Students, parents, schools, media stars (athletes, singers, and movie/tv celebrities): I place the blood of those killed in school shootings completely on your shoulders. Notice, surprisingly, that I did not mention guns. Here is the painful truth: since the advent of jacketed ammunition and then a slight jump ahead with the first civilian-marketed semi-automatic rifle back in 1903, there’s been no innovative leaps with firearms. Granted, optics have greatly improved, and polymers have created much lighter weapons. I would even agree that accuracy and reliability have increased remarkably. Yet in terms of the ability to quickly and accurately engage targets within roughly 25 meters (which is pretty much the distance you will have in a school shooting situation), nothing substantial has changed.
You can still quickly reload weapons with several rounds at a time and quickly shoot one round per trigger pull at a high rate. So if guns haven’t changed, what has?
I know that in today’s world it is almost unheard of for individuals to take responsibility, especially with the list of people above. But I am throwing it out there for public discourse. I hold all of those groups listed above as complicit in these shootings. They have created an environment where kids are so over-empowered that they believe they live in a world free of consequences. Unfortunately, this is actually a fairly accurate statement.
Our media continuously tells our young that they need to live a life free of respect and responsibility. These individuals will scream at us about the racial and sexist divide in America, and then go out and promote this same behavior in their movies and lyrics. The lesson here is very clear: there is no such thing as actual ethical behavior. Moral outrage only extends as far as the monetary bottom line. Eminem, who has recently made attacking the NRA his latest publicity stunt, had this to say about gun violence in his lyrics:
Left the keys in the van, with a gat in each hand
Went up in Eastland and shot a policeman
F**k a peace plan, if a citizen bystands
The sh*t is in my hands, here’s your lifespan
(Murder, Murder)
I could go on, but I think my point has been made fairly clear. Yet these same hypocrites go onto social media and are praised for their high moral standards. Hello Matt Damon (who I think did his best work in “Team America”), who has made millions off of his character’s love of mass killing but has publicly stated, “I hate guns.” While promoting the film Jason Bourne in Australia, he stated, “You guys did it here in one fell swoop and I wish that could happen in my country, but it’s such a personal issue for people that we cannot talk about it sensibly. We just can’t.” Of course, he had no problem with endorsing his movie based upon the glorification of killing without remorse.
What about the schools and parents? Again, it comes back to the empowerment of children and the loss of accountability for their actions. When it comes to the parents, I would add the lack of parenting in general. It used to be that schools focused on education. Not that bias was not always part of the system, but it at least was somewhat hidden. Students were taught respect in school, and it started every morning during the pledge of allegiance. I don’t care about the “under God” line either. It was about children learning from day one to stand solemnly and show respect for a country of the people, by the people, and for the people. In other words, it taught them to respect the uniqueness inherent in all of us. They were also taught respect for their elders. It was rare to find a student who would blatantly disrespect a teacher. This is because parents used to actually respect the profession of teaching and gave those teachers the backing they needed to do their jobs.
Parents used to demand respect through the archaic use of forcing children to say things like sir and ma’am or Mr., Ms., and Mrs. Children knew their place around adults. They were to quietly wait for the adults to be done talking before they interjected. There is something to being seen and not heard. It taught children to understand their place in the world: something that would have helped the millennial generation immensely. They allowed their children to be disappointed and learn that the world does not give you anything.
Finally, you have the children of today’s world. They are both victim and antagonist. Notice how you never hear about a school shooter having lots of friends or being on a school’s sports team. Why is that? Is it surprising that time after time after a shooting occurs survivors come out talking about how so-and-so was a loner, without friends, and had all sorts of social problems? There is a reason for this. Social media has allowed children (and adults for that matter) the ability to create a world free of moral boundaries. With the lack of parental oversight, they have been free to develop a callousness towards their peers that I often feel is only rivaled by that of a sociopath. This is why we see children, both off and online, verbally attacking others to the point of suicide. It is a true account of the book Lord of the Flies brought into the digital age. The only difference is instead of being stranded on a physical island, they have been abandoned upon a cyber one.
As I write this, kids across America are walking out of their classes in order to protest gun violence. More accurately, they are walking out to protest guns. They protest the symptom instead of the disease, because to protest the problem would involve self-reflection and personal responsibility. In many cases, this protest is being promoted by the schools. The parent has once again been taken out of the equation, and it is the children who are being allowed to make these decisions. It is easy to walk out of classes, disrupting the teaching actually occurring. It is easy to walk down the street and repeat words others have given you without any understanding of the issue.
What saddens me about the whole affair is while the National Walk Out day has received immense publicity, the National Walk Up Not Out day has received almost none. The National Walk Up Not Out day is a movement started in Indiana that states, “Instead of walking out of school on March 14, encourage students to walk up – walk up to the kids who sit alone at lunch and invite him to sit with your group; walk up to the kid who sits quietly in the corner of the room and sit next to her, smile and say hi; walk up to the kid who causes disturbances in class and ask how he is doing; walk up to your teachers and thank them; walk up to someone who has different views than you and get to know them – you may be surprised at how much you have in common. Build on that foundation instead of casting stones. I challenge students to find 14 students and 3 adults to walk up to and say something nice in honor of those who died in FL on the 14 of March.”
If we want to stop school shootings, this is how we do it. We teach our children compassion and empathy. We encourage them to show kindness and understanding. Best of all, this movement was started by a teacher who looked at the walk outs and protests and said, “Enough!”
We owe it to our children to teach them the hard lessons. This falls upon all of us. Those who make money out of promoting violence should not be allowed a soap box to lecture us about guns. Those who profit through misogynistic and racist music lyrics lose the right to moral outrage about society mirroring their messages. Parents who ignore the needs of their children and who fail to instill a moral compass cannot lecture others about their children. Teachers who preach politics of protest instead of education cannot be surprised when their students turn the disrespect they learned on their instructors.
Finally, children should not be surprised when those students who they have picked on, ostracized, and shunned strike back at them. Is it fair or right? No. Is it their fault? Of course not; we are all responsible for our own actions regardless of others. Unfortunately, none of that brings back to life those who have been killed. Let’s try reaching out to these young people before they turn their backs on society in a violent retort.
