Santa Fe school shooting.... no way to close Pandora's box?

[Pete]

​

….the clack, clack, clack of his military boots hitting the polished stone floor echoed throughout the hallway as one lone bead of perspiration rolled down the right side of his face from his grease filled imitation of Steven Seagal's hair and dripped down to glisten on the toe of his boot. His longtrh coat draped over the shotgun hanging from his neck suddenly parted as he neared the art classroom filled with students, then he raised the shotgun and fired as soon as he kicked in the door. With bodies falling and children screaming as they ducked for cover he failed to notice the school security officer as the man raised his handgun and fired at point blank range..... The dripping red video screen morphed into an all red background with the words GAME OVER and Dimitrios Pagourtzis popped another can of Red Bull and hit the replay button on his video game machine


When I woke up Friday morning and turned the news on it was the now painfully familiar refrain of yet another school shooting. That shooting was at the Santa Fe high school located between Houston and Galveston here in Texas and it was reported that there was 10 fatalities and 10 injuries. This latest incident brings the total of school shootings this year to over 22 and the number of dead to 197. But has anything changed since the shootings at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. and the protests that occurred there and nationally as a result of those shootings?



Nothing much has changed even though some states have acted unilaterally and tightened their background checks, a couple national retail outlets have changed the rules for buying guns at their stores and some companies have severed their association with the NRA, but seriously after all the protests and marches both locally and nationally by tens of thousands of children and adults it comes down to nothing really changing and you know why?



Journey with me back to the 50's and 60's with me and let us look at another school kid just like the one who just shot up the Santa Fe school. He is a basic outcast shunned by most in school made fun of by the girls and some of the guys and feels he just doesn't fit in. He gets more and more depressed and after he has a fight at school where he was badly beaten he resolves to kill himself... of course he fails at that but is taken to the hospital where his depression is diagnosed and he ends up being treated for his problem.



In 2018 we have Dimitrios Pagourtzis who may have been ridiculed because of his name and no doubt did not fit in at school so he spends hours playing video games where he is desensitized to the extent that he eventually doesn't understand the difference between killing someone in a video game and in real life. So instead of Dimitrios getting into fights with people he perceives are treating him badly he steals his fathers handgun and shotgun, dresses in his long black trench coat like someone out of a video game and heads to school to make things right.



I offer no solutions here
just a restating of the obvious
that if we had regulated violent video games
back when they first became part of our culture
the children of today
might just value another's life more than
1,000 points in a video game

 

[hearlady]

I don't think this gets near the attention it should. It's not the only answer but certainly seems to play into the perfect storm of what's going on with these shootings.

 

[drifter]

Maybe we can raise enough "Thoughts and Prayers and
Bless Your Hearts" to last us until the next msss shooting
when we can raise more 'thoughts and prayers and bless your
hearts,' and so on and so forth.

 

[Traveler]

Pete, your post is SPOT-ON. I have said exactly the same thing about ultra-violent video games, many, many times.

Some parents have fuzzy ideas of what a child's rights are. Children, quite naturally, do not have the emotional/mental development to make wise choices. Yet, something so obvious seems to have alluded many parents. Some parents even go so far as making the child their "friend". Bad idea !

Getting back to the idea of children's rights. A child has certain absolute rights. Namely, a safe and secure home, nutritious foods, proper clothing given the environment, (this does NOT include the latest of fashions), an education, and the right to be free from abuse.

Almost everything else is a privilege, which must be earned, and not a "right". No child has a right to choose any electronic game he/she sees fit. IT IS THE PARENTS JOB TO CHOOSE FOR THE CHILD UP UNTIL AGE 18. You and I, as adults, have a right to pick and choose what we watch on the computer/TV, but a child has no such rights.

We, as a society, have decided that a child may not drink alcoholic beverages, or smoke tobacco. We, also, have decided that a child may not vote. The same applies to what the child may read, do on the computer, and the playing of certain ultra-violent electronic games.

With the above in mind, we need to make it illegal to sell certain video games to anyone under age 18. That may not stop ALL of the school shootings, BUT, it would be a big step in the right direction.

 

[terry123]

I agree. I think parents should monitor their kids social media and be careful of the age you allow them to have FB, twitter and Instagram accounts. You should know what is on those pages. If you have guns, lock them up. If you give them to your kids then you should be held responsible for their actions with those guns. Know where your kids are and WHO they are with. What about homework. Mine stayed home until all homework and chores were done. My youngest was a wild child and had to be told that curfew meant your whole body inside the house at that time. Parking in the driveway at curfew time was not meeting the curfew. I was told many times that I was the meanest parent of all her friends and that was fine with me. I worked 3 jobs to support my kids and I was the parent and they were the kids. We were at church on Sunday morning whether they liked it or not. When they are grown and can pay their way they can do whatever they want. In my house, my rules. They turned out good, one a pharmacist and one a teacher. Parents don't know what their kids are doing and don't seem to care. We had good times and they see now what I was doing for them. My oldest daughter asked me one time if we lived paycheck to paycheck and I said yes. She said, we never knew that. You always made sure we had what the other kids had. We were never ashamed of our clothes because you made sure we had at least one of the latest thing the other kids had so we always fit in. I was a hands on parent and was at every parents night to see what the teachers thought of my kids homework and what we could do to improve. There was not a social life for me but those kids were my responsibility as their dad was bipolar, refused to take meds or get help and was abusive to us. I had to get us out of the situation and we made it. You do what you have to for your children.

 

[Traveler]

I agree. I think parents should monitor their kids social media and be careful of the age you allow them to have FB, twitter and Instagram accounts. You should know what is on those pages. If you have guns, lock them up. If you give them to your kids then you should be held responsible for their actions with those guns. Know where your kids are and WHO they are with. What about homework. Mine stayed home until all homework and chores were done. My youngest was a wild child and had to be told that curfew meant your whole body inside the house at that time. Parking in the driveway at curfew time was not meeting the curfew. I was told many times that I was the meanest parent of all her friends and that was fine with me. I worked 3 jobs to support my kids and I was the parent and they were the kids. We were at church on Sunday morning whether they liked it or not. When they are grown and can pay their way they can do whatever they want. In my house, my rules. Parents don't know what their kids are doing and don't seem to care. We had good times and they see now what I was doing for them. My oldest daughter asked me one time if we lived paycheck to paycheck and I said yes. She said, we never knew that. You always made sure we had what the other kids had. We were never ashamed of our clothes because you made sure we had at least one of the latest thing the other kids had so we always fit in. I was a hands on parent and was at every parents night to see what the teachers thought of my kids homework and what we could do to improve. There was not a social life for me but those kids were my responsibility as their dad was bipolar, refused to take meds or get help and was abusive to us. I had to get us out of the situation and we made it. You do what you have to for your children.

Exactly ! You sound just like my sister. She was a real iron tail but she turned out 3 super fine boys. 3 college grads and one of them is an officer in the Coast guard.

 

[hearlady]

Many kids these days are mentally abused by parents:

If they are not taught limits or consequences for their actions.

If they are allowed to believe they are more important than the parents who provide their survival.

If they are allowed access to violent video games or unsupervised tv and computer.

If they are allowed to believe they are more important than their teacher or policeman.

If they are not taught how to handle bullies and why you shouldn't bully others.

If they are taught drinking and pot smoking are "rights of passage" and not a bid deal.

If they are not taught the value of hard work and responsibility.

If they are not monitored for possible sexual abuse or misprescribed drugs like Ritalin.

If they have no idea who their children's friends are or why they have no friends.

If they have no idea what goes on in their children's daily life.

If they are not loved unconditionally even if it means tough love when needed.

 

[Traveler]

HearLady is exactly correct. For those who have not heard about the Tough Love program, I'll pass on some info.

Many years ago I was married to a woman who had a 14 year old boy by a previous marriage. He was totally out of control. She and I talked about it but she just couldn't see the real issue. She was waaay too liberal with him and allowed him to get away with all manner of bad behavior, with out any consequences.

Several times, in my presence, he said to his mother, "F**k You". I went ballistic and came very close to putting his head through the wall. I didn't, but it was a close call. (If I had dared to say that to my mother would likely have resulted in my step father beating me with his fists.) Finally, my wife got the message when at 4 am the cops called and told her that the boy had stolen her brand new car and totaled it.

My Ex finally relented and we went to "Tough Love" meetings. There we learned dozens of ways to correct such bad behavior. One of the first things we learned was to remove things the boy highly valued. The first thing we did was to remove, and hide his bedroom door. As you likely already known, privacy is a big deal with teens.

The next time he acted out, we removed his stereo and put it in a storage locker. More bad behavior and his TV disappeared. Next to go were his favorite clothes. Then his skate board. Then, finally, following an arrest for selling fake pot to the blacks in Oakland, which could easily have gotten him killed, we put a heavy steel door on his bedroom and locked it tight so that he was forced to sleep on the sofa.

Like all teenagers, he loved pizza. Well, one Saturday night I ordered his favorite kind of pizza and my wife and I ate it in front of him. He had a fit when I instead offered him tuna fish sandwiches, a bowl of tomato soup, and an apple for dessert. At first he said he'd rather starve to death, but 3 hours later he relented and ate the food we offered.

He called the cops to report "child abuse". When the cops came, he didn't get a tiny bit of sympathy, but he did get a lecture. Eventually he broke down crying, and begged for his stuff back. We had him !

We wrote out a contract specifying what we expected of him and what he would earn in return. Truant at school, equaled nutritious food but food he hated. Learning to say please and thank you equaled his favorite clothes back. A sincere apology for cussing out his mother got his bedroom back, along with a door.

It didn't happen over-night, but with the help of other tough love parents, step-by-slow-step, we finally got him under control.