{"id":799,"date":"2012-02-29T15:54:27","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T13:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=799"},"modified":"2015-04-19T17:13:40","modified_gmt":"2015-04-19T15:13:40","slug":"go-to-school-get-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/go-to-school-get-shot\/","title":{"rendered":"Go to school, get shot"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have mixed feelings about this. The stated purpose<\/a> of this column is to explain what America is really like, not to dwell on<\/span> its extreme aspects. For example, I try to convince you that most Americans do not walk around carrying guns<\/a>. But then something like this happens: once again, some deranged<\/span> kid has brought a gun to school and killed some of his classmates.<\/p>\n

In Chardon, Ohio, east of Cleveland, on Monday, three 16- and 17-year-old high-school students were shot and killed by one Thomas “T. J.” Lane. Two other students were seriously injured, one more slightly injured. They’d been eating breakfast. Lane had stood up in the cafeteria and shot his victims in the back of the head. He was chased and caught when a teacher and a football coach ran after him.<\/p>\n

We all remember the shooting in Columbine, Colorado<\/a>, in 1999 and the 2007 incident at Virginia Tech<\/a> (not a secondary school, but a university). However, Wikipedia tells us that school violence in the US is nothing new. Its “list of attacks related to secondary schools”<\/a> goes all the way back to 1882, when students brought knives to school and stabbed<\/span> their teachers. But the list also shows no sign of ending. It includes 10 incidents in the United States in 2010 and four in 2011.<\/p>\n

More people are killed in American schools by guns than by fires or tornadoes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why does this sort of thing keep happening? Michael Moore tried to answer this question in his 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine<\/i><\/a>. The title comes from one of the few clues<\/span> the police had: that the perpetrators<\/span> had gone bowling the night before \u2014 an absurd connection. The only real conclusion Moore could come to was that access to weapons makes it easier to use them.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, CNN published a guest column by psychiatry professor Frank Ochberg, entitled “Why does America lead the world in school shootings?”<\/a> Ochberg ponders<\/span> our improved alertness to warning signs, better anti-bullying<\/span> programs, and the fact that America does not have more major mental illness or more violent role models than other countries. At the end, he is left with little else to explain a Columbine, a Chardon or a Virginia Tech than access to guns.<\/p>\n

It’s sobering<\/span> that this latest incident comes only a month after the first and last public appearance of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords after she’d been shot in the head outside a supermarket. Giffords received a standing ovation at Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address<\/span> for her year-long recovery<\/span> and her return to Congress. But she immediately resigned her office; the recovery was not complete.<\/p>\n

For a few days after Giffords was shot, a few politicians paid some lip service<\/span> to the idea of gun control, but it was all soon forgotten. When Giffords returned, nobody \u2014 not Obama, not anyone in Congress, not even any of Giffords’s staff \u2014 proposed any kind of law that would, say<\/span>, require psychological testing for a gun permit<\/span>. Cowards<\/span>!<\/p>\n

Knowing that some crackpot<\/span> might go on a rampage<\/span> at any time, most US schools have a plan of action \u2014 even if the students and teachers are often not trained in it. The chief of police at a small university in suburban Columbus, Ohio, wrote a column for Fox News this week explaining “How to survive a school shooting”<\/a>. It should be required reading.<\/p>\n

Kids have enough to worry about: peer pressure<\/span>, cyber-bullying<\/span>, and not least their academic performance. They shouldn’t have to worry about getting shot.<\/p>\n

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In response to a reader’s comment<\/b>, I wrote:<\/p>\n

I’d meant to include this.<\/p>\n