A Soft Parade
" Can you give me sanctuary
I must find a place to hide
A place for me to hide." -- Jim Morrison; The Soft Parade
In the early morning hours, I heard a newsman from Michigan say, "It can be said tha 'all school shootings are local'." An appropriate Tip of the hat to the late Speaker O'Neill, I suppose. Several students at the university had attended Oxford high school when there was the mass shooting there on November 30, 2021.
Other university students spoke to the media hours later, about running and looking for a place to hide while the gunman was shooting people. The descriptions of events was bizarre, almost impossible to imagine, far beyond Jim's walk along Sunset Boulevard. A soft parade that displays all that went wrong in the country I once knew.
This mass shooting was both like and distinct from the others that take place in centers of education. With some seventy-plus mass shootings thus far in 2023, it is no surprise that there are variations in the explosive, deadly hatred that wounds and kills innocent human beings on a daily basis. Let's look at two differences.
This murderer was about twice the age of the usual school shooter. He was not white. More, the legal system might have prevented him from legally being able to buy a gun, had he been properly prosecuted in 2019 for illegally carrying one. Despite his previous record, which showed he had no regard for the law, he got a plea deal for a reduced charge that did not prevent him from legally buying a gun. It is not enough to say he might still have gotten one illegally -- gun laws need to be firmly enforced.
How is he similar to other mass shooters? I've read where people say he should have been treated for mental illness before, even one comment blaming his father for not getting him "help" before. Thus far, I have heard nothing that suggests he had a major mental illness. I've heard that he had a job up until his mothe died two years ago. From what his father and sister are reported to have said, he had tended to be socially isolated up until his mother's death -- with her being the closest to him -- and became a hostile recluse after she died.
This would appear to put him in the same grouping as most school shooters ..... not mentally ill, but with severe personality disorders. Serious mental illnesses can surface after the loss of a loved one, but that is generally in one's teens or early twenties. They do not tend to appear in a male's 40s. More, personality disorders tend to become entrenched in the teens through early twenties -- by no coincidence, in the very years that the human brain has its final growth -- and become far harder to treat thereafter.
I am all for expanding the current gun laws. I live in rural, upstate New York, where there are far more republicans than Democrats. Most of the men that live near me hunt, and love their guns. In fact, most have been divorced at least once, but have never parted with one of their weapons, which I think illustrates their priorities. Most parrot some NRA lines. Yet, when I aask them if the favor keeping guns out of the hands of, say, school shooters, they all agree this is necessary. Thus, I think we need a focused message to counter the gun lobby.
Also, the current gun laws have to be expanded, and firmly enforced. Mass shootings aren't the only issue; on an average day, one hundred people are killed by someone with a gun. While in rare examples a person with a gun stops an attack by a gunman, the problem does not appear to be one of too few guns. There are currently 120 guns per one hundred Americans, which suggests that gun owners don't need to worry about them being taken away. Close to 90% of Americans support reasonable regulation of guns.
At the same time, we need to recognize that extreme personality pathology does not respond well to treatment after a person is 40 years old. In fact, it can be very difficult by the time one is in their later teens. This is especially true when society places the majority of the responsibility on schools, or expects police alone to deal with it. Add to that the reality of multi-generational families lacking both resources and parenting skills. We have to recognize, for example, the impact that having addiction and violence in a household has. Putting one or more parents behind bars may resolve one problem, no matter how temporary, but it frequently plants the seeds of future problems.
This country is experiencing a crisis that involves guns. It is overwhelmingly a male problem. And mass shootings associated with schools is overwhelmingly a young white male problem. I know that many people, especially republicans, do not want to fund programs for "those people." I've heard them say that for decades. But perhaps they can come to understand that as a society, we owe it to those others in school or college. And it is essential to start early, or we risk more 6 year olds bringing a gun to school, and many more white male teenagers.
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