My heart is broken, and my mind is conflicted. I don’t ever want to see another mass school shooter massacre ever happen again. Of that, I’m certain we can all agree. Unlike the talking heads on tv and the masses online, I have zero interest in making this about politics. We need solutions that will help address the issues, not grandstanding or even bills aimed at winning votes rather than solving the problem.
Over 81 million people in the US own guns; 44% of all Americans live in a home with guns. There have only been 14 mass school shootings at K-12 schools since the 1970s. Given those numbers, it’s really hard to make an argument that it’s the accessibility that’s at issue here. It sounds like a commonsense move - guns are used to kill, so let’s eliminate guns, until you look at the numbers. I don’t know that you can really blame .000017% of anything for being the cause.
Since more than 99.9999% of gun owners have never had their gun used in a school massacre, the real question is what makes .000017% behave differently than the norm and use them in this way. There is also not one weapon that has been used at these attacks - many different types of firearms have been used as well as weapons besides firearms.
Mass school shooters are exactly who you think they would be. They are either current or former students of the school they attack. All shooters but one have been male. They were bullied & assaulted at the school they later attacked. They are described by others as being social outcasts, isolated, withdrawn, and angry. It’s never been the high school quarterback, the mathlete, or band geek, though the latter two are often bullied.
The public school day experience has been so ingrained into our society over the past 100 years that adults usually dismiss struggles students face in their day at school. School bullying is something kids are often left to handle on their own - which more often than not just means the child must endure being tormented and sometimes assaulted day after day for years. You know, wives have been known to get away with murder when they kill their abusive husbands. Yet we are surprised when children, with their underdeveloped problem solving skills and long-term thinking, prove to have been at risk for the same actions when they feel trapped by abusers.
It’s also worth noting that the children who are picked out by bullies are usually somewhat on the outskirts of the peer circles already, they usually are coming from a home that is disadvantaged already, they are often poorer kids, and kids with less family support. They are kids who are less likely to have the support resources to handle the situation and get the victim the needed mental health services they need to heal fully from the experience, not to mention the support needed to change their trajectory in some way so that they are not victimized again in the future.
This country has been sent a message loud and clear from these desperate and damaged perpetrators. Now I call on the adults to respond. We need to prevent children from growing up to be desperate and damaged by preventing abuse at home and at school. When students are bullied at school, they need to be removed from the situation. Ideally that would occur by removing the bully from the school premises, otherwise the bullied student should be moved for their own benefit and protection. Victims need to receive mental health counseling to help them deal with the experience of being bullied and the damage it has done.
More than just attending to the victims after they have been hurt, we need to work on teaching children not to be unkind. We need to work on promoting safe, healthy families so children don’t go to school with anger in their heart and a need to knock others down. We need to promote acceptance and support, and discourage exclusion and unkindness. Teach by example by reaching out to someone you know who might need a friend. Let your kids see you interact with people from all walks of life, expose them to people different from your family starting at a young age so they will respect others. We need to normalize standing up for others, including those you may not know. Let’s value standing up for truth and right regardless of what others think.
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