Huckabee - CT school shooting due to God being removed from schools

[Tetragrammaton]

The whole idea that taking religion out of schools increases gun violence is pretty easily wiped away by pointing out how crime has gone down since the seventies. It would be more accurate to say that taking religion out of schools saves lives.

[WVDolphan]

When did you go to school? The 50's?

• April 25, 1950:
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  Dr. William Nicholas, 48, president of
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  and Dr. Paul Maxwell, 56, education department head, were shot to death at their desks by Dr. Barney Baker, 54-year-old psychology professor. Baker was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot at his home on campus.
• July 22, 1950:
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  A 16-year-old boy was shot in the wrist and abdomen at the Public School 141 dance… during an argument with a former classmate.
• March 12, 1951: Union Mills, North Carolina Professor W. E. Sweatt, superintendent and teacher at the Alexander school, was shot to death by students Billy Ray Powell, 16, and Hugh Justice, 19. The assailants had been reprimanded by Sweatt, and they waited for him as he locked his office door.
• June 4, 1951:
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  Carl Arch, a 50-year-old intruder to a girl's gym class, was shot and killed by a police officer, at Manhattan's Central Commercial High School.
• November 27, 1951:
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  David Brooks, a 15-year-old student, was fatally shot as fellow-pupils looked on in a grade school.
• April 9, 1952:
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  A 15-year-old boarding-school student shot a dean rather than relinquish pin-up pictures of girls in bathing suits.
• July 14, 1952:
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  Bayard Peakes walked in to the offices of the
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  at
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  and shot and killed secretary Eileen Fahey with a .22 caliber pistol. Peakes was reportedly upset that the APS had rejected a pamphlet he had written.
• September 3, 1952: in
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  After 25-year-old Georgine Lyon ended her engagement with Charles Petrach, Petrach shot and killed Lyon in a classroom at Lawrenceville High School where she worked as a librarian.
• November 20, 1952:
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  “Rear Admiral E. E. Herrmann, 56 years old, superintendent of the Naval Postgraduate School, was found dead in his office with a bullet in his head. A service revolver was found by his side.
• October 2, 1953:
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  14-year-old Patrick Colletta was shot to death by 14-year-old Bernice Turner in a classroom of Kelly High School in Chicago. It was reported that after Turner refused to date Colletta he handed her the gun and dared her to pull the trigger, telling her that the gun was “only a toy.” A coroner’s jury later ruled that the shooting was an accident.
• October 8, 1953:
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  Larry Licitra, 17-year-old student at the Machine and Metal Trades High School, was shot and slightly wounded in the right shoulder in the lobby of the school while inspecting a handmade pistol owned by one of several students.
• May 15, 1954:
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  , Putnam Davis Jr. was shot and killed during a fraternity house carnival at the
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  house at the
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  . William Joyner and Allen Long were shot and wounded during the exchange of gunfire in their fraternity bedroom. The incident took place after an all-night beer party. Mr. Long reported to the police that, while the three were drinking beer at 7 a.m., Davis pulled out a gun and started shooting with a gun he had obtained from the car of a former roommate.
• January 11, 1955:
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  After some of his dorm mates urinated on his mattress Bob Bechtel, a 20-year-old student at Swarthmore College, returned to his dorm with a shotgun and used it to shoot and kill fellow student Holmes Strozier.
• May 4, 1956: in
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  , 15-year-old student Billy Prevatte fatally shot one teacher and injured two others at Maryland Park Junior High School in Prince George's County after he had been reprimanded from the school.
• October 20, 1956:
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  A junior high school student was wounded in the forearm yesterday by another student armed with a home-made weapon at Booker T. Washington Junior High School.
• October 2, 1957:
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  “A 16-year old student was shot in the leg yesterday by a 15-year old classmate at a city high school.”
• March 4, 1958:
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  “A 17-year-old student shot a boy in the Manual Training High School.”
• May 1, 1958:
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  A 15-year-old high school freshman was shot and killed by a classmate in a washroom of the Massapequa High School.
• September 24, 1959:
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  Twenty-seven men and boys and an arsenal were seized in the Bronx as the police headed off a gang war resulting from the fatal shooting of a teenager Monday at Morris High School.

The 60's?

• February 2, 1960:
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  Principal Leonard Redden shot and killed two teachers with a shotgun at William Reed Elementary School in Hartford City, Indiana, before fleeing into a remote forest, where he committed suicide.
• March 30, 1960
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  Donna Dvorak, 14, brought a .22 target pistol to Dubose Junior High School, and fatally shot Bobby Whitford, 15, in their 9th grade science class. Dvorak believed Whitford posed a threat to one of her girlfriends.
• June 7, 1960:
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  Lester Betts, a 40-year-old mail-carrier, walked into the office of 33-year-old principal Carson Hammond and shot him to death with a 12-gauge shotgun.
• January 4, 1961:
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  Donald Kurtz, 17-year-old senior at Delmont High School, was fatally wounded by a .22 caliber bullet from a rifle. The shot, intended as a sound effect for a school play, hit him in the chest during a rehearsal just minutes before the play was to take place.
• October 17, 1961:
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  Tennyson Beard, 14, got into an argument with William Hachmeister, 15, at Morey Junior High School. During the argument Beard pulled out a .38 caliber revolver and shot at Hachmeister, wounding him. A stray bullet also struck Deborah Faith Humphrey, 14, who died from her gunshot wound.
• August 1, 1966:
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  age 25, climbed atop the observation deck at the
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  , and killed 16 people and wounded 31 during a 96-minute shooting rampage.
• November 12, 1966:
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  Bob Smith, 18, took seven people hostage at Rose-Mar College of Beauty, a school for training beauticians. Smith ordered the hostages to lie down on the floor in a circle. He then proceeded to shoot them in the head with a 22-caliber pistol. Four women and a three-year-old girl died, one woman and a baby were injured but survived. Police arrested Smith after the massacre. Smith had reportedly admired Richard Speck and Charles Whitman.
• January 30, 1968:
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  16-year-old Blanche Ward shot and killed fellow student Linda Lipscomb, 16, with a .22-caliber pistol at Miami Jackson High School. According to Ward, she was threatened with a razor by Lipscomb during an argument over a fountain pen, and in the ensuing struggle the gun went off.
• February 8, 1968:
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  In the days leading up to February 8, 1968, about 200 mostly student protesters gathered on the campus of
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  , located in the city of Orangeburg, to protest the segregation of the All Star Bowling Lane. The bowling alley was owned by the late Harry K. Floyd. That night, students started a bonfire. As police attempted to put out the fire, an officer was injured by a thrown piece of banister. The police said they believed they were under attack by small weapons fire. The officers fired into the crowd, killing three young men: Samuel Hammond, Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith, and wounding twenty-seven others.
• May 22, 1968:
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  Ernest Lee Grissom, a 15-year-old student at Drew Junior High School, shot and seriously wounded a teacher and a 13-year-old student after he had been reprimanded for causing a disturbance.
• January 17, 1969:
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  Two student members of the Black Panther Party, Alprentice Carter and John Huggins, were fatally shot during a student meeting inside Campbell Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles. The motive of the shooting regarded who would own the school's African American Studies Center. The shooter, Claude Hubert, was never to be found but three other men were arrested in connection with the shooting.
• November 19, 1969:
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  Principal Martin Mogensen was shot to death in his office by a 14-year-old boy armed with a 20 gauge shotgun.

The 70's maybe?

The two most notable U.S. school shootings in the early 1970s were the
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in May 1970, where police opened fire on the campus of
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and the
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also in May 1970 where the National Guard opened fire on the campus of
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.
The mid to late 1970s is considered the second most violent period in U.S. school history with a series of school shootings, most notably were;

• December 30, 1974:
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  , Anthony Barbaro, a 17-year-old Regents scholar armed with a rifle and shotgun, kills three adults and wounds 11 others at his high school, which was closed for the Christmas holiday. Barbaro was reportedly a loner who kept a diary describing several "battle plans" for his attack on the school.
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• Thursday February 12, 1976: At
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  's
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  , about six intruders, who according to police looked like junior high students or younger, entered Murray Wright. According to the police they were searching for a student who had "stolen one of their girlfriends."
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  Two teachers discovered the intruders and asked them to leave. A security guard escorted the intruders down a hallway as about six Murray-Wright students followed the intruders as they were leaving. Outside of the door to the school, two of the intruders brandished guns and fired into the group., shooting and injuring five students. One of the injured was treated and released and the others were treated at
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  .
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• June 12, 1976:
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  , where the school's custodian opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle in the library on the California State University, Fullerton campus killing 7, and wounding 2.

• February 22, 1978:
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  After being taunted for his beliefs, a 15-year-old self-proclaimed Nazi, kills one student and wounds a second with a Luger pistol.
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• January 29, 1979:
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  ,
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  , where 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer opened fire with a rifle, a gift from her father, killing 2 and wounding 9.

So, bull****.

Lets also take note of how much less the body count is when these incidents involve basic handguns and hunting rifles as opposed to semi automatic weapons.

[SkapePhin]

While I definitely do not agree with Huckabee's sentiment regarding "God" in the schools, I do feel that public school education should require courses on Ethics and have mandatory community service. However, the method of community service should be altered. The way schools do it today leaves it up for abuse and students feel alone and up to their own devices - it doesn't build a sense of community or instill empathy. The better way to do it would to have certain periods during certain days where entire classes go out and help out in nursing homes, hospitals, homeless shelters or environmental cleanup projects.

I believe one of the main contributing factors in incidents like we saw yesterday (other than access to guns) is the increasing social isolation of people, especially young people. Almost every one of these mass shooters shares the same profile - young, white, middle class awkward kids that have been neglected, outcast or lack a social support system. Perhaps this is an unfortunate side-effect of civilization as urban sprawl and technology leads to increasing social isolation. We are operating with the same hardware and software from thousands of years ago, and for those thousands of years we were developed in small, close-knit communities that provided social support, and required participation from every member of its community.

Developing small, close-knit, supportive communities is the one thing that religious institutions do well that most other facets of society do not provide. Sports institutions are the only other ones that come close, imo. As we shift toward a more secular society, we must find ways to incorporate these sorts of community-building practices into our system. Unfortunately, in the rush to rid ourselves of superstitious belief, we aren't working to implement the essential services that those institutions provide into other facets of society and we end up leaving a lot of people out there floating alone in a sea of isolation.

[jared81]

Lets also take note of how much less the body count is when these incidents involve basic handguns and hunting rifles as opposed to semi automatic weapons.

Agreed.

[Dolphan7]

While I definitely do not agree with Huckabee's sentiment regarding "God" in the schools, I do feel that public school education should require courses on Ethics and have mandatory community service. However, the method of community service should be altered. The way schools do it today leaves it up for abuse and students feel alone and up to their own devices - it doesn't build a sense of community or instill empathy. The better way to do it would to have certain periods during certain days where entire classes go out and help out in nursing homes, hospitals, homeless shelters or environmental cleanup projects.

I believe one of the main contributing factors in incidents like we saw yesterday (other than access to guns) is the increasing social isolation of people, especially young people. Almost every one of these mass shooters shares the same profile - young, white, middle class awkward kids that have been neglected, outcast or lack a social support system. Perhaps this is an unfortunate side-effect of civilization as urban sprawl and technology leads to increasing social isolation. We are operating with the same hardware and software from thousands of years ago, and for those thousands of years we were developed in small, close-knit communities that provided social support, and required participation from every member of its community.

Developing small, close-knit, supportive communities is the one thing that religious institutions do well that most other facets of society do not provide. Sports institutions are the only other ones that come close, imo. As we shift toward a more secular society, we must find ways to incorporate these sorts of community-building practices into our system. Unfortunately, in the rush to rid ourselves of superstitious belief, we aren't working to implement the essential services that those institutions provide into other facets of society and we end up leaving a lot of people out there floating alone in a sea of isolation.

You make a great observation here in that we have lost the way we promote self worth. While religion does provide that to a great extent, removal of it from our schools and replacing it with nothing is a huge loss to our youth. And I also think that adding the teaching of evolution in our schools promotes just the opposite of self worth. We are random acts of accidents. There is no hope, no future, no purpose...only to live and die and make the most of it while we are alive. I wonder sometimes when I see these killers off themselves at the end of their spree that they think that that is the end and thus avoid accountability for their crimes? Makes you wonder.....

[SkapePhin]

You make a great observation here in that we have lost the way we promote self worth. While religion does provide that to a great extent, removal of it from our schools and replacing it with nothing is a huge loss to our youth. And I also think that adding the teaching of evolution in our schools promotes just the opposite of self worth. We are random acts of accidents. There is no hope, no future, no purpose...only to live and die and make the most of it while we are alive. I wonder sometimes when I see these killers off themselves at the end of their spree that they think that that is the end and thus avoid accountability for their crimes? Makes you wonder.....

Sorry, but I cannot ever agree with the removal of science and evolution from schools. Evolution isn't a philosophy, it is an observable process that is essential to our understanding of biology. The knowledge of evolution does not degrade one's sense of self-worth. Personally, I find that suggestion both ludicrous and dangerous. But as I stated, I do believe that we need to apply the things that religion does well, mainly community building and support, and apply it to other facets of society.

[MoFinz]

Yep, weapons have gotten far more effective and far more accessible. How many people did you know that owned automatic weapons growing up? I didn't know any in the 80s, but I know quite a few now (grew up in AZ).

Further, what kind of spiteful god says, "not asking me for favors every day? Fine. Time to kill some kids!" Yeah, no thanks to praying to something like that.

Im betting you dont actually know anyone with an automatic weapon.

SEMI-automatic, sure. If you know anyone with a fully automatic weapon, feel free to turn them in

The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was only a small part (title XI, subtitle A) of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.

The Act created a flowchart for classifying 'assault weapons' and subjected firearms that met that classification to regulation. Nineteen models of firearms were defined by name as being 'assault weapons' regardless of how many features they had. Various semi-automatic rifles, pistols, and shotguns were classified as 'assault weapons' due to having various combinations of features.

The Act addressed only semi-automatic firearms, that is, firearms that fire one shot each time the trigger is pulled. Neither the AWB nor its expiration changed the legal status of fully automatic firearms, which fire more than one round with a single trigger-pull; these have been regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934 and Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986.


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And as far as God and praying goes......maybe it's not my prayer that stops the crime...but maybe a perpetrator praying to God and finding a new path for himself is a better way to prevent these things from happening so often rather than the ridiculous notion of banning all firearms.

Not everyone that claims to be a Christian is a Christian. It takes more than saying so to make it so. I don't go to a garage and claim to be a mechanic, so going to church doesn't necessarily make you a Christian. It's whats inside.

[rob19]

Just so we're clear, the proponents of 'religion in school', by 'religion', you really mean Christianity, am i right?

Do we need Buddhism in school? Taoism? Hinduism?

[SkapePhin]

Just so we're clear, the proponents of 'religion in school', by 'religion', you really mean Christianity, am i right?

Do we need Buddhism in school? Taoism? Hinduism?

Buddhism in schools wouldn't be such a bad idea... If there is one thing American children need is a daily practice of a still mind to balance out all the over-stimulation their brains receive...

That being said, I am in favor of separation of Church and State.

[MoFinz]

In social studies, wouldn't you think a study and discussion of religions would be beneficial to a microwave generation? Maybe understand what Muslim believe and what Buddhists believe and why? Wouldnt it be a great start towards developing some tolerance?

Nahhhh.....some ACLU suit will pop up from an offended Christian or Atheist claiming Seperation......nothing in that clause endorses seperating your good common sense from educational enlightenment