World News Korner

Most recent school shooter was a Mormon who wanted to kill "sinners."

Courtesy of the New York Daily News:

The 15-year-old freshman who opened fire on his Oregon high school Tuesday wanted to kill "sinners," the teen wrote in his diary.

Jared Padgett, an active member of an Gresham, Ore., Mormon church, shot and killed a student and injured a teacher during the attack on Reynolds High School before turning the gun on himself, police said.

While searching through the teen's home, officers found his journal, Portland's KGW reported.

In the diary, Padgett detailed plans to kill the "sinners" at his school, police said.

No specific students or teachers were named as targets. His writings did not outline how or when the killings would occur, police said.

Well I guess when you are surrounded by a culture that labels guns "tools" that can be used to solve problems, it might make sense to give God a helping hand with those you consider "sinners."

This young man was pumped full of religious fairy tales, allowed to arm himself, and then sent to school. It is a miracle these things don't happen more often.

And there is at least one teacher from his high school who has had enough of this kind of lunacy.

Courtesy of Americans Against the Tea Party:

Seth Needler teaches science at Reynolds High School, where America saw the 74th school shooting since Sandy Hook. After the shooter, Jared Padgett, killed one of his classmates last week, Needler wrote a lengthy post on social media describing his terror as he and his students huddled in their darkened classroom, fearing for their lives.

Now, he is calling for action. Needler has even offered his own outline for tightening security on gun sales. He was critical of the NRA for not allowing such common sense steps to be taken already, stating:

“I’m sick and tired of hearing gun enthusiasts claim that any kind of gun regulation is an attack on the second amendment, or that the solution to gun violence is more guns” he wrote. “I completely fail to understand how one organization, which is the lobbying arm of one industry, can control every politician in Congress to the extent of preventing any action at all on gun control, even after polls show that 90% of Americans are in favor of it.”

"But every time another shooting happens, and undoubtedly this will be no exception, people (including me and my family and friends) sigh, groan, bemoan the incident, talk about how awful it is, criticize the NRA and its lopsided influence, and then do…nothing. The only constituency that responds with any energy to incidents of gun violence is gun enthusiasts, who declare that it just provides more proof of their hypothesis that schools need to be staffed with U.S. Marshalls and teachers need to be armed and carry loaded weapons. Rather than stricter gun regulation, we get weakening of the existing regulation, and states literally pushing each other out of the way to be the most liberal when it comes to who can carry weapons into how many different venues, including churches, schools and even bars."

Mr. Needler then goes on to lay out a very reasonable gun control proposal which includes letters of recommendation, extensive background checks, and gun safety course.

Mr. Needler also says he is going to start aggressively contacting his representatives and ask them to sign a "No Gun Pledge." He reminds naysayers that there was a time when big tobacco was considered too big to take on, until the government and people did just that.

Personally I think what he says sounds more than reasonable. And as someone who has gone through extensive background checks, including letters of recommendation, I don;t see why anyone who wants to own a firearm should not have to go through a similar experience.

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