It can' t be just the guns

 

This daily mass shooting has this country standing on its head. Everyone laments what is going on? The anti gun folks call for stricter gun control. Others have decided this is sheer lunacy and want the mental health system straightened out. Media outlets stopped naming the shooters thinking that the cause was a need for glory. Bullying gets talked about a lot. I m sure if I spent time researching this topic there would be a lot more theories.

I don't know what's going on. Like everyone else I think about it a lot and my heartbreaks for the loss of so many innocent men,women and children. Of course we don't talk about the fact that this random death by gun violence has been happening in our ghettos and poorer cities for decades. Another topic for another day.  What I keep thinking about is the underlying anger, the rage that must accompany these acts so many happening at the hands of young people. Young people are useless now did you know that? The foundation of  American consumerism perhaps. But otherwise? Oh yes they do community service projects so they can get into a good college. But no one really needs them .

I read a great book once when my daughter was little called "Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-indulgent world". I loved it. I believed and still do believe that the advice was correct. The basic idea was to give children every opportunity to develop multiple skills, initiative and problem solving steps.  But even then I couldn't do it. There were few things left over to let my daughter do. We live in an age of convenience. My husband and I worked full time and my husband held down a second job to make ends meet. Chronically exhausted I relied on conveniences to survive which left little for me to do and not much for my daughter to do.  So there I've confessed. But having done that I can say with certainty that my daughter will not turn out to be a mass murderer .  I also recognize that the parents of those mass murderers didn't think that's how their kid would turn out either.  

I guess the answer is elusive. It probably is not one or even two things- instead it's a human "perfect storm." It's not going to be predictable or easily recognized except in retrospect. What is scary is that we might come to think we can predict who will become a mass murderer. Like a decade or more ago  when researchers suggested that children " at risk" for developing a major mental illness be medicated prophylactically

with anti psychotic medication.  Stay tuned for a similar response to kids "at risk" for becoming mass murderers!