Another School Shooting

Slaughter on St. Valentine’s Day—————-

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

When I was a schoolboy and subsequently a grade school teacher many decades ago, I encountered the usual number of bullies and disruptive students. As a student, I was sometimes, like many other kids, their target and later, as one of the relatively few male grade school teachers in those days, the one chosen to deal with some of the more disruptive ones. Back then, teachers actually used seating plans and the seats and desks were securely anchored to the floor. Students didn’t move around without permission. Today, that sounds rather quaint.

 

There were lots of guns around but they were toy guns. Boys played with them often, sometimes during recess. They were mostly fairly accurate replicas of the real thing but no one seemed particularly troubled by them because carrying a real gun would be unthinkable. Guns were for the exclusive use of cops, criminals and soldiers  Bullies used threats and sometimes their fists as weapons and their targets either stood up to them or suffered in silence. They didn’t get a gun and shoot up the school. Fear of having a child shot in school was not even on the list of parental worries.

 

A lot, obviously, has changed since those days of innocence. It’s purely coincidental, I’m sure, but things started to change, and not for the better, when they began to unscrew the desks and chairs from the floor. That’s when authorities started to lose control. Our society has changed and we have become much more permissive and tolerant of aberrant behavior. In fact, nothing seems to outrage us much anymore except politics. These days, fear of having their children shot while at school ranks rather high on the list of parental worries.

 

With each mass shooting comes a now-familiar sequence of events. The shocking headlines keep the story alive for a week or two. The images of sobbing parents and schoolmates dominate evening TV. The makeshift memorials with flowers, balloons and teddy bears are followed by candlelight vigils. Then comes the search for answers followed by demands for stricter guns laws. Marches and demonstrations are scheduled. Nearly everyone takes to social media with a solution. Meanwhile, somewhere out there, the next mass shooter is also thinking about getting even with society and achieving national recognition and perhaps a new record.

 

The sexual revolution of the 1960s was accompanied by a startling increase in the number of divorces and out-of-wedlock births. Whereas divorce once carried a stigma in our society it has become the norm. A majority of marriages now end in divorce, often leaving broken families raised by a single working parent, usually the mother, with little time for parenting. Far too many boys grow up without a resident father to model acceptable male behavior.

 

We blame school shootings on many things including the glorification of violence in movies, video games, rap lyrics and other forms of entertainment. They tend to make us insensitive to violence and the value of human life. We permit late-term abortions, disposing of unwanted babies like trash. This is what America has become and we permitted it to happen. We reflexively blame the shootings on mental illness and easy access to guns. Perhaps we should pay more attention to the breakdown of the family unit and the decline in parenting skills in our society. We are quite good at bringing babies into the world and surrounding them with love when they are cute and adorable. But then they grow up and become rebellious and difficult so we give up on them. We can only do so much, we rationalize. But conceiving a child must carry with it responsibility and commitment until the child becomes an adult.

 

Most mass shootings are carefully planned and not all mass shooters suffer from mental illness. Some may just be criminals, perhaps because their parents, if they were even around, failed to instill in them moral values, respect for life and discipline.

 

So what can we do to prevent more massacres? We are not going to correct America’s social problems overnight, or perhaps ever. They were years in the making and they are ingrained. By all means, let’s try to pass laws banning assault-style, fully automatic, military-style weapons. No civilians, other than gangsters, need them for self-defense. But more restrictions on gun ownership will be a tough sell because enough Americans simply are not confident enough in the ability of police to protect them, especially in remote areas and gang-infested inner city areas. Schools that declare themselves to be gun-free zones are tempting venues for mass shooters since they will be the only ones armed until the police arrive. Our best bet, for now at least, will be using armed, trained security guards on school grounds and permitting some trained faculty and staff members to carry concealed weapons. This can lessen the risk and may at least reduce the carnage if a shooting does occur.

February 22, 2018