, something that, many would argue, was deliberate and calculated for political reasons. After all, the writings of another leftist community organizer, Saul Alinsky, were well known to Barack Obama. The 13th of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is “Pick the target. Freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/02/divisive_democrats_united_by_hate.html
Obama certainly got the “polarize” part down.
So the FBI just indicted 16 Russians for creating fake social media accounts and posting political crap. I am pretty sure Americans do that too ……. can you say Think Progress
What needs to be known is if the FBI was so distracted by the fabricated Russia collusion story that they failed to protect the kids in Florida.
It also makes me wonder if Israel should indict the Obama administration for playing a very active role in influencing the outcome of Israel’s elections.
I read the following in a USA Today article about the AR-15 being the weapon of choice in mass shootings:
He’s absolutely right. A large capacity semi-auto handgun, like a Glock 17, equipped with a laser sight or a mini red dot holographic sight would be much more effective in close quarters like a school corridor, easier to smuggle into a school, and has available 33 round magazines that are half the size and weight of a loaded AR-15 30 round magazine.
I’m not gun expert enough to judge…but, yeah; if massacre at close range is your goal, lugging around a rifle when there are very effective hand guns around seems less effective…but the MSM has made a bogey man out of the AR-15 and so your local lunatic, who probably knows little about firearms, just picks up on it.
Heck, just looked up the specifications of an M-1 Garand and it is capable of 40-50 rounds a minute and fires a much more deadly bullet than the AR-15…and there are millions of them around the world and they don’t look scary, at all…
I’m not what I would describe as an accomplished tactical shooter, although back in the late 70’s and early 80’s I did qualify expert 5 or 6 years in a row with a Colt 1911 .45. I have both a Glock 17 (standard magazine is 17 rounds of 9mm) and a Glock 22 (15 rounds/.40 S&W), and I can change mags on both in around a second. I’ve never had anyone time me on my AR-15, but I doubt it’s as fast. You’re holding around 7 lbs. in one hand vs. around 2 lbs. with a pistol.