thomas leverett weblog

Rainy Night in Georgia

The blood is barely dry on the Georgia school shooting, and now that I've read about it, I find myself not saying "how horrible" (though it is horrible), but rather, "how typical." It's just a usual family who gives their son an AR-15 for Christmas.

I'm sure they didn't say "oh by the way don't shoot up the school with this, or, "don't ever use this on people, especially not people you know" Rather, they didn't say anything but "Merry Christmas!" and deep down they felt that the kid's unhappiness which they knew only all too well would be alleviated somewhat by the feeling of power one gets when one takes an AR-15 out or around or in the back yard, and waves it around, and notices that if one were to fire it all range of things in its path would be killed.

It's a somewhat subtle way of encouraging a school shooting, since it wouldn't be polite to say, "just go shoot up that school if they start mistreating you," or, "this gun is to fix whatever problems you're having at that damn place", which is probably what they really wanted to say, if only subconsciously. I know I am putting thoughts in their heads; I absolutely don't know them. But one thing I noticed from subbing in gun-country high schools was that the parents had tons of unresolved issues around school's simply giving them the tools they needed to survive in this world, and many of these issues, surprise surprise, came right out in their kids' behavior or lack thereof. Kids sometimes through their violence or even non-action expressed a hostility that was thinly veiled when you actually talked to the parents, and which surely came out one way or the other in the daily grind of getting kids dressed and down to the building at least some of the time.

Nowadays those of us who still put our kids in public schools are playing a kind of roulette. Sure it may only be a couple-thousand-to-one these days, with the actual chances your kids' school will be shot up pretty slim in the big picture. But school shootings are commonplace, everyday, usual methods for sick kids to express their frustration these days. They've all played Call of Duty, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, etc.; some have played them hours at a time, or all summer, or in blocks of four, eight, ten hours at a time with occasional breaks for food. They have practice firing guns, the electronic kinds. They've worked on their aim and they've normalized expressing their hostility through shooting some random little electronic creature. They've been shot and killed and come right back for a few more hours of it.

It's because it's totally part of the overall fabric of our world that it seems so normal. I have three kids afflicted with mental illness. Two swore to me up and down they would never confuse a video game with reality and then lo and behold, both confused video games with reality. They make video games very well these days; they're easy to confuse with reality, and mental illness in their case was something they brought into the picture. Fortunately violent tendencies were not part of the picture. But the third kid confused life and Grand Theft Auto - he couldn't tell them apart. Stole our car three times and wrecked it each time. We were lucky no one was killed. He sure as heck didn't know what he was doing. He had maybe two or three hundred hours of GTA under his belt, and not a single minute of driving practice. That I realize is entirely my fault. or our fault. It's the way it worked out. We were lucky not only that no one got hurt, but also that he didn't end up dead or in jail himself for various other things done on impulse and irresponsibility. He was a kid.

This is all very personal, and shoudln't be. Innocent people are dying. And that's because the basic framework of our country is built around gun ownership and gun possession. I set out to be a Quaker and it saved my life, the life of my kids, the life of countless people around them, who are the victims when things like this happen. In this case I happened to be connected to one of the victims - a friend out in Utah happened to know someone, who was related to the guy who got shot in the foot and the hip, but who mirculously survived. He was maybe a math teacher too? I was a math teacher. I have special sympathy for those math teachers. They are the saints of this world. And we should not just turn away and say, "whatever!"

posted by tom @ 7:08 PM