Cluster and Copycat Shootings - Cruel Christmas Headlines

Typically, this is the time of year when lead stories are about how Christmas consumes the retail news.

Not so during this particular pre Holiday week.  

As the nation is reminded about the one year anniversary of the Sandy Hook tragedy, the memorializing is sadly trumped by more stories of innocent people who are victims of even more heinous gun violence.

CNN Reports on another Colorado Colorado shootings in a school. This follows the horror of the Columbine school shootings and the movie theater massacre.

Centennial, Colorado (CNN) -- The condition of a 15-year-old girl who was shot Friday at Arapahoe High School was downgraded after surgery to critical, Sheriff Grayson Robinson told reporters.

In addition to two students who suffered gunshot wounds, three students suffered anxiety attacks, Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson told reporters Friday.

Two of the students were released to their families immediately; one was taken to a hospital for additional treatment and later released, he said.

Two Molotov cocktails were found inside Arapahoe High School, Sheriff Garyson Robinson told reporters during a news conference on Friday.

Additionally, the Portland Press Herald website reports another shooting in the small town of Hollis Maine.

Approaching the one year December anniversary of the Newtown massacre, the NBC news correspondent Jeff Rossen ran a drill on several schools to determine if security measures were in place to prevent another massacre. Unescorted, Rossen went looking for the main office, per school policy. As he looked, he walked past several classrooms with kids, stopping at one to ask a teacher for directions. No one asked who he was, or what he was doing there. For two minutes, he walked through the halls, and was only stopped once he arrived at the office. Although some schools in the test passed the security test, several others came up short, putting students in a potentially vulnerable situation.

This seasonal time of year is supposed to be consumed with joy and good will. Instead, the negativity of more gun violence compounds the one year memorial of the Sandy Hook preventable murders.

Peace and good will are lovely seasonal themes, but these greetings are lost on the victims of preventable gun violence. This Christmas and every subsequent Holiday will cause the victims to relive the Sandy Hook massacre. Indeed, the entire Sandy Hook community is harmed by association with the traumatic killings.

A one year Sandy Hook memorial will be a quiet observance, but the growing incidence of gun violence screeches through the headlines. A cacophony of anguish about relentless gun violence incidents continues, with no hope in sight for prevention.

These cluster and copycat shootings are cruel Christmas headlines,

All these deadly incidents are preventable, if guns and ammunition were to be regulated.  

My sympathy to the families who are mourning the one year memorial of the preventable death of children and teachers at Sandy Hook. Their sadness is deep and everlasting.

Even worse, the Sandy Hook deaths haven't changed anything in our nation about preventing future tragedies. There's no justice in these continual cruel headlines.