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School Shooting— No panacea for Tears and Fears.
Editor,
The continuing school carnage is a national shame, but the guns and the shooters are not the only ones to be blamed.While guns remain the greatest threat to safety in America, we cannot be so embroiled in the gun debate control that it hinders us from seeing where the truth unfolds.
Firstly my condolences to the families of the victims of the recent Texas school carnage. A young 17-year-old walks into Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, and murders up to ten people- eight students and two teachers.
This latest school shooting failed to evoke little reaction if any from most people, for such behaviour has become an inevitability in America. Following the last school shooting in Parkland, Florida, it has been the generally–held belief, even among students that it would not be long before another student would walk into a school and kill his classmates and teachers.
Like hospitals, schools are soft targets, and as a consequence they must be toughened.
Without introducing any further level of pessimism, whenever the topic of mass shootings is raised, one of the initial question asked, is the simplest in reality, but also the most difficult to answer. Why? Why is this taking place?
Gun control advocates are the first to proffer a ready response—the pervasiveness of guns in the United States. History reveals that guns have always been a visible part of the fabric of American culture for its entire existence, except that the deadly mass shootings have been a most current occurrence.
As America, bites another bullet and struggles to move on, as has been repeatedly done in the past, we will be subjected to listening to all kinds of media interviews, pressing for stronger gun controls, while on the other hand there will be more influential voices claiming that stronger gun laws have nothing to do with what took place in Santa Fe, Texas.
We have seen it all before; it is all so-o-o familiar— anger, tribal chants, political outpourings, Second Amendment activists, those who desire armed security at schools, and still those who say that already there are too many guns in America. The tired liturgy will start all over again———reigniting of the gun debate.
The veritable enigma therefore lies in the following question: What is the wave of school shootings telling America? The answer is neither complex, nor is it to be found in the rubble of the ongoing polarized gun debates. We do not want to understand the answer, for in so doing; it would make us as a people guilty and reveal an ailing culture.
In the somewhat recent shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that left 17 dead, were so many tell-tale signs that the killer, Nicolas Cruz, was in desperate need of help.
He was mentally disturbed, obsessed with the Columbine massacre, and had been expelled from school for erratic behaviour. School records show that by age 16 he was preoccupied with wars, death and killings. Both the neighbours and his classmates knew that he was problematic but did not report it to the appropriate authorities.
There were signs that he was dangerous but these were ignored again and again. The Columbine obsession is not an issue that forms part of this discussion, except that it is being cited as giving potential killers an idea or a potential body count target to surpass.
Official reports state that Adam Lanza , the gunman who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012 had access to ammunition and firearms, an obsession with mass murders, in particular the April 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.
Documented evidence further shows that Adam would not allow anyone to enter his bedroom, and although he lived in the same house with his mother, communication between the two was done by email.
He also sealed his bedroom windows with rubbish bags and duct tape to keep out the natural light, behaviours which clearly reflect a deviation form societal norms. .
While restricting or altering the means of people getting guns, keeping guns away from the mentally ill, as well as weapons of war such as AR 15 rifles off the streets, is certainly not an impossible aspiration, it is also evident that on the gun issue, opposing sides must agree.
It is utterly imperative that the American government does as it ought, for the nation cannot continue this destructive path to take, especially where the youth, her future is at stake.
Therefore, the key solution to ending gun violence lies in a more caring and responsible America.
Y. Sam
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