So, with another tragic school shooting in the books, I am wondering again if any official questions or blame will be directed at the shooter’s parents. So far, three kids are dead, and I have seen nothing about the kid’s parents in any of the reporting in this matter.
Now, I know that parents are not responsible for their kid’s actions legally, but I wonder if it’s time to address that as a problem. In this case, it appears that the shooter had a reputation as a bullied weirdo and had posted threats and references to violence on his Twitter and Facebook accounts. Since this isn’t a case of an otherwise happy kid suddenly freaking out, I have to wonder where the hell his parents were, and why they could not have at least tried to prevent something like this.
Certainly, more information may come out that he had been to counseling, had been in a special program, something, anything, that indicates that parents were aware that there was a problem. I remember during Columbine, just wondering what the hell was wrong with the parents that their kids could descend into a murderous rage, build explosives and procure weapons without any knowledge of their parents.
I am the parent of a teenager, and I know that there are things I don’t know, and it’s certainly possible that she could get a hold of a gun, or have a secret weapons facility in the woods behind our house or whatever. But I cannot understand how a parent could allow their child to become so completely depressed/angry/whatever emotional trauma that could lead to this, without being aware of potential trouble for years before hand, and without actively taking steps to prevent it. I wouldn’t even be thinking about a possible school shooting - I would be heart broken and battling those bad feelings with everything I could, because I love my kid.
So, assuming no knowledge comes to light about the parent’s involvement in getting the shooter healthy, should they have any legal and/or moral responsibility for this shooting?
Are there any of those? With regard to school shootings, I mean?
I agree there are a lot of unanswered questions here and maybe more informatino could change my opinion, but I don’t see where holding parents legally responsible for stuff like this will prevent any crimes. These kinds of shootings are so rare that if parents are being neglectful of their kids on a day-to-day basis, the threat of being prosecuted in case their child shoots up a school isn’t going to change their behavior. In cases like this it seems like we’re talking about people who are pretty clueless, and it’s hard to make clueless people aware of their own cluelessness. I say that without knowing any particulars about what happened in Ohio, since nobody seems to know much about why this happened.
Link:
“Lane’s family life had been disrupted by divorce and violence, ABC News affiliate WEWS reported. His parents divorced in 2002, and his father later served time in jail on assault and other charges, according to the station.”
Now, I don’t know that profiling teenagers will help identify this sort of thing before it occurs, but what possible options do you have if someone is determined to do something bad?
Yea, for every depressed mopey kid that goes on a shooting rampage, there are tens of thousands that are just depressed and mopey. Teenagers are pretty well known for that kind of thing, and I don’t think there’s really any way to distinguish the Daria’s of the world from the Loebs and Leopolds.
Given that it probably describes hundreds of thousands of kids, I think there’s zero chance that identifying teens based on those factors would prevent any shootings. A divorce can be tough on a child, but this kid’s parents divorced 10 years ago - that’s hardly a predictor that a shooting rampage was on the horizon. Kids coming from difficult backgrounds sometimes need additional services and certainly kids who have psychiatric problems (I’m going way out on a limb here) also need support, but even among the mentally ill, you don’t see a lot of kids killing each other at school.
snowthx’s link says some students said he was a bullied outcast, and others said he wasn’t bullied and had friends. So if I were a TV news anchor, I’d say that at this point that a clear picture of the suspect is starting to emerge.
It is not yet clear from the news reports if he shot the bullies, or just went on a random rampage. Something made him snap. I get your point about responsibility, tho.
I dunno. I suspect there WERE warning signs present, but people chose to ignore them. Even tho, there is no way to predict how far someone can be pushed by their own circumstances before they break. I am also curious how this young man aquired the gun, speaking of responsibility.
Maybe not a lot of killings, obviously, but what about the larger problems of petty crime, school attendance and the like, which are often indicators of poor parenting?
Certainly, those kids need social service help, which I think should be provided, but at what point do we try to mitigate the cost of those services by looking at the parents who aren’t doing their jobs in the first place?
Mandated reporters, concerned school staff, concerned students and friends, family members, etc., should have stepped in, but it seems like 99% of the responsibility should lie with the parents.
I think parents have more responsibility than all of those people and their effort is usually more important, but that’s a bigger question than the one I thought you were raising in the OP. I don’t know what you do to make parents do a better job.
If there was anything to see and if they saw anything. I think you may be taking it for granted that this kid was being seriously bullied, and we don’t know that that’s the case.
The parents are responsible for the years of physical abuse and untreated mental illness that led to this happening. Why do I know those things happened? Because that, not metal music, not guns, not black trenchcoats, not God’s punishment for gay marriage, not eating meat, and not any of the other nonsense factors that the vultures of politics will try to blame this on, is the only reason people do things like this.
That’s more reasonable than blaming it on Marilyn Manson and other bullshit, but it’s probably still wrong. As far as I know, neither of the Coumbine shooters was physically abused. One of them was on medication for problems including depression, although the drug he was on can cause increased aggression and both of them had more severe problems, and the stuff they were doing should have made people realize that.
Which “people” would have more opportunity and responsibility to realize that than their parents?
Mental illness can be greatly exacerbated by emotional trauma on the level of simple emotional neglect. And, based on the parent’s denial of any knowledge of severity, I betcha those kids were emotionally neglected.
These types of events are basically what we call “black swans.”
They’re only “obvious” in hindsight when you use a lot of confirmation bias. In other words, they’re not really predictable going forward. They are just high-damage events that come out of nowhere, with no rhyme or reason.
Are parents responsible? They’re responsible for part of the variance, yes. But sometimes a kid is just mentally screwed up via genetic hardwiring and there’s nothing good parenting can do about it. Granted, bad parenting allows a lot of bad seeds to go unchecked.
I think sometimes people want someone to blame when something bad goes down. In this case, the shooters are responsible. How much of that psychotic behavior is attributable to parents is rarely clear.
I think the answer lies in the fact that most high schools have their share of depressed, mopey kids, it seems to be a developmental stage for many teens, who do not in fact go on shooting rampages. I imagine the resources needed to prevent mopey teens would be enormous, if it could be done at all. That’s they key issue, weeding out the actual violent ones from the merely mopey ones. Hard to say what would do the trick.
I would like to know how he got the gun though. I’m thinking “Dad” but it would be nice to know for sure. I know our gun-loving board members will object that it is not the weapon that does it, but I like for people to be reminded of the cost of having free access to guns for practically everyone.