I stopped by the memorial set up for the MSDHS victims today.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

It's in a local park, about a mile or so from the school itself. There's an amphitheater stage that is covered in pictures, flowers, stuffed animals, candles, messages written on poster boards, everything.

And in the field in front of the amphitheater, are seventeen individual memorials for each of the victims. Each surrounded by their own assortment of pictures, flowers, stuffed animals, candles, messages, etc.

I maintained an iron face throughout, although as a contemplative thinker, the gravity of everything I saw will hit me hard later on like a brick.

You know what?

When they say this is all mental illness problem, that this is all about mental illness, and the problem that needs to be discussed is mental illness....they are absolutely, 100% correct.

Because what we see here is textbook insanity.

The classic definition of insanity....doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.

There's a shooting, people die, we all mourn, and then we forget.

Over and over and over again. And nothing ever seems to get accomplished. We don't seem to learn anything.

God help the next community that has to erect a memorial like the one I saw this morning.

[genxlib]

1. What park is that?

I live in the area also.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. Pine Trails Park. nt

[genxlib]

3. Thanks

I do a lot of consulting work in the area and we designed one of the nearby parks. But it wasn't that one thankfully.

I may decide to stop by although I am not sure my heart can take it.

[OhNo-Really]

4. Heartbreaking

This comment from Sandy Hook article, responding to "need more mental health care

..."His mother is just as much a child murderer as he was. And better mental health care won’t help. It’s the GUNS, Donald. The GUNS are the problem because, as we know from SO MANY examples – you so-called “law-abiding citizens” can become murdering nutcases in the blink of an eye. Any of us can, That’s the human condition. The idea is, don’t give weapons of mass murder to humans who don’t have the capacity to handle them or their own mental state.
But you gun junkies would rather feed your own illness than protect children from nutcases like yourself with weapons that were never meant to be in civilian hands...."
https://voxpopulisphere.com/2015/12/11/10733/?shared=email&msg=fail

Why isn't emotional maturityntaught in our schools?

In England they are teaching meditation and anger management to kindergartners on up

[gratuitous]

5. Here's a thought to contemplate

What makes you think the folks advocating so vociferously for doing nothing - more and better nothing! - actually want a different result? Maybe they're getting exactly the results they want, and since things are working precisely as they want them to work, there's no sense in messing with the status quo. They're not insane, they just bloodthirsty.

[Sneederbunk]

6. The real memorial is action.

[beveeheart]

7. My daughter and I went to the Columbine memorial a few days after

it happened. How were we to know that day that so many similar scenes of photos, messages, candles, stuffed bears and flowers would be repeated over and over again across the country?
Even though we didn't know anyone from that school, we were as shocked and saddened as those who did. I felt as if I knew them because of the amount of tv and newspaper coverage of each and everyone. In fact, I could even recognize their parents. I don't remember feeling angry then. I did wonder how the parents of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold could have been so unaware of all the preparations their sons had made.
Today when these shootings occur, my first emotion is anger, not shock. Anger that it has happened AGAIN, and as you said, that nothing has been accomplished in all these years.
Yesterday I signed up to participate in my local high school's Walkout on March 14. Maybe this time the anger generated from the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS will make a difference.

[RandomAccess]

8. If these kids have anything to say about it

there won't be a next time.