Here’s a sobering statistic. There have been 2032 school shootings in the U.S. since 1970 and the number of shootings is increasing in frequency. Yet very little is being done to help our vulnerable school children.
We can talk. We can be angry and call for justice in the name of our dead children. But until we the people and our elected representatives take the subject seriously the 50 years of non-action will continue.
It is obvious to this Monday morning quarterback that schools need more security. The Uvalde school made it very easy for the murderer. A door was unlocked, and the resource officer was nowhere to be found allowing easy access for the child murderer.
Remember the $40 billion dollars in aid we just sent Ukraine? It seems like a good chunk of that could have been utilized for school security at home. Rather than providing a country halfway around the world with aids to continue their war against an aggressor, wouldn’t it be better to provide our schools with trained school resource officers, better locking mechanisms, fencing and other items necessary to keep our children safe?
Our representatives can step up to the plate and make schools safer, but we as citizens need to do our part as well. A whopping 93 percent of school killers plan their attack before it happens. Almost all mass school shooters share information about their intentions, most via social media, before the action occurs. Again, in almost all cases, warning signs were prominent and if we as friends, parents, law enforcement had heeded the signs, the mass killings would have been prevented.
If you know a teenager has exhibited a tendency towards violence and has shared it on social media; has been bullied by other students and seems to hold a grudge against those students; or appears to be obsessed with crime lords or murderers in history, he may need to be reported to the authorities. AND those authorities need to investigate the student thoroughly. Too many times citizens, students and law enforcement fail to follow-thru on this preventative measure.
Statistically, most of the school shooters qualify as being mentally ill and much like immigration, our lawmakers refuse to address the issue. Since the 1980’s when most facilities that housed the mentally ill were shuttered, the problem of mental illness and how to address it, has continued to burden our society. We have no good answers at to how to take care of our people. As of late, we simply provide them with medicine and send the home to fend for themselves. It clearly doesn’t work.
As a society we need to take care of our own. I’m not an isolationist, but I believe it would be more prudent to spend our hard-earned dollars on providing compassionate care to our mentally ill versus enriching our elite by funding the latest and greatest war thousands of miles away.
Further I don’t oppose the tightening of some gun laws. Upping the legal age from 18 to 21 to purchase a gun makes a lot of since to me. 18-year-olds can’t purchase liquor or cigarettes. Why should they be allowed to purchase a gun?
However, where there is a will, there is a way, and if that teenager or criminal wants a gun they will find out. Focus more on school security, reporting suspicious behavior and addressing mental illness, and you will make our school children safer. That’s the real ticket.