Murphy Foss and Tarky Lombardi<\/p>\n
Staff Writers<\/p>\n
Tragedy struck the city of Las Vegas on Oct 3, 2017. A lone shooter on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino reigned terror down on a crowd of 22,000 at a Jason Aldean concert. Aldean was the final act of a multi-day country music festival in Vegas. The shooter, 64 year-old Stephen Paddock, left 58 dead and hundreds more injured, making this the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. He used the 23 guns he had brought up to his suite over the course of previous two days. Most of these firearms were either fully automatic or had been converted to automatic by devices that Paddock had legally purchased.<\/p>\n
The shooting has raised concerns over gun control, even here at Jamesville-DeWitt High School and what the solution is to our gun violence issues. \u201cGun control doesn\u2019t work,\u201d said junior Quinn Walton, \u201cthere are still other ways for people to obtain firearms if they are restricted.\u201d Some people, like freshman Inika Gajra, think gun control is necessary. \u201cI don\u2019t think mentally ill people should have guns and guns should be harder to get in general,\u201d said Gajra, \u201cautomatic weapons should not be available to the public.\u201d Senior Leah Netti agrees with Gajra, \u201cthese things just keep happening, we need gun control in order to put an end to this,\u201d said Netti.<\/p>\n
Despite the divide on issues like gun control, it appears as though there may be room for compromise. \u201cThere is no need for automatic weapons to be on the market,\u201d said Walton, who is an avid hunter, \u201cno hunter I know uses an automatic weapon or has the need for one.\u201d Some citizens, like junior Jakob Ellithorpe, think the best thing we can do as a country right now is to come together, \u201cwe all just need to stand together,\u201d said Ellithorpe, \u201cwe need to work together to find solutions that will benefit our country as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paddock had been planning this horrific event for a while. He had even set up cameras on the door of his suite and in the hallway outside so that he would know when police officers and SWAT operatives arrived. He even sent his girlfriend, Marilou Danley, out of the country to visit her family and wired around $100,000 to her in the Philippines. However, she says she saw no signs that Paddock was planning anything of this sort and claims to have thought that the money he had sent was a way of breaking up with her.<\/p>\n
Because there is no way to know when and where the next mass shooting will take place, so schools have to be prepared. Legislation could take a while to pass, so schools are looking for their own solutions to stop active shooters. \u201cBeing prepared for emergencies is really important,\u201d<\/p>\n
said Principal Paul Gasparini, \u201c(Dave) Nylen, (Will) Dowdell, and I met with a first responder yesterday to go over lockdown drills and we had an awareness meeting with our teachers.\u201d Other CNY schools like Baldwinsville are taking it a step further, going through active shooter scenarios with teachers. \u201cOur primary goal is to keep students safe at school,\u201d said Principal Gasparini.<\/p>\n
Paddock himself was a retired accountant, who had made a lot of money over his career. He was a big time gambler, gambling up to a million dollars in one night. He spent a lot of time on the road, most of it in casinos. Paddock\u2019s own brother was completely shocked by his actions, describing him as someone who loved video poker, cruises, burritos, and country music. However, he had only started gambling after retirement as he had no children and plenty of money to play with.<\/p>\n
Legislation could take a while to pass, places such as schools are looking for solutions to stop active shooter. \u201cBeing prepared for emergencies is really important,\u201d said Jamesville-DeWitt High School Principal Paul Gasparini, \u201cMr. Nylen, Mr. Dowdell, and I met with a first responder yesterday to go over lockdown drills and we had an awareness meeting with our teachers.\u201d Other CNY schools like Baldwinsville are taking similar measure, going over drills with teachers in case of a shooter. \u201cOur primary goal is to keep students safe at school,\u201d said Principal Gasparini.<\/p>\n
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Murphy Foss and Tarky Lombardi Staff Writers Tragedy struck the city of Las Vegas on Oct 3, 2017. A lone shooter on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino reigned terror down on a crowd of 22,000 at a Jason Aldean concert. Aldean was the final act of a multi-day country music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}