Georgia Shooting

               I am going to comment on this school shooting in Georgia. To begin with, I feel empathy for the students, and the faculty. They have been through a traumatic event in their lives, and I hope they find the strength to somehow overcome the grief, sense of loss, and sorrow

           The reason for this shooting, is the reason for just about all the rest. The reason for this shooting was not the gun. It is not the parents; I will have an opinion on that later. But for now, the root cause of this shooting is bullying at school. This child was bullied, and he did not see any other way out, so he shot people, and he took human lives. The school districts, administrators, counselors, and teachers don’t do enough to curb bullying. They didn’t do anything then, and they do less now.

They haven’t changed their tune since I was in school some 50 years ago. They are to blame for the proliferation of school shootings. They have blood on their hands. Society argues gun control every time one of these shootings happens, but we never argue, or even discuss bullying. There are other underlying causes at work here. There are mental health issues, there are school bullying policies, or lack thereof, teacher issues, and the cornerstone of the problem, is the systemic blindness of the problem and the systemic mismanagement by the people we put in charge of educating our children. The administrators. They focus too much on academics and too little on the emotional well-being of our children. The administrators should be focusing on the academic well-being of our children, but not at the expense of the emotional well-being. There can’t be one without the other. When there is, we have what we have been enduring at a greater rate for the last 30 years, school shootings.  The administrators want to blame teachers, parents, law enforcement, guns, and everything but themselves. There needs to be a political, educational, and administrative reckoning in this country when it comes to bullying in school.

I was bullied in school. There were loaded guns in our house when I was growing up. I never once thought to use those guns to fight bullies. I fought bullies, because I intensely dislike bullies, and bullying. My reaction to a bully was to fight. Not shoot them. I was able to fight them, because of my attitude, my size, and determination. Mostly my very bad attitude at times. Some can deal with bullies, some can’t. for those who can’t they need help and aren’t getting it from the very people who are supposed to help them, not ignore them.

Now about the parents. If they are going to crucify and imprison the parents for missing the signs, then the teachers, the administrators, mental health doctors, counselors, and in this case, the FBI agents, the local police, and all who knew about the danger of the kid last year, all need to be up there on the cross with the parents. There is enough wood for everyone. Either crucify them all, or none of them, they all have blood on their hands. Blood is blood, how much is irrelevant.  

If this is a case where everyone’s hands were tied, then society needs to untie their hands, so the professionals, and parents can better do their job in catching the problem early. Society must find the political, emotional, and moral will to be proactive, instead of reactive.  Debates about guns and thoughts and prayers are not the solution. It starts with policy changes, and the application of those changes. It goes back to the beginning of the problem, the administrators, who can be the solution, if they just choose to be.   

The child must now face the consequences for his actions, whatever they are. That is going to be up to a jury. As well it should be. This child needs to at the very least needs to go to jail for the remainder if his life. In my opinion, age notwithstanding, they need to execute him. Not for closure, because that is a myth, or justice because that is a fleeting fool's folly. But for punishment. You commit crime X, and you get punishment Y.

There is no easy solution for this epidemic that we are enduring as a society. On one hand, the rights of the one must be compatible with the rights of many. If expelling this child from school, permanently for that stunt last year somehow violates his rights, then there needs to be a solution that is equitable for him, and all the others who don’t have a problem, so the rights of all are not violated. This child last year needed to be taken out of school and watched closely by the authorities. The law enforcement apparatus, the school district as an institution, and the parents, all made mistakes, and society suffers the consequences. I was told by my father more than once that there are consequences for everything you do in life, whether they are good or bad was up to me. Well, here we are, and where society is concerned, there are consequences for how a society deals with these consequences, how about society do something so we get some positive consequences for a change. This school shooting thing is wearing thin, and needless death is wearing even thinner.