Why Are Our Children Shooting Each Other in School?
"The silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload..."
Some of you might remember those lyrics from the song "I Don’t Like Mondays." It was written in 1979 by "sir" Bob Geldof, who was in a new wave band called The Boomtown Rats. Geldof wrote the song after learning about an elementary school shooting that had occurred in a quiet suburb in the city of San Diego, Calif.
In January of that year, 16-year-old Brenda Lee Spencer killed the principal and a custodian and wounded eight children and one police officer when she opened fire on the Grover Cleveland Elementary School with her .22-caliber rifle. Spencer fired from inside her house, which was located across the street from the school. During the shooting, a local reporter talked with Spencer over the telephone and asked her why she was doing it. Spencer said, "I just don't like Mondays...this livens up the day."
Geldof went onto write the song and capitalized on the tragedy as the song hit #1 on the U.K. charts, but it was widely criticized and even banned on many U.S. radio stations.
This particular shooting certainly wasn’t the first of its kind. If you conduct any type of search for school shootings and stabbings, you’ll discover there are many documented incidents that go back at least a century. The exception with this particular case is that the shooter was female.
Through statistics and profiling by many research institutions and by law enforcement, we know that over 95% of school shooters are male and, typically, white.
Psychology Today posts these statistics:
1. So far, the vast majority of school shooters have been male and the vast majority of those (over 90 percent) were active or recent students at the school.
2. If there is one predominant theme in school shootings, it is anger and revenge.
• 75 percent of school shooters felt bullied or harassed by other students.
• Sometimes, shooters felt unfairly treated by teachers.
• They seldom have specific targets, but kill randomly in order to inflict the most harm.
3. School shooters tended to be socially awkward and avoidant, and often isolate themselves with few (if any) friends.
• They were sometimes described as "strange."
• They seemed to have a penchant for "retreat into fantasy ," especially when under stress.
• Shooters exhibited an obsessive quality that often led to detailed planning — but, ironically, they seemed to lack an understanding of the consequences of their behavior and thus may have a history of adverse encounters with law enforcement.
• If the shooter does associate with others, it is likely to be with those who share preoccupations with the macabre.
• Shooters may have a history of cruelty to animals (this is a low probability factor, but a significant one when present).
• There is often a sense of hopelessness that predicts their own death by the end of the incident.
4. The media contagion effect (copycat killings) may serve as an especially powerful motivator for those who already feel anger, frustration, or loss.
5. Shooters tend to have experienced dysfunctional family situations or experience a lack of effective adult supervision, mentoring, or oversight.
6. Sixty-eight percent of shooters obtained weapons from their home or the home of a relative.
7. Shooters tend to express their frustrations and anger using art and/or social media posts; thus, monitoring of such media becomes an important tool in early identification of individuals at risk for committing violence.
Strangely enough, Psychology Today throws in this caveat:
This model is not a "profile." It is simply the accumulation and integration of recurring themes that warrant consideration, not only by law enforcement, but educators and mental health clinicians dedicated to primary prevention and school safety.
Profiling is exactly what these statistics appear to be. Why be afraid to call it that? Documented statistics and logic aren’t discriminatory. If the FBI can dedicate a unit of investigators to profiling serial killers without claims of discrimination, why be afraid to chronicle other groups of people who commit specific crimes? Oh, yeah, I forgot...profiling is evil. Racism.
We all know that the pundits like to gnash their teeth and use firearms as the reason why these killings occur. It's a means for them to not have to acknowledge the truths of the matter. They refuse to answer these basic questions about school shootings: why are our children slaughtering each other in schools at an increasing rate? What has changed in the last 10–20 years in the male psyche that causes males to lash out in such a violent and deadly manner?
Those of us who tend to be like-minded and frequent sites such as the American Thinker have long believed that the American education system has been indoctrinating and brainwashing our children. Bruce Deitrick Price's "K-12 The War against Children" (January 9) outlines exactly what's wrong with the education system — and what I believe is contributing to the disillusionment of our male youths.
The current "woke" movement and social justice warriors have had a dangerously toxic effect on our male youth. The bombardment of negative criticism and shaming boys just for being born male is, and will continue to be, a recipe for disaster. Constantly being called racists, homophobic, misogynists, etc. has a damaging effect on a young, developing mind in the throes of pubescent chemical changes. Having their masculinity being called toxic doesn't jive with the millions of years of DNA in their bloodstream, which compelled the first hominid to pick up a sharpened stone and kill an animal for food.
Couple the onslaught of negativity with a troubled or broken homelife. Throw in a degree of mental illness along with psychotropic medications. Mix in the erosion of societal mores and the negative aspects of social media. Lastly, combine all of that with the devaluation of the sanctity of life, and you end up with a child with an identity crisis who can no longer cope with any perceived issue and will lash out at society in a horrific way.
How do we fix a problem that's been decades in the making? To start with, get involved with what's being taught to your child in school. If it's leftist propaganda, start lodging complaints with the school first and then start reporting and revealing it on alternative media sites. Take a page from their playbook and get in their faces and make some noise. Expose them so they have to explain their reprehensible ideology to the public. Tell your sons their DNA-prescribed behavior is not toxic. It's nature that's been passed down to them since the dawn of man.
The liberals control our education system for now, and short of having conservative public school systems, we must fight for the sake of our children.