I always hated the argument "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." I still don't ever want to own a gun but at this point I tend to agree. As a society we need to stop being afraid to talk about difficult things. One of my greatest pet peeves that contributes to my inability to function in our current social structure is that I like to talk in depth, at length about unpleasant (inappropriate) things. I tend to try and find the humor in everything to make it bearable but then there are just some things in life that are never going to be funny.
It's always nice to imagine we can legislate our problems away. We have been trying to do that for a long time in this country. From drugs, to guns, to abortion, you will never find the solution to a problem by making it illegal. When it comes to guns I find them completely unnecessary. People tell me I need one to defend myself. I feel relatively safe in that anything I fear will not be stopped by a gunshot. So now you know that much about me but this isn't about guns.
I was in the first generation largely affected and raised during the time of the Columbine Massacre, I was 13 in 1999. Since then the epidemic of mentally ill young people has exploded like never before. Earlier that school year I was personally affected when the boy who sat next to me in 8th grade hung himself with his Catholic School uniform belt. Shootings are more frequent in America than in other civilized nations. I speak for my culture and not others. We are not taught how to deal with our emotions. Boys even more so than girls are taught that it is not okay to be fragile, it is not okay to be upset or broken.
Children are often mistrusted or accused of exaggeration when they do come forward saying they need help. There is no place for people who want real help to get it. Many societal problems are influenced by poverty, or the fear of failure, leading to hopelessness. It is easy to believe in this society that you will never have enough to be happy. If we are at the bottom we can't even see the way to climb ourselves out of emotional holes dug by our expectations of what life should be. We have isolated our children. We fill them with fear, we punish them and teach them that they need to fit in or else.
The Diagnostics and Statistical Manual (version IV has been in use since I was 15 in my first Psychology class, version V was just completed) is the holy bible of mental healthcare in America. It has been written by doctors who are funded by and largely influenced by the pharmaceutical corporations for over 10 years. At a time like this we as Americans divide into teams. Those who want gun control and those who don't. One side thinks they can solve theses tragedies by carrying weapons themselves and shooting the killers while being caught off guard and surrounded by innocent civilians. The other side thinks that somehow if we take away all the guns, people will stop going insane. Sometimes mass killings happen with knives. It doesn't work to legislate away abortion or drugs, and it won't work with guns. Even though a gun traditionally has no purpose other than to kill, that doesn't mean we should expect a reasonable person to react with inappropriate violence without being provoked. We have created a culture of fear. We have created a culture that normalizes this behavior as just something that happens instead of using every single one of these tragedies as an example and an opportunity to discuss how to prevent them.
The solutions to this kind of anger, hate, and violence in the world do not lie in fighting amongst ourselves. It does not involve talking about how we could have tortured the killer physically for what he has done if he hadn't killed himself. In my very humble opinion, and I say this knowing some will react angrily, I consider the shooter himself a child. I see grown adults behaving like children every day, child psychology is just as broken as adult psychology. Being in my late twenties and realizing how young I am still, I consider most people in their young twenties in this society to be children. They don't have adequate social skills or education and they are raised in a bully centric culture where dominant children are rewarded for it and sensitive children go through constant emotional abuse.
Emotional abuse is pervasive. I have seen multiple responses today such as, "I don't care what kind of mommy-problems you have, that is no excuse." Of course no one wants to excuse a psychopath or a killer. Don't we want to try and understand? Until we find out why this happens we won't be able to prevent it. I have been studying emotional abuse on a quest to become a happier more whole me. It is pervasive. There is absolutely no laws against emotional abuse and there is almost no way to prove it even if there were. Again, you can't legislate morality. There is no hope for millions of children who need help. That is why children commit suicide, take drugs, or resort to violence. When you add in the dangerous drugs that we give to children to treat mental illness (such as Ritalin, Adderol, Lexapro, Prozac, etc.) with no evidence they work and heaps of evidence proving they can be detrimental to brain development, it is no surprise that we will have an epidemic of childhood depression and mental illness on our hands. Many children bear the weight of their parents struggles with money and work on their shoulders and school is their only escape. But for many children it is a continuation of the nightmare of a world where there is no expectation of happiness and no hope for a better future.
The most common factor in emotional abuse is a denial of emotions. The abused has been taught to believe that their feelings are invalid. It leads many mentally ill children and teenagers to fear asking for help. They are taught they are broken, they are taught that they will forever be stigmatized for admitting they need help. They are taught that this is their fault. They go on to raise their children in the exact same pattern of abuse.
In the wake of tragedy I always like to find a balance, a purpose, a positive to outweigh the negative. In situations like these you can feel the unhealthy shift of our society. The unbalance of evil and hurt in our world needs to be addressed. Let us try and use this momentum to propel a movement that leaves people feeling less isolated and a part of a larger community that cares that they are hurting. Let us show children that we are there to help them even if they are not our children. Let us have courage to speak up when we know that someone whether it be a child, friend, loved one, or a stranger, needs help. We are not powerless. We can help.
**An earlier version of this post mistated the Columbine Massacre as happening in 1998
