Shooting Children

I am not at the grieving stage yet, I am angry. Very angry. How dare someone walk into a school and shoot and kill children and shoot and kill the adults who work with those children? How dare him!


Schools are to be sanctuaries for learning. Kids are to be safe there. Now some idiot will suggest that if Kindergartners were carrying firearms this would not have been as bad. Or, that if all the teachers were armed. Or, if we just had metal detectors and razor wire fences and double entry doors so we can check ID’s before anyone gets inside. In other words, let’s make schools prisons designed to keep folks out and leave the folks within armed and ready.

And somewhere is a fleet of superintendents getting calls from local papers and TV stations wanting to know what they are doing to keep kids safe and what they might do in the future. So sad.

I have been watching this phenomenon closely since Columbine and I have reached the following conclusions:

1. No one ever got shot at a school when the perpetrator did not have a gun.

2. No safety measure creates safety. It creates the illusion of safety to pacify the panicked.

3. The problem lies in the community, not the school. This is not school violence; this is violence that walked into a school. The solution must lie in the community.

So, what would I do? Make owning a handgun extremely difficult if not impossible. Make owning an assault rifle impossible. Spend more money on community services instead of cutting them. If any of the now infamous perpetrators of this brand of violence had a readily available professional counselor we would see much less of this. And, lest we not forget, Virginia Tech and Columbine were violent acts committed by students there. We need more money for more teachers so teachers can develop good relationships with their children so we will get a “heads up” if one of them plans to start shooting.

As long as disturbed and sick people have ready access to firearms we will continue to have this. We will continue to see people shooting children.

So sad.