School Shootings and Possible Preventive Measures
By Rafiq Ebrahim
Glendale Heights, IL
Killing innocent children, our future responsible citizens, in learning places is something that is truly abhorring. It is a scourge perpetrated by mentally deranged and pathogenic students, sometimes revengeful and devilish. It doesn’t need a psychologist or a psychiatrist to understand the attitude, behavior and abnormal thoughts of a person. We all can very well distinguish such a person.
Killing of students in schools now seems to be a ritual, beginning as early as in 1764, listed by Wikipedia. On July 26 of that year, four American Indians entered the premises of Enoch Brown School in present-day Greencastle, Pennsylvania, shot and killed schoolmaster Enoch Brown and nine children. It was perhaps the earliest shooting to happen on school or college property.
For the next century, no such shootings were recorded, and it was taken for granted that the 1764 incident was a solitary one and wouldn’t occur again. Then the wave invaded again, and since 1840 about 300 school shootings have taken place, making the scourge a regular happening.
The recent shootings spree began in 1966 when Rick Whitman opened fire in the University of Texas. In 1999, students in the Columbine High School in Colorado were targeted by two mentally deranged students, eighteen-year-old Eric Harris and seventeen-year-old Dylan Klebold. They killed 12 children and injured many more before they committed suicide. In 2007, there was a mass-killing in Virginia Technological School. In 2008, Steven Kazmjerczak shot multiple students in Northern Illinois University, before killing himself. Years later, in 2012, we saw the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton where twenty children less than seven years old were shot to death. A few years later, a fifteen-year boy killed two classmates and injured more than eighteen others in Kentucky.
The latest attack took place at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida this year in February. Nikolas Cruz, a young boy, mentally unbalanced with a history of family loss and personal problems, living with persons other than his parents, carried an automatic rifle to the school, killed several students and injured many more in a fit of rage.
Reactions
David Hogg, seventeen-year- old student, escaping the massacre at the High School in Parkland, gave a message to the country’s political leaders on CNN, ‘We are children. You are adults. Work together, come over your politics and get something done.’
Erica Goode, a former New York Times reporter and a visiting professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications, mentions in her NY Times article of 15th February 2018, ‘… High Schools and Colleges, it turned out, were rife with troubled students who expressed violent thoughts. One scribbled, ‘Kill Everyone. Leave None Alive,’ in a notebook beside drawings of bombs hitting a building that looked disturbingly like a school. Another posted pictures of himself on Facebook holding guns alongside the words, “School-Tomorrow”. A third student said that Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter, had done a good thing in killing 20 children by enabling them to escape the travails of life.
Malcolm Gladwell, staff writer of The New Yorker, points out in his article published in The New Yorker on 15th February, 2018, ‘…Kip Kinkale, who shot his parents, then killed two others and wounded 25 others at the High School, was psychotic; he thought the Chinese were preparing to attack the United States, that Disney had plans for world domination, and that the government has planted a computer chip inside his head. The architect of the columbine killings, Eric Harris was a classic psychopath… a law-breaker…. Bought guns illegally, set off home-made bombs, and at one point hacked into school’s computer system. He wrote, ‘Ich bin Gott’, common for ‘I am God,’ in his school planner. His journals were filed with fantasies about rape and mutilations. ‘I want to tear a throat out with my own teeth like a pop can. I want to gut someone with my hand, to tear a head off and rip out a heart…..’ ”.
Possible Preventive Measures
Gun Control would be the most effective measure in preventing many of such shootings at school. Students have been protesting, articles are being published, some leaders are pressing for gun control. It is high time the government imposes a law to control the buying and use of guns, particularly automatic weapons. Some quarters, profiting by sale of guns, would no doubt object, but for the safety of children at large, this objection must be overruled. America is generally a safe place. Why do people need guns that they cannot keep away from their children? How can a child get hold of a gun and do the damage? These are the questions that should be kept in mind to ensure safety.
Duties of Parents and Guardians: To get a child educated is the foremost duty of parents or guardians. As such all children must go to school to have a bright future, but in some rare cases, a child, who appears to be abnormal and behaves violently, should be first taken to a mental clinic and get treated, before being sent to a school. Elders should by now learn a lesson from the rampage of killings at schools. And, in all cases, guns and destructive weapons should be kept out of reach of children.
Security at Schools:All possible efforts should be made to raise the number of security personnel in every school. Security guards must also be posted at the entrances of a school. If possible, backpacks of the students must pass through conveyor belts installed and designed to detect metallic objects. This would be costly, but in the interest of children’s safety, funds should be made available for introducing this measure.
A discussion is going on about arming the teachers, but all teachers are not anxious to shoulder this responsibility. Those who are willing may be provided with guns. This measure could provide additional safety in some cases.
Factor of religion: Perhaps the most effective factor would be to teach and encourage children the good points of religion. All faiths teach goodness, helping others and ensuring safety everywhere. If children are made to attend churches or any place of worship when they are very young, they would certainly not harbor any evil or destructive thoughts while growing up. Unfortunately, many people these days are just taking religion for granted, and not adhering to its teachings. The world would be a heavenly place if more and more people return to their religion.
Since the latest shooting episode, more and more people and political leaders appear duly concerned and one hopes necessary measures are expeditiously taken to effectively stamp out the scourge of school shootings once and for all.
(RafiqEbrahim is a freelance writer and novelist)
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