She died in a car accident in 1896.
School shootings are tragic. A disturbed individual, almost always young, goes to the place where molding potential is the business of today and every day, and unleashes hell. I mourn for those killed in school shootings. Indeed, if the perpetrator or perpetrators were still technically children, I lament the missed warning signs and loss of potential.
However, as cold as it sounds, due to their rarity, in the grand scheme of things, they are statistically irrelevant. More children are splattered across the highways of America in a day than on the day of the Columbine massacre. 4,920 infants to 17 year olds in 2003. Check for yourself.
A Columbine a day happens just on the highways of north america. We still drive. We still drive, because, the alternative to driving is so unpleasant, so impractical, that it is better to knowingly sacrifice nearly 5,000 children a year to the asphalt than to give up our keys.
You might find me cold. You might find me boorish. You can't find me wrong. Chew on that for a while, Ed.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Bridget Driscoll
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6 comments:
personally, i'm all for child sacrifice. especially in a large group. keeps the rest of them in line. they try to rise up, mow em down. oppress them from the get go and the kids will never be able to overthrow us. mwahahahaha. so... let's go to the preschool and cull some of the children to appease the gods.
Nobody plans on killing a child wih their car. If there was a light that went on when you started your car that said "today you will kill an infant" I think you would call in sick that day. We drive because we don't believe we're going to kill anyone.
But Chud makes a good point.
Cindy, while you are right that as individuals we drive because we don't think we're going to kill anyone, societally, we tolerate a Columbine massacre a day on our national road system, while are shocked, SHOCKED, that one or two children out of the eighty million gun owners kill a days worth of kids killed on the highway every two or three years.
It strikes me as hilarious, that we pick and choose which tragedies are tolerable, and which aren't. Of course, I'm not a very nice person.
thank you cindy. i thought i made a damn good point.
scooter i think the outrage comes from the intent. you know, driving down the freeway behind a log truck that suddenly loses its load and suddenly there's a 100 car pile up for miles and 70 dead is pure accident. icy roads and cliffs, same thing. slick roads and intersections. people going into insulin shock behind the wheel. none of these start out with malice. numbers to numbers, yes, there are more deaths due to ACCIDENTS per year than due to school shootings. but the intent behind a shooting is simple malice. they go in fully intending to inflict damage and death. pretty sure that's where the shock comes from. we all know accidents happen. you can be changing a light bulb and fall off the ladder and die of blunt force trauma. what are you going to be outraged at? the ladder? the bulb? gravity?
Well, to be honest, outrage doesn't really do much. Training teachers to spot kids with serious mental stress and installing seat belts does more for both than outrage will ever do.
I just don't see that the distinction between a fucked in the head 14 year old and an icy patch on the road matters all that much.
Either way, kids die.
I'm mad at gravity every day.
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