5
by SoftwareEngineer
Why is this gun-related news?
Superficially, that's obvious: a gun was used to kill two people. And to make it even more scary, the killing happened at a school, which our society holds to be a specially protected place.
But look at it from a broader context. It seems that this was a murder-suicide. As the parent of high-school kids, I've seen plenty of personal drama. Students that are physically sick, and miss school for many months. Students who are mentally sick, and miss school for several years. We've seen two cases of suicide of students, one very nearby (classmate), one a few grades away. While we've never actually had a murder in school, we've had one playground fight with a student who was both developmentally disabled as well as mentally unstable, and he caused a serious head injury by throwing another student on the ground and then jumping on the head (the school yard had both an ambulance as well as a police car during recess, traumatic scene). Fortunately, there were no long-term health effects, once the broken skull (!) healed. And we've had two students (classmates) get into a fight while skiing, with one of them thrown off a ski-lift, fortunately without terribly injury (broken femur, but that heals in half a year); in that case the parents of the victim wanted the perpetrator to be charged with attempted murder, but fortunately our county prosecutor was wise enough to handle it sensibly in juvenile court (it was found to be horseplay going reckless and going very wrong, and the perpetrator spent a few unpleasant weekends in "juvi" and lots of afternoons picking up trash in town). Either of those two cases could have ended up being an intentional homicide (both cracked skulls and broken femur can easily be fatal).
All this is very sad. And it is reality.
What I'm saying is: Both murders and suicides happen among teenagers; suicides are not all that uncommon, murders rare but not unheard of. Some of these events happen at school. Our society does a reasonably good job of not blowing these things out of proportion, and respecting the privacy of the students and families. It would be better if our society did a better job preventing them, but our mental health system isn't that good. Why are they a big deal when they involve guns? What difference does the term "shooting" make? To me, none.
Meh.. What do I know.
