14 year old Gia Soriano died last night. Gia was wounded when Jaylen Fryberg opened fire in a school cafeteria killing one instantly and wounding four others before turning the gun on himself. Of the three remaining teens in the hospital, two in critical condition and one in serious condition. After the last school shooting I wondered aloud in this space what can be done to prevent future tragedies. The only thing I can think of is to have metal detectors and x-ray machines at every entrance to every school. Although it is an expense for every school district already trying to find new means of funding, I think it is something the federal government should pay for and I just don't see any other alternative. Something must be done to keep kids safe in school. you can argue all you want about gun control, but the Second Amendment will never be repealed so you have to take that out of the conversation and come up with other ideas to keep kids safe.
No words. I can't believe this. RIP dear soul.
ReplyDeleteMetal detectors are required to enter any government building, I think our children deserve the same consideration as our lawmakers. A decade ago I would think it unneccessary, but we live in a new age.
ReplyDeleteTruer words.
DeleteI don't know what to say. So young. RIP, little girl.
ReplyDeleteMy youngest daughter is 14 and this breaks my heart.
ReplyDeleteCo-sign, Enty.
ReplyDeleteRIP
ReplyDeleteA school I worked at many years ago had a botched shooting attempt. I am so grateful it never went through. The program heavily searched students coming in. Weapons were frequently confiscated, but this was an orchestrated plan by a student's relative who did not go there. This is not going to stop any time soon, Enty. Don't hold your breath. RIP Gia, I am so sorry this happened to you and all of those poor kids.
Don't some schools already do this?
ReplyDeleteNot that "some" schools s enough.
But i did think some are.
How sad. Unfortunately in cases like Sandy Hook Elementary metal detectors would have done no good. I have a 13 year old son. I don't allow him to become obsessed with shoot 'em up games. I watch him & pay attention to him. He has depression issues- and the last thing I would ever do would introduce a gun into his world. I try to bring him "UP", I try to influence him positively. When needed, he's gone to counseling. He takes anti-depressants. It's parenting. There are always going to be problems, but trusting a child with a gun is not a good idea. They go through a break-up, and have no adult perspective on it. I am the grown up. My child is a child. I expect him to make mistakes. I would never give him a gun to make those poor decisions & mistakes with.I'm sure some kids can handle guns- but they are still children. One bad day- and people can die. Easily.
ReplyDeletePoor child. RIP.
ReplyDeleteThe insanity continues. I agree with Enty about metal detectors but disagree the feds should pay for it.
Firstly, condolences to everyone directly affected by this tragedy, and right now especially to this girl's loved ones.
ReplyDeleteNext... Wow. This is one seriously ignorant and skewed post by an Entern. The problem with this argument is you're focusing on the weapon and not the cause of the killings. How many school killings happened before Reagan cut federally funding for mental health institutes? How about, rather than using taxpayer money to essentially turn our schools into prisons, we use it for education and health care for mental illness? I mean seriously, I'm not saying my suggestion is the right one but a shiv made out of a toothbrush isn't going to set off metal detectors FFS.
That is a great point. So many people left without a safety net, yet we give generously to welfare and undocumented citizens.
Delete@Riven, it's not just about budget cuts for mental health, although that is certainly a part of it. It's also about court decisions that gave the mentally ill the civil right to refuse treatment unless they could be proven to an immediate danger to themselves or others.
DeleteThese court decisions came in the wake of extremely troubling treatment of the mentally ill up through the 1960s, including forced lobotomies, extreme treatments to make gay people straight, 'uppity' women being treated as mentally ill. Confinement for mental illness has also been used extensively as a political weapon, most famously in the Soviet Union.
Fifty years later, we as a society need to decide how we are going to balance public safety with individual civil rights.
@ Riven While I completely agree with all you are saying...like this post you are also saying it's "this part" not "this part" you should be focusing on. Myself, I believe it is these tragedies are "recipes" and all ingredients have to be dealt with. To focus only one part in any case is overlooking other important parts. It's complex, and has to be dealt with in a complex way with again, in my opinion, many solutions...i.e. funded mental health available for all, more support groups in schools, intensify gun laws and accessibility (for hopefully have a trickle out effect in the long term), high tech protection for the buildings themselves, just to name a few. IMHO...there no "fix-that-one-part" and it will get better. For anything in society to be IMPROVED, there has to a multi-level multi-group and multi-resource mass conscience effort to address ALL the ingredients to begin to move in the right direction.
Delete@Riven, you should watch Jackson Katz's documentary "Tough Guise." Here is the intro. I think you would enjoy it.
DeleteThese issues are of course intricately tied to concerns about funding and mental health, but it is also deeply rooted in American culture
Thanks for giving your input/insight to this discussion Nutty, Wahoo & LadyH. I actually agree with many (if not all) of your points. But I think I should clarify: I did not intend to imply or suggest that mental health care in the US is the only cause or solution to this problem. I just definitely feel we need to educate our youth and the general public to help break the stigma surrounding mental health care. I'd personally rather see education and outreach before metal detectors on school campuses. It may prevent these mass shootings but it won't necessarily prevent kids killing kids because they don't have the tools, knowledge or support system to help them in moments of severe emotional crisis (especially if it's exacerbated by a mental illness). That's not to say what I'm suggesting will prevent any kid from killing another, but hell I just think education and support is a better start than generating fear and anxiety via metal detectors.
DeleteLady H thanks for the rec, I'll definitely check that out! Seems really interesting.
(And by really interesting I mean damn LadyH that is right up my alley! I was going to get into the theory of masculinity in my first post but work duties required me to *attempt* brevity.)
Delete@Riven re: your reply...Could not agree more!!!! I wish it was enough (maybe it could be). Again...absolutely agree it's (mental health education/help) "a VERY GOOD tool that needs to be unstigmatized, reshaped and utilized at any stage" AND it should be the genesis of a very complex large scale plan that cover many many parts of a problem where the other ingredients are waaayyy to easy to throw in. IMO...it is happening more today than 50 yrs ago (wiki Charles Whitman '66) is because of the "other elements" now that are soooo accessible. No doubt mental health needs to take front seat with this issue but weapon accessibility, media attention and peer pressure (bullying etc) has increased 10fold and needs just as much attention to resolve as the rest of the recipe. I do get that you said that.
DeleteThank YOU!!! for bringing attention that this post (that also frustrated me in it's narrowness) did not. As someone who suffers from debilitating depression from time to time...I'm always grateful for one who can point out that guns are not "THE" ONLY problem.
When I was a teen (80's) it was NEVER talked about and I had no clue what I was going through much less that I wasn't alone :)
I knew you would love it @Riven. The full length should be on Top Docs and online. Katz has a lot of neat Ted Talks and stuff with the ManKind Project. I agree that a lot of our problems come from our gun culture in addition with issues related to contemporary concepts of masculinity. It's a superb video. I love his work.
Delete@Lady H I'm gonna check that doc out too... Thank you very much for sharing that!
DeleteI have a lot of gun control ideas, but this boy even targeted members of his own extended family.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if anything can be done to prevent or stop someone that determined.
Maxxy- thats the sad truth; you legislate against crazy.
DeleteMy sympathies. However I don't see how a detector at the door would prevent shootings in the parking lots, on school buses etc. Detectors are more likely to force a change in location rather than prevent.
ReplyDeleteYou're probably right
DeleteExactly @D Brown. Organizing violence in certain ways always displaces it somewhere else.
DeleteThat or we can make each bullet cost $5k. Chris Rock 4 president.
This is crazy, right down the road from me. This area isn't the type you would think needs metal detectors and police security. I guess it truly does happen anywhere
ReplyDelete1. Knives can do as much damage so a metal detector will kill several birds if you will with one stone.
ReplyDelete2. The other part of this tragedy is how many kids don't even feel safe in their own school these days. If you can't feel safe at school where can you?
Even Toronto is having these problem, some recent shootings and stabbings at high schools, so you can't necessarily blame it all on gun laws because kids are getting guns here too and we have the stricter laws, clearly not strict enough.
Yet another sad story about the murder of innocent school children in an American school. Our country definitely needs better mental health programs to prevent the outcome of all of this insanity. There were definitely warning signs in this case (the perpetrator's online comments) but no action taken. To call ourselves the "United" States, we sure seem divided. I feel very badly for the victims of all of this unnecessary, tragic violence.
ReplyDeleteOh, and, what can Enty do? Stop making these shooters famous. As we already do for rape victims, don't say their names. Don't run their pictures. We've seen that some shooters actually compete against each other for the largest kills - the Sandy Hook guy had a spreadsheet - so take away that motivating factor.
ReplyDelete@Nutty Totally...that could be one more "ingredient" (I didn't mention above after your response to Riven) to eliminate and improve the big picture. I agree that a big part of the problem of this "recipe" is the news/media!
DeleteIn five years, plastic guns will be easily printed at home. Metal detectors are no solution. We have to focus on mental health and social support networks and teaching people how to navigate life's disappointments from an earlier age.
ReplyDeleteMental health is a huge issue across the world. Parenting is the key. Watch your children. Be part of their lives. If you are worried- there is no shame.
ReplyDeleteAnd although knives & other weapons are also very dangerous- We are not hearing reports of mass-stabbings. It is guns. Don't allow access to kids. Don't allow access to children with problems especially.
The key is to provide greater support for mental healthcare. Give these parents who know their children are experiencing mental illness a way to handle their illnesses.
ReplyDeleteWe need more mental hospitals, rehabs, counseling, therapies, and UNDERSTANDING in the general populace and the healthcare industry. We can't just let this school to prison pipeline or - as in this case and so many others - a school to grave pipeline, be our answer for kids with mental illness .
It must be said that you, ENTY, completely missed the one piece that makes this story whole. How about publishing the name of the the first year social studies teacher, MEGAN SILBERBERGER, who confronted the shooter, interrupting the spree, grabbed the shooter's arm and prevented shots from hitting any other children or bystanders, and may have forced the shooter's gun back at him, making the last bullet he fired the last thing he did. Courage. The exact opposite of the shooter: The stark juxtaposition of conduct and character gives chance comfort to us all.
ReplyDeleteAnother senseless tragedy and my heart goes out to the family who lost their child.
ReplyDeleteAgree with @Riven and others regarding the state of mental health care. While I wouldn't argue that greater security measures in schools would certainly have benefits, we also need to become a nation that is proactive, helping those in need, rather than reactive, and waiting for the bomb to explode.
ReplyDeleteMy heart goes to those affected. I cannot fathom their pain.
Why do you think school shootings are happening more and more frequently? When I was in school, we never had any of these fears.
ReplyDeleteIf a tragedy like this or the hundreds of others doesn't move people to do something, you know, like implement a sane gun policy and tell the gun fetishists to go fuck themselves, then this country has no soul. I'd be totally okay if gun owners slaughtered each other. Live by the gun, die by the gun. But they're directly and indirectly responsible for the lives of thousands of innocents, and I'm not okay with that.
ReplyDeleteThis case really bothers me because I read the Twitter feed of the shooter. It is highly sexualized throughout and it is obvious he was quite sexually active with the girls he dated. The emotions/confusion at such a young age about sex had to play a big role. I wonder where were the parents in all of this? Why weren't they monitoring such a young child that was sexually active before high school?
ReplyDeleteObviously th case is quite bothersome in general. Sorry for my haste in writing.
ReplyDeleteWe're Americans. We love school shootings. We love massacres.
ReplyDeleteWe love them because we live in the fantasy world that we're Charles Bronson, and will whip out or 9mm surrogate penises and shoot bad guys with unerring precision, and then gorgeous movie stars will fuck us.
Fuck the fact that history shows that you're orders of magnitude more likely to have your gun taken away by a bad guy and used to shoot you. Fuck the lives that will be ruined and the children who will die.
If we stop pretending that an amendment that begins with the words "A well-regulated" is somehow violated by any slightest whiff of regulation, and pass the sort of sane laws control access to firearms that have saved lives where-ever they've been enacted around the world, then we're not going to be able to whip out our Glocks and pop caps in the asses of murderers, rapists, drug dealers and stalkers before a grateful Scarlett Johansson throws herself at our feet, tearing open her clothing while crying, "Thank you, thank you, you saved me, take me now!"
A few hundred dead children are such a small price to pay for that.
In terms of monitoring the behaviour of teenagers you must have forgotten part of being a teenager is being sneaky.
ReplyDelete@Tina, the kid's Twitter page is public. Go take a gander. It is shocking. If I could see it, so could his parents.
ReplyDeleteIt's time the government put a crowbar in their wallet and started giving public schools more money. Metal detectors should be a no brainier after Columbine.
ReplyDeleteWe could try talking about toxic masculinity and the entitlement complex that goes with it. These shooters are all male, they all feel "rejected" and they take that pain out on others. This needs to be addressed in the way that we raise our boys to view women as "others" and themselves as the default setting for humanity. That needs to change.
ReplyDeleteWe could try talking about toxic masculinity and the entitlement complex that goes with it. These shooters are all male, they all feel "rejected" and they take that pain out on others. This needs to be addressed in the way that we raise our boys to view women as "others" and themselves as the default setting for humanity. That needs to change.
ReplyDeleteJust a thought, but as a parent with 3 children, I have to say that as little as 20 years ago, children were not playing games like Call of Duty, Fast and Furious, and other violent video games. I am shocked when my 10 year old comes home and asks what some of these violent games are and if he can play them. I always tell him no.
ReplyDeleteMost of these parents will say, "It's just a game." I firmly believe that these types of games desensitize people to violence. I also believe it is detrimental to their developing brains.
The second Amendment has been around a long time. It was just in the last 20 years we have seen this kind of tragedy more and more. It is also in the last 20 years children have been exposed to technology that allows them to role-play and feel as though they are a part of a violent scenario, then leave and eat dinner without any consequences.
Sorry this post is so long, but the buck stops with parental supervision. No, we can't be there 24/7, but until they have the money to buy these games for themselves, we do have input as to which games they are allowed to buy.
My 2 cents worth as a parent.
I have been watching horror movies since I was in elementary school, and playing video games (including violent ones) since I was in junior high. My dad is awesome. I spent many years in the LAN community, playing FPS for fun. And so have my many siblings and cousins. Not a single one of us has ever so much as gotten into a fight at school. Our family raised us to respect how our actions affect others, to understand the consequences of our actions and that violence isn't the answer to your problems.
DeleteSo for every kid who listens to Marilyn Manson (I did), plays Call of Duty (I prefer Rainbow Six and Fallout), and watches violent movies (Aliens FTW) and goes out and kills someone, I know 50-100 people who have done the same and never hurt a soul.
I'm in no way trying to say you're wrong and I'm right (sincerely that's not what I'm trying to say), but if owning a gun doesn't mean you're going to kill someone then how can you make that same correlation apply to a video game? Just my 2 cents as a non-violent person who loves video games and horror movies.
This is the result of gun laws. 100% They need to be reformed now! RIP baby girl.
ReplyDeleteBeyond sad. But god forbid we enact any gun restrictions whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteJesus, just read she was 14. Im speechless.
DeletePart of the problem is that kids are coddled too much these days. They are told they are special little snowflakes and that they can do or have anything they want as long as they do their best. Everyone gets a trophy mentality.
ReplyDeleteThis kid got turned down by a girl, so he goes on a shooting spree. Other kids are bullied and instead of telling them to just fight back, they are told to tell on the bullies and they get picked on worse until they snap.
We have to start teaching kids they don't always get what you want. You either win or lose and only the winners get the prizes (My bro played on a youth baseball team that lost but was given a trophy, he broke it as soon as they handed it to him and told them "We didn't win, we shouldn't get the same trophies as those that did"). That they aren't special.
Yeah, it sounds like it would hurt the kids but it actually makes them try harder and become more productive citizens. If you notice, these school shootings started becoming a regular thing when they started pushing time outs and the everyone is special and gets a trophy groups took over schools.
@Rowdy It's interesting that nowhere in your comment do you say we need to teach our kids to stop bullying others...
DeleteThe world has gone crazy. This is just one( of many reasons) reason why I'm so glad we homeschool!
ReplyDeleteYou live in a gun-crazy country, you reap the consequences of that. Your children are dying, and you're gonna sit there and whine about your (COMPLETELY misinterpreted) Second Amendment rights?
ReplyDeleteThank you @Riven and @Wahoo Wife. Please let me know what you thought of the film. @Benita and @BeeHaven should watch Tough Guise too.
ReplyDeleteSo many great points made here in a rational way, thank you. It seems a mystery but you've all given clues as to what went wrong and when someone could have intervened. Somewhat close to me geographically & culturally. He's been called "a regular, normal popular kid." True, but I think we all need to raise our standards and expectations greatly.
ReplyDeleteSome of you made me think about my own gamer son who has a really firm moral foundation AND love of 1st person shooters.
Kids need to be taught how to cope. We take it for granted they know how to manage mistakes, argue, apologize, assert themselves, etc; yet many of us adults acknowledge we lack those skills.
Normally when there is debate in comments I end up scrolling past but you CDANners are a sensible lot!
These types of shootings have been happening for a lot longer than we like to admit. My heart breaks for these families and no one should have to go through this. Just as families shouldn't have to deal with molestation or children being snatched off the street but it has unfortunately always happened.
ReplyDeleteI had a long talk with my grandma about this in the 90's before she died. She remembered child molesters, shootings and disappearances. She believed that because of the national news we hear about sooner, if at all and with pictures. It happened back in the 1920's thru the 1970's but it wasn't always in our face.
In the 1980's the.Boomtown Rats put out "I Don't Like Monday's" about a school shooting in the UK.
It has always has been a problem, one we need to solve together.