Leave it to me to take the contrarian attitude, and it will probably get me in trouble around here. After all, now that thought crimes are being punished in this country, expressing my thoughts here will probably engender hatred toward me.
First of all, forget what you hear on the media. These school violence events are exceedingly rare. They are not an epidemic. School violence is down overall over the last few years. It's the media that blows it out of proportion, and it's the media that indirectly inspires copycat actions.
Secondly, real violence in schools is horrific and should be prevented, without a doubt. I'm completely empathetic toward the families of victims. In the case of Columbine, how much better it would have been had the signals been read in advance.
Thirdly, it's the parents who need to take their responsibility seriously. In the case of Columbine, the parents failed utterly to notice weapons in plain view in their kids room. Then society moans and wails about the school not protecting us, when it was the parents who should be noticing their children and how they act.
Fourthly, society, in eschewing the obvious causes of these violent acts (mental illness), seek for any other excuse they can find. Music! Yeah, that must have caused it. Movies! Those are horrible and they cause it. Video games! Ban them! Infantile thought processes.
Fiftly, there is a cult of hero worship in our society whereby the captain of the football team is held up as an example. The fact that the athletes of the school sometimes beat up the "outsiders" of the school escapes notice of the authorities. Then when these "outsiders" finally get fed up and snap (a totally inappropriate response, but we are talking only about those with mental instability enough to snap in those circumstances), society moans and wails about these 'awful violent kids' while ignoring the violence that was foisted upon them by the 'heros' of the school. Kids being picked on at school get shafted twice: First by the bullies, then by society.
Sixthly, with typical overreaction, society now develops zero-tolerance rules. Five-year-old boy playing touch football says during the game, "I'm gonna kill you" -- suspend him and send him to reform school (actually is happening). The thought police are not a future 1984ish nightmare, they are in America today. Your child is different? Doesn't fit the "norm"? Make him take this test and see if he conforms to society's norms. He doesn't? Keep your eye on him, for "different" = "dangerous." Too bad that the geniuses of history would all have failed such a test and would now be considered dangerous threats.
Seventhly, the teen of this particular story didn't sound dangerous to me. It sounds as if he was letting off steam in a safe way. Better to write out your feelings than to express them through the use of guns. But no, let's use zero tolerance, teach the kids that they will be jailed for their thoughts, and make sure they keep those emotions bottled up deep inside them with no way to let off the tension until they finally burst. Then we can label them violent monsters and throw the book at them. And feel good that we are being "tough" on crime.
Lastly, the gun laws in this country contribute to this problem greatly. If it weren't so easy for children to get serious firearms and all the ammunition they can drag along, such occasional violent outbursts of the mentally unstable would be minimized. It's much easier to take down a child with a knife than it is to take down a child with a gun. But will society solve this problem? Of course not, for I got my rights, doggone it! Just lock the little hellions up in jail instead, while I have another beer and watch wrestling.
Look, I understand the fear the parents would have when such a list of names is found, and I'm not saying nothing should have been done. All I'm saying is that the problem started long ago, and society didn't do a damn thing about it until it reached this point.
This is a serious societal problem, and I hate that people just want to apply simple, feel-good solutions that accomplish absolutely nothing, but probably teach the "different" kids that they had better conform to society's rules and be good little consumers like the rest of us. For every genuinely mentally instable child that would act on their impules, there are a hundred "different" but mentally stable children that would never act on those impules but will get branded by society as "dangerous" when they are nothing of the kind.
