I feel like I have had an unfair advantage over most people in terms of dealing with the Sandy Hook killings. See, for the last few weeks I've been reading a book on genocide. Unlike the review that links to, I would not list "none" under "Cons," but it's nice synthesis/survey of the general topic. I feel like it should have been released by the Journal of Obvious Results' publishing house, but that doesn't mean it isn't interesting or informative. Actually, prior to reading Becoming Evil, I read this (which is far better than the cover would suggest...though that is pretty much the most awesome cover ever. CONTROVERSY!) Consequently, I was really already on a roll with the "thinking about the massacre of children" train.
Also, last week I skinned out a wild pig (several, actually, but I only did one mostly by myself ), dressed her in clothing, beat her 34 times with a length of rebar (I wanted to inflict damage on the bones, and managing to do that on a dead pig that's still covered in all her piggy-ness is NOT AS EASY AS YOU THINK), and buried her in a shallow grave. The highlight of my day was when the retired Homicide Investigator who was giving me tips on skinning the pig asked, "Am I training a serial killer?" I assured him that if I had learned one thing from studying forensic science, it's that being a serial killer who doesn't get caught is WAY too much work for me to ever consider it.
For a while now I've been working on an art project I call the "Massacre-A-Day" calendar. The idea is in the vein of those "Inspirational Quote A Day" desk calendar things you see, but instead of your daily origami animal, you get a massacre that happened on that day. The idea came to me last year when there was a particularly big outpouring of sentiment over the 10 year anniversary of September 11. I wondered how many people comprehended that it was not a unique event. That I could probably find at LEAST one recorded civilian massacre for every day in the year. Bam. Massacre-A-Day. I haven't been actively researching for it. I figure that given my line of work/study, the information will eventually find its way to me.
When I found out about the shooting, one of my first thoughts was simply, "this gets a day."
