Frank's Musings

Stopping School Shootings

Preventing school shootings in the U.S., like Parkland, will take a lot more than reducing mentally disturbed persons’ access to firearms.  That might make it more difficult for potential mass killers to carry out their awful schemes; but it won’t alter their desire to resolve personal issues by resorting to extreme antisocial behavior.  Simplifying the American problem with violence to ready access to firearms is our way of disguising our basic societal flaw of protecting individual liberty at the cost of disregarding responsible communal boundaries.  This is a weakness in the American system that must be addressed with a painstaking effort by concerned citizens to correct it even though it would mean admitting that American exceptionalism has a detestable aspect too.

Is there anything unusual about American society’s vulnerability to violent outbursts like school shootings?  Other wealthy nations do not seem to suffer the same weakness.  It is not only easy access to firearms that distinguishes America.  I would argue that the principle of individual freedom to rebel  against the perceived unmerited third-party imposition of control over personal behavior leads us to encourage breakages of communal standards that cause some of us to ignore traffic rules, evade income tax regulations, and even to extinguish innocent children’s lives.

Banning bump-stock or automatic weapons sales won’t prevent the unwarranted mass killings--banning matches won’t reduce arson; like a traffic barrier, it will only make their execution more challenging.  What is needed is a difficult, persistent and imaginative campaign to change our expectation that life’s frustrations and outrages can equally be resolved by simple measures.   Preventing blazes of violence  will require constant investment in vigilance and treatment of possible perpetrators.