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Kids Who Kill: The Lessons of Littleton
The stories of school violence have become an all-too-common scene in our newspapers and on our TV screens. Hardly a week goes by, it seems, without some new tidbit in the news about some kid shooting,
stabbing, bombing, or otherwise harming either his parents, his teachers, or his fellow students. But despite the extensive coverage of such shootings, the Associated Press reported only 7 school-related
shootings between October 1997 and April 1999, suggesting that school violence of this type is more rare than it appears.
Are we over-reacting? After every incident of school-related violence, the press is quick to report extensive details of the weapons used in the violence, prompting such groups as HCI to begin beating the "ban
guns" drum, which in turn prompts the NRA to issue press releases of its own. But are "guns" really the problem? Or is there something deeper at work here?
First, let's briefly examine the myth of what is popularly called "gun control". In every credible study that's been done on the subject, researchers have agreed, without exception, that ready access to
firearms does not contribute significantly to gun violence. In fact, every 13 seconds a firearm is used in defense against a criminal. For those who would prefer to call the police, it would be well to
remember that the courts have ruled that the police do not
have a duty to protect a single individual, only to protect society in general (I'll post a link to the actual ruling as soon as I can find it again!). And, as Robert Heinlein once said, "An armed society is a polite society." If banning guns is the answer, then why has there been such a rise in school shootings, despite the banning of literally thousands of guns? In the words of J. Neil Schulman, who wrote "Stopping Power", "Gun control, so-called, is a fraud perpetrated by those who are fundamentally opposed to the doctrine of universal individual sovereignty:
individual liberty. Its proponents are either philosophical pacifists or statists, or both. Its stated purpose of reducing crime and violence has never succeeded in doing either, no matter how thoroughly it has been
tried; as good a case can be made that it disarms only the innocent and increases violent crime overall. While the purposes for which it is proposed are dubious, its function is clearly to deinstitutionalize, once
and for all, the doctrine of universal individual sovereignty in this country by depriving the people of their final means of resisting incursions upon their lives, property, and liberty: armed force."
If people would give the matter more than a few seconds worth of consideration, it would seem obvious that an armed citizen or teacher in the near vicinity of the Littleton incident would quite possibly have been
able to engage the perpetrators and stop them before they could have shot 15 students and a teacher. But is even that the real issue? I think not.
If we profile, and really listen, to the stories of the perpetrators of such offenses, they all tell much the same story: like it or not, most all tell of a home life with parents willing to shower them with money,
gifts, or anything else in an attempt to "make them happy", but they don't have the time to give them what these kids really want - love, attention, affection. Food, shelter, and clothing may be enough to
sustain the body, but certainly not the soul. It is the quality time spent with kids that may be the missing factor, and that may be primarily where the blame lies, not on "guns" or other mythical
factors. It's a hard and bitter pill, but one that has to be faced as a very real possibility.
Another factor that has yet to be taken into consideration is, how much support did these kids have with their peer group? Zero? There were a lot of kids in school that knew they were in trouble, yet they
turned their backs on them. Columbine High School has a peer counseling service - did any of the peer counselors reach out to these two young men and try to help? Did anyone else at the school try to
help, or did everyone turn their backs on these young men, thinking they were "just weird" and scary and to be ignored?
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