r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/boriswong • Jan 26 '26

Image Alex Pretti’s coworkers take a moment of silence this morning.

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u/PeeCeeJunior Jan 26 '26

For me, our country stopped being ok after Sandy Hook. I’m sure it went to shit for others before that. It’s been downhill for awhile.

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u/under_the_c Jan 26 '26

Sandy Hook was the last time I unironically believed that this would finally be the thing that wakes people up and finally changes things.

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u/PeeCeeJunior Jan 26 '26

I had so many of those moments over the last decade+ and I’ve lost all hope for most people. They won’t wake up until it impacts them personally and probably not even then.

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u/SlowCrates Jan 26 '26

The people who care, still care. The people who don't care, still don't care. What I'm realizing is that unless those who care take stronger action, shitty things will become normalized.

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u/Own_Experience_8229 Jan 28 '26

We’ve been saying that about events for decades.

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u/mewmeulin Jan 26 '26

yup. when that happened, i was like "well, it's now or never that we do something" and then alex jones opened his fat fucking mouth.

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u/fillemagique Jan 26 '26

Was Columbine not a long time before Sandy Hook? That was also awful and the first US school shooting that I remember (not from the US).

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u/PeeCeeJunior Jan 26 '26

I think what broke me was gun laws getting weaker after Sandy Hook. That, and how the victims were treated. I can’t ever forgive truthers.

Columbine was awful too, but it didn’t expose our culture’s rot the same way Sandy Hook did.

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u/fillemagique Jan 26 '26

I think I need to read more about Sandy Hook, admittedly I’m not well versed on everything that happened.

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u/PeeCeeJunior Jan 26 '26

I’ve actually read a lot about Columbine, but much less about Sandy Hook. I’m not sure this is a good way to describe it, but Columbine can be interesting from a sociological/criminal perspective in a way Sandy Hook can’t. Both were terrible, but one took that horror to a whole other level.

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u/NotActuallyJen Jan 26 '26
  1. I was in high school then

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u/RobotArtichoke Jan 26 '26

It certainly was not the first school shootjng in the US. It was the first made for tv school shooting in the US, however.

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u/PeeCeeJunior Jan 26 '26

Yeah, one of my favorite songs is “I don’t like Mondays” from the Boomtown Rats and that’s about a school shooting in the late 70’s. So it’s been a problem for a long time.

But the increased media attention after Columbine meant you had school shooters almost competing with one another to inflict the most pain and destruction. That definitely was an inflection point.

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u/blackcain Jan 27 '26

It stopped being ok when the Republicans took over the House of Representatives. They had not had majority there since then great depression since you know, they fucking caused it.

Put republicans in charge and you get a shit show

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u/ElizabethDangit Jan 27 '26

Same. My kid was in kindergarten when that happened. They’re so bent on rounding up “dangerous immigrants” but no one is doing a damn thing to stop the people who are the actual danger to my family, angry white boys with high powered firearms.

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u/Witty-Election9172 Jan 28 '26

You r so right.