Bullies and school shootings

My heartfelt thoughts and prayers to the grieving families that have lost loved ones to the thoughtless and malicious actions of others.

Law enforcement officers across the country are filling out a questionnaire as to whether they would be willing to go to homes and ask citizens for their guns.

Will you willingly forfeit yours?

One person will own multiple guns in my state. There are probably as many guns as people. We learn from an early age to respect weapons, and how to handle them.

I do not own a gun because I do not trust them or like them. But my personal feelings do not get in the way of my Constitutional rights. We are America the free. Take away our right to bear arms, next we lose our freedoms of speech, religion, and due process. Are you ready to give up your freedoms because you are angry at the shooters and the guns they carry?

The problem with guns and drugs is they are easily available if you know who to ask.  It is fairly easy to find the right weapon for the job at hand, with a permit or not. Gun control is not the solution, in my opinion.  Instead, we should use our energy to ask Congress to flood the funding for mental health programs.

We are not meeting children's needs, we are letting the bullying continue, and we blame our children for being victims to the system. When children are happy, and not angry; when they are getting the support and encouragement they need, then they do not need a reason to shoot a into a gathering of students.    And our rights stay intact.

Here is an excerpt from my book:
Walking Between the Raindrops: A treatise on trauma

Bullies and School Shootings

After the Sandy Hook Shootings in Connecticut in December 2012, the governor of Connecticut formed the Sandy Hook Advisory Council. A study by a former FBI agent of the forty-one attackers involved in the thirty-seven school shootings from 1974 to 2012, shows every single shooting could have been prevented.

• All were males, most felt bullied, all were depressed or suicidal.
• All had access to weapons, either from the family or a relative of the family.
• The shootings took less than 5 minutes.
• The shooters talked about their plans to friends; in person, and on-line.
• Some were very popular in school.
• Each attack was planned far in advance. The boys at Columbine had their plan in place nearly two years before the incident.
• Gathering weapons were part of the planning.
• All had suffered recent losses and major traumas. One had a mother going through a divorce. She told the shooter (her child) she was going to commit suicide in front of her husband.

The shooter in Alaska was bullied for years. His bullies put notes on his back and jammed up his locker. His adoptive mother was the superintendent of the schools, and she initially reprimanded three of the students, which caused the bullying to escalate. The boy was told, “Try to ignore it.” The message he heard was: Ignore it or solve the problem on your own. He solved the problem - he decided to shoot his classmates.

 

The plan escalated. The target list went from three to fourteen. The boy had never used or loaded a weapon until then. The night before the shooting, he told a friend he was bringing a gun to school the next day, she warned him against it, and she stayed home from school. A boy brought a camera to take pictures of the shooting. When the shooter walked into the school’s lobby, he told the classmates, “You had better run!” He shot at the ceiling, and then shot the principal.

The Sandy Hook Advisory Council discovered that children whose needs are unmet or unrecognized far outnumber the children who are a public safety threat. About eight million children enter the system every year through adoption, institution, foster care, and of course, the legal system. There is no count of the vast number of children raised by grandparents and other kinship.

In light of this information, what happens to make children want to shoot their classmates? Perhaps students and teachers should look to the way they treat one another and consider that perhaps their behavior is contributing to these deaths as much as guns are.

Until priorities are placed on helping our troubled children and families, we will continue to see an increase in violence to where there will be no more gatherings because people will be too afraid to leave their homes.  

www.cwpickett.com