Clair Davis has died.
Shot at point blank range by 18-year-old Karl Halvorsen Pierson at Arapahoe High School on December 13, Davis is another in a series of nauseating gun violence statistics. A friend of mine put it most sadly and eloquently on Facebook this morning.
Clair Davis died. She died because ANOTHER underachieving boy (and they are all BOYS) understood masculinity and power in terms of violence. The gun is being used as a pathetic shortcut to manhood.
Indeed. They are all boys and that's where the focus should be on preventing this sort of thing from happening again. Recall this post (ban hammered on HuffPo) from Peter Brown Hoffmeister.
Have you ever heard of a school shooter who’s hobbies are kayaking, rock climbing, and fly-fishing? If that seems absurd – and it does seem absurd to me – we might be onto something. I don’t think that those hobbies can create a school shooter. There’s just something abut the natural world that defuses anger.
I know this because the outdoors helped saved my life. An outdoor diversion program for troubled teens started the process when I was sixteen. Camping and hiking and climbing helped me mature further as a nineteen and twenty year old. And now, as the director of a high school outdoor program, one of my student leaders said recently that “the outdoor program saves lives.”
That’s not me. That’s nature. Kids need the outdoors.
Help the young people. Get them outside.
More than this, parents need to engage their young sons and get them involved in the community. If they are mentally ill, they should not be allowed access to guns. If they are old enough to buy their own guns and are exhibiting warning signs of wanting to commit violence (or if they have already committed violence), call the police.
The other key thing that has to happen is we need to take school shootings out of the zeitgest. I contend that beyond the issue of mental health, guns and young men is the fact that these shootings keep happening because they are part of our "monkey see, monkey do" culture. Somehow, they have become "normal."
And that shit needs to end fucking yesterday.
2 comments:
these shootings keep happening because they are part of our "monkey see, monkey do" culture. Somehow, they have become "normal."
And that shit needs to end fucking yesterday.
Except for you? Because every time there is one, you start spouting off....you don't think you are part of that same problem, do you?
You're making the mistake everyone is by treating these school shootings as somehow different from the rest of the gun violence that occurs in this country.
There's no difference between kids who shoot up their schools, the men who shoot up their workplaces and the men who shoot their wives, girlfriends and children.
They're all pretty much the same: they feel despondent, hopeless and suicidal. They vent their anger on those who they feel have wronged them by shooting them, and then they turn their guns on themselves. They want to take out as many of those they hate before they themselves are killed.
Nearly all gun violence is part of the same continuum: from gangbangers in the hood, to school shooters, to deranged husbands: they are all disaffected males who use the power of firearms to hurt those they feel have wronged them.
They are materially different from criminals who use guns as tools during the commission of their crimes, as a contingency against being apprehended.
Guns are the magical tools that give them the sense of power to take life and death into their own hands. Guns are like cocaine to these people: they provide a rush that makes them feel they can do anything.
Guns don't kill people, lots of people with lots of guns kill lots of people. People without guns kill a lot fewer people. It's basic arithmetic.
Post a Comment