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I'm thinking about it a lot. No judging yet, just trying to process and get a handle on it (if you ever can). I'm on our school's emergency preparedness committee, so hopefully my participation in that will quell some anxiety.

Yes it is so depressing

Yes, but I'm still in the "devasted for the families" stage & haven't gotten to processing the politics of it all. I've cried everyday thinking about the parents that lost their kids & the poor babies that had to see something so horrific. :,(

I don't think you should be angry at the parent, her son was 20 years old so it would be different if he was a 6 y/o finding a gun. They said that the whole family would go target shooting together, so he knew how to handle them from that.

I find it incredibly sad that this entire thing has only sparked gun safety/gun control debates. It makes me sick to think those poor babies were still in the school when people tried to turn this into a gun control issue. (Not you @Maysprout:, just venting!)

I am feeling sorry for baby-less mamas today, and i'm feeling sorry for those who had siblings when they went to school, and came home an only child. I feel sad for the set of twins where one survived and one didn't. I feel sad for the teacher who stayed home sick, and her entire classroom and her substitute were killed. I feel sad for the shooter because whatever snapped in him must be a horrible thing. I'm feeling sad/proud for the teachers who died laying on top of their students, doing all they possibly could to save those babies.

I hate that we need to teach 5 year olds the best way to exit the school if someone comes in to shoot them. That makes me sick.

Mostly, i'm just feeling sad for all the mamas, the siblings, the grandparents and the friends of all those children and the brave teachers.

@MrsTiz: I agree. No disrespect @maysprout - but a 20 year old man taking his parents gun is his own issue and NOT his parents. My dad has a gun but I would NEVER blame it on him if my little brother took it. They know better.
Even someone with Aspergers knows better.

I was just going to say that we're all mourning in our own way, and we're all going to have very different reactions. I think all are valid and as the fog clears hopefully we can start taking next steps and channelling the anger and frustration in constructive channels.

I have been thinking about all the families involved. So sad!

@caffeinated: There is certainly a right time to talk about gun control, and it is not on a day where twenty children lost their lives. A random Tuesday, a gun-safety awareness event, a bill to provide more in-depth background checks to those buying guns, whatever.

A day where twenty families are mourning the loss of their 6-7 year old is disgusting, disrespectful, and just plain sad.

Lets talk about guns next week, or last week, or any.other.day where an elementary school didn't get assaulted.

This tragedy is such an overwhelmingly depressing situation. I am having a hard time processing it as well because there are so many different factors. The media tries to pick apart the "cause" of why this happened, and I honestly don't ever think we'll have an answer everyone's so desperately trying to come up with. It's so situational, and honestly I doubt it could have been prevented. And as painful as it is to say/think it, I doubt similar events will be able to be prevented in the future.

Mental illness is a sad situation all around, but blaming any of these tragedies on "mental illness" is counter productive. Mental illness is SO prevalent, SO misunderstood, and SO stigmatized. I know many individuals who suffer from varying types of mental illness, and they are not violent individuals. Mental illness doesn't MAKE you violent. That being said, obviously people suffering from it should not have access to weaponry.

Regardless of his mental status, which I doubt we will ever be able to understand, this was one individual who had easy access to semi-automatic guns (completely unnecessary for a civilian to own, IMO). He made a decision to inflict the most damage he could to a crowd with the least ability to defend themselves. He was looking for notoriety. You can't prevent someone from doing that. You can stop them once they establish a pattern (i.e. catching serial killers), but for an isolated incident, I think it would be incredibly hard to prevent.

I don't know. I'm all for individual freedoms, the 2nd amendment being one of them, but restrictions should definitely be enforced. Like no semi or automatic artillery. There is absolutely no reason a civilian needs that, like ever.

I also wish that he wouldn't have committed suicide. We could have at least gotten answers from him if he hadn't, now they will never know.

@MrsTiz: Thank you for posting their names -- I think that's the most important focus in our national grieving process, making sure we remember the victims here, not the killer.

Not to make an insensitive comparison, but if you're a dog owner and you know your dog might be aggressive, you have a responsibility to keep other dogs and other owners safe. I feel it's the same with children, regardless of their age -- if they're under your roof, they are your responsibility. If you know your son is disturbed and you must have weapons in the house, make sure ONLY you can access them. I think that's just common sense.

I don't blame the mother for this tragedy -- the shooter bears the responsibility for this alone. But if it were one of my babies being buried, you can be damn sure I'd want meaningful policy change. There are too many deaths as a result of gun violence in this country, and we are better than that. As a nation, our tears and our sympathy don't mean much if we can't figure out how to fix it.

I agree that the day of the tragedy, Friday, was not the day for a gun control debate. But I do thing it's time to have that discussion now.

It really does bother me, I just cant and dont even want to imagine how those parents feel right now. I am angry that there are too many guns in the system that can easily get into the wrong hands.

Personally, I think the policy discussions should still take a backseat. Primarily because many of the families haven't even buried their loved ones, whether it be a child or spouse/daughter/mother. I remember having to go through the process with my ex mil when she had to bury my bil, only 19. Processing his death didn't even start until after his funeral (that's just kind of how it works). I feel the families deserve all the emotional support that can be provided & shift to policy takes away from that. They are still in just the very beginning days of their grief, really the numb holding it together stage, & I feel out of respect for them we can still be in mourning with them.

It's strange, but all I can focus on is that the parents left in the wake of all of this have probably already bought Christmas presents for their children, and now those children are gone. All the love and joy that surrounds the holiday season is gone, and now they have these gifts and no child to enjoy them. I'm having a hard time looking at my Christmas tree without crying because of this silly little thing, but it seems so big to me. How as a parent do you deal with all of this, how do you look at that box, and know the person who was supposed to open never will.

I can't stop crying. My husband thinks I'm insane. He compartmentalizes very well, I don't. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I've gone to bed early every night since then so I can cry BC I know mt prayers will take twice as long to get through.

I think there is a lot of finger pointing and unfortunately that won't get us anywhere. There is an interesting perspective on the mental illness side of things in the blog post below. I'm not saying it's an 'excuse' but it certainly is real. People out there need help and it can be hard to get at this point in our society.

Http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.HTML?m=1

@prettylizy: @Thehistoryofus: Me too! And I can't stop thinking about the fact that these parents weren't allowed to see their children the day of the shooting. I would have slept outside that school until they let me in to be with my baby. I just can't imagine. I am shattered at the thought.

@Mrs. Pen: His mother's friends did describe him as "troubled," but hindsight is 20/20. I don't blame her, though, I blame the system. She followed all the rules, did nothing illegal. But the fact is, no one needs an arsenal like she had. If we had more sensible regulations here, this would not have happened. That would be where my anger came from. Sorry, I realize that was not clear from my previous post, so I just want to emphasize that I do not blame her, at least with the info I have now! Although, with time, who knows what we might find out. But I absolutely agree that most mothers would never think their children are capable of murder.

I can't get past the shock and disbelief. I have really cut back on watching/reading the coverage because it just upsets me so badly. I literally threw up after hearing about it Friday night.

I feel so badly for the parents who lost their babies, I'm heartbroken for the children who saw everything and will have to live with those images and the missing friends/classmates for the rest of their lives. And I feel for the siblings, many of whom are way too young to comprehend what happened and will never get to grow up in a normal childhood without fear.

One of the most touching things I saw on the news (outside of Emilie Parker's father's discussion of his baby girl) was a teenager whose younger sibling was a student at the school, a 4th grader who was unharmed. He described the sheer terror of not knowing whether his little sister was okay or not. The love and bond of siblings was so evident in his words, it made me cry and be so grateful that I have a big brother just like him.

Okay, I'm going to get tissues now.

Yes it has been on my mind. I teach second grade and a lot of my babies are 7- the same age as some these sweet babies whose life was taken too early. Not that this is the same because he wasn't taken away by such evil but I lost my 7 year old nephew in a car accident two years ago. It is the most heartbreaking and worst thing I've ever dealt with. Even today I struggle dealing with his passing and miss him constantly. I can understand the complete and utter gut wrenching pain of losing someone so suddenly, especially a child but at the same time I can't imagine how these parents and other family members are going to cope dealing with it publicly. Just absolutely devastating.