The pattern is all too common.
School shooting happens.
We react with shock and horror.
We see the news footage.
We send #thoughtsandprayers.
We debate about the shooter's motives, his (and it is always a he) parents, his friends, was he bullied, was he mentally ill?
We hear the reports of 4chan and InfoWars, "false flag," "crisis actors", "hoax".
And always, always, always, there is the debate about gun control.
And nothing changes.
Until the next shooting.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Max Lucado, pastor and writer, says in this article that "this evil will not last forever". He means to be comforting and reassuring here, and he is right in that there will be a judgment and that no, evil will not last forever . . . but to be honest, that is not much comfort to the ten families who right now have to decide on a casket or an urn to bury their child in. Nor is it much comfort to me, because while evil could end in the next 40 seconds, it could also take 40 years or 400 years to end. In the meantime, I still have to pay the mortgage and put food on the table.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
I also despair of finding reliable sources to determine the truth or fiction about anything anymore. I have been told that I need to "do my own research" which, on the face, is true, but too often, the words "do your own research" means either, "if you do, you'll agree with me; if you don't agree with me, you didn't do your research," or, "I don't have any proof for what I so confidently assert. Don't confuse me with the facts."
Lather, rinse, repeat.
CNN states that, on average, there has been one school shooting a week so far in 2018. That all depends on how you define "school shooting". (For example, a shooting in Seaside, California happened when a gun was accidentally discharged during a safety demonstration and a student was injured.) But even one is too many, and there has definitely been more than one this year so far.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
I had a social media meltdown yesterday after hearing of the shooting at Santa Fe High School. It wasn't my first meltdown and it probably will not be my last.
It's been 19 years since Columbine, 21 years since Pearl, Mississippi, 20 years since Jonesboro, Arkansas . . . and NOTHING has changed. NOTHING, except people are angrier.
All of our thoughts, prayers, marches, and advocacy has changed NOTHING.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
How many more people -- how many more children, parents, teachers, law enforcement personnel -- how many more people have to die before we DO SOMETHING???
Or will nothing be done, just like a FB friend expressed last night in despair?
We're three weeks away from the 50th anniversary of the death of Bobby Kennedy, who was also murdered with a gun. His brother was murdered with a rifle. In the TV coverage of Bobby Kennedy's murder, both Walter Cronkite and Howard K. Smith commented about the gun control bill that was in Congress at that point.
What has changed in 50 years?
What has changed in 20 years?
Nothing.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
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Showing posts with label school shootings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school shootings. Show all posts
Saturday, May 19, 2018
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
False accusations
In fourth grade, we had a system where we had student lunch monitors in each class who would keep an eye on students and report their misbehavior.
Our teacher had given us a number of slips of colored paper that we kept at our desks. For each "demerit" we got for lunch misbehavior, we were supposed to give our teacher a slip of paper.
One day, after I had brushed come cookie crumbs off my part of the table, we came back to class and one of the lunch monitors reported that I had earned a demerit for "shooting crumbs".
I knew I hadn't, and some of the kids knew I hadn't either. Someone told me to "write a complaint", which we were allowed to do.
Instead, after finishing my work, I took the prettiest sheet of paper I had--a bright pink one--from the slips we'd been given and took it to my teacher. I said, "Here."
She held the sheet of paper in her hand and asked me about what had happened at the lunch table. I said, "I was only brushing them off."
At the end of our conversation, she gave me back that sheet of pink paper.
I can't remember who the lunch monitors in our class were now, but I do know that at least one of the lunch monitors had used that false accusation to bully me. I'd been bullied since first grade, and it would go on until 12th grade.
Nearly twenty years later, I sat in a counselor's office and cried because I said, "She believed me."
What if she hadn't? What if she had thought that I was the person who was lying?
I thought about that incident in the wake of this article, where a group of students used social media to spread a rumor that another student had threatened to "shoot up" their high school.
That group framed the accused student. They accused the student of doing something that they hadn't done--just like the lunch monitor did to me in 4th grade.
This is just another way to bully students. And it's very frightening, because often it comes down to "they said, they said" and you have to make a decision on who to believe. I've often thought that the anti-bullying hotlines, where you can pick up a phone and dial a number to report bullying; or boxes where you can put in anonymous tips, could also be used to frame students who hadn't done anything wrong.
And even if the person is cleared . . . there's always the taint of suspicion. Especially when you lob a false accusation of sexual misconduct against someone. I know that the majority of accusations of sexual abuse are true . . . and there are some that are false.
In another situation, if the lunch monitors had been a group of "the cool kids", and if I had been a kid from the "wrong side of the tracks", so to speak; or if the teacher had liked the lunch monitors and hadn't liked me . . . she very easily could have not believed me. She could have believed a false accusation.
In this day and age of social media, all you have to do is type a person's name, say, they did such-and-such, hit the "send" button . . . and presto, you have turned someone's name into mud.
Some things have not changed since I was in fourth grade.
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
Our teacher had given us a number of slips of colored paper that we kept at our desks. For each "demerit" we got for lunch misbehavior, we were supposed to give our teacher a slip of paper.
One day, after I had brushed come cookie crumbs off my part of the table, we came back to class and one of the lunch monitors reported that I had earned a demerit for "shooting crumbs".
I knew I hadn't, and some of the kids knew I hadn't either. Someone told me to "write a complaint", which we were allowed to do.
Instead, after finishing my work, I took the prettiest sheet of paper I had--a bright pink one--from the slips we'd been given and took it to my teacher. I said, "Here."
She held the sheet of paper in her hand and asked me about what had happened at the lunch table. I said, "I was only brushing them off."
At the end of our conversation, she gave me back that sheet of pink paper.
I can't remember who the lunch monitors in our class were now, but I do know that at least one of the lunch monitors had used that false accusation to bully me. I'd been bullied since first grade, and it would go on until 12th grade.
Nearly twenty years later, I sat in a counselor's office and cried because I said, "She believed me."
What if she hadn't? What if she had thought that I was the person who was lying?
I thought about that incident in the wake of this article, where a group of students used social media to spread a rumor that another student had threatened to "shoot up" their high school.
That group framed the accused student. They accused the student of doing something that they hadn't done--just like the lunch monitor did to me in 4th grade.
This is just another way to bully students. And it's very frightening, because often it comes down to "they said, they said" and you have to make a decision on who to believe. I've often thought that the anti-bullying hotlines, where you can pick up a phone and dial a number to report bullying; or boxes where you can put in anonymous tips, could also be used to frame students who hadn't done anything wrong.
And even if the person is cleared . . . there's always the taint of suspicion. Especially when you lob a false accusation of sexual misconduct against someone. I know that the majority of accusations of sexual abuse are true . . . and there are some that are false.
In another situation, if the lunch monitors had been a group of "the cool kids", and if I had been a kid from the "wrong side of the tracks", so to speak; or if the teacher had liked the lunch monitors and hadn't liked me . . . she very easily could have not believed me. She could have believed a false accusation.
In this day and age of social media, all you have to do is type a person's name, say, they did such-and-such, hit the "send" button . . . and presto, you have turned someone's name into mud.
Some things have not changed since I was in fourth grade.
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
Saturday, February 17, 2018
So how many school shootings have there been?
There's been a meme going around Facebook showing the locations of 18 school shootings so far this year:
Eighteen school shootings. That sounds bad. Even one school shooting is too many.
That statistic comes from Everytown for Gun Safety, which is an advocacy group that keeps track of incidences of gun violence. Their definition of a school shooting is, according to the CNBC article, "any time a firearm discharges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or grounds". The article goes on to say that when this happens, it counts as a "school shooting", whether or not that shooting results in injury or death.
Whenever I hear the term "school shooting", I usually think of someone on the grounds of a public PK-12 school that, while a school is in session, picks up a firearm, points it at someone, and, with the intent to injure or kill, fires. I don't usually think of colleges, although those are also schools and I shouldn't ignore shootings that happen there.
The "eighteen school shootings" statistic from Everytown includes the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and another shooting at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky.
That statistic also includes:
- a suicide at a school in Sierra Vista, AZ
- a shooting in a school parking lot in Oxon Hill, MD, after school hours
- a rifle that went off at a school in Los Angeles; a 12-year-old brought it to school and she was charged with "negligent discharge of a firearm". Four students were injured. I'm unclear if this was a case where the person pointed the gun at anyone with intent to injure or kill.
- a case in Maplewood, MN, where a third grader pressed the trigger on a school liason's gun. The gun was outfitted with a trigger guard, but it discharged anyway. No one was injured.
- a case in Denton, TX, where a college student picked up a gun belonging to an advisor, and, thinking the weapon wasn't loaded, discharged it. She ended up shooting through the wall. No injuries were reported. (Note: The gun is always loaded!)
- a suicide by a man in St. John's, Michigan, where a man died by suicide in the parking lot of a school that had been closed for the past seven months. (Everytown has removed this incident from their list of school shootings.)
On the other hand, take away the six shootings I listed above, and you still have twelve shootings that have happened on school property since January 1, 2018.
That's twelve shootings too many.
One shooting is too many.
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Just let me lament!
Yesterday was the 18th school shooting in 2018.
This one killed 17 people.
Some of those 18 shootings include incidents where a gun was accidentally fired on campus. But of the remaining, I don't know the number of casualties (horrible to use that word, as if I'm talking about a war, which maybe I am!) but ANY casualty of a school shooting is one too many.
Yesterday, 17 people died in a school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in Broward County. This comes on the heels of the January 23rd shooting at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky, where two people died and 18 were injured. Less than a month ago.
When does this madness stop?
My son was two months old when the news broke about Columbine. Columbine was not the first school shooting, but it was the one that seared itself into the nation's consciousness. We now refer to "since Columbine" or "post-Columbine".
This Sunday, my son turned 19.
We have learned nothing since Columbine.
The cycle has become all too familiar: Someone opens fire on a school campus. Children die. People express shock and horror. Thoughts and prayers go out to the victims. The arguments about gun control start. The speculation about the shooter's motives run rampant. Eventually, everything dies down . . . only to start up again at the next school shooting.
I am truly in despair.
I see nothing changing and nothing ever getting any better.
I have my own questions about faith, about Christianity, and that is not helping matters any at all.
Right now, I just need to lament.
We have lost our way. We are an angry, broken country and I am just waiting for the spark that will ignite the Second Civil War. I sometimes feel that if I express my feelings and my opinions, I am the one that will be bashed, blamed, and shamed. I am the one that has to change. No one else does. A close friend posted a meme about how good people voted for Clinton and good people voted for Trump--and she got such pushback from people, including members of her own family, that it made her cry. And I have a problem when something makes a friend of mine cry.
And nothing changes.
Lawmakers take the microphones and the floor of the House and Senate and pontificate about the need to keep our children safe . . . and nothing changes. Nothing.
Fifty years ago, Robert Kennedy was shot, and in the coverage of the event, several commentators spoke of the need for gun control. (I believe a bill about gun control was in Congress at the time, June, 1968.) Fifty years. Half a century. And nothing has changed.
Yes, I can speak of the need for God, I can speak of need for changed hearts, I can speak of the need for individual change, I can listen to those who talk about faith and the need for faith, I can read the Bible and listen to Christian music . . . but right now, all of that is not going to help me.
Today, I believe only one thing can really help.
Just let me lament!
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
This one killed 17 people.
Some of those 18 shootings include incidents where a gun was accidentally fired on campus. But of the remaining, I don't know the number of casualties (horrible to use that word, as if I'm talking about a war, which maybe I am!) but ANY casualty of a school shooting is one too many.
Yesterday, 17 people died in a school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in Broward County. This comes on the heels of the January 23rd shooting at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky, where two people died and 18 were injured. Less than a month ago.
When does this madness stop?
My son was two months old when the news broke about Columbine. Columbine was not the first school shooting, but it was the one that seared itself into the nation's consciousness. We now refer to "since Columbine" or "post-Columbine".
This Sunday, my son turned 19.
We have learned nothing since Columbine.
The cycle has become all too familiar: Someone opens fire on a school campus. Children die. People express shock and horror. Thoughts and prayers go out to the victims. The arguments about gun control start. The speculation about the shooter's motives run rampant. Eventually, everything dies down . . . only to start up again at the next school shooting.
I am truly in despair.
I see nothing changing and nothing ever getting any better.
I have my own questions about faith, about Christianity, and that is not helping matters any at all.
Right now, I just need to lament.
We have lost our way. We are an angry, broken country and I am just waiting for the spark that will ignite the Second Civil War. I sometimes feel that if I express my feelings and my opinions, I am the one that will be bashed, blamed, and shamed. I am the one that has to change. No one else does. A close friend posted a meme about how good people voted for Clinton and good people voted for Trump--and she got such pushback from people, including members of her own family, that it made her cry. And I have a problem when something makes a friend of mine cry.
And nothing changes.
Lawmakers take the microphones and the floor of the House and Senate and pontificate about the need to keep our children safe . . . and nothing changes. Nothing.
Fifty years ago, Robert Kennedy was shot, and in the coverage of the event, several commentators spoke of the need for gun control. (I believe a bill about gun control was in Congress at the time, June, 1968.) Fifty years. Half a century. And nothing has changed.
Yes, I can speak of the need for God, I can speak of need for changed hearts, I can speak of the need for individual change, I can listen to those who talk about faith and the need for faith, I can read the Bible and listen to Christian music . . . but right now, all of that is not going to help me.
Today, I believe only one thing can really help.
Just let me lament!
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
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