For ‘Columbiners,’ School Shootings Have a Deadly Allure https://nyti.ms/2H3Kahb
Interesting correlation between historical events and more current school shootings in the US. Seems to confirm the idea that the cycle is escalating – which means that it will take a huge amount of work to turn it around. Hopefully that happens soon.
I can’t imagine living with this kind of status quo – seems almost incomprehensible to me. I’ve lived in places with safety risks, but it never felt as random or unpredictable or awful as regular mass shootings in schools and other places.
Naturally, these young men need social support etc to help them thrive and achieve their full potential. However, at the same time, it seems like nobody is talking about the fact that a bad stretch for a 15 year old will pass, if they are given strong support systems – about the only thing that can turn it into a tragedy most quickly is easy access to automatic weapons, combined with a cultural notion that solutions lie in violence, instead of doing the hard work of restoring and building relationships. That applies for the individuals, but also for society as a whole – when military solutions are glorified in the media, is it any surprise that individual violence is glorified in the same way for some people?
Perhaps the solution is at all levels – reign in the military, put the funds towards better schools and resources for youth, implement a massive gun control/buy-back/education effort, and reframe problem solving to something more positive than what is currently in place.
The alternative is to maintain the status quo, and I can’t imagine how much longer that can go on before people start to simply leave the country – Canada is always here for anybody who wants lots of maple syrup, universal health care and no guns. 🙂
NYTimes: For ‘Columbiners,’ School Shootings Have a Deadly Allure
