Another Tuesday, another school shooting. On May 7, two armed teenagers entered their own STEM School Highlands Ranch outside Denver, killed one student and injured eight more.
Photographs in The New York Times included one heartbreaking image of a small girl, probably in kindergarten or first grade, being evacuated, arms folded on her head, I suppose as part of the evacuation protocol, not wanting police to think she, too, might be armed.
I couldn’t help but see my 7-year-old granddaughter in that image, a confused child marching though a group of armed police officers, their neon vests matching the lime green of her small T-shirt.
The response to this latest shooting was immediate and predictable. Tears. Thoughts and prayers. Calls for gun control. Calls for better school security, including arming teachers.
None of those things will prevent the next, inevitable, school shooting.
“Patrick Neville, a Columbine survivor and the top Republican lawmaker in the Colorado House of Representatives, said in a statement that the shooting was a reminder ‘of the need to secure our schools,’ ” The Times reported. “ ‘School safety programs which include armed security and safety upgrades to school facilities are the best way to stop these criminals from harming our children,’ he said.”
Hours before I saw the news of this shooting, I picked up my granddaughter at her Colorado school, as I do each afternoon. She skipped out of school, giggling with friends, joining a growing gaggle of children, parents and caregivers lingering in the warm, afternoon sun. “Armed security guards and safety upgrades” would be no obstacle to anyone with a gun on this or any other afternoon at one of America’s 130,000 schools.
I frequently pointed this out, in writing, conversation and school policy, before my retirement. Arming a school or its teachers is an empty, dangerous gesture, not a solution. Children at my school went to recess on unguarded playgrounds, traveled in groups on field trips and gathered at dismissal and arrival times, as they do at schools everywhere. There is no protection, except for the odds favoring you — until they don’t.
Sensible gun control is not the answer either, unless we address the underlying truth regarding weapons and their use. Don’t get me wrong. I favor any and every gun control measure, including confiscation, the favored red herring of the gun lobby. Guns are ugly, violent things, and if one must have a gun for hunting, “sport” shooting or the delusion of self-protection, then register it, secure it and prepare to be held criminally liable if it falls into the hands of someone who kills children.
But let us be honest. Gun violence is a symptom of a sick society, the illness exponentially more grave during the Trump presidency.
Shootings like the one on Tuesday are the logical endpoint of a culture that enjoys violence, where young people are conditioned to see revenge as divine and where they are de-sensitized to bloody death. They watch mixed martial arts and cheer. They play video games where problems are solved with explosive force. They subliminally absorb the ignorant, crude bullying flowing from the lectern of the president of the United States, who invites his frothing base to beat up political opponents and directs his administration to rip babies from their migrant parents’ arms. They hear men and women in fine suits say that the only protection from a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
Every guy with a gun is a “good” guy in his own delusional self-deception. The shooters at the STEM school, Columbine, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Sandy Hook — the list is long — did not pull the trigger because they believed they were “bad.” They pulled triggers because they were seeking justice, and justice is always “good.”
These shooters — almost always boys — are usually quiet, isolated, rejected and neglected. Schools ignore or punish them, peers ridicule them and families often don’t see them. I did this work for many, many years. I know these children can be seen and they can be loved. Our schools and communities just don’t care enough until the simmering hurt builds to explosion and we say, “How did we miss that?”
Yes, we need gun control but it, alone, will not stem the violence. We need to reverse the narrative. To create cultural values that say, “guns are not the answer” rather than “arm yourself.” We must admit that guns are dangerous whether in the hands of sad teenagers or poorly trained security guards. We need more parents and caregivers to say, “Please don’t play that violent game. I love you.” We need to teach empathy in schools, to look for lonely children and invite them to join us for lunch.
Why do we express surprise when a few troubled individuals seek attention and justice precisely the way they have learned?
Steve Nelson lives in Boulder, Colo., and Sharon. He can be reached at stevehutnelson@gmail.com.