A place for the discussion of all things not closely related to the sport and its competitive side. (Locked down several times a year during the major championships)
-If Nancy Lanza was my sister or daughter I would definitely go, but then I wouldn't have waited more than 4 days to claim her body. -I wouldn't go to Adam's funeral if he were my brother, son, father or friend. -I would go to Javon Belcher's funeral - if I barely knew him.
I give parents a lot of blame for a lot of things, but I'm not ready to put what Adam did on his mother. Crimes of passion...just sit different with me than the crime of killing children that you don't know who have never done anything to you. Now, if the children belonged to his worst enemy...
gh wrote:I haven't been to a funeral in 20 years and don't plan on ever going to one ever again. Including my own.
I try as hard as I can to not go to funerals or wakes. Memorial services, yes. I will not have one. Cremate me, get rid of the residue with the rest of the day's refuse, and throw a little party with some rock'n'roll, ice cream and cake. My family gets it. That said, Lanza's death is equally as tragic as all the lives he took. No man is an island.
preston wrote: I give parents a lot of blame for a lot of things, but I'm not ready to put what Adam did on his mother. Crimes of passion...just sit different with me than the crime of killing children that you don't know who have never done anything to you. Now, if the children belonged to his worst enemy...
Aside from the killer himself, I think his mother is by far the most responsible person. She knew how mentally unstable her son was (she told one of his baby sitters never to take eyes off of him, even for a second) and yet taught him how to use a gun, because she thought that would teach him "discipline." And she allowed him to have access to her guns (even if unintentionally), knowing how much danger he could cause to other people. This is incredibly irresponsible beyond imagination.
All the gun licensing and registration would mean nothing if registered gun owners like herself do not take responsibility for the guns they own. I think they should be criminally held responsible if someone else used their guns to commit crimes.
Funerals are as much about the survivors as it is about the dead, if not more. Yes, you might go to one to honor the dead, but it is a time to help the grieving and reacquaint yourself with friends and relatives you have lost touch with for whatever reason. I would not have a problem with going to Adam's funeral if I was in the family or friend circle. I am sure there was good in Adam's life. Tragic ending of course. Maybe some good healing among those who are close to him can take place because of it. I would hope people close to the family choose to go.
odelltrclan wrote:Funerals are as much about the survivors as it is about the dead, if not more. Yes, you might go to one to honor the dead, but it is a time to help the grieving and reacquaint yourself with friends and relatives you have lost touch with for whatever reason. I would not have a problem with going to Adam's funeral if I was in the family or friend circle. I am sure there was good in Adam's life. Tragic ending of course. Maybe some good healing among those who are close to him can take place because of it. I would hope people close to the family choose to go.
Well said. I consider it MY problem that I try so hard to avoid funerals, but it's a coping mechanism, I suppose. At least I'm not expecting anyone to attend my (non-existent) funeral. We all mourn in our own ways.
Funerals and memorial services are exclusively for benefit of the survivors (and the vendors). The deceased does not know whether you showed up to honor him/her or not. Unless I were a personal friend of a Lanza survivor, I would not attend.
odelltrclan wrote:Funerals are as much about the survivors as it is about the dead, if not more. Yes, you might go to one to honor the dead, but it is a time to help the grieving and reacquaint yourself with friends and relatives you have lost touch with for whatever reason. I would not have a problem with going to Adam's funeral if I was in the family or friend circle. I am sure there was good in Adam's life. Tragic ending of course. Maybe some good healing among those who are close to him can take place because of it. I would hope people close to the family choose to go.
Very well put. If as a close friend or relative you go you are mainly supporting the family. I would certainly think I would go as a close friend or relative in that situation.
agree w lonewolf. Funerals are for the living. Of course, I have no idea what it could be like to be related in any way to something as horrific as this, but were I close to someone who was a surviving family member of someone/thing that was particularly painful, and if it helped that person to have me at the funeral with him/her, then I would go. Otherwise, of course not.
I'd give him the bin Laden treatment. Toss his ashes--or corpse-- in the ocean.
My father wanted the Veteran's Cemetery deal which I assumed he thought was due him for his service (and was free). If I'm in an unmarked grave...fine.
What the question is really asking is: How do we feel about these 2. My answer is: His mother was doing her best as a mother, but she may have been blinded to the danger, or he was not showing any signs that could be picked up on. As to Adam Lanza I can only say that a human with such a disconnect between good and evil had a brain that was malfunctioned, and unfortunately no-one knew of the danger.
The mother told his 'sitter to "not turn his back on him"(Lanza). She didn't say why but the inference was that something really bad could happen. If she knew that was the case putting some high-powered weapons --even if locked-- in her home was negligent to say the least.
preston wrote: I give parents a lot of blame for a lot of things, but I'm not ready to put what Adam did on his mother. Crimes of passion...just sit different with me than the crime of killing children that you don't know who have never done anything to you. Now, if the children belonged to his worst enemy...
Aside from the killer himself, I think his mother is by far the most responsible person. She knew how mentally unstable her son was (she told one of his baby sitters never to take eyes off of him, even for a second) and yet taught him how to use a gun, because she thought that would teach him "discipline." And she allowed him to have access to her guns (even if unintentionally), knowing how much danger he could cause to other people. This is incredibly irresponsible beyond imagination.
All the gun licensing and registration would mean nothing if registered gun owners like herself do not take responsibility for the guns they own. I think they should be criminally held responsible if someone else used their guns to commit crimes.
As an aside....this is what should have been put forth by the NRA yesterday rather than what we got in the address by Mr. LaPierre who apparently went to the Bud Selig school of being the face of an organization.
The mother told his 'sitter to "not turn his back on him"(Lanza). She didn't say why but the inference was that something really bad could happen. If she knew that was the case putting some high-powered weapons --even if locked-- in her home was negligent to say the least.
I saw nothing in what this guy said that implied violence. If he was tending a kid with ADHD he might get the same instructions, or a developmentally challenged kid like Lanza. We don't know much about Lanza or his mother to say anything definitively, and I still guess that had he shown any tendency towards acting out against people she would have ditched the guns. Right now too much is being said that is made up or conjecture, as it still is about Columbine.
no one wrote:Geography aside, would you go to Adam and his mother's funeral?
If you were a close friend of a close friend of his family?
I would go to those funerals if, and only if, they were close blood relatives. If any my closest friends turned out to be what he was, and did what he did, I'd be nowhere near the funeral. Of course, I have to suspect that Adam had no close friends.
Another school shooting today, in California. (Fortunately no dead reported so far.) At least one other major difference: no weapons of mass murder. The relative the shooter 'borrowed' the gun from (a brother this time) only had a shotgun.
Do you remember how the Amish reacted after their young schoolgirls were massacred?
Since the tragedy, people around the world have been inspired by the way the Amish expressed forgiveness toward the killer and his family. But while their acts of forgiveness were inspiring, they also caused a misperception that the Amish had quickly gotten over the tragedy.
Forgiving the Killer
Charles Roberts wasn't Amish, but Amish families knew him as the milk truck driver who made deliveries. Last month, it was announced that the Amish community had donated money to the killer's widow and her three young children.
It was one more gesture of forgiveness, gestures that began soon after the shooting.
Donald Kraybill, is a sociologist at nearby Elizabethtown College and co-author of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy.
"I think the most powerful demonstration of the depth of Amish forgiveness was when members of the Amish community went to the killer's burial service at the cemetery," Kraybill says. "Several families, Amish families who had buried their own daughters just the day before were in attendance and they hugged the widow, and hugged other members of the killer's family."
Of course that schoolhouse shooting didn't generate the national media outrage and calls for sweeping gun control legislation that the Connecticut schoolgirl massacre did.
There are about two billion people in the world who call themselves Christians, but very few of them are Christ-like.
This sounds a lot more appropriate response to me than the "Amish forgiveness."
"The father of a woman killed in the Aurora movie theater shooting shouted "Rot in hell, Holmes" moments after the judge put off arraigning the suspected gunman, James Holmes."
Pego wrote:This sounds a lot more appropriate response to me than the "Amish forgiveness."
Appropriate? For whom? Is it inappropiate for the Amish react the way Jesus did to his crucifiers and the way Pope John Paul II did to his attempted assassin?
Pego wrote:This sounds a lot more appropriate response to me than the "Amish forgiveness."
Appropriate? For whom? Is it inappropiate for the Amish react the way Jesus did to his crucifiers and the way Pope John Paul II did to his attempted assassin?
I am not going to discuss theology on this forum. Not Jesus, not the Pope.
Pego wrote:I am not going to discuss theology on this forum. Not Jesus, not the Pope.
That's a good idea but I thought you opened that can of worms when you seemed to speak disapprovingly of "Amish forgiveness".
All right, this much and then I'll permanently shut up. I do not believe the sincerity of that "forgiveness." They did it because they believe in the Biblical code of conduct (exactly the one you mentioned). I shall say no more.
jazzcyclist wrote:Do you remember how the Amish reacted after their young schoolgirls were massacred?
Since the tragedy, people around the world have been inspired by the way the Amish expressed forgiveness toward the killer and his family. But while their acts of forgiveness were inspiring, they also caused a misperception that the Amish had quickly gotten over the tragedy.
Forgiving the Killer
Charles Roberts wasn't Amish, but Amish families knew him as the milk truck driver who made deliveries. Last month, it was announced that the Amish community had donated money to the killer's widow and her three young children.
It was one more gesture of forgiveness, gestures that began soon after the shooting.
Donald Kraybill, is a sociologist at nearby Elizabethtown College and co-author of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy.
"I think the most powerful demonstration of the depth of Amish forgiveness was when members of the Amish community went to the killer's burial service at the cemetery," Kraybill says. "Several families, Amish families who had buried their own daughters just the day before were in attendance and they hugged the widow, and hugged other members of the killer's family."
Of course that schoolhouse shooting didn't generate the national media outrage and calls for sweeping gun control legislation that the Connecticut schoolgirl massacre did.
There are about two billion people in the world who call themselves Christians, but very few of them are Christ-like.
Did this killer's widow and children help him to commit his crime like Nancy Lanza did to her son?
If not, it is apples and oranges. I would have more sympathy for Nancy Lanza if she had been actually a victim.
TN1965 wrote:Did this killer's widow and children help him to commit his crime like Nancy Lanza did to her son?
If not, it is apples and oranges. I would have more sympathy for Nancy Lanza if she had been actually a victim.
Either you're unfamiliar with the details of Adam Lanza's crime or you're using some very convoluted and twisted logic if you're arguing that Nancy Lanza was a co-conspirator, and not a victim of her son's crime.
By the way, the gun debate thread has already been locked, so there's no need to revisit that topic.
