How do we stop another Virginia Tech-like Shooting?
The horrible shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16th, 2007 left me with a lot of questions; I struggled (and am struggling) to come up with answers to them. The most pertinent being “How do we stop another Virginia Tech-like Massacre?”
The most obvious first thing that came to my mind was gun control. I know that Virginia, my home state, has some fairly relaxed laws on obtaining guns. But I had no idea that anyone could walk into a gun store, and after passing an instantaneous criminal background check, walk out with your firearm. You don’t even have to register the weapon. I thought there was a waiting period of at least a week or something. On the other hand, even if there was a week-long or more waiting period, that wouldn’t have stopped this lunatic. He would have just waited and gotten his gun and done the same thing.
I had a short discussion with a coworker about this, declaring that somehow we have to tighten up our gun control laws to make it harder for anyone to get guns. My friend replied “Tell that to a friend of my family who shot a man as he was breaking into his house and about to rape his daughter.” I had no comeback for that one. Nothing at all. I know that this is an oft-used argument by proponents of the right to bear arms.
While I will never own a firearm, stories such as my friend’s above are very hard to argue against in terms of gun control. Defending your family from harm is the ultimate pathos argument; appealing to a person’s emotions by putting them in yours (or someone else’s) shoes.
My friend also had another strong point to make in saying that even if this guy had been denied the guns he sought, he could have made even more damaging and lethal weapons, like a bomb, out of ingredients bought from a grocery store and/or a hardware store. Indeed, the online magazine Slate published an article recently titled “Thank God the Blacksburg killer only had guns.” Can you imagine how many lives would have been lost had he produced something even remotely like the bomb used in say, the Oklahoma City bombing? And if all he really wanted was to use guns, I imagine it can’t be that hard to get them off of the black market.
All that being said, steps should be taken to tighten up gun control in this weapon-saturated nation of ours. While that will do some good, the reality is that terrible tragedies like this are very difficult to stop. The only way to effectively reduce their number is reaching these deeply disturbed individuals before they act on their twisted thoughts. This guy at Virginia Tech put out the warning signs, with one of his professors referring him to counseling because of his macabre and twisted writings; the police being called about him stalking a girl, etc.
So what can be done about this? Our country has many, nay far too many school shootings (and regular street shootings) every year. No other country in the developed world has anywhere near as many. Why? That is the question at the root of the matter. It’s not the easy access to weapons, although that doesn’t help. No, there is something askew deep within the psyche of American society. I only wish I knew what it was.
Any thoughts?
Hi Doug.
I just wanted to respond to this blog entry because I agree with what you are getting at. As a school psychologist and a member of the mental health field, I feel strongly that mental health if too oft neglected. Part of it is societal or larger views that encompass ideas like participating in therapy or being diagnosed as depressed or psychotic means you are weak or that you can’t control yourself. As a society we neglect, perhaps, the most important organ in our bodies, the one that literally makes our bodies work: the brain.
Part of this is also due to limited resources. If you are an administrator of an institution, whether elemetary or seconday or undergraduate or even graduate for that matter, and you are facing budget cuts that will affect staffing, the first people to go are your social workers and counselors (unless, of course, the cover other administrative duties) or the art teacher (which is a whole different issue). This brings me to another issue with the role of mental health in educational institutions which has to do with the actual roles we end up performing. We are often saddled with paperwork or administrative mumbo-jumbo, are given lunch room duties or proctering tests, we deal with dis-satisfied parents (another whole discussion) or are in charge of creating class programs for the students. Frequently, the first thing to go are the REAL mental health services that count (in my humble opinion, of course). The first thing to go when I become overwhelmed (which I am) is the individual counseling, which is probably one of the best ways to access how a student is doing. In almost all instances of school violence, other students know about the event before it happens, but don’t tell. To me, this seems like such an obvious answer to this issue. Setting up school-wide violence prevention programs, creating early warning systems, and implementing crisis management plans are key to controlling this problem. However, I admittedly have participated in none of these activities. Why, you ask? Because I am responding to administrative pressures and am busy doing psychological assessments and holding meetings, and completing paperwork for students in special education…you know, the things that “count” as work to administrators, leaving no time for these largely more important, and potentially life-saving activities.
Although I pontificate above the merits of REAL mental health services, I feel I must also mention that educational institutions are for the purpose of educating people. They are not mental health facilities or clinics. The level of services that some students may need will not be able accessible through an educational institution. Often times, the services offered in schools are temporary, both in length of session and service, simply because the staff are not trained for serious mental issues and there is often the pressure of the “other duties” lurking in the background. This being said, I think we as a society often rely on our schools to provide the primary mental health services, especially for children. It is true that schools are often the first line of defense in terms of noticing when something is off with a student, but the bottom line is schools and educational institutions are not currently equipped to deal with serious psychological issues. (Perhaps this is something we could look at changing? Dare I mention funding?) This means we must link our families to outside services. This in itself is a challenge in getting the student and thier families and their respective cultures to buy into the idea of first admitting to and then seeking help for a psychological problem. Assuming we get this far, along comes another issue…funding those services. Mental health and health care systems don’t make it exactly easy or palpable to receive services. Alot of health care plans cover 12 sessions a year…maybe 16. So, that means, you can go to therapy for January through April, but then you have to pay for yourself from May to December. At anywhere from $50-200 per week, that’s a big committment! If there is a long-standing problem that it has taken you a lifetime to develop, is 16 weeks of therapy really going to nip it in the bud? Without going too deep into it, I think it is accurate to say that diseases of the brain are not treated with the same respect or intensity of care than say, of the heart, lungs, liver, etc. As a society, we view mental illness as almost a choice and not necessarily a condition for which treatments are available. In order to address this larger problem, not only does the mental health system, both in and out of educational institutions, need to be re-worked, our whole societly mental schema of what a psychological problem is needs to be re-worked. Needless to say, that is a loft project. I’m not sure how we begin to do that. Education?
Sarah
May 31, 2007 at 9:06 pm