Good Friday -
Mar. 25th, 2005 07:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburg"Where ... was my help when the low test scores came in? Where was the help from outside? Give me the money to help these kids. You get paid back later on by them going on to college and getting good jobs," he said.
And as for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
weise's wearing black, spiking his hair and adopting gothic dress style, Desjarlait said, "He has rights. He did no crime dressing like that."
Scary that I can put a user name in there.
Yeah, and the superintendent looks like a mushy-headed liberal, too (riiiiight):
Oh, and at the risk of stirring the embers from the flames over guns from last week?
But the more relevant context, I think, is that young people are under tremendous pressure these days, whatever their station in life. In a high-powered suburban school district like Columbine, it's not enough just to go to college; anything less than the Ivy League or another top-rank school is seen as failure. In less affluent Red Lake, Jeff Weise may have looked ahead and seen, to the extent he could see anything clearly, a life of quiet, desperate anonymity.
That pressure helps spin a common thread that runs through these horrific incidents: the apparent desire to make an indelible mark, to leave behind a manifesto that cannot be ignored. To force the world to finally pay attention.
In the six years since Columbine, we've had alienation-style school shootings in Georgia, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Michigan, Florida, Louisiana, California, Pennsylvania, California again, Indiana, Michigan again, New York, Pennsylvania again -- all before Red Lake. For those in Europe who blame it all on our insanely lax gun laws, it should be noted that there have also been school shootings in gun-averse Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Sweden, Germany again (deadlier than Columbine), Bosnia, and even in Carmen de Patagones, Argentina, practically at the end of the earth. Reasonable gun laws alone, while sorely needed, wouldn't be enough.
Anyone who has studied suicides in this age group "under pressure" around the world knows it exists - but what fuels the desire to "leave a mark" - when so many don't, and just point the guns at themselves?
Interesting.
I stand by my assertion that it's the belief guns solve problems - always - that fuels most of the problems we have with them in this country. Not easy access, not lax gun laws.
--
In other news, still sick. Not sick enough to stay home, but sick enough to hate being awake. That work for you?
And as for
weise's wearing black, spiking his hair and adopting gothic dress style, Desjarlait said, "He has rights. He did no crime dressing like that."Scary that I can put a user name in there.
Yeah, and the superintendent looks like a mushy-headed liberal, too (riiiiight):
Oh, and at the risk of stirring the embers from the flames over guns from last week?
But the more relevant context, I think, is that young people are under tremendous pressure these days, whatever their station in life. In a high-powered suburban school district like Columbine, it's not enough just to go to college; anything less than the Ivy League or another top-rank school is seen as failure. In less affluent Red Lake, Jeff Weise may have looked ahead and seen, to the extent he could see anything clearly, a life of quiet, desperate anonymity.
That pressure helps spin a common thread that runs through these horrific incidents: the apparent desire to make an indelible mark, to leave behind a manifesto that cannot be ignored. To force the world to finally pay attention.
In the six years since Columbine, we've had alienation-style school shootings in Georgia, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Michigan, Florida, Louisiana, California, Pennsylvania, California again, Indiana, Michigan again, New York, Pennsylvania again -- all before Red Lake. For those in Europe who blame it all on our insanely lax gun laws, it should be noted that there have also been school shootings in gun-averse Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Sweden, Germany again (deadlier than Columbine), Bosnia, and even in Carmen de Patagones, Argentina, practically at the end of the earth. Reasonable gun laws alone, while sorely needed, wouldn't be enough.
Anyone who has studied suicides in this age group "under pressure" around the world knows it exists - but what fuels the desire to "leave a mark" - when so many don't, and just point the guns at themselves?
Interesting.
I stand by my assertion that it's the belief guns solve problems - always - that fuels most of the problems we have with them in this country. Not easy access, not lax gun laws.
--
In other news, still sick. Not sick enough to stay home, but sick enough to hate being awake. That work for you?
