“This is good reading, especially if you’re under the impression that:
+School shootings are perpetrated by loner, loser types
+Really, that there’s a “type” that can be categorized as a likely shooter
+That Marilyn Manson or violent video games have anything to do with this stuff (apparently, school shooters play violent video games at a lower rate)
+That you, as a parent, would totally know if your kid was up to something like this
I have to say that this book did chip away at some of the sympathy I feel for journalists at times. Because the way most journalists involved with the story acted, both on the day of, in the following weeks, and even years later, is pretty gross. I’m just glad Buzzfeed didn’t exist in ’99…
This book also brought back some feelings I had at the time. I was in junior high, maybe 2 hours away, and the massacre made for a pretty weird couple of days, to say the least. It hadn’t really occurred to me that something like this might happen. I mean, sure, it seemed plausible that someone might bring a gun and shoot someone at school, but I don’t think I’d really considered someone blasting away at whoever was convenient.
Shortly after this we were required to have student IDs on us at all times. Which was stupid because the boys from Columbine were students. They would’ve had IDs. The IDs would have made absolutely zero difference in what happened that day. But this is what happens when we come across a problem we can’t really fix: We end up just doing stuff, even if it doesn’t address the original problem.
When I brought those feelings into the present, it sharpened a VERY unpopular opinion I hold on these events, more a question than a statement: What if gun control isn’t the answer?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t own a firearm and never have. I’ve taken a hunter’s safety course, fired guns a handful of times, but I don’t own one and don’t have particular plans to get one. I don’t think gun control is the wrong answer because it’s a bad thing. I think, in light of the fact that it’s now been 20 years since the massacre at Columbine and very little has changed, gun-wise, that people who care about preventing this stuff need to try something else.
I think it’s fair to say that we want is for tragedies like this to A) Stop entirely, or B) At the very least, claim fewer lives when they DO happen.
One possible way to do this is to reduce the firepower that any individual can wield, or at the very least, create restrictions that make it more difficult for the sort of person who might shoot a bunch of people to get their hands on guns. Those measures do help us with the B) portion, but what about the A)?
Part of what I’m worried about is that the battle over gun control has lost track of that purpose, and that it’s become about being right. Sometimes it feels like we are fighting about gun control, but with no context regarding why or to what end. We’re not fighting about the best way to reduce needless death. We’re fighting about the issue of gun control in a vacuum. We’re fighting between political types, as separated by our views on the issue of gun control.
Maybe the fights have lost sight of the original scope: Let’s stop this from happening.
The question I’m asking is: What if there’s another way? If there was a way to reduce, nearly to stopping, these kinds of events, would we be satisfied if that method didn’t involve gun control? Would we be willing to give up on gun control for the time being if another alternative presented itself?
And the reason I bring up the question is because it seems impossible to institute serious gun control. That might sound defeatist, but I’m being real. 20 years since this happened, and it’s still happening on a fairly frequent basis.
My theory also involves the fact that gun control is a place where logic and emotion clash. Logically, gun control seems to make sense, to me. Logically, it’s something we totally could do, if we wanted to. But, because democracy is a system that works via the will of all people, logic isn’t the way decisions are made. If logic ruled, would it be possible for someone to be on a no-fly list, unable to buy a plane ticket, but still able to buy a gun? If logic mattered, everyone would want everyone who owned a gun to pass at least a rudimentary test of some kind. We make charts and shit all day, but that doesn’t really matter if someone feels like guns are important to the structure of America or to their personal identity. There’s not much you could tell a person who feels that way that will convince them that gun control is a good thing, and they will throw stats back your way about guns, knives, what have you, and that’s how it happensâwe’re fighting about gun control, not working together towards a common goal. .
That’s why I wonder if it’s possible to redirect and reframe the conversation so that both sides are looking for a solution to the problem instead of fighting each other, meanwhile the massacres keep rolling on.
It’s just a thought, and it’s probably not entirely correct. But I feel like we’re beyond the stage where we should be asking if our current ideas, in which we’re making no headway, are the right way to go.
I’ll admit upfront that I have no idea what that solution might be. Before I read this book, I, like many people, would have gone the mental health route. But after reading, I don’t think that’s going to work either. Both shooters at Columbine were involved in juvenile offense diversion programs, which involved therapy. We can argue a lot about the effectiveness of a given program, but unless we can offer effective programs to all people in all places, and unless those programs are targeting audiences and pulling people in, many of whom won’t want to be pulled in, I don’t know that mental health is going to be the solution either.
This is all gloom and doom, and I don’t mean it to be. I just wonder if there are other people who feel like there’s got to be a better way, one that we can agree on, and one that we can work on together. “