The News From Connecticut

On an otherwise routine Friday morning, in a quiet New England town in Newtown, Connecticut, a 20-year-old young man walked calmly into an elementary school with several loaded guns.  By the time he was finished with his horrific mission, 26 human beings were dead, including 20 children between the ages of 5 and 10. As has become all to common in these cases, the gunman allegedly killed himself as authorities were closing in on him.  Days later we now are coming to the frightening realization that there will be no making sense of this.  Easy access to guns?  Passive mental health treatment?  Seasonal depression?  We'll probably never know for sure.  In the mean time, we grieve.

Our good Bad Hat friend Alex lives but 30 miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, where the shooting took place.  Alex and his beautiful wife have two children of their own, one of who's picture graces the heading of this blog as the Face of Bad Hat.  When I heard where this had happened I was immediately concerned for Alex and his family, but he quickly contacted me and assured me they were okay. He has graciously allowed me to share his thoughts with all of you.  The following is the combination of two E-mails, the first part on Saturday, when confusion and misinformation reigned, and the latter came this morning, when more facts have come clearer.
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So, from what I understand, the news you are getting is probably better than the news we are getting. Lots of media mistakes and "made up" facts being shot around. CNN and a host of others stated the name of the brother of the shooter as the actual shooter. The poor guy was at his work in New Jersey, but had received a text message from a friend saying he had shot up the school and wtf. He apparently announced on his Facebook that he was in NJ and on his way home to figure out what was happening.. then the police picked him up. That's gotta suck.

The school is about 30 miles from where we live.. roughly ten miles west and twenty miles north. Sandy Hook and the Newtown area are on the comfortable middle end of the rich upper crust neighborhoods. The poorest people in the area are probably the teachers, since I'm sure the maids and gardeners earn easily two to three times an educational salary in tips and sex favors alone.

The shooter himself is 20 years old.. said to be somewhere on the functional end of the autism spectrum. Functional enough to load and use a gun. Depending on the news source, he had two or four guns of various types, all legally owned by his mother, the Kindergarten teacher at the school. He obtained access to the school because he is a family member of the teacher - otherwise, all doors to the school would have been locked or otherwise secured, which is how Maisie's school works. The school did everything right in this case. It would have been no different from if I had shown up at Maisie's school to visit her teacher or take her out of school early.

My understanding is that this was a family matter gone bad. The kid had some beef with his mom and decided it was better to end it all. She obviously wasn't a firm believer in gun safes or in securing her weaponry. He got access to the school, shot up the office staff.. took a bunch of kids and teachers out.. depending on the news, you get a different story. Some even said he had hostages at some point. One said he committed suicide. Another said he was taken out by a SWAT officer. I'm sure we'll get a better picture as the reporters actually listen to what the police and survivors have to tell them.

There was one touching story I heard which stood out in my mind - after seeing his kindergarten teacher shot down (which may have been the shooter's mother), one of the kindergarten students bravely grabbed a couple of his friends and they all marched out a door to get outside. The gunner ignored them as they left.

We have a few problems with the local media out here. Recently, there was an auto accident involving friends of my neighbor. Three women died in the car. Of the local media coverage, one news channel, being denied comments from the surviving family, decided to put a camera up to their living room window to get video of the family mourning so they had something to play on the air. A second news channel broadcast the names and addresses of the victims. Neither of them were FOX affiliates. I hate to think what FOX must have done. The media frenzy is blinding and annoying, so I'm sure most of what I say here is faulty in some way.

It is close to home.. only thirty miles. It's somewhat between our home town and Tina's school, which caters to wealthy families. Due to the area of the shooting, I'm certain many of the students who were shot would have eventually transferred to Tina's school and become students of hers. No doubt their siblings will transfer to Tina's school in years to come.

Tina and I haven't had a lot of chance to talk about it, since she's been at work and then had a work-related holiday party to attend this evening. One thing we did discuss, though, is that this could have happened anywhere. Not just in the US, but… it seems since this was a family affair gone bad and the shooter took it out on the entire school… well, what if she worked at a mall or a movie theatre? It just happened to be a school.. and happened to be a grade school. Sucks. Shit happens.

Just a few thoughts.

And my deep thought for the evening - Lack of universal access to mental health care kills people.

 

Love, Alexander

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On reviewing the most recent news on what happened.. I'm not certain universal mental health care would have helped in this situation. The mother was a volunteer, not a teacher. Her ex-husband is a VP at a big corp and she got $10,000 a month in alimony. In the divorce hearings, the judge ordered them all to seek mental health care... And they appear to have ignored this. Given they had the money, plenty of available doctors in the region and a court order, I doubt having universal access would have helped at all.. Like donating a dollar bill to a billionaire banker during the bailout. They don't want filthy paper money.

I'm not certain I see the paranoia here, but it is no doubt due to our east coast differences. The class divisions between upper, middle and lower class are much stronger here. On the west coast, I found it difficult to see the differences on the street. Public schools taught basically the same standards as private schools. Most people, despite economic levels, shopped in the same stores and went to the same entertainment venues. Here in Conn, you can really tell just by looking. There is a readily visible difference in the education standards taught in rich towns, be they public or private schools, as compared to poor towns. The rich and poor live in entirely different worlds and very rarely cross paths, utilizing different stores, restaurants and entertainment sites. Only the working middle class cross lines and see both worlds.

The upshot of this is that, rich or poor, they are all at the very basic level whiny complaining bastards. It's that tough working middle class of skilled survivors who push on and carry the weight of the whole. For instance, after Sandy hit and the power outages shocked the nation, it was the rich and poor towns who complained, whined, egged repair trucks and blamed each other for causing the repair delays. It was the tough working middle class who did what had to be done to survive the power outages and repair the damage.

Overall, though.. And getting back to my point.. I don't see the paranoia here. People still go out and do things. Sure, the day of the shooting I saw a couple of families pulling their kids out of school early - but it is important to note that this was happening while I and other parents were dropping their kids off for afternoon kindergarten sessions. Maisie is in a small class, but it is very diverse. She is half Chinese. There is an Indian kid. There is a Muslim kid. There is a Japanese kid and a Filipino kid. And, ya, a couple of white bread Christian kids too. Everyone in her class was in attendance despite the shooting.

Maybe it's because we live in a middle class town, well removed from the Bridgeport slums and pristine neighborhoods of Greenwich. (Although the New Haven slums hang over us and police reports constantly remind us how close they are.) We love our kids, but we also think its ridiculous to close a school just because the power is out or some mentally ill person in another county went apeshit.

I still stand by my words - it coulda happened anywhere. The mother was a privileged woman who volunteered at the school. She could just as easily been volunteering at the library or a hospital or working at the mall to embellish her $10k/mo. A shooting like this could happen anywhere, anytime.. Including in our own living room. It just happened to have been a grade school this time.

I highly doubt tougher gun laws would have helped. I also highly doubt having armed teachers or staff members would have helped. Had they actually sought mental health care, that might have helped. Had the mother been a responsible gun owner and secured the weapons legally bound to her, that might have helped.

Love, Alexander