Saugus High School shooting

As I'm sure all of you know, there was another high school shooting.

This one occurred in Saugus, CA, which is about 30 miles north of Los Angeles. It's part of the Santa Clarita Valley, near Newhall, Valencia, and Canyon Country. I actually spent a good deal of time in the area about 25-30 years ago.

I just found out today that the sister of my childhood best friend lives in Saugus, and her son was 10 feet away when the shooting began. The boy saw the gun out, and watched as other students got shot. He ran away and actually tried to keep his backpack facing where the shooter was standing "to block the bullets". Fortunately the shooter didn't fire at him, and he got away. And fortunately for his mom, she got a text from him that he got away before she was aware there was a shooting. His uncle (my friend) told me that the boy is surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

The shooter, Nathaniel Berhow, decided to do this on his 16th birthday, for unknown reasons. He was half-Asian, with a white dad and an Asian mom. He was known as a smart, quiet kid, who was not bullied, and he had a girlfriend. However, his dad abruptly died of a heart attack in 2017, which seemed to have sent him spiraling into depression.

https://thenypost.files.wordpress.co...8&h=410&crop=1


Some sicko also set up a fake Instagram account shortly after the shooting, pretending to belong to the shooter. The account had the tag, "Saugus have fun at school tomorrow", and for awhile the account was assumed to be real. Later it came out that the account was a hoax, and that some kid had set it up to "troll" and to get onto the news.

Two kids died there, and a few others are injured. The shooter shot himself in the head at the end, causing himself to become braindead, but he's being left on life support so his organs can be used for others.

The motive is not known, but it's said that a "dispute with a girl at the school" might have been the reason for the shooting. However, I think there's a good chance he wouldn't have done this if his dad were still alive. That seemed to be the factor which screwed him up. His father was 41 years older than him, and died at age 55.

You know these school shootings are way too common when nobody even bothers to start a thread for days after it happens.

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Originally Posted by Hockey Guy

You know these school shootings are way too common when nobody even bothers to start a thread for days after it happens.

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Unfortunately this "trend" was started in Columbine 20 years ago, and all since then have basically been copycats.

Prior to that, nobody really had the idea to shoot up their school. Nobody's mind went there. There was just as much access to guns prior to 1999 as there is today.

Some of this responsibility has to fall upon the parents' shoulders. They should keep all guns locked away from their teenage kids.

Shootings like these also spark the gun control debate, but the fact is that there are too many guns out there in the US, and a full gun control could never work. The lives saved from the prevention of mass shootings would be miniscule compared to the lives lost because criminals would be emboldened to commit home and business invasion robberies, knowing that nobody would be armed to defend themselves.

The only real solution here is a strong education campaign to parents to make sure to lock away their guns, and to pay special attention to doing so if they have a teenager who seems to be going through problems.

I wouldn’t simply write it off to copycat behavior. There has been a increase in mass shootings and terrorism generally.

The other episodes are greeted with similar resignation. It’s just part of the culture now. Can’t change that with laws.

gonna wanna hear what meds he was on.

I assume it was a sneak attack.

https://youtu.be/J6WoH2RpzPI

an LA Times story that says the unregistered firearms were found at the home of the Nathaniel Berhow--no specification by the police if the firearms were handguns or assault weapons

not specifying is incendiary reporting, because it implies there was deliberate lawbreaking by the family

you see, California only requires registration of handguns and firearms considered assault weapons--no registration is required for shotguns nor long rifles

so if the firearms were rifles or shotguns, there was no ill intent by not registering

incomplete reporting by the police


here is a link to a sample of the sloppyness
https://www.omaha.com/news/national/...a6b450012.html

Investigators found several firearms during a search of the teen’s home, and some were not registered. Villanueva did not specify what types of guns were recovered. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department is working with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace the origins of the .45-caliber handgun used in the shooting.

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Originally Posted by sonatine

gonna wanna hear what meds he was on.

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That's actually a very good possibility.

The dirty little secret about depression meds is that they cause suicidal feelings in people in their teens and 20s, leaving parents of depressed teens with the unpalatable choice of either not treating the depression or risking a higher chance of suicide.

If this really was partially brought on by medication taken after depression brought on by his father's death, it should be widely publicized, and parents should be made aware of this danger.

I learned all about this last year when searching for possible depression/anxiety meds for myself (which I ended up not taking), and I was at least relieved to see that I was far too old for those to cause suicidal feelings.

Now we got Asians trying to appropriate my culture? C’mon that’s not cool.

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Originally Posted by Hockey Guy

You know these school shootings are way too common when nobody even bothers to start a thread for days after it happens.

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This wiki has a chart that lists them. I'd forgotten half of these.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_s..._United_States