SCHOOL SHOOTINGS : What should we do to protect our schools?

MA, as always, does raise a very valid point.

But I wasn't just talking about the parents of the kids that did the killing.

What if we could raise a generation of parents that taught their kids to value, or at least be tolerant, of "different" kids?

What if we could raise a generation of parents who realized that their kid might be mentally unstable without worrying that it might be some kind of stain on the family name?

My parents were pretty bohemian and they allowed us to go our own way but if we had been hoarding guns and ammuniton or building bombs in the basement they surely would have figured it out.

I can still remember my mom zeroing in on things that we were up to that we had /still don't have any idea of how she knew. She would say "I have my sources" and she sure damned did.

I wish that could happen, boomer.

I don't think our society is capable of not having the totem pole mentality. There always has to be somebody kept down to let us know we're not the worst.

World....................................1

Lash's hope for a kind world....0

Well, isolation and disconnect are the issues. There are probably several contributing factors. I was an isolated kid, I never fit in. I think I could have had guns in my closet and my mother wouldn't know it. However, I dunno where I would have gotten the guns. I didn't tip into muderous rage, though. Neither did my brother who was ostracized for being gay. So, there's something else there, some other component particular to today's society.

Wouldn't it just be an internal predisposition to react badly under significant stress?

If it was something in society, wouldn't everyone be doing it?

(Questions)

Fear?

I think another element is the media, the copy-cat element. It didn't used to be that if someone in Maine went crazy and chopped up his family with an axe, everyone in Pennsylvania would know about it. And there have always been psychopaths, even in extremely connected/ social contexts.

I do think that there are fewer everyday social connections and that it generally doesn't help, though. (I say "generally" because I think that there can been situations where the extreme connectedness could itself cause antisocial behavior -- a sense that there was no escape, etc.)

So if you have a few different elements contributing to what could end up being a violent person, I think that person seeing stuff in the news could help push things towards one specific type of violence or another.

I'm not saying that it shouldn't be reported, though a little bit lower in the news hierarchy might be good. I think that there is something with the Golden Gate Bridge where they're not allowed to report suicides there because every time it becomes known, there is a spike in new suicides. (And there are evidently a lot of suicides off the Golden Gate Bridge.)

Lash - why, then, are more people predisposed? Why is it happeneing at such a quickened pace? Certainly there are more of these crimes today (as opposed to 20 years ago) than can be accounted for by population growth.

Fear? How so, Dys?

Soz, I dunno. Remember everyone saying that Ozzy Osborne was singing demonic lyrics to dark music trying to amass an army of teens to bite off pigeon heads and bat wings? I don't know if I buy the copy-cat theory. I am still undecided about how much I feel media has a play in matters like this. Certainly, life seems cheaper in these days. So, maybe there is a connection there.

Copy-cat theory has been proved, I'm pretty sure... I'll see what I can find on it.

I consider that different from the Ozzy stuff. That was about Ozzy inciting kids to do bad things they wouldn't otherwise do -- I'm saying that there are rashes of certain kinds of crimes because a) already-violent people who would be violent anyway see them and choose to direct their violence in a certain way but also b) the media senses a theme and so reports things that might otherwise go unreported if it fits the theme (this wouldn't be true for these latest school killings I don't think I think they'd be reported anyway).

Been a long day and I'm kind of muddled so I don't necessarily stand by any of this, I'll see what I can come up with tomorrow.

One last thing though, ARE there more of "these kinds of crimes" than 20 years ago? Which crimes, if so?

Well, school shootings for sure, no? I dunno how you could compare various other violent crimes that specifically, but didn't the school shootings sort of start with Columbine?

I had a metal detector installed in my high school about 20 years ago because of violence and threats of violence -- guns went off but nobody was killed.

I'm wondering too about equivalents, if not that exact one.

Anyway, really need to stop and get back to it tomorrow... interesting!

Good questions, lilk. I hope to come back here (to this thread) once in a while to bring some articles and theories. Hope you will, too.

I think nature AND nuture can predispose someone to be unable to cope with "not fitting in." The Amerindian Jeff --I think his father had committed suicide and his mother had died in a car wreck and he had no real support from family --and was ostracised--and acclimated to Hitler and black trench coats.

Maybe a little nature button and a little nurture button.

Do you have a theory?

The "more" question seems to go along with the general breeding. The more people created...the more, who are predisposed.

Very interested in other theories.

There is somewhat of a history here.

I think yall have maybe nailed this already. Why do these shootings (excluding the one in PA, committed by an adult) often occur in rural areas and involve student perpetrators? Wisconsin, Colorado, Colorado again. Guns? Availability of guns and knowing how to use them? No.
If you are a kid in an urban area, and you are Goth, Punk, Gay (or any other groups that Johnboy is too old to know about) you can find kids who think like you. But if you are the only kid in town, the only kid in the rural school like "that," you will be ostracized.

Lash, I've been thinking on it for years, will continue to do so. I am too tired to do much more thinking about it tonight.

<what happened to Laguna?>

I was thinking about this when I dropped off my child in school this
morning: Would an unauthorized person be able to enter the school?
The answer was Yes! It gave me an uneasy feeling...

It is freaky. I just started working at an elementary school which has a lockdown strategy! I attended a faculty emergency procedures meeting. The lockdown process was for a circumstance like a school shooting spree. In elem school! While it is true that my school is on the leading edge of preparedness, I wonder if the plan is akin to hiding under one's desk during a nuclear strike.

This, from soz, struck me as kind of odd, when I actually considered it. Had I actually graduated (GED instead) it would have been in Miami, Fl., in 1962. I don't know of a single gunshot in or around the school. Had anyone carried a gun to school, I'm sure the word would have gotten around. Since this was before the gun control act of 1964 (maybe 1968?), hand guns weren't hard to come by. They were advertised nationally in most magazines with an outdoorsy slant, and sold by mail. The only sticking point was signing an unwitnessed affadavit swearing you were over the age of 18. With the market flooded with military surplus, the prices were right.

Though I'm known as fairly pro-gun, I'm really not trying to make any kind of point with this. It just seems odd that in the time from my time in public schools till the mid 80s that soz seems to mention, things would have changed so much. Well, we can't go back, and no, I don't favor a return to mail order gun sales to individuals. Not now.

There may have been a gun or two in my high school (1982-86), but no shots and no public cases that I know of. We had no metal detectors.

A boy who lived with his father in a small town in Maryland was very well
liked by his peers and teachers alike. He spent his free time outside playing sports with his friends.

When his father uprooted him and moved 3000 miles away due to job opportunities, the boy found himself in a new school in the suburbs of a bigger city that was riddled with racial tension among Latinos and Whites.
The boy - undersized and childlike for his age - was ridiculed, bullied and ostracized by his new classmates. His father worked up to 12 hours at his new job, and the boy was left alone. He started playing video games. In this world of video games, he got even with his tormentors and every day after school, he rushed home to escape reality and kill yet another one of his classmates that beat-up on him.

After he was bullied once again by his classmates, he took
his father's gun to school one morning and started shooting randomly
at classmates, killing two and wounding 16 others. He later on was tried as adult and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison.

I certainly feel for the victims and their families, but I can't help but feel
pity for the boy, who - due to circumstances beyond his control -
was put in a position of having to cope with a terrible situation, and
no one to turn to. It seems to me, the system failed him all the way.....

That boy is Charles Andrew Williams and the shooting took place
at Santana Highschool in Santee.