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opinion:
our view
Violent motives
unclear
This week's shooting
at Santana High School in Santee, CA, shocked and saddened us
as a nation. Violence like this that happen in our schools,
terrify us even more because we feel helpless in protecting
our children, as we continue to struggle to find explanations
for these horrific incidents.
The knee-jerk reaction
is to tighten security at every school, installing metal detectors
and surveillance systems and turning the halls of education
into near-prisons. However, the problem is not pervasive enough
to warrant this type of reaction; incidents are just too few
and far between.
Funding for schools
is scarce enough to make schools spend needed money on the
latest high tech video cameras. Many students feel alienated
enough at school, having them walk through a security checkpoint
every time they need to go to the restroom will only increase
tensions.
Since the Columbine
shooting, researchers have been studying the motivations behind
school shooting sprees, attempting to find an underlying motive.
They have not found one single answer, because the motivation
behind each shooting is different. There is no "high
school gunman" profile like there is for serial killers.
In the Santee shooting,
just as in the Columbine shooting, warning signs were present
before the incident occurred. In both cases, the suspects
talked about the actions they planned to undertake, but the
threats were either ignored or not taken seriously by those
who knew.
A zero-tolerance
policy in which every suspicious activity is fretted over
and reported to the police is not the answer, as this would
overwhelm police resources and encourage students to harass
students they do not like by reporting them to authorities.
Violent video games
and movies are an easy scapegoat for us to use every time
something like this happens. Humankind has used violence to
settle disputes since the beginning of civilization; people
did not start to become violent after "Pulp Fiction"
hit the big screen.
Regarding video
games, even though some children involved in shooting sprees
had played violent video games, it does not mean every child
that plays them will develop violent tendencies. This is a
logical fallacy of composition.
Not to be overlooked
in all of this are the parents, but all discussions of responsibility
wind up back there. The first and most important responsibility
lies with the parents, but children's personalities are made
throughout childhood. It takes more than realizing when a
child is in high school that they like to collect guns and
make videos detailing shooting sprees.
There are no easy
answers to these problems, but parents and school administrators,
as well as classmates of potentially troubled teens need to
heed the warning signs we only acknowledge after the fact.
Incidents like
this may not be universally preventable, but if only one is
stopped, lives would be saved.
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