Step #1: "Have A Plan"

if someone wants to get into a school to create havoc, they can do it.”

During the last part of my tour in Viet Nam, I was "in the Rear Echelons" (assigned to a base camp) where we paid regular visits to orphanages and Childrens' Hospitals.  I met kids as young as 7 or 8 years old who had been "injured".  Land mines (ours, theirs, whatever) took a terrible toll on children who would pick up a toy, only to have it blow up on them.  I met children missing arms, legs ... and parents.

It didn't matter whether the land mine which had taken their limbs were set by our side or the other side ... usually, the children of Viet Nam were delighted to see us because we brought them  food, fruits, candies and other treats.  It was hard to accept that we were sent on these visitation to "win the hearts and minds" of children who were missing body parts,  and who had terrible battle scars much worse than our friends in the company had suffered from similar war wounds

A seven year old girl with burn scars over her chest from Napalm, but still smiled at us, is enough to make a grown man cry.  And we did ... but not until we left their "safe" compoind.

I've been around the world and I've Seen The Elephant, but after all these years I've not seen worse than this.

I was lucky; I never saw children die. And I hope I never will.

Now ... today ... we have American children suffering the same kind of wounds.

But we have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.

Santa Fe school had a shooting plan, armed officers, and practice. And still 10 people died. – The Denver Post:

They thought they were a hardened target, part of what’s expected today of the American public high school in an age when school shootings occur with alarming frequency. And so a death toll of 10 was a tragic sign of failure and needing to do more, but also a sign, to some, that it could have been much worse. “My first indication is that our policies and procedures worked,” J.R. “Rusty” Norman, president of the school district’s board of trustees, said Saturday, standing exhausted at his front door. “Having said that, the way things are, if someone wants to get into a school to create havoc, they can do it.” 

Is This The New "American Angst"?

Have we become a colony of lab-rats who are so insular that we begin to feed upon our own?

Did we sink so far that we have evolved a National Paranoia which inevitably requires us to self-destruct?

I know that any society has its portion of insane people who are so far out of sync with 'normality' that they are not bothered by enjoy wreaking havoc on their neighbors.  Call them Schizophrenic, call them paranoidal, call them crazy ... they exist in any societal group sufficiently large to support  non-productive members.

All I know is that we have an emerging sub-class of people who feel no obligation to support the well-being of Society,  and they are running wild in America.    Their politics don't matter; whether or not they support the Second Amendment doesn't matter.  They will use any weapon, any societal meme, any trick of rhetoric to undermine American society/values/peace.

They have always been here, but today they are given free reign to use our "Acceptance" to attack the  rest of the rats.

We are the rats, and we are under attack.

What are we going to do about it?