This is a disturbing incident, but it’s an outlier, and we have no clear baseline. School violence and kids bringing guns to school are not new—many cases in the pre-internet era went unreported unless someone was hurt. Even serious incidents, like the Cleveland Elementary shooting in 1979 and Olean High School in 1974, were largely forgotten. Today, with 54 million K–12 students, tragedies like the recent case in Arizona are rare, though now they make the news. Human needs, flaws, and distracted parenting have always existed; these are not new societal problems. What we can control is being deeply involved in our children’s lives, loving them fiercely, and teaching them about firearms early.
I can’t say that I was overly fond of many of my teachers when I was a kid. It wasn’t anything personal; it was just that they were teachers, and they made me do things I didn’t want to do, like math. The nerve of it all.
Still, as annoying as they could be, and as much glee as I might have felt at imagining some kind of mishap to occur to them after they made a thing of me not having my homework yet again, I never would have actually thought about harming them myself. It’s one thing if God decides to smite them. It’s another to take matters into your own hands.
Unfortunately, our society has moved on from those days over the last 40-some-odd years. Today, kids are different, which is fine in concept.
By Tom Knighton
