The latest shooting: Two children, an 11 and a 13 year old, were shot by a 12 year old with a sawed-off shotgun in a New Mexico middle school yesterday. Both of the injured children are alive — no recent reports on their conditions. A teacher talked down the shooter, so he wasn’t hurt.
In a sane world, an aggrieved, upset 12 year old should have recourse to a number of options. He can talk to his parents. He can talk to adults at school. He can be taken to a mental health professional. He can even figure out a way to get back at the kid he’s mad at, including beating the snot out of him. All of those options have their up and down sides, but none of them involve lethal force. No one should be in the hospital in critical condition because a 12 year old, rightly or wrongly, has a grudge against another child.
No details yet about how the 12 year old got the gun. That would matter if this were a rare, isolated case of a gun in a child’s hands, but children regularly shoot children and adults, sometimes with intent like this child, sometimes while they’re just playing with a gun. It happens too damn often. Argue all you want about gun regulation and the Second Amendment. We as a society have an obligation to keep guns out of the hands of people too young to hold someone else’s life and death in their hands.
I hate it when people look for silver linings in tragedy. There are no good stories here. But the heroic action of one teacher is worth noting. Ten seconds after the shooting began, the teacher walked up to the child with the gun and, with a gun pointed at him, convinced the boy to drop the weapon, then held him against the wall until someone could get help. The teacher was armed with nothing but his bravery and — I know this feeling from being a teacher — his instinct to protect the children in his charge. Remember that, and similar responses of teachers in other schools during shootings and life-threatening storms, the next time you’re moved to talk about pampered teachers who don’t have the best interests of their students at heart.
This article appears in Jan 9-15, 2014.
I hate to tell you, but most shootings like this involve bullying that schools do nothing or little to prevent. School bullys also tend to have parents who are bullys themselves.
Stop blaming the weapon.The weapon didn’t shoot anyone-the kid did.I grew up with loaded rifles,shotguns,handguns around the house-never any issues.Ya know why?MY PARENTS HAD A CLUE!!!
Billy, this isn’t about you and your fantastic family. Guns have been in US homes for generations. So have bad parents. Blowing the heads off of classmates is recent. There is something new going on and the fact that you have great parents and you think this boy doesn’t is not going to shed any light on the issue. Maybe your parents had a clue, but you don’t.
If the 1890’s are recent, then yes, blowing the heads off of classmates is recent. From Wikipedia’s list of school shootings in the United States:
“April 24, 1890: Brazil, Indiana, While the pupils of the Meridian Street School were at play, Ben Corbery drew a revolver and shot Cora Brubach, aged 10, seriously wounding her in the face. The reason for the assault was that the girl had informed the teacher of Ben’s misconduct.
December 27, 1890: Staunton, Virginia, At the Kable’s Military Academy a 15-year-old student, A. H. Hathaway of Dennison, Texas, was accidentally shot dead by his 17-year-old classmate James Whitworth of Sulphur Springs, Texas while they were playing with an old pistol.
January 20, 1891: Syracuse, New York, In an abusive rage, Wilber F. Baker went to the Bassett Street School where his wife was teaching, entered the classroom and shot her five times, killing her. He was caught by police after a 40 mile chase.
March 30, 1891: Liberty, Mississippi, During a school exhibition and concert given at the Parson Hill schoolhouse, just as the performances were starting in front of a large mixed audience of black people and white people, crowded with teachers, pupils, and spectators, a double barreled shotgun, heavily charged with shot, was fired into the assemblage by an unknown assailant. 14 people were wounded, some seriously.
April 9, 1891: Newburgh, New York, James Ferguson, 70, fired a shotgun at a group of students in the playground of St. Mary’s Parochial School, causing minor injuries to several of the students.
October 10, 1892: At Kansas University, two students, E. Higgins and Jack Craycroft, were shot as they were walking back to their dorm rooms from practicing football at the athletic field by a double barreled shotgun as they passed the home of law student, Fred Basset. Basset said they were warned not to trespass on his farm as students so frequently did.”
This is by no means a full list for the decade; it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. School shootings are nothing new, left-wingers. And just think, right-wingers; the incidents listed happened long before the Supreme Court “took Jesus out of the classroom”. Maybe instead of seeking answers through more pointless legislation and empty, knee-jerk rhetoric we need to ask ourselves what makes us so violent a culture in the first place.
RJFletcher said, “we need to ask ourselves what makes us so violent a culture in the first place.”
Amen. Thanks for reminding us of how frickin’ twisted our gun culture is.
“Two children, an 11 and a 13 year old, were shot by a 12 year old with a sawed-off shotgun in a New Mexico middle school yesterday.”
These editorialists should take a basic weapons familiarity course. A shotgun that is ‘sawed-off’ typically means the barrel is shortened to a length less than the law allows, not the stock.
Geesh.
What was you purpose of referring to it as a “sawed-off shotgun” David? Was this just an example of your ignorance on the subject or was it deception on purpose?
There were always loaded firearms in our coat/boot shed. We lost a horse to a groundhog hole so we wanted our arms at the ready in case one popped its head out of its hole.
The thought of taking one to school and shooting someone who I disliked, and there were a few, never entered my mind.
In fact, we used to take our shotguns and/or rifles (depended on which game was in season) to school with us. They were in our vehicles along with a change of cloths so we could go hunting directly after school.
Never an incident. I wonder why that is? What has changed? Answer that and a solution may be found.
Any one above who keeps loaded firearms unsecured, I hope you never have children over or that you inform every parent who lets their kids come over.
I have nothing against it as long as you let me know.
I don’t think anything has changed. Just more and more people (and more pervasive media) means more and more problems.
Kids shooting kids. Adults shooting kids. Kids shooting adults. Guns and mentally disturbed people shooting innocent people. Guns and angry people shooting/killing innocent people. Guns and violent people shooting/killing innocent people. These are typical headlines in our country and culture that sadly no longer make the front page. The relationship of guns and firearms is symbiotic. A gun never fires unless there is a person behind it, a person regardless of how violent or disturbed never shoots another person without a gun. I’ve said this many times, but it’s rare to have a mass stabbing or clubbing. Like it or not, guns are part of this problem. Good or bad parenting are poor excuses, distractions, and a smoke screen for the real problem at issue here.
I mistyped: I meant to say that the relationship of firearms and people is symbiotic. Apologies.
Jana,you wouldn’t know a clue if it bit you in the arse.The problem is PARENTS.Period. END. Stop.
Ronko-you need to apologize for your whole ridiculous rant.
Freedom of speech baby! Words never killed anyone, or made them bleed. No apologies for my content or the freedom, privilege and right to exercise my opinion.
“…the heroic action of one teacher is worth noting.” Indeed! This is yet another example of a school employee – whether they be a janitor, secretary or teacher – using their head to defuse a situation and proving the crazy man from the NRA who claimed, The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” WRONG!
RJFletcher, that list of 5 shootings covered a 2 1/2 year period. We today have more than that in an average week. We have web sites now that list ‘this weeks child shootings’ every week and they have 8 to 13 shootings per week. Not one every 6 months. So yes, this is new.
The more insane a culture grows, the faster the rate at which it consumes itself-this is not a new problem in anything other than scope. And nothing our country has done in 120+ years has solved the problem. There’s always been a population of loons willing to commit mayhem in this country, as demonstrated by my post above. Something has indeed changed, as you note, but what? The pendulum has swung between gun gluts and gun bans and neither of them address the real problem: mental illness.
Over 90% of school and mass shooters over the past two to three decades were on or in withdrawl from SSRIs, the increased use of which closely correlates with the increase in these incidents over the same period. Let’s face it, a drug that warns on its label of increased risk of rage and suicidal thoughts is probably not the best thing to prescribe people when they show up to a counselor for mild depression, but that’s the widespread reality. And if they do get put on these drugs, they need to be prohibited from legally owning or purchasing firearms until they’re no longer taking them and past any potential residual effects. Can we agree on that much?