The problem with Lanza is that there was no one to even observe that a problem existed. Some kind of intervention was needed there, but there was/is no one to really detect or initiate that.
It will change nothing, I fear. My kids go to the St. Paul school (Crossroads) where a kid recently brought a gun to school. He took it out of his aunt’s transparent plastic tote where she was storing it. I could have gotten “the call,” but thank god the gun was fired into the floor.
But fewer guns and requiring people that have gun permits to have a certain amount of training, and establishing a computerized gun registry will not make this country safer, right?
I can’t wait for the first person to give me the “It’s the flexor muscle of the index finger that kills…”
The bullying that queer kids and neurodiverse kids have to go through is far worse than what everyone else goes through. Acknowledging that fact, and not writing it off to “kids will be kids” is a good first step. Also, “the kid deserved it, he’s a weirdo” is not a justification for bullying of any kind, and it’s certainly no justification for anything this egregious.
We live in a violent society that extends far beyond access to guns. If we took away access to guns, we’d still have a violent society, albeit one with fewer guns.
We teach that bullying is okay, as long as we do it to certain classes of people whom we don’t care about. We also teach that if someone criticizes an opinion (especially a conservative opinion), that is bullying and will not be tolerated. It’s apparently okay for religious people to bully gay people, because the bullies think being gay is a lifestyle choice or whatever, but if you dare criticize their religion (which actually is a lifestyle choice), oh boy, they’ve flipped the tables and they’re calling you the bully.
We teach that the only way to resolve conflict is through more conflict 
Deescalation is not a thing. Pacifists get laughed at, and then bullied some more. Civility is a prop designed to feed the fake outrage machine while telling other people not to defend themselves after you’ve attacked them. Political correctness is simply pretending to ignore differences and to be happy clappy, rather than acknowledging and celebrating these differences like we should.
The only mental health issue Adam Lanza had AFAIK was obsessive compulsive disorder. It was speculated that he was schizophrenic, but there’s not much evidence for that compared to evidence for OCD, and he wasn’t officially diagnosed with either condition. He had Asperger’s and sensory integration disorder, but so what? Neither of those are mental illnesses.
Technically, I have Kanner’s autism, epilepsy, sensory integration disorder, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, prosopagnosia, depression (either clinical depression or bipolar disorder depending on whom you ask), and probably a few other neurological things I’ve forgot to list. I have anxiety and strong OCD symptoms, even though I do not actually have OCD. I came from a working class family in the Midwest and left home when I was 17. So, I should have killed what, like 150 people by now? Mental illness is no excuse, and neurological issues such as autism are even less than no excuse. Autism is about as much as a contributing factor as cerebral palsy would be.
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A “thing” at our local high school was thwarted when a girl went to school officials and very possibly saved lives. A classmate told her “don’t come in tomorrow”. Luckily she took it seriously, and the kid had an arsenal and plans back home ready to go. So “IYSS-SS” is ok … not great … but it’s better than everyone walking around with blinders on.
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We are far from the only violent society though. You’re statistically more likely to be the victim of a violent crime in Glasgow or Liverpool than most cities in the US, but the U.K. doesn’t regularly experience mass shootings with death tolls in the dozens.
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That doesn’t make it any better. Our society is fucked up, and we should try to fix it on a deeper level. I’m not saying we should do nothing about the gun problem, but fixing our gun problem will not be sufficient to fix the inherent violence in our society.
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There is suspicion that Lanza had undiagnosed long-term Anorexia which led to permanent brain damage. There is also suspicion that he may have developed schizophrenia. Because his mother discontinued his psychiatric treatment and facilitated Lanza’s self-imposed isolation, it is very difficult to know what problems he may have suffered from. Somehow he decided that the best course of action was to mass-murder elementary school children. To me, that suggests that he may have had problems with empathy.
I’m not trying to villainize mental illness. This was a human being who was worthy of compassion and who needed help and didn’t get it.
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Agreed. It’s one important piece of the problem though.
On the plus side our society is actually a lot less violent on the whole than it used to be.
What this video does well is point out specifics about what to look for. Changing IYSS-SS to IYSSpecifcThings-SS
I also learned to look at the world through a high depth of field cellphone camera instead of a narrow focus DSLR.
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I wish this would come up more often. Things are a lot better now than they were for decades before. We have a lot of problems that desperately need attention, but we should be heartened by the decline in violence. The situation can improve.
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Someone’s claiming the ad was largely stolen.
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Meh, much of that is high school stories in general, and as for the rest, allusive homage? Anyway, didn’t you know? Everything’s a remix!
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