We’ve done a lousy job of keeping kids safe
We send our children off to school these days with a kiss, lunch money, a reminder not to forget their homework and to please not get murdered by another disgruntled guy with a gun.
We go to the movies or a concert or a nightclub and hope another disgruntled guy with a gun chooses to shoot up a different venue or, better yet, none at all.
We go to church and pray that another disgruntled guy with a gun doesn’t send us bloody and bullet-riddled to heaven on his way to hell.
Last week, a 19-year-old disgruntled guy with an AR-15 was accused of slaughtering 17 staff members and students at a high school in Parkland, Fla.
Last December, in Aztec, a 21-yearold disgruntled guy with a 9mm Glock pistol gunned down two students before turning the gun on himself at a high
school.
We know these patterns. We’ve seen these shootings again and again, but we seem incapable of taking action.
Take a look at the similarities. Accused Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz was described by his public defender as a deeply disturbed, emotionally broken young man who has struggled with significant mental illness and trauma his entire life. He was a sad, bullied outcast even among outcasts, an untethered, angry soul expelled from school whose adoptive parents had died and who appeared to find comfort in firearms and long knives in a dark world of hate and despair found in the bowels of the Internet.
Aztec shooter William Atchison held a similarly dark and disconnected view of his world. In various Internet postings, he complained of having few friends, few job opportunities after dropping out of high school and a hatred for his parents, minorities, gays, liberals, life.
“Suicides are ignored,” he wrote in one posting. “Suicidal people who commit mass murder, however, get the entire world’s attention, garner thousands of fans/fangirls, become a household name and become celebrities.”
Both young men’s dangerous disenfranchisement from society and the many red flags each one dropped went unheeded. On at least two occasions, the FBI admitted this week that it failed to follow up on reports it had received about Cruz — one from a YouTube blogger who had reported that someone with the username nikolascruz had posted about his plans to become a “professional school shooter,” another from an unnamed close source fearful of Cruz’s guns and desire to kill people, including through a school shooting.
Atchison — whose many online usernames included “School Shooter” and “Future Mass Shooter” — had been interviewed by FBI agents at his home in 2016 about a post in which he asked about finding a “cheap assault rifle” for a mass shooting, but the agents concluded that no crime had been committed and closed the investigation.
Atchison may have been unable to find an assault rifle, cheap or otherwise, but plenty of others have. In five of the six deadliest mass shootings in the past six years, an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle was the weapon of choice, a speedy way to commit carnage to chilling effectiveness.
Such a weapon can be easier to obtain than a handgun. Under federal law, a handgun requires the buyer to be at least 21. The age requirement drops to 18 to purchase a rifle.
The National Rifle Association calls the AR-15 the most popular rifle in the country, but it was originally designed for military use as an effective and accelerated method of killing the enemy. These days, the enemy appears to be us.
We adults have done a lousy job of keeping our children safe. So many patterns, so many similarities and we can’t, or won’t, figure out how to do better, not just in how to protect them from a mass shooting but gun violence — homicide, suicide, accidental — in general. I can’t count anymore how many columns I’ve written advocating for at least a civil discussion on the matter.
But now the generation that has grown up in this era of mass shootings is demanding that discussion. The survivors of the shootings at Parkland — and, I suspect, elsewhere, including Aztec — are done with adult doublespeak, rancor and political agendas. Thoughts and prayers are not enough, they tell us. And they are right.
“I‘m just a high school student, and I do not pretend to have all of the answers,” Cameron Kasky, 17, told CNN. “However, even in my position, I can see that there is desperate need for change — change that starts by folks showing up to the polls and voting all those individuals who are in the back pockets of gun lobbyists out of office.”
Said Lyliah Skinner, 16: “If they’re not able to purchase their first drink of alcohol, then how are we allowed to buy guns at the age of 18 or 19? Obviously whatever we have going on, it’s not working.”
A girl who identified herself as Carly on Twitter offered this retort to a recalcitrant Second Amendment supporter: “I was hiding in a closet for two hours. It was about guns. You weren’t there, you don’t know how it felt. Guns give these disgusting people the ability to kill other human beings. This IS about guns and this is about all the people who had their life abruptly ended because of guns.”
David Hogg, 17, put it this way: “Congress needs to get over their political bias with each other and work toward saving children’s lives. We’re children. You guys are the adults. You need to take some action and play a role.”
And so we should. And so we must. And so we should also note that in a couple more years, many of these young survivors will be old enough to vote.
UpFront is a front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 8233603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www. abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.