It started for me on April 20, 1999. Two teenagers entered Columbine High School set bombs that fortunately did not explode, massacred 13 people and then killed themselves. It wasn’t my fault but have I done enough to prevent something like this happening in my community. The honest answer – not enough.
Prior to that time, I had heard a health care futurist talking about taking personal ownership for anything happening in our communities. Only then can we commit to making a difference. His twelve words (I am the problem, I am the solution, I am resource) remind us to recognize our common humanity (we share a problem), to seek a common purpose (a joint solution) and to work together for the answers (devoting our resources to this end).
I was so moved after Columbine that I started writing a series of articles (op-ed submissions) to the local newspaper. After over 160 articles over 13 years, I published my first book, MY CHILDREN’S CHILDREN: RAISING YOUNG CITIZENS IN THE AGE OF COLUMBINE. I identified Five Steps to Community Improvement (learn to be the best parent you can be, get involved, stay involved, love for others, and forgiveness) and felt that reasonable adherence to those Steps would go a long way toward building a better community less likely to endure school shootings. But school shootings persist, and we are almost numb to them. After Columbine, there was Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Oxford and so many (too many) in between. Over the last four years, there have been 58 deaths and 163 people injured at school shootings!
(Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12/6/21)
To recommit to eliminate these events, we must reanalyze the common elements present –
- Guns that are far too ubiquitous in a civil society with weapons of war (semiautomatic or assault pistols or rifles) as common as public restrooms. And too many people think that these weapons, not even conceived of when the Bill of Rights was drafted, should continue to be unchecked with unfettered access allowed.
- A lack of comprehensive mental health services. As a society, we have relegated mental health services to the “basement” of our health care systems and often have figuratively pulled up the stairs and left people alone.
- A lack of the ability to practice forgiveness, forgiving ourselves first for what we have failed to do and then extend forgiveness to others recognizing our common humanity.
- A lack of civility that breeds hostility and discontent along with a lack of trust in public authorities.
Once we acknowledge these common elements, then we can seek solutions.
- Rational gun regulation is not gun confiscation (as purported by too many). It comprises reasonable measures for responsible ownership and use. Parents have to have some significant responsibility for the location, restricted access and ammunition that enable guns to be used.
- We need a wholesale revision of the recognition of mental health issues, help for parents to deal with mental health, and a robust system to mandate insurance/health coverage for mental health services. The American Academy of Pediatrics and two other organizations have rightfully declared a national emergency in children’s mental health (https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/17718/AAP-AACAP-CHA-declare-national-emergency-in?autologincheck=redirected). We need to heed their advice.
- Forgiveness is a vital element in social discourse. We need to learn how to forgive ourselves for the ill feelings that we have for others (often intolerance for those that are different). Only then can we move forward to extend forgiveness. The ability to exercise forgiveness on a personal and communal level allows us to change the pronoun from “I” to “we” – We are the problem, we are the solution, we are the resource – and provide a strategy for personal change on a community level.
- I don’t know how we have allowed divisive, demonizing and demeaning interactions to be a significant part of our social interactions. The resultant hostility and the erosion of trust can only change when we accept our common purpose (to care for each other, to care about each other) and work together and stop the blame game.
These measures are no guarantee that school shootings will be eliminated. It is time for all of us to pledge to make the changes needed. Life is complicated, and bad things will continue to happen. But just accepting the death of children as inevitable and extending “thoughts and prayers” to the families is reprehensible when corrective measures are available. Gun regulation, addressing the mental health crisis, practicing forgiveness and noting the “we are the problem, we are the solution, we are the resource” will take us on a course in the right direction. We need everyone to recommit to these changes.