I'm watching the niece so there will be no television for now... which is probably good.

Carolyn Hax was having her live chat when the news about the shooting came in, so here's here outline of how to talk to kids:

Q. SCHOOL SHOOTING In light of today's shooting at the elementary school at CT, can you give all the parents some ideas of what to say to our ES-age kids when they get home? They may or may not hear about it, but I want to be ready and good lord, how can I tell them the truth? – December 14, 2012 12:16 PM Permalink

A. CAROLYN HAX : When I have to tell my kids about these things, I always say that sometimes people do terrible things to each other. I also say we're all very fortunate that these things are still very rare, even if it doesn't seem that way from the number of times they appear in the news. If they ask for details, I might say that I'm not sure of the specifics myself, and that I am going to wait till the full story emerges so that I can learn what I need to know instead of just getting hit with images that will haunt me.

I also let them ask questions, because I don't think talking at kids is ever the whole of what they need; they need to process the news and what we've said about it, and form their questions. Which I will try to answer honestly, though with stuff like this I can't get away from my inability to get my mind around it.

If you start watching the news, I highly recommend CBS.

CNN, NBC, MSNBC are turning their news into an unwatchable clusterfuck with their decision to interview KIDS. WTF.

I feel like I'm having this argument all over the place - people with psychiatric disorders are far more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than they are the perpetrators, and so far there is no evidence that the shooter here was a victim of poor mental health treatment. How does this line of thinking help anyone?

It doesn't.

I don't know if this will have much affect on Em, but I'm fearing it will freak L the fuck out.

One person said "It's not gun control we need, it's mental health control", which is a glib way of saying what I'm thinking.

well the country does nees better mental health control, but what REALLY needs to be done is that Americans need to be taught that you do not have tantrums and resort to violence when you do not like the way things are going. I truly believe it is this one thing that results in so much more gun violence here even though other countries have similar gun ownership numbers. It's a weird cultural thing.

I also think if someone is determined to carry out something like this, no gun laws or mental health checks are going to help much. The number of people who do this sort of thing is still tiny, although it doesn't seem like it when it's all over the news.

And the guy in China stabbed those kids today. So making guns unavailable wouldn't solve everything, in every instance.

This is the kind of gun he used.

He bought it legally.

I think that people believe that it takes someone mentally ill to kill more than two dozen people, most of them little kids. Otherwise, how do you explain how someone could do such a terrible thing? The little kids couldn't have made the person fear for his life, so mental illness could be a factor.

How do you explain the unexplainable?

I believe we need much better mental health care and I actually think that if it were as widely available as OTC drugs, we probably would see the rates of this (and other forms of violence) diminish. But I'm a dirty hippie and want better healthcare period.

Specific to this issue, I don't think there are enough healthy outlets for disappointment, rage, anger and this is what a small portion of the population decide to do. What makes this deadly though are easy access to assault weapons.

That said, it would be nice to have a good discussion of what would prevent these deaths because life is going to get more stressful, not less.

So making guns unavailable wouldn't solve everything, in every instance.

It's a lot easier to stop one guy with a knife, than a guy with an assault weapon.