The right to bear arms

Bentleyspop

Gern Blansten said:

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1735291116050641077

I wonder where he learned that guns are a solution?

Where did he learn that Jews needed to be killed?

josevolution

Bentleyspop said:

Gern Blansten said:

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1735291116050641077

I wonder where he learned that guns are a solution?

Where did he learn that Jews needed to be killed?

At home it all starts at home with mommy& daddy 

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/virginia-student-shot-teacher-mother-sentencing-9b99a00c2745dcbcd49b4c25f2a86f96   Mother of 6-year-old who shot teacher in Virginia gets 2 years in prison for child neglect

 

Mother of 6-year-old who shot teacher in Virginia gets 2 years in prison for child neglect

By BEN FINLEY and DENISE LAVOIE

Today

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — The mother of a 6-year-old boy who shot his teacher in a Virginia classroom was sentenced Friday to two years in prison for felony child neglect by a judge who chastised her for abdicating her responsibilities as a parent.

Deja Taylor's sentence was much harsher than the maximum six months prosecutors had agreed to recommend as part of a plea deal and also surpassed the high end of advisory state sentencing guidelines. Taylor, 26, pleaded guilty to a single count of felony neglect in August. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to drop a misdemeanor count of recklessly storing a firearm.

Circuit Court Judge Christopher Papile said the sentencing guidelines did not take into account the shooting's physical and psychological toll on first-grade teacher Abigail Zwerner or the emotional trauma it has wrought on other students and staff at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News.

Zwerner was critically injured when the boy fired a single shot at her, striking her hand and chest, breaking bones and puncturing a lung. She spent weeks in the hospital, had five surgeries, and says she is so mentally scarred by the shooting that she does not plan to return to teaching.

Papile noted that “we are lucky” someone wasn't killed at the elementary school. In admonishing Taylor, the judge said a parent's ultimately responsibility is to "protect the child, to keep them from bad influences, to keep them from dangerous situations, to keep them healthy and nurtured. Ms. Taylor has abdicated most, if not all, of those responsibilities.”

The state sentence handed down Friday was the second time Taylor was held to account for the classroom shooting in January, which stunned the nation and shook this military shipbuilding city.

Taylor was sentenced in November to 21 months in federal prison for using marijuana while owning a gun, which is illegal under U.S. law. Her state sentence will be served consecutively, making a combined state and federal sentence of nearly four years behind bars.

Taylor’s son told authorities he got his mother’s 9 mm handgun by climbing onto a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was in his mom’s purse. He concealed the weapon in his backpack and then his pocket before shooting Zwerner in front of her first-grade class.

Moments later, the boy told a reading specialist who restrained him, “I shot that (expletive) dead,” and “I got my mom’s gun last night,” according to search warrants.

Taylor initially told police she had secured her gun with a trigger lock, but investigators said they never found one.

Following the shooting, the boy was removed from his mother's custody and spent 227 days in inpatient treatment, during which he was attended to by a team of physicians, psychiatrists and other clinicians, prosecutor Travis White told the judge. The boy, now 7, had problems with “basic socialization” and suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome and insomnia, among other disorders.

“That is the depths of neglect that Deja Taylor inflicted on her child,” the prosecutor said, calling the shooting “a consequence and manifestation of that neglect.”

The boy now lives with his great-grandfather, Calvin Taylor, who told reporters after the hearing that he believes the sentence handed down by Papile is “excessive.” He said Deja Taylor tried to get help for her son before the shooting but child protective services did not follow through on her request.

The elder Taylor said the boy is now doing well in a structured environment. The child told him that he wanted “Santa to bring his mom home for Christmas.”

Deja Taylor did not speak during Friday's hearing. Her attorney, James Ellenson, said Taylor struggled with addiction and domestic violence. He said Taylor, 26, smoked marijuana “all day, every day” since age 15.

“Who knows what the effects were on that teenage brain?” he said.

Ellenson said earlier this year there were “ mitigating circumstances,” including Taylor’s miscarriages and postpartum depression. She also has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a condition sharing symptoms with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to court documents.

Taylor told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in May that she feels responsible and apologized to Zwerner.

“That is my son, so I am, as a parent, obviously willing to take responsibility for him because he can’t take responsibility for himself,” Taylor said.

During her sentencing in federal court last month, one of Taylor’s attorneys read aloud a brief statement in which Taylor said she would feel remorse “for the rest of my life.”

Zwerner is suing Newport News Public Schools for $40 million, alleging administrators ignored multiple warnings the boy had a gun at school the day of the shooting.

During the sentencing hearing Friday, Zwerner recounted the shooting, telling the judge: “I was not sure whether it would be my final moment on earth.”

She said she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, and has difficulty sleeping.

“The shooting has instilled many fears in me that will remain forever," she said.

She said she will not return to teaching because she's now afraid to work with children.

“Now, at 26 years old, what am I supposed to do?” she said. “My life will never be close to the same again.”

Stove

I've always been more partial to arming bears. 

Halifax2TheMax

If they can’t be “responsible” with their firearms, should they lose their “right” to them? Fucking madness.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/tsa-guns-carry-on-luggage-airport/index.html

tempo_n_groove

Halifax2TheMax said:

If they can’t be “responsible” with their firearms, should they lose their “right” to them? Fucking madness.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/tsa-guns-carry-on-luggage-airport/index.html

Things like this aggravate the piss out of me.  The amount of signs stating "NO FIREARMS" is redundant.

It's a felony and if convicted they will lose that right to bear arms.

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/ClaudetteGGibs1/status/1741538471146139991?t=nAzk-6ZdNf_zuWYdIWcqMg&s=19

Halifax2TheMax

mickeyrat said:

https://twitter.com/ClaudetteGGibs1/status/1741538471146139991?t=nAzk-6ZdNf_zuWYdIWcqMg&s=19

Will he be convicted of a felony, as a responsible gun owner, and lose his right to possess? Nah, he’s suffered enough. But his 6 year old should spend a year or two in juvy.

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/FeistyLibLady/status/1741827709926350876?t=uZB2umuG-IyMKLctrELjyQ&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1741832959135535595?t=gSZeLN4aHmEszOt8BYhnkg&s=19

Bentleyspop

mickeyrat said:

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1741832959135535595?t=gSZeLN4aHmEszOt8BYhnkg&s=19

Guns don't kill people 

The children of gun owners kill other children with their guns.

mickeyrat

Bentleyspop said:

mickeyrat said:

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1741832959135535595?t=gSZeLN4aHmEszOt8BYhnkg&s=19

Guns don't kill people 

The children of gun owners kill other children with their guns.

with their stolen guns...

the father here was a felon. possessed a stolen loaded weapon in the car........

dead child is black. reasonable guess the shooter and father are black. this is a case where the hammer comes down. if they erre white, I am sure it woukd be seen as a horrible accident and havent the parents suffered enough.....

Gern Blansten

Another day another shooting

JeBurkhardt

Gern Blansten said:

Another day another shooting

I saw the notice on the news and mentioned it to a coworker. His comment was well it happens all the time in Chicago schools, they just never report it. So instead of being concerned about the potential loss of life at a school, his reaction was to criticize gun policies and media coverage in an entirely different State. 

Gern Blansten

JeBurkhardt said:

Gern Blansten said:

Another day another shooting

I saw the notice on the news and mentioned it to a coworker. His comment was well it happens all the time in Chicago schools, they just never report it. So instead of being concerned about the potential loss of life at a school, his reaction was to criticize gun policies and media coverage in an entirely different State. 

Yeah Chicago is always the magat response. 

josevolution

I just looked and there’s very little mention of this Iowa shooting! We’re done with caring as a nation it’s over just take it and swallow it! 

jeff2040

The shooting today happened about 30 minutes from where I live.  These things are always hard to see but even harder when it happens in your backyard.  I really wish we could do something to stop these from happening. 

A 6th grader was killed eating breakfast before school.  Things need to change. 

Halifax2TheMax

Imagine being a pre-schooler or a first grader or the parents of same and having to wonder if you'll survive to graduate from high school, never mind college? What a country, 'Murica. From WaPo:

 

Terror in small-town Iowa as gunfire erupts at Perry High School

PERRY, Iowa — It was the first day back after winter break, and students at Perry High School were streaming into class just before sunrise.

Some were eager to see their friends after spending the holidays apart. Others could barely keep their eyes open after a couple of weeks of sleeping in. No one knew one of their classmates had posted a TikTok video that morning posing with a blue duffel bag, ominously captioned: “Now we wait.”

Then gunshots rang out at 7:35 a.m., and everyone started running. On this 30-degree morning, before some families in this town of roughly 8,000 had taken down their Christmas trees, America’s first school shooting of 2024 had begun.

Cameron Ketelson, a 15-year-old sophomore, was still in the parking lot when he heard the blasts. He didn’t think. He just grabbed his younger stepsister, Chloe, and guided her away.

Their parents ran a body shop across the street. They could take cover there.

“It was chaos,” he said Thursday, huddling with his family by the auto garage. From the window, they could see police cars, lights ablaze, closing off the surrounding streets. A sheriff’s SUV rolled by. So did an ambulance.

“Everyone was yelling,” his stepsister, 14-year-old Chloe Buck, said.

It was hard to believe that a teenage gunman — someone they said they knew — had opened fire in the high school connected to the middle school, killing a sixth-grader from a nearby middle school and wounding five others — four students and the school principal — before turning the firearm on himself.

Police identified the shooter as Dylan Butler, whom fellow students identified as the sender of the troubling TikTok post. Earlier, police had converged at Butler’s rural home. They said later that he carried two weapons and an improvised explosive device into the school.

Now students were texting each other, “Are you safe?” They’d trained for this in active shooter drills. They’d been hearing about school shootings since they were old enough to understand such things — not that they understood it now. Not really.

The emotions coming up: Blankness. Numbness. As though none of this was real.

“We’re in shock,” said Chloe’s mom, Jill Ketelson, drawing the girl close. They were waiting in the body shop for other family members to arrive. Their first instinct had been to come together.

Ketelson’s sister-in-law, a school employee, had been in the building when gunfire erupted. She was working in the main office when the vice principal ran in, urging her to hide in a safe room.

After they emerged, she told Ketelson, there was blood on the counselor’s office door. There were shells on the ground.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Ketelson said, “and it’s sickening and scary.”

Down the street, people who lived next to Perry High School — who could see from their porches the children flocking in each morning — stood in their driveways, hands stuffed into coat pockets, talking to their neighbors.

Jason Spence, a 46-year-old Marine veteran, had heard the shots when he was walking his chocolate Labrador, a service dog named Hershey. His wife worked at the nearby elementary school. She called him in a panic. They were reuniting at home when a friend called. The friend’s children had just fled the school and needed somewhere to go.

Spence opened his door for the boy and girl. He’d been shot in the leg during a 2009 tour of Iraq. The booms had stirred up a familiar dread. Those children, he thought, will need help. Some kind of counseling after this, perhaps. A lot of support.

“You wouldn’t think this would happen here,” he said, “in a little town.”

Next door, a brother and sister who’d fled the violence stood below their basketball hoop, responding to check-in texts from their friends. The adrenaline was still flowing. They couldn’t sit down, but they weren’t sure what to do, aside from attending a candlelight vigil later that evening.

Joseph, a 13-year-old eighth-grader, had just finished a 5:30 a.m. basketball practice when he heard screaming. A lunch lady saw him and started shouting, “Run! Run! Run!”

From active shooter drills, he knew the students should have been moving in a certain direction, but everyone was sprinting in different directions. Fear was taking over.

He recalled the scene as his mother fought tears. Their sense of security had been shattered, she said. A school employee, she spoke on the condition that her name be withheld and that only the first names of her children were published, citing “weirdos out there” and concern for their safety.

“I’ve been shaking for two hours,” Joseph said.

His sister, Mercedes, a 16-year-old junior, had been running late that morning and hadn’t left their house yet when the attack began.

“It’s just shocking,” she said.

Even spookier: Just the other day, she’d wondered what to do if a gunman ever stormed one of her wrestling meets. The state match, for example, was a huge affair. Were they safe crammed into a gymnasium like that?

A girl in Mercedes’s math class, she’d heard, had been among those shot early Thursday and was at the hospital in critical condition. Another boy she knew had been hit in the arm.

The boy who’d made the TikTok, the one police identified as the gunman, had been in a class with Mercedes called Connections, which was meant to help students build social skills.

He’d seemed friendly, she said. He sat near her and had a tendency to perform silly raps.

On any other day, she would have been happy to see him in the hallways. She and Joseph had been looking forward to going back to school and seeing all their friends.

“Now I don’t want to go back,” Mercedes said.

Soon the sky darkened, and people streamed toward the city’s recreation center, which had served eight hours earlier as a family reunification base and now was the scene of a vigil.

Kathryn Pentico, a 66-year-old retired insurance agent, tried to shelter herself from the evening chill under a brick gazebo, watching volunteers pass out candles.

She smiled at a woman approaching her with a cane — a stranger, but a neighbor.

“Has anybody heard about the principal?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Pentico replied. “I think he’s still alive.”

What a thing to say, she thought: “I think he’s still alive.” How could he not be? She’d just seen the principal around town, friendly as ever.

“I sound like a broken record, but it’s true,” she said. “He’s an amazing person.”

She played volleyball with his wife.

“Right over there,” Pentico said, “at the recreation center.”

Before it became the family reunification base. Before the people all around her clutched their candles and wept.

Iowa students, community recount terror of Perry high school shooting - The Washington Post

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/ResisterSis20/status/1746193429409734898?t=A8itOoAWeOZi_LBWmixxeg&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/KSlatteryResist/status/1746648057599643952?t=oZytV7X7DmzoFSKllltZxw&s=19