It Takes A Whole Village To Raise A School Shooter

The recent shooting in Florida is just another in a series of tragedies that are becoming pretty much a day to day event (19 in 2018 so far). The media and the public, as usual, seems to struggle to understand why these things are happening. At the same time most of the news coverage is split between pro gun and anti gun factions who seem to think that the basis and/or solution to the problem of school shootings lies in guns.

Are guns to blame for violence in America though? That seems ridiculous. If we can’t blame properly functioning cars for auto accident deaths or alcohol makers for creating alcoholics then we can not blame guns for school violence. It is the people behind the guns that are the cause and the cure and it is our job as a society to really understand the problem so that we can find a cure that works in the long term.

You know there was a study done by the Secret Service to try to figure out the common traits in school shooters. One thing that stands out is;

“Many attackers felt bullied, persecuted, or injured by others prior to the attack”

If this is the case then there is a whole lot more than needs to be done if you really want to end school violence. Gun legislation will not do anything to fix the broken kids that can be the result of bullying. Being one of the “other kids” in the school who did not participate in the bullying does not necessarily make you innocent in the eyes of the kid who was bullied. Especially if you never tried to “save” said bullied kid from their attacker(s).

In that sense, because so often kids and teachers know full well who the bullied, angry kids are and do nothing to stop it, no one is truly innocent in the eyes of the shooter. If there is actual mental illness involved and that is the cause of the shooter’s rampage then that is a different situation. Bullied kids though, often start out pretty normal. Maybe they are from single parent homes or in other ways have just not had much skill or luck in building relationships to a peer group that might protect them from being singled out by bullies,

Another big contributing factor according to the same study is;

“Most attackers had difficulty coping with significant losses or personal failures. Moreover, many had considered or attempted suicide”.

In the case of the the Florida shooter lost both his parents recently and if that does not contribute to your sense of being alone and powerless in the world I don’t know what would. There have been varied reports on the shooter, Nicholas Cruz’s history and these have ranged from Fox News saying that he had exhibited no warning signs to the more common theme of Cruz having a very obviously troubled past which involved hurting and killing small animals for “fun”. According to Psychology Today that behavior is the sign of real mental illness and is one shared by some serial killers.
According to the previously referenced study by The Secret Service there are 10 key findings that the authors of the study had in relation to common traits of School Shooters (page 31 of the study);

The 10 key findings that the authors believe may have implications for the development of strategies to address the problem of targeted school violence are as follows:
1 Incidents of targeted violence at school rarely are sudden, impulsive acts.
2 Prior to most incidents, other people knew about the attacker’s idea and/or plan to attack.
3 Most attackers did not threaten their targets directly prior to advancing the attack.
4 There is no accurate or useful profile of students who engaged in targeted school violence.
5 Most attackers engaged in some behavior prior to the incident that caused others concern or indicated a need for help.
6 Most attackers had difficulty coping with significant losses or personal failures. Moreover, many had considered or attempted suicide.
7 Many attackers felt bullied, persecuted, or injured by others prior to the attack.
8 Most attackers had access to and had used weapons prior to the attack.
9 In many cases, other students were involved in some capacity.
10 Despite prompt law enforcement responses, most shooting incidents were stopped by means other than law enforcement intervention.

I am not trying to excuse any of the shooters just to put some clarity on the root causes so that we can perhaps hold a more intelligent discussion on the WHY of it and how to prevent it at that level (before it happens). This seems much better than hiring armed guards and installing blast doors to prevent the kids on the low end of the social pecking order from exacting revenge on a society that failed to protect them.

In the case of kids that have serious mental problems there should already be assessment and intervention policies in place in school districts to assist the student as appropriate. I say this because mental illness is and has always been a part of human society. No program of identification and intervention is perfect but they should work most of the time. This is the kind of child that the community can help with but this does also require management by medical professionals.

At the other end of the spectrum are the otherwise normal students who have the misfortune of being singled out by a bully or bullies for persecution. This is obviously an important contributing factor as the study does say that “many” shooters have this contributing factor in their profile (point 7).
Bullying can take many forms and be of varying degrees but at its worst it is a special kind of mental and physical torture that victims have to endure every day on the way to and from or in school. It can take the form of physical violence or teasing or both.

Sometimes kids in this situation turn the feels that they experience as the result of bullying inward and harm themselves in response. Such was the case not too long ago, in a town right up the road from where I live, when a local student skipped school one day and walked along a nearby road for about 13 miles then casually jumped in front of a semi to end his life.

According to the linked story above the school he attended had only recently had an assembly on bullying. Also according to the story, students told the reporter that “no one took it seriously”.
In another case a girl from Staten Island jumped in front of a train to kill herself. Again, “everyone” knew about what she was going through and no one took the time to intervene and help or defend her. It does say that she was in counseling about the bullying but that is not a solution. It does nothing to stop the bullies. Her history (quote from above referenced story) seems similar to many bullying victims;

Felicia moved from foster home to foster home after her parents died, leaving her and younger brother orphans. She also spent time living at friends’ houses and at her ex-boyfriend’s place.
‘(She) had a terrible life on top of all the heartache — bullies at school taunted her and spread rumors,’ Gabriella Leone, whose younger sister witnessed the incident, told The New York Post.

When bullying ends in suicide or self harm society seems to be pretty much fine with it. One, probably insignificant, life is not much to lose I suppose. But what about the bullies? Why are they never prosecuted? When you torture someone to the point that they kill themselves why is there no punishment waiting? That is one place where perhaps we could use the law as a deterrent to make bullying less attractive than it is now by instituting punishments for the behavior.

If you do not think that bullies should be held accountable for what is the result of their actions when a student commits suicide then how about at the other end of the spectrum of possible reactions when the bullied student snaps and comes to school with a gun and starts shooting? Is the bully then liable for the lives taken just as much as the shooter? Not at present but what if they were just like any accomplice to a crime that results in a murder may be charged with murder. Would that be a sufficient deterrent?

It is true that the bully had no active role in the shooting but in a moral sense it seems obvious that A leads to B. How about the rest of the students and teachers who may be relatively indifferent to the bullying? It seems that the shooter may hold those who do nothing to help them with as much indifference when they start shooting as they feel that those people had to them.

I am not trying to imply that indifference equals responsibility. What I am saying is that school shootings and shooters seem to have, in many cases, a long and complex path leading up to the actual event. It should then be possible to intervene in a variety of ways at a myriad of points in time all along this path and by so doing avert the next tragedy.
Everyone who is a stakeholder in preventing school shootings (teachers, administrators, parents) and especially the students who might become the victims of the potential shooting can and should work to prevent the next incident. They can do simple things like be aware and responsive to other students as human beings and not look away when someone is bullied but step in and stop the bullying.

In the title of this article I said it took a whole village to create a shooter and I think this is true in many cases. In conclusion I think it is obvious that the way to prevent future tragedies whether suicides or shootings is for the same village to work together simply by changing their response and mitigating known trigger factors for the students who might be otherwise molded into someone who resorts to violent actions.

Actions to prevent school shootings can be something as simple as being more aware of bullying and anti-bullying programs. Perhaps a larger implementation of peer support groups or community based support for kids like Big Brothers/Big Sisters could be effective too. Anything that allows kids in bad situations to feel like someone cares and is on their side is going to reduce the chance of another school shooting or suicide.

I hope that you understand that our current debate on the merits of gun control every time there is a school shooting is really missing the point on both the problem and the solution. Making guns illegal would not stop the pain and suffering of bullied kids or mend the mentally ill. It would simply serve to perhaps better protect the indifferent and the bullies. But maybe that is all we really want as a society. I don’t know, only time will tell.

Link to the original story that includes references: https://medium.com/@mikesjohnston/it-takes-a-whole-village-to-raise-a-school-shooter-7d35461d8010