This. Needs. To. Stop.
There Was Another School Shooting. This One at Apalachee High School in Georgia.
There has been another school shooting. I am sick and tired of reading about these. They need to end now. This needs to be the last one. I don’t know how to make that happen. I’m a dude with a degree in history, not law enforcement or psychology. I just know it needs to end.
Experts say the cause of school shootings is complicated but that mental health plays a role. I’ve written about my own struggles with mental health. I’ve written about the importance of treating mental health issues. I get the feeling of everything going wrong, the world closing in around me and thinking that nothing will ever get better. I’ve lived it. I put my then thirteen year old daughter through hell trying to comfort me. I know the desperation and the pain. But here’s the thing: I didn’t kill anybody. The only person I even though about killing was myself (and that was years ago. I’ve gotten treatment and I’m better now.) and I couldn’t go through with that because I was worried about what my death would do to my daughters. (Who are both awesome human beings and don’t deserve that. Not that anyone else does either.)
Only now we’ve got families mourning loved ones because somebody decided that it was okay to kill a bunch of people because whatever. The excuse doesn’t matter. Those families are dealing with the loss of someone they love simply because the shooter thought that the way to deal with their problems was by killing people.
And please don’t use the fact that some of these guys were bullied as an excuse. Guess what? I was bullied. I took a Tae Kwon Do class, trained under Sam Kas Mikha and learned to defend myself. I kicked one bully right in his junk to get him to back off but I never, ever, in my entire life, even thought about shooting up a school. Not once. I’ve always credited the self discipline I learned as a kid in that class for helping me channel my violent impulses into something harmless, like punching a heavy bag or breaking a board. School shootings are not about bullying.
The article I liked above does make on great point though:
So what makes a small minority of kids who have mental health issues and thoughts of suicide turn to violence and homicide?
Meloy and Van Dreal think it's because these individuals had been struggling alone — either because they were unable to ask for help or their cries went unheard when the adults in their lives didn't realize the child needed support.
LISTEN. YOUR. KIDS. PEOPLE. LISTEN TO EACH OTHER. LISTEN WHEN SOMEONE SAYS THEY ARE HURTING.
Of course there’s the person’s own reluctance to talk that can keep them from reaching out, even if you’re ready, willing, and able to listen. Sometimes you need to probe. Sometimes you have to ask hard questions until you get answers that match with what your eyes are telling you. Sometimes you have to, as a sales manager would call it, “keep digging until you find the pain.”
I’m fortunate in that I lack subtlety and people will sometimes end up screaming at me to let me know what the problem is just because I don’t have the guile to make it look like I’m asking about something else. But whatever works, find out what the problem is, talk to the person about it and get them help if they need it.
And remember this: In just about anything in this world, it’s better to have something and not need it than it is to need something and not have it. All that to say that if you’re not sure if you and/or your friend/loved one/colleague/whatever needs help, make them get help anyway. This is one area where it’s okay to freak out and over-react. They have to be alive to be mad at you, so you’ve already won the big battle and you can apologize later if need be.
And, from the same article, there’s this:
"So the fantasy is one where the teenager starts to identify with other individuals who have become school shooters and have used violence," he says.
These days, Meloy adds, it's easy for a troubled kid to go online and research how previous shooters planned and executed their attacks.
Sometimes it’s easy to spot a problem. Sometimes it’s not. And sometimes, once again per NPR,
The keys to prevention are to spot the earliest behavioral signs that a student is struggling, Langman says, and also to watch for signs that someone may be veering toward violence.
Some signs can seem obvious in hindsight. "So, I've stopped being the kid who went to Boy Scouts, and church and loved his grandmother," Van Dreal says, "and now I want to be that kid with camouflage who's isolated and attacks people and hurts them."
But sometimes, even professionals who see the signs miss their significance.
About a year and a half before he attacked students at Columbine High School, Dylan Klebold, who was a gifted student, started to get into trouble.
He and some friends hacked into his school's computer system. Then, a couple of months later, he and his friend Eric Harris broke into a van and stole some equipment. They were arrested at that point and sent to a diversion program — an alternative to jail for first-time juvenile offenders — that offered counseling and required community service.
I get the reason why Dylan Kebold was mentioned in the above article, but hear me on this: We need to stop publicizing the shooters. I’m not saying to keep it quiet when a shooting happens. I’m saying that we need to not give school shooters the massive publicity as individuals. It needs to be a situation where we know what happened and who was harmed (hint: The primary victims are the people who have been shot or shot at, but they’re a long way from being the only victims.) I don’t want to see the government controlling this. I want to see the media applying common sense and not publishing things that would encourage another shooter, or make it easier for him to plan his shooting.
That’s not to say that law enforcement shouldn’t gather all the information they can to prevent another shooting. I’m not criticizing. I know they’re already doing their best. I’m just saying that I want them to continue doing their best until we get this problem solved and put an end to these school shootings and that my comments about what the media publicizes should not be construed as meaning that they police should be constrained in their jobs. I would just encourage them to not leak what they learn about specific individuals to the media, where the next school shooter can get it and capitalize on it.
We need to take a cold, hard look at ourselves as a country and figure out what our problem is. We need to find a way to keep our kids safe. It doesn’t much matter what it is as long as it fits within the bounds set by the Constitution. But school shootings need to end. Our kids need to be safe. Something needs to change to make that happen. It might not be all that hard, either. From the same NPR article:
Time and time again, psychologists and educators have found that surrounding a young person with the right kind of support and supervision early on can turn most away from violence.
Talk to your kids, man. Talk to other people’s kids if you have to. Freaking listen. The life you save might be your kids.
And you’ll notice that I didn’t give a take on gun control. I had one written and deleted it. Not today. I’ll keep that in mind for a later post.