<-- HitTail.com code -->

Blogger News Network

BNN provides English-language US and world news, analysis and opinion from all over the Internet. We strive for high standards, ethical behavior, and the presentation of multiple responsible points of view.

Visiting our advertisers directly supports this site. Thanks!

Get More Traffic For Your Blog!

Blog Explosion brings hundreds of interested visitors to your blog - without costing you a cent.

BNN News Archive Page

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Imagine Your Byline Here - Click Here To Write For BNN

The Return of the School Shooting

After a recent school shooting in Montreal (I thought there was no crime in Canada, Michael Moore!), followed by a foiled Columbine-style plot in my hometown, Green Bay, the Green Bay Press-Gazette is set to run a piece analyzing the effects of bullying. (Full disclosure: I interned there, and with other Gannett Wisconsin papers, several times during and after college.)

I posted these comments on my personal blog a few days back, and I think they still pertain to a newsworthy subject. After a several-year lapse, school shootings just might be coming back. The Montreal college shooter was 25 years old, but high schools are a more fertile breeding ground for this kind of rage, as Green Bay East experienced.

I think one possibility is that memories fade, and a certain subset of high school jocks lose their fear of retaliation from the less popular. I went to high school in the immediate wake of Columbine, and though I had long hair, wore black now and then, listened to Marilyn Manson and hunted every year, in all honesty I didn't get picked on much. There's only one particularly egregious incident I can recall, and I suppose I'm lucky few people overheard me contemplate putting "a bullet in his head." I wasn't serious, of course, but bullying arouses extreme feelings of anger in a 16- or 17-year-old male.

However, I think it's important to note that kids getting picked on doesn't explain the totality of the issue. Something had to make school shootings start in the first place in the mid-to-late '90s -- bullying has been going on for ages -- and analyses of Columbine showed the shooters did not concentrate on those who'd picked on them, opting instead for "Doom"-style random violence.

My preferred explanation -- one that ruffles feathers -- is parenting. Many of these kids had plenty of time alone in their houses (Harris and Klebold made pipe bombs), and in most cases I can recall, the parents could easily have afforded quitting one job or working fewer hours. It's also a parent's job to monitor his/her children's mental health issues, and keep guns away from the offspring if need be.

I think it's the only explanation that stands up to scrutiny, as it's one of the few explanations that changed markedly between my parents attending high school in the '70s (much bullying, lots of access to guns, no shootings) and now. Other factors can make it wax and wane, but as long as parents let a violent media raise their kids, the shootings won't disappear.

Finally, we should be sure not to blow the issue out of proportion. Though violence in the media escalated and big stories like Columbine broke, crime overall dropped in the '90s.

Blogger News Network is advertiser-supported, and your visits to our advertisers help BNN to meet its expenses. Help keep us afloat!

posted by Robert VerBruggen at 8:34 PM