A new Approach
“School shootings are a fact of life.” — J.D. Vance
No it’s not. It’s just not. I hate to go all old man on everyone here, but these things didn’t happen when we were kids. I graduated from high school in 1993. I think there was a famous school shooting at the University of Texas back in the day, but that’s pretty much it. In 1999 Columbine happened. In the last 25 years it is has been like shooting fish in a barrel.
So, maybe logic is the way to go about it. I feel like the conservative response is to point to things we know we can’t fix. It’s a whole generation of kids raised by single parents. It’s the violent video games. It is the lack of God in our culture. It’s the ramping up of hate on social media. It’s the mental health.
These things might be true to a greater or lesser extent and I am not here to discount any of those things. However, school violence is a choice. Gun violence is a choice. Every other industrialized country on the planet has figured this out better than we have. It’s not a fact of life. It is what you have chosen to accept.
One of the things I’ve noticed with a child going into the college process is that I wouldn’t have gotten into the institution I went to with the grades I had. My SAT score wouldn’t have been enough. We are loading up our kids with AP courses, college essays, internships, and part-time jobs. These kids aren’t soft like we are accusing them of. They have a lot more on their plate than any of us had.
Now, what does this have to do with the issue at hand? Someone that shoots up a school, mall, movie theater, or anything else by definition is mentally ill. That by definition is someone in distress and is not exercising good coping skills. Mentally ill doesn’t have to mean being in a straight jacket. It doesn’t mean needing a padded room with no sharp things. It doesn’t mean they need copious amounts of medication and therapy.
It is so much more than that. We are increasingly creating an entire generation of people without coping skills. We heap all of this stuff on them, tell them they will have to pay for college for the rest of their lives, won’t be able to ever afford a house of their own, and we provide them with few ways to manage this stress. We tell them they have to choose a path early in life. They need to spend all of their free time either studying or getting better on that path. What stress relief strategies are we providing?
Guns are not necessary for the survival of 99 percent of us. Your little pea shooter is no match for the military might of the largest and most powerful armed force in the history of the planet. I want people to be able to do what they want in their free time as long as it doesn’t endanger me or my family. You can do that without an AR-15. You can do that by simply waiting a week to make sure you don’t have a history of domestic abuse, mental illness, or criminal behavior. Registering your gun is not going to seriously infringe on your rights. Heck, having a license to carry it won’t either.