Saturday, December 22, 2012
We've been inundated with the arguments for and against guns. It's the wrong argument. How do we protect our most precious and vulnerable population against unthinkable violence?
I have a message for gun banning advocates and guns rights supporters... Shut Up. Just shut up. Seriously...enough! Stop yelling at each other. Stop posting memes on Facebook. It's not that your opinions are irrelevant, they aren't, but think about it for a moment...you are part of the huge, knee-jerk movement that has taken attention away from any real lessons that might be taken from the horrible tragedy in Connecticut. Just stop, for a moment, set your own agenda aside, and hear me out for a minute. Please. There is no simple solution here...more guns is not the answer. Less guns, also not the answer. No amount of weapon legislation would have an impact on Adam Lanza. If he didn't have an AR-15? He still had two pistols. Every …
Friday, December 21, 2012
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," the NRA's Wayne LaPierre said.
In an amazing Friday morning press conference in Washington DC, the National Rifle Association broke its weeklong silence following the horrific shooting of 26 people at a school in Newtown, CT by advocating for a surge of gun-carrying "good guys" around American schools. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called for a new kind of American domestic security revolving around armed civilians, arguing that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." "We care about our President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents," LaPierre said. "Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by Capitol Police officers. Yet, when it comes to our most beloved, innocent, and vulnerable members of the …
Thursday, December 20, 2012
An expert shares advice for parents who are trying to explain the Newtown school shooting to their kids.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting tragedy, parents may wonder what to tell their children about what happened and how to help them process what they may be hearing from friends, on television and via social media. Lauren Hutchinson, LMFT, is a child and family therapist and parenting consultant with a practice in Bellevue, WA. She says step one for parents is to “turn off the TV.” “We don’t want to have the TV playing in the background all the time. It isn’t helpful and the news is traumatizing for kids to watch.” For kids age seven and younger Hutchinson says, “you want to shield them from the media coverage completely and parents should not initiate a conversation about the event because kids this age cannot make sense of…
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Patch bloggers and commentators throughout Northeast Georgia offer their thoughts to help us sort through last week's catastrophe.
The shootings in Newtown, Connecticut last week spread grief and turmoil across the country, including to towns and neighborhoods throughout Athens and Northeast Georgia. Many of Patch's contributors have responded with thoughtful and thought-provoking posts to continue the local conversation about what the mass murder of children and their teachers means, and how we should respond. Here is a glimpse at some of their blogs and opinion pieces, in case you missed them: Jason Books on losing a child: You never get used to standing over your child's grave. Not when it's open, waiting on the coffin to be lowered. Not when the first shovel full of dirt hits the top of the vault. Not when the last shovel full of dirt gets patted into place and …
Did you tell your children about the tragedy in Connecticut?
The first thing I did when I read about the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was weep. The second thing I did was tell myself that I would never let my children, ages 3 and 8, know that something so horrific had happened in the world that they live in. It would be easy for me to shield them from it. We don't have cable and we never watch the news with them in the room. My 8-year-old is very sensitive and we shield him from the many horrors of the world, regardless. I didn't want something so terrifying to even enter his consciousness. The fact the the tragedy happened on Friday gave me the weekend to ruminate on whether or not we should share the news with our sweet boy. It started to sink in that children at his …
Tammy Osier
4:44 pm on Friday, December 28, 2012
Jeff addressed exactly what he started with: He said, "We've been inundated with the arguments for and against guns. It's the wrong argument. How do we protect our most precious and vulnerable population against unthinkable violence?" He addressed the true issue at hand - how to educate so as not to be vulnerable before another attack. No one else has really addressed it in this way. I would ask … more ›