Recent events with horrific school shootings continue to put a spotlight on ways to punish such behavior. “Lock ‘em up for life” and even worse “kill ‘em” for retribution are often heard exclamations. Then we will hear public officials refer to them as scum and evil. All of these are preceded by the officials that the victims and their families have our thoughts and prayers and, of course, it is too early to consider how to rectify the problem.
Let me address the outrage first. I am deeply empathetic to the calls for some type of justice. They are the genuine responses to the pain and suffering that is felt and relived daily by the families. And, yes, accountability and justice are necessary in a civil society that operates under the rule of law. But too often, the outrage is never followed by concrete actions that will actually address the problem and hopefully prevent its recurrence or markedly diminish the number of such occurrences in the future.
The other significant impediment is the pat answer that it is too soon to talk about ways to correct the problems while we are in the midst of the suffering. Time has taught us that that is a convenient excuse to sweep the problem under the rug, ignoring it until next time. If we truly want to honor the memory of those who lost their lives or those who were seriously injured, we would be eager to address the problem and seriously seek tangible solutions with long-lasting impact.
I would like to offer a public works problem that I think is uniquely analogous to the above issues.
- A water main breaks in town. Water is spewing skyward with tremendous force. The road adjacent to this water main break collapses. Two cars with passengers inside are now engulfed in this collapse, sunken below the surface of the road.
- What to do next? Rescue the passengers in the car? Turn off the water? Patch the road?
- Of course, our primary concern will be the passengers in the car who are in imminent danger. We need to contact the authorities (fire and rescue, police) to start the process. We might actually need cranes to assist in the rescue so additional resources need to be considered.
- Yet, did someone contact the public works authority? They need to turn off the water (to stop the continuous flooding and further erosion of the road and the ground underneath). The public works employees (including their engineers) can provide technical assistance as this rescue process goes on.
- Time has passed, and remarkable work by the rescue folks has rescued the trapped passengers. Are we done? What about the water service that is now turned off? What about the break in the water main? What about the unstable ground and the closed road affecting traffic in town? Businesses need the road fixed and traffic restored.
- So now, the public works folks step in to fix the water main (and this is usually not an easy task); they turn the water back on; they assess the safety of the ground; they fill in the hole; they get the road repaved; and they remove the barricades. Life is back to normal. But is it?
- What have we learned? Is our infrastructure weak and will similar problems occur in the future? Behind the scenes, how do we assess our current situation and seek to update a system that is in need of an overall or update?
The protracted example above is offered as an analogy to our responses after a school shooting except that we stop after turning off the water and rescuing the passengers. We applaud the rescuers (as we should!), but we refuse to fill the hole in the street, or we fill it with sandy soil that will collapse under the weight of renewed traffic. We refuse to assess the weak infrastructure that led to the break in the water main. Have we addressed the tremendous pressure in the water system that is likely to spring another leak? It will happen again somewhere else unless we vow to fix the system.
If we can fix the water main break, then we can address the problems with mass shootings in schools in a similar way. For example,
- If we shut off the water to prevent further erosion and allow for repairs, we can shut off the “flow” of weaponry contributing to gun violence that has nothing to do with curtailing Second Amendment rights.
- Expand background checks
- Enact laws for secure storage
- Put in place “red flag” laws
- Ban semi-automatic/automatic weapons
- If we can rescue the passengers in the hole from the water main break, we can provide emergency services for children and families needing it.
- Follow-up when red flag issues are identified in a tangible way
- Provide emergency services for mental health issues when needed, not on an as available basis
- If we can fill in the hole and repave the street, we can start to address mental health issues and needed social services immediately, not after some “thoughts and prayers” pause.
- Timely intervention to provide services (acute and chronic) for individuals and families at high risk for potential violence
- If we can conduct an analysis of our infrastructure to prevent water main breaks in the future, we can honestly assess the failings of our society that lead to children and families using violence to express their concerns or emotions.
- Offering broader interventions as needed
- Addressing the gaps in our nurturing of our children and services available in our communities
I contend that we have let our children down when we have situations where and when children can get their hands on weapons of war, when we have situations that arise because we have failed our children, when they are lacking in nurturing and support from our society, when we have let a culture of hate permeate our actions,1 and we have treated children with behavior problems too often as “bad” instead of seeing how we can help them.2 We have not taken adequate steps to ensure the nurturing of our children.3,4 We have public works teams assessing our infrastructure to prevent major issues. Let’s do the same preventive measures for our children.
Water main breaks will continue, and we will jump into the breach quickly to correct the problem. Why can’t we do the same with similar crises for our children?
- https://mychildrenschildren.com/the-toxicity-of-hate/
- Perry BD, Winfrey O. What Happened to You? Conversation on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing. Flatiron Books, 2021. 298 pp.
- Garner, A.S. and Saul, R.A., 2018. Thinking Developmentally — Nurturing Wellness in Childhood to Promote Lifelong Health. Itasca, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics. 173 pp.
- https://mychildrenschildren.com/our-children-are-ill-should-we-treat-the-symptoms-or-the-cause/