Shooting at Northern Illinois University. (Naperville, Bryant: work, hospitals, home)

[tcs1366]

Originally Posted by Muhnay

Sheriff is dead and 15 others, the shooter is dead from a self inflicted gun shot wound.

They are saying 5 confirmed deceased, 1 being the shooter.
With 14 others in Kishwaukee Community Hosp in various conditions.
8 in stable condition
6 in good condition
4 critical
2 transported to other hospitals

I just blows my mind.. There is another kid who lives in our town who attended or still does, NIU, who was beaten to a pulp on year -- I heard it was over a pizza.

what is the world coming to ??

[via chicago]

Originally Posted by Steve-o

Do I seriously have to answer that?

yes?

this isnt a high school where you can control the flow of students. this is a university with dozens of separate buildings, contained on an open campus. you have people coming and going at all times of day and night for various reasons. logistically, it is not feasible to have full time security staffed at every conceivable door, at every building.

[nJohn]

To be honest, not only do I feel sorry for the families that had a loved one hurt, but for the shooter as well and for his family. Call me a jerk, but you must look at both sides. He must have had a harmful upbringing.

[sbd78]

This saddens me so much. NIU/DeKalb was my home for 5 years and I have so many great memories there. I had many classes in Cole Hall. My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families.

[Avengerfire]

It is a shame. I echo everyone else with their sympathies.

No college campus (and just about anywhere else) can be massacre proof. It is a simple equation of lack of money and logistics to protect, with the intangible of a deranged individuals desire to kill. If someone is hell bent on killing, it is very hard to stop.

[Steve-o]

Please keep the families/friends/school in your prayers. This is unreal. Its really bothering me much more than I thought. 6 dead (shooter included) as of now. Truly sickening and depressing. WHY???

[BRU67]

Originally Posted by sbd78

This saddens me so much. NIU/DeKalb was my home for 5 years and I have so many great memories there. I had many classes in Cole Hall. My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families.

I graduated from NIU also, and was a TA while I was a grad student there. So this really, really hits close to home for me There are a lot of sick bastards in this world I'm afraid. Usually upbringing has something to do with it but this cannot be considered an excuse.

[baylovers]

My sympathy to all effected by this horrible tragedy. Prayers for for the families of the victims.

[Katiana]

I pray for their families.

[arpschneider]

Originally Posted by tablemtn

. . .the only thing to do at this point is to find anyone affiliated with the shooting and "nail them to the wall" legally. For instance, if any of the weapons were provided to the gunman in an unauthorized fashion, the people who provided the weapon should be jailed for life. If the shooter was still a minor, his parents should be arrested and investigated for any sort of complicity.

It's not always the parents' fault! Look at the situation in Colorado where the deranged person shot-up the YRAM Ministry near Denver, and then went on a rampage at the church in Colo. Springs! The parents were deeply devoted Christians who were obviously trying very hard to try to raise their son "right".

Sometimes, people just "blow a fuse" for reasons understood only by them but by the time *that* happens, it's generally way too late and the damage/murder has already been done.

What *I* want to know in the Colorado case is how did this person had access to so much heavy artillery and firepower??

It was obvious that those who read his blog on-line were alarmed and did everything in their power to warn those in authority, but since this was such a senseless, random act of violence, we would all have to live in a "police state" to protect ourselves from every deranged lunatic that is out there.

Personally? I blame the VIDEO GAMES that kids have access to nowadays!! When children grow-up on a steady diet of things like "Cop Killer", they quickly blur what is reality from what is fantasy and the line is all too easy to cross with stimulation like that.

For example: we are helping parent our 7-year-old Grandson and just tonight, his Valentine's bag had pictures he drew on it of what appears to be the exploits of a video game he plays. There's dead stick-figure people littered all around the bottom of some castle he drew and dotted lines representing bullets emanating from the castle, killing other stick figures who are approaching.

I showed his Mother this stuff when she came home from work tonight and she says that he does this because: "he's just a boy", but this kind of stuff really SCARES me because I see it is as being WAY too easy in the future to blur right from wrong because of being allowed to develop attitudes like this from such a young age.

You want to send someone to jail? Then how about going after the writers/manufacturers of those STOOPID Video games??

To the extent possible, I'm "reigning-in" on those things with our grandkids and am trying to monitor the kinds of games that they are allowed to play. Maybe all of us who are responsible for helping raise young children in our lives need to consider what we're letting them watch and do much more carefully than heretofore.