NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Friday, October 24th, 2014

Eighty-seventh school shooting since Sandy Hook leaves two dead at Marysville Pilchuck

Today, some of the worst fears of par­ents, teach­ers, and stu­dents in Sno­homish Coun­ty’s sec­ond largest city were real­ized when a stu­dent, said to be a fresh­man and a mem­ber of the Tualip Tribe, opened fire in the cafe­te­ria of Marysville Pilchuck High School, killing and wound­ing sev­er­al peo­ple before appar­ent­ly tak­ing his own life. The tragedy unfold­ed at about 10:45 AM, accord­ing to news reports.

The tragedy is the eighty-sev­enth school shoot­ing in Amer­i­ca since the night­mare that took place in New­town at Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary in Decem­ber of 2012. Yes, you read that cor­rect­ly: the eighty-sev­enth. The com­plete list is avail­able here.

The alleged per­pe­tra­tor is dead and the wound­ed have been tak­en to area hos­pi­tals, chiefly Prov­i­dence in Everett. One gun­shot vic­tim was tak­en to Har­borview Med­ical Cen­ter in Seat­tle; report­ed­ly, he was shot in the jaw.

Police are been per­form­ing what’s called a grid search, after ear­li­er com­plet­ing a pre­lim­i­nary sweep of the cam­pus, which is rather large. (More than two thou­sand stu­dents attend the high school). They now con­sid­er the cam­pus secure.

Said the district:

We are active­ly work­ing with law enforce­ment in iden­ti­fy­ing stu­dents and get­ting them home safely.

A stu­dent reuni­fi­ca­tion cen­ter is locat­ed at the cor­ner of 116th and 51st Street at the Shoultes Com­mu­ni­ty Church. Sup­port ser­vices for stu­dents and fam­i­lies are also avail­able at this location.

All after school events have been can­celled district-wide.

This is an active police inves­ti­ga­tion. All media calls are being direct­ed to local law enforce­ment. Addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion will be released as it becomes available.

We want to extend our thoughts and prayers to the fam­i­lies involved in this tragedy. When some­thing hap­pens to one of our chil­dren, it hap­pens to all of us. We are work­ing close­ly with law enforce­ment.  Our thoughts are with all stu­dents, fam­i­lies, staff, and our com­mu­ni­ties dur­ing this time.

Schools are sup­posed to be places of learn­ing, com­fort, and safe­ty. But today, Marysville Pilchuck High School turned into the site of a tragedy and a crime scene, like so many oth­er schools before it. We are pray­ing for the young peo­ple who are wound­ed and the good doc­tors and nurs­es who are try­ing to save them. May those med­ical pro­fes­sion­als be suc­cess­ful, and may their patients make a full recovery.

But thoughts and prayers are not enough. We can’t allow these tragedies to con­tin­ue to unfold, and not talk about the need for action to pre­vent any more of them. Right now, there is some­thing that every one of us who is reg­is­tered to vote in Wash­ing­ton State can DO. We can vote NO on I‑591, and YES on I‑594.

The defeat of 591 and pas­sage of 594 will bring uni­ver­sal back­ground checks to Wash­ing­ton State. By itself, I‑594 will not end gun vio­lence, but it will make a dif­fer­ence. Pas­sage of 594 will pre­vent peo­ple from buy­ing guns in Wash­ing­ton with no ques­tions asked. I‑594 will save lives.

Of course, there’s more we need to do. But it is with­in our pow­er as a peo­ple to take this first step. These ini­tia­tives are before us, in our capac­i­ty as cit­i­zen law­mak­ers. Let’s change the law and make our com­mu­ni­ties safer by vot­ing NO on I‑591 and YES on I‑594.

As Shan­non Watts (founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in Amer­i­ca) said today: “Amer­i­cans are tired of watch­ing news heli­copter footage of our chil­dren being led out of their schools – a place where they should be safe from the gun vio­lence that kills eighty-six Amer­i­cans every day.”

“After the tragedy at Sandy Hook, we start­ed count­ing shoot­ings in Amer­i­can schools and today’s is the 87th —three of which have occurred in Wash­ing­ton. Our chil­dren and teach­ers should not be the front­line of Amer­i­ca’s gun vio­lence. This is unac­cept­able.  We need to do every­thing we can — and demand our lead­ers do the same — to pre­vent the next tragedy.” 

Leah Bern­stein, a Moms Demand Action mem­ber in Wash­ing­ton, agreed.

“As a moth­er with kids in school just miles down the road from Marysville, my heart is bro­ken for the stu­dents and fac­ul­ty of Marysville-Pilchuck High School, and for the entire com­mu­ni­ty. When we send our kids to school each day, we shouldn’t have to wor­ry about whether the next shoot­ing will be at their school. As moth­ers com­mit­ted to reduc­ing gun vio­lence, all of our thoughts and prayers are with these chil­dren and their fam­i­lies in the wake of this awful tragedy.”

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2 Comments

  1. Of course this is a tragedy, but to allow an emo­tion­al response to guide a vote for 594 is an error. Do not allow the pletho­ra of adver­tis­ing to mis­lead you, you are smarter than to be mis­lead in this manner.

    The argu­ment for many has come to the age old and mis­lead think­ing, “If it only saves one life…what harm can it do?”. Bad argu­ment, bad law. Shame on the pro­pa­gan­da which con­tin­ues to sell this infan­tile statement. 

    There is no like­li­hood or proof 594 can change human behav­ior, it does not address causation. 

    As much as we would all pre­fer to decrease spo­radic per­sons act­ing-out with vio­lent behav­ior, 594 has no pro­vi­sions which speak to use­ful change. The foun­da­tion which 594 bases its TV ads (loop­hole and back­ground check) are a ruse to steer the observ­er from the rest of the con­tent of this proposal. 

    If 594 were as sim­ple as some say it is, and indeed it only addressed a cou­ple sim­ple points not­ed in its adver­tis­ing, why would it take 18 pages to define this? Exact­ly, it would not. 

    So we are left to ask an intel­li­gent ques­tion, what else does it say in those pages?

    And this is where the prob­lems are, this is why the major­i­ty of Police Offi­cers and intel­li­gent respon­si­ble adults are against 594. The mil­lions of dol­lars spent in ads have been inject­ed to induce fear and bring about an emo­tion­al response. Chang­ing and imple­ment­ing law is a job for ratio­nal log­i­cal thought, not emotions.

    I’m not sug­gest­ing any­thing oth­er than a NO VOTE on I‑594.

    # by Gearmoe :: October 27th, 2014 at 11:43 AM
  2. # by Krystina Bair :: November 12th, 2014 at 12:28 PM

One Ping

  1. […] sense­less and trag­ic inci­dent marks the 87th school shoot­ing in the U.S. since the Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary School mas­sacre in Decem­ber 2012.  Mathematically, […]

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