*sigh*
I am an elementary teacher and today was especially difficult. I agree with some posters and just laugh at others. Here are my thoughts and my thoughts alone. I spent the better part of today dealing with this and my feelings might change but here it goes...
Mental Illness is just that. An illness. Nothing more, nothing less. It needs to be destygmatized. The reason is that people often ignore or excuse it and see it is some kind of horrendous problem (it can be, but often it can be managed and treated humanely). Often mental illness is treatable and manageable. In the 20 years I have been working with children, I have seen my share of children and parents with different types of mental illness from SED (seriously emotionally disturbed) to Bipolarism and depression. Parents often ignore warning signs, deny anything is wrong, take it personally, etc. Society has put a lot of pressure on these people to be "normal." This attitude seems to be causing problems. I would not be surprised at all if this person's mental status was questioned as early as elementary school. It does not excuse what happened but it might give a little perspective.
Gun control might be nice but it will probably never happen. Too hard to change the constitution. On the other hand...nothing is said about ammunition. Tax ammo like you take cigarettes...do not make it illegal...make it really really pricey. Might not solve the problem but can certainly help. If you cannot afford munition, it might keep you from buying and using it. Probably not but it couldn't hurt...
To the posters that said this did not happen before...not true...we (humans) have been very proficient at killing others for as long as we first picked up a stone and used it as a tool...When you look at the amount of killings as a ratio of our population, I bet it is less now than in the 1770s. To those of you that say the mass murder aspect is different, I say nope. There have been mass murderers forever. The difference now is the speed at which it can be accomplished and the way it is globally sent around the world. It used to take much longer to kill people before guns but it happened (more often than people realize).
Media has not helped. The media saturation is unreal. It was much easier 30 years ago to insulate your children from these horrific events. Turn off the tv and radio, hide the newspaper. Now, kids see stuff on the internet, phones, tv, radio, e-readers, etc. Much more difficult to avoid the saturation. I had a kid in my 4th grade class pick his phone up after school and immediately started yelling to his friends about the school shooting. Parents need to be aware of what they are handing their kids and how they discuss what is seen on that media. (Of course, the media has been around a long time...I bet people in London were saying the same thing about Jack the Ripper...probably the first mass murderer to have photographic portrayals in the newspaper).
The theory that this is happening because as a nation we have moved away from God and let kids play Call of Duty is sort of ridiculous. The amount of carnage caused in the name of God by countries that were "godly" is unreal. We forget our history so quickly...Crusades, Inquisition, Wars of Religion, etc. Belief in God does not suddenly make the unstable stable and the evil go away.
Call of Duty and other violent video games do not suddenly cause children to be violent. What science has shown is that it makes people predisposed to violence possibly more violent AND in some of those, allows an outlet for that violence. If everyone followed what they saw/did in games, half the country would have taken up farming. I dislike video games for a whole different reason...but that is another discussion on parenting and problem solving.
Again, my thoughts alone...and I am still emotional but there it is...
Joshua
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