School shooting near my hometown

[paminala]

Yesterday in a middle school near here a 9th grade boy, 14 years old, was shot and killed by another student at his school.
There hasn't been much said yet about what caused this dreadful waste of 2 young lives (one is ended and one is essentially over) but it seems like this is becoming so common that it is barely even considered shocking anymore.
These events always shock me. They always hurt my heart. I don't have kids and when I hear news like this I'm kind of glad I don't. Are kids different than we were? Are parents? Something certainly must be.
Is this where our society is going? What happened to respect for each other and ourselves?

[Matthew Whaley]

i think our modern world is different because it suffers from so much information that we don't have time to think, let alone feel. we are also too busy to have time to reflect on what we see, learn, and experience. i think we need to change that somehow. i'm sorry to hear about what happened near you.

[Leslie]

You ask, 'Are kids different than we were?' I don't know how old you are, paminala, but when I was a kid in high school 35 years ago, we had a fatal shooting in our school (the first one, but sadly not the last, in Canada).

This link gives a summary of known violent acts in high schools -- the first one is in 1882. The first incident on the list that I notice in a quick skimming that fits the pattern that we associate with recent school killings -- the angry or disturbed student who deliberately takes a weapon to school and injures or kills fellow students and teachers -- happened on May 4, 1956.

There's nothing new about violence, when you think about it -- every age of history, in almost any society you care to look at, has its share of seemingly mindless, wasteful violence. But we hear about it more these days, due to the incessant media, and I think in a way we have perhaps developed an increased ability to be shocked by it, and we ask ourselves how we can make it stop.

I'm sorry too, for the agony of the familes and friends of both those students, and for the sorrow of your community.

[paminala]

For the record I'm 40, graduated high school in 1987.

Maybe things aren't so different than they were. Maybe I was just a small fish in a very small pond, but I can't imagine myself at that age knowing another person seriously intended to commit that kind of violence and not saying something to someone. (Apparently quite a few students were aware of what was coming.) I trusted my parents and teachers to help with things like that. There is nothing in my experience like the adversarial relationship that exists today between kids and adults.

Certainly it is true that violence is not new, though whether it is only the media which make it seem more prevalent or not I don't know. The general reaction of people to violence among children, however, is one of growing complacency. Parents interviewed on TV smile and talk about how glad they are it wasn’t their kid. People say it was a small incident because it was only one kid. Why isn’t that one kid too many? Something is wrong with this picture.

[Karen]

There is nothing in my experience like the adversarial relationship that exists today between kids and adults.

From my perspective (I'm 52, and graduated from high school in 1975), and where I live, the relationship between parents and teens is much closer than it was when I was growing up. There is very little 'generation gap' (we all love The Beatles and The Who ), and I see close and loving bonds between most parents and their children. Now I realize that's not the case everywhere, but as Leslie points out, these horrific incidents have been happening for a long, long time, and while they're terrible, they're not anything new. What is newer is the ability of kids to get hold of guns, something all too easy for anyone in the US to do.

[paminala]

[quote="Karen What is newer is the ability of kids to get hold of guns, something all too easy for anyone in the US to do.[/quote]

Why is that always where people go? Gun violence is accountable for less than 1% of violent crimes in public schools (I looked it up.)
It isn't the gun or the knife or the two by four that kills a person. It is the other person holding it that is responsible.

Most girls have been hit or abused by a boyfriend before they are out of high school but when Chris Brown beat up Rihanna half of the reporting implied it was her fault. What are we telling them?
Kids are bullied and pushed around but in which schools do you see anyone teaching conflict resolution? What are the consequences for bad behaviour?
A high school honor student was beaten to death in Chicago and someone recorded it on their cell phone. That made the news for all of a day before we all went back to worrying about where the next Olympics would be held.
Girls are catching up to the boys in fighting. Go to your favorite search page and type in "girl fight" then search for video before you tell me I'm wrong.
This is SO not about guns. Should the shooter's parents be held to account for not securing their firearms? ABSOLUTELY. But the real issue is why that kid picked up a gun and pointed it at another kid, and why nobody said anything even though they knew he was planning it.

I work with an older gentleman whose granddaughter witnessed the shooting. She couldn't sleep alone last night. According to her (through him) everyone in their class saw this coming. He says she was afraid to speak up.

[Leslie]

As a non-American, I hesitated to bring up the gun issue, but it is a factor, especially when statistics on murder of all categories are compared from country to country (and that's all I have to say about that). It is much easier to seriously injure many people with a gun than with a knife, but as you point out, paminala, most personal violence happens at close quarters on a smaller scale, one on one, where any weapon (even fists) will do.

I suggest that both the availability of weapons and the emotional/psychological problems that make someone willing to hurt others need to be addressed.

[Karen]

paminala (I now understand your screen name ), you have a lot of different things going on in your post, so I'll try to address them one by one:

It isn't the gun or the knife or the two by four that kills a person. It is the other person holding it that is responsible.

I will defer to what Leslie just posted.

But the real issue is why that kid picked up a gun and pointed it at another kid, and why nobody said anything even though they knew he was planning it.

I agree, this is the real issue. From what I've read, the shooting appears to be gang-related: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/08/AR2010020803533.html. As to why no one said anything? If the gang reports are true, I imagine they were either very afraid, or part of the same gang. The larger question here is why kids join gangs in the first place.

Most girls have been hit or abused by a boyfriend before they are out of high school but when Chris Brown beat up Rihanna half of the reporting implied it was her fault. What are we telling them?

Domestic violence is a terrible thing, and has been going on since time immemorial. What is new is our ability to see and hear about it, all the time. And I'd argue that in the past this sort of behavior was kept much quieter than it is now, although of course there are still many women who are afraid to say anything. I'm not exactly sure what your point is, other than that the media rarely delivers news anymore, but has rather become a source of 'infotainment'. It's about getting viewers, not about saying or doing the right thing.

Kids are bullied and pushed around but in which schools do you see anyone teaching conflict resolution? What are the consequences for bad behaviour?

There's a zero-tolerance policy for bullying in our local public schools, and it seems to work. In fact, more and more school districts are adopting various anti-bullying measures. Clearly there's much more that can be done, but it's an issue that is now taken very seriously around the country. Obviously not every school district feels this way, but your question implies that no one is doing anything about these matters, and that's simply not the case.

A high school honor student was beaten to death in Chicago and someone recorded it on their cell phone. That made the news for all of a day before we all went back to worrying about where the next Olympics would be held.

It made the news on various blogs for quite a while, and was discussed at length. I highly recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates or The Root.

Girls are catching up to the boys in fighting. Go to your favorite search page and type in "girl fight" then search for video before you tell me I'm wrong.

I don't think you're wrong about the existence of the fights. But you only know about them because the fights are posted on YouTube. For all you know this sort of behavior is happening less now than it did 20 years ago (I have no idea what the actual statistics are, but I hope you see my point.)

As a counterpoint, I grew up in NYC in the 60's and 70's, when the crime rate was sky-high, and heard gunshots (I lived just south of Harlem) on a regular basis. Since that time the incidence of violent crime has dropped dramatically, to levels not seen since the 1950's. In fact many cities in the US are safer now than they were 20 years ago. So while I'm horrified by the fact that a child would shoot another child, I don't see it as something new that has suddenly reared its ugly head. But that may have to do with growing up as a small fish in a very, very big pond.

[Karen]

Sadly, it's not just kids who are doing this: 3 dead in shooting on University of Alabama-Huntsville campus

There has been a shooting on the campus of the University of Alabama at Huntsville....law enforcement sources say a female faculty member learned during a Biology faculty meeting that she would not receive tenure. She then pulled out a gun and started shooting.

[paminala]

I had been thinking a lot (and listening a lot) over the last week about the question that had been posed, namely what my point was. For a while I was afraid I didn't actually have one but had just lashed out emotionally out of shock. After all this didn't have the usual 'buffers' that events like this usually have, ways to place them at arm’s length and view them rationally in spite of their irrational nature.
It turns out that I did have a point. It had to do with the loss of innocence. There was also the sadness and anger it makes me feel to know that youth is no longer synonymous with innocence. I can’t help feeling that something is being stolen from the young people of this country that they do not even know they are missing.
That was my point and I had finally found a reasonably articulate way of expressing it. Then another Friday afternoon came along. Now I just feel sick.
Still, I think that I will stand by my point with a just little alteration. This very small pond where I grew up feeling safe and trusting my parents and teachers, is losing its innocence as well. I suspect that is true of a great many small ponds. Whether it is because we are all more connected on a greater scale than ever before (the kids wanted to be in a gang like they saw on the web) or because everything is growing less personal (how many people do most people really know?) I couldn’t say. I do know that it is getting much harder to be a little fish whatever size pond one lives in.
I just pray for the families of everyone touched by any of this madness.

Karen-- I always thought my screen name was obvious! Makes wonder how many other people haven't gotten it (yikes)

[Karen]

I just pray for the families of everyone touched by any of this madness.

Amen.

Karen-- I always thought my screen name was obvious! Makes wonder how many other people haven't gotten it (yikes)

I thought at first it was a pretty-sounding sci-fi or fantasy name, pronounced pam-in-ah-la. Remember, too, that many people posting here are from the UK or elsewhere, and 'ala' doesn't automatically conjure up 'Alabama'.

[paminala]

I thought at first it was a pretty-sounding sci-fi or fantasy name, pronounced pam-in-ah-la. Remember, too, that many people posting here are from the UK or elsewhere, and 'ala' doesn't automatically conjure up 'Alabama'.

Just to be safe I did a web search to make sure I hadn't accidently used a word that means something awful in a foreign language! I've used that name before and I never could figure out why so many people asked me where I was from...pam in ala. One of my blonder moments I suppose.

Seriously though, most everyone around here is on eggshells. After two in a row no one is looking forward to this Friday.
This is so surreal, to look at the national news and see places I've been. The people who work and have kids in those schools shop in the store where I work. I've been many times to the shooting range that the UAH shooter is supposed to have gone to with her husband (she didn't get the gun there.) These are good people, kind people.
This close to home it is just...I don't have a word. Shocking doesn't quite get it.