BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary

Subject: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 08:49 AM

Got the memo at work yesterday. Apparently, school officials have been lulled back to sleep, because the amount of attention still being focused on Columbine isn't really proportional to the threat level.

The threat level for violence (gun related, gang related, along with fist fights, knife fights, etc) is greater in the spring as kids who are failing become more tense and hard to handle. But as we all keep seeing from school shootings across the US becoming local news rather than national, it seems school violence is just another level of violence we have grown accustomed to accepting in our lives.

So as I ruminate as a high school educator on yet another anniversary of the Columbine shootings, on the impact Michael Moore's film "Bowling for Columbine" has had on the culture, I think it safe to say, not much.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: Big Mick
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 11:15 AM

I would like to see some cites for your assertion that school shootings are becoming local news rather than national. Also anything that shows that there has been a rise in school violence of the Columbine type in the past year, or in the years since it happened. I am sure anxiety's are greater in the spring but I think it is more complex than that.

I am a gun owner, but I am not for easy access of the type we saw in the Columbine incident. I tire of folks acting like this was caused by gun laws. It was caused by many things. Inattentive parents, and counselors, for one. Violators of the laws which regulate the sales of firearms, would be another. School bullying would be another. And we could go on and on. I completely agree that we must never forget this incident, and that analysis of the root causes of it are critical. But the sloppy kind of critical analysis that most of my liberal friends use is counter productive. I tire of hearing them point at an inanimate object as the "cause" as opposed to figuring out why two boys would rise to the level of violence they did.

Guns, shotguns, rifles, pistols, were plenty available in the '50's and '60's when I was growing up. Most houses on my block had them. There was the occasional accident, but very few shootings with malice. I want to know what has changed in our society. My belief is that until we settle the problems spawned by hopelessness among the poorer youth, we will continue to experience these types of incidents perpetrated by young ones using illegally obtained weapons. Society will spawn a violence prone underclass anytime one is in times like these where the gap between richest and poorest is widening, and there are no prospects to escape the poverty legally. Create real opportunity, with a doable route, and the young ones will find their way out. Resolve the hopelessness of the bullied, and they will not look to other means to strike back. Create tolerance among our youth, and curiousity among them about each others differences, and they will find that what they have in common outweighs what is different.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 12:10 PM

There's one key that Mick put his finger one; the hope factor. As long as a person can see a way into a better future with some sens ethat it is really possible, they'll eschew violent solutions in most cases. It doesn't take a lot to give a kid hope. But it does definitely take something.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 01:24 PM

The boys also had homemade bombs, not just guns. They were walking arsenals.

Big Mick, if you don't think this problem has fallen off the national radar, can you cite what school shootings have occurred, and where, that happened in the last year?

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: Big Mick
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 02:04 PM

Nice try, GUEST, but I won't allow the burden to be shifted. This thread was started with specific assertions. I am just trying to find out on what these assertions are based. Please give me some evidence of what has been asserted. It is an interesting subject, one with many shades of truth. I believe that answers can be found by honest examination of causes and effects instead of tossing out assertions based on biases. I am trying to get to that instead of lobbing grenades back and forth.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: open mike
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 02:16 PM

I planted a columbine plant in the garden as a memorial to the terrible incident as I have every year since it happened. Did you see the mention in the "I read it in the newspaper" thread to the guns which were found at an easter egg hunt? There are gun-related incidents ("accidents")every day. I know of a fire fighter in Kentucky who died of gun shot wounds she got when responding to a domestic violence call at was attempting to give aid to a woman who lay dying of gunshot wounds in the yard outside the house. Her life was a great loss and the other victims as well were senseless losses.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 03:11 PM

I agree with Mick.

But I have other questions as well.

Why is it that a gun is seen as the only answer by so many segments of our Society? Why is it that some men feel it's okay to kill their wife, ex-wife, girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, whatever? Why have we permitted movies and other media to glorify violence as the only solution to problems?

Gun violence -- all violence -- in our society is symptomatic of underlying problems. Problems like hopelessness and despair and feeling powerless. How often have you read the low percentages of people who vote? How often do those people who don't vote shrug it off with "It won't matter anyway"?

Amos is correct: it doesn't take much to instill hope. But unless something is done to instill that hope and to alleviate the other feelings, I think that guns in the schools will be the least of our gun problems.

Let me also say that the newspapers and television, with their 15 second sound bites and reporting from ignorance are also much to blame. No news story can be given the treatment it should have in such a climate.

And what's the bottom line? Well, personnel are the biggest expense in a business; reduce the number of people working there and you increase your profits. Since the time for the newscasts are limited, you can sell more commercial time by shortening the time spent on news. There's a pattern here -- a seemingly unquenchable hunger for money.... So the poor slop who was fired so that the company could post higher profits, buy more air time to advertise the product and achieve still higher profits -- that poor guy is going to reach deeper and deeper into despair.

And if you don't believe this, go to your nearby state employment agency.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: freightdawg
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 03:58 PM

Just a couple more questions to add to the discussion:

The boys at Columbine were from affluent families, in an affluent suburb of an major American city. Why did they deem themselves to be so hopeless? I had heard (there again, in a media account I have grown to be wary of) that one had bad grades.

And more is coming to light, thanks to lawsuits, that the authorities had more than ample opportunity to stop this days, weeks, months before the event. Did they just think such carnage was unthinkable?

It is so important to remember these events, without enshrining them as some sort of cultic reverence. Those of you who teach in junior and senior high schools have my support.

Freightdawg

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 04:04 PM

In order to do something, you have to be able to imagine doing it. What constant exposure to fantasy violence, and real violence, through modern media - TV, video games, films etc - does is it makes it easier for us to imagine ourselves doing appallingly violent things.

It seems to me, it has to. And for some people that makes all the difference, and when something triggers them they move into killer mode, as if they were in some shoot-em-up game.

Ready availability of guns feeds in to that, and some of the characteristics of schools (and workplaces for that matter), especially in some cultures - cliquishness, bullying, social competitiveness.

Put them all together and it's strange it doesn't happen a lot more often.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 04:05 PM

I think you're being a bit paranoid. The only school shootings I can think of that rose to the level of national consciousness this year were the DC shootings that came together within a period of weeks. But one would expect anything happening inside the beltway that is local news in other locations, to become national news because of the concentration of media there.

I honestly can't name another school shooting that occurred this year in any other location, except our one local one in Minnnesota.

And I would disagree that gun violence is mostly about hopelessness. I believe it is anger and rage at others we can't control.

I did read an idiotic "attack the liberal" sort of article in the wake of Columbine, that was admonishing "white liberals" for not seeing the gun violence in their own communities due to (fill in the blank with your favorite anti-youth stereotype) and lack of discipline.

Bullshit. Our high school has a pretty active student and staff anti-gun lobby group called "Minnesotans Against Being Shot". Right now we are lobbying at the state legislature to get the idiotic conceal and carry law introduced by our fascist Republican governor last session, and passed by the Republican dominated legislature. The Republicans claimed that there was a great hue and cry among gun owners, who were demanding their rights to not just have their guns at home, but in church, school, universities, hospitals, etc.

So the passed this idiotic conceal and carry law. Less than half the number of permit applications the Republicans INSISTED was a conservative estimate of the number of people who wanted permits, have been applied for, a year later.

So much for gun owners' hue and cry, and demands for their constitutional rights.

Remember, guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: Big Mick
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 04:15 PM

McGrath, guns are no more available now than they were in my youth. I had guns, (.22 rifle, .22 pistol, 2 shotguns, and a high powered rifle) available to me. Most of my friends did as well. Yet there wasn't anything like the level of gun related deaths that there is now. Hunting, and the availability of weapons, is not a new phenomena in this country. They have been a part of our traditions from the earliest times. Despite what the anti gun folks try to get folks to perceive, the facts are that Americans are not in favor of taking the rights of law abiding gun owner away. Why? Because this isn't about the fact that I can purchase, carry, and shoot a weapon. It isn't even about the violence in movies, and on video games (even though I agree with you that, tragically, these contribute to young ones seeing this as a solution to whatever is bothering them). It is about getting to the underlying causes of young ones committing heinous crimes that most kids, gunowners or not, would not even consider. The fact that these kids came from affluent homes has nothing to do with the hopelessness. Lack of economic opportunity wasn't the source of this. But the bullying and being made to feel like they were the subject of disdain did. I would suspect that parents who didn't even know that these young men had pipe bomb making material in their rooms, didn't know the weapons they owned, these all suggest parents that were emotionally unavailable to their kids.

It just seems to me that as long as we alibi the problem to owning guns, ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of gunowners are responsible folks that obey the law, ignores the larger problem. And that will never lead to a solution. We must attack ferociously the root causes of violent behaviour.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 07:27 PM

That was what I meant - putting it all down to gun ownership is a mistake, I think. A bit like saying "joy riding is just down to there being lots of cars about."

It's an important factor - without the guns you can't have the shooting, without the cars you can't have the joy-riders. But in principle it's possible to have societies with lots of guns and lots of cars which don't have those problems.

The crucial thing is where you have those things, together with people whose fantasy lives are filled with gun violence or car violence, and whose real lives are distorted in ways that means they are motivated to turn those fantasies into reality.

The only realistic way of tackling this, as Big Mick says, is to find ways of tackling the things that screw up young (and not so young) people in a society. Scews them up in such a way that, when the shit hits the fan, they turn to this kind of thing.

Making it a whole lot harder to get hold of the guns and the cars, and finding ways of changing the way modern media fills people up with violent images and fantasies would be fine as well, though complicated - particularly in the USA. I'm glad I live here instead.

But even if that could be done, it wouldn't tackle the basic problem. What is really dangerous isn't technology, it's people, when they get motivated to act in a destructive way - as is being so dramatcally demonstrated in the context of terrorism.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: Barry Finn
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 08:14 PM

I truly believe that a major factor for random & wanting killings in our schools are the bully factor. It seems as if (from what I can remember of different shootings I lot of attention was paid towards bullies that made some one's life a living hell. With 2 teens in high school & with knowing what kids have to deal with I'm very surprised it doesn't happen on a large scale. Boys tend to be more physical & don't count out the girls they're been seen to be far more vicious. In most cases when one thinks on ending their life it's because the pain they're is to much to cope with & walking into a school armed is a way of getting rid of one of the sources of the pain leading to the next step is to take out yourself. It's an unbelievable situation. A kid gets harrased on a daily basis & turns to the school for help & is told "what did you do or say to provoke the situation" or "kids will be kids" or "no one's blameless". I have it that the schools cop told one parent "that maybe your kid should find a new school". Suspensions for both kids is the norm at alot of schools, so the victim suffers again at the hands of the bully & now the school. Kids no longer want to report being the victim of a bully, they'll get in trouble themselves, nothing will come of it & the adults, when made aware & who are supposed to help can't be bothered & the bully now knows that he's got the kid right where he wants them. Nice when the school in a roundabout way incourages the bully to keep at it at it. Bottom line is the system doesn't have the resources, desire, training or the money to make the school safe for all it's students. I believe that all schools must have a Bully Program (correct me if this is wrong) & for a very good reason. It's enough to make you want to put a bullet in someone's head & for very good reasons.

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: Big Mick
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 08:29 PM

Thanks for posting that, Barry, my old friend. I know it isn't popular, and that the poor families of the slain students at Columbine might not understand, but I believe that society must, after the grieving, get to the true reasons for this senseless crap. It is so easy to throw out an oversimplified reason, pat one's self on the back, and say "there". But as long as we do this, we will end up with problems we thought we dealt with resurfacing. It takes courage to stand and challenge the herd mentality.

If I thought giving up the guns I possess, and my right to own them, would really save lives, I would do so gladly. But nothing I see tells me that this will resolve anything, other than taking away a right I currently possess without getting the desired result.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 08:33 PM

Well gol dange!?!?!?..... What we got here???? Yet another gun thread?... Fine...

First of all, I'd like to see a much greater effort made in cataloging balistics so guns can be matched to criminals. Speaking of which, I'd like to see the old system of 90 days rather than 48 hours be the period for background checks. And I like to close the gun show loophole but... other then those things I don't think we have a major gun problem but a major *empowerment* problem.

Yep, I grew up with guns in the house. Still got my share but those were some different times. Why? Well, my theory is that folks felt empowered back then. Since then I believe kids who grow into young adults and then adults have felt less and less empowered. Our population is way les empowered than it was 30 years ago. So?

Well, the gun has filled that void. It's power and empowerment and unfortunately we now live in a much defferent and more militarized world where when most folks hear the word gun they immediately think of it as weapon to be used against another human. Back when I was a kid that was not the case at all. It was for sport or for hunting. Period.

The only way we can change that sad reality is to change our society and our world but until then, at least in the US, the gun is gonna be used as an empowerment equalizer.

Just my views...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: LadyJean
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 01:37 AM

This is already on another thread. I'm posting again because I'm an egotist.
The NRA is holding their annual convention in Pittsburgh. I sent them a message at www.pghcitypaper.com

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: LadyJean
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 01:38 AM

maybe that should have been @www.pghcitypaper.com

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 01:39 PM

The gun rights advocates just LOOOOOVVVVEE saying that gun violence isn't related to them, or anything they do with their guns.

Despite the fact that guns are legal and regulated, there are still approximately 25,000 gun related deaths per year in the US. No other democracy has those kinds of statistics.

So, since gun owners already have and exercise their constitutional right to bear arms, and the sale of guns is already regulated, just what in hell is causing 25,000 gun related deaths per year?

It is complex, but in terms of school related violence, it isn't about bullying alone. It is about a tremendous increase in the past 30 years of male violence, combined with an explosion in the easy availability of cheap guns.

Bullying has been around for forever, and while it provides easy, instant answers, is isn't a root cause of school violence. Cheap and easy access to guns hasn't been around forever though--it is a very recent phenomenon.

So is the upward spiral of male violence in every sector of our society a recent phenomenon--in schools, workplaces, homes, and in the broader community.

US society, like every other imperial power in history, is an extremely violent warrior culture. When imperial powers of the world have been in their ascendancy, and begin their decline, their societies have become increasingly violent. That was true for Greece, Rome, and Britain, just at it is now true for the US.

From cheap handguns bought on black markets, to smart bombs, cluster bombs, and nuclear technology being sold on black markets, our society is enamoured with guns and explosives, and we worship them in Sunday church services praising our mighty warriors in Iraq, as well as in our film, music, and video/computer game fantasies.

I listen to the boys who enlist in military service every spring, talk about how cool it is going to be to get their hands on these powerful weapons. How they won't have to tolerate ANYBODY telling them what to do or giving them any shit.

It is a culture of extreme machismo and cheap weapons that has produced the school violence crisis, just as it has produced the workplace violence crisis, just as it has produced the domestic violence crisis, etc.

This sort of violence is rooted in male anger and rage at not being able to control others. In the case of school violence it is directed both at peers and authority figures who are perceived as having more power than the perpetrator of the violence. In the case of workplace violence, it is directed at authority figures or colleagues who are perceived as having more power than the perpetrator of the violence. In domestic violence, it is the domestic partner or children in the home, who are perceived as challenging the power and authority of the perpetrator.

Females get bullied all the time at school, both by other females and by males. But they aren't the perpetrators of school violence. Males are. There are millions of boys who get bullied at school who never turn to violence.

Nope, there is no place to hang this one but on angry men and angry boys.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: steve in ottawa
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 02:23 PM

Loads of things I could say, but I'll stick to this odd one I haven't seen anywhere.

When I saw images of Columbine High School, two things struck me:
-That school is WAY more beautiful than my high school was.
-The kids' lockers are TINY; the designers cared more about how the schools looked than how the kids felt.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 04:48 PM

Steve, I did't notice that but it's true. Perhaps it's a message to the kids that they cared more about the looks of the school than the students in it.

Hmmmmmmmm...that'd be an awful indictment of many, many buildings (of course, I think that architects usually build to satisfy their egos than to satisfy their client's needs).

Subject: RE: BS: Columbine Shootings Anniversary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 05:10 PM

"... When imperial powers of the world have been in their ascendancy, and begin their decline, their societies have become increasingly violent. "

I'd question whether that is actually true. Much of the time the violence gets exported. Nineteenth and early 20th century Britain was much less violent than in previous times, or later times, in terms of law-and-order type violence.

The USA as "a warrior culture"? Well, if a warrior culture means one where people actually go out and fight wars against equal enemies, that doesn't really fit. If it means having a fantasy life about fighting as a warrior, true enough. (Parallels with Roman times here fit quite well too. PLenty of gladiatorial combats in Rome, but the actual fighting, in the arenas and in the wars, was mostly done by non-citizens.)