School Shootings

I'm reading about the recent post-Columbine mayhem (the latest massacre took place in my own San Diego County, at Santana High), and I'm almost as appalled by our attitude toward these tragedies as by the events themselves.

We analyze, consult experts, speculate, blame the media, sort shell fragments, measure bodies....do everything but try to get inside the hearts of the children who perpetrate these killings. Not all of them by any means are psychopaths; we'd be relieved, I think, if they were, if the problem could be reduced to something simple. "It's a nice country except for a few nutcases."

It's not a nice country, but one insane enough to allow such a proliferation of firearms that even children can get ahold of them--while gun makers sell and gun owners buy in the name of liberty and democracy.

These children are symptomatic of the craziness and violence inherent in our quick-fix, superspeed, alienated American culture. The gun: a kind of ultimate expression of the need to get things done NOW, resolve problems quickly--in "self-defense," as the government says of pilots dropping bombs in Iraq.

If we actually listened to these kids (I have, as a counselor to violent teens), we'd hear about frustration and loneliness and a tremendous lack of interest by their parents, in many cases forced by economic necessity to work themselves to the bone. We'd hear about disinterest and poor boundaries and too little structure and too much brooding.

I look forward to the day, if it ever comes, when we adults look inward to how we model peace and kindness and presence and availability to our kids--and the shootings stop.

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