Teacher's Thoughts on Fixing Gun Violence in America
What 1 Teacher's Facebook Rant Gets Very Wrong — and Right — About Fixing Gun Violence
After every mass shooting, gun advocates try to blame literally anything other than guns for the tragedy. Now, following the school shooting in Parkland, FL, that resulted in the deaths of 17 innocent adults and children, one teacher who says she "grew up with guns" has outlined all of the ways she feels the system has failed confessed-mass-murderer Nikolas Cruz.
In her now-viral post, Kelly Guthrie Raley begins by explaining that she's volunteering to "say what no one else is brave enough to say, but wants to say":
Until we, as a country, are willing to get serious and talk about mental health issues, lack of available care for the mental health issues, lack of discipline in the home, horrendous lack of parental support when the schools are trying to control horrible behavior at school . . . lack of moral values, and yes, I'll say it — violent video games that take away all sensitivity to ANY compassion for others' lives, as well as reality TV that makes it commonplace for people to constantly scream up in each others' faces and not value any other person but themselves, we will have a gun problem in schools. Our kids don't understand the permanency of death anymore!
As a former teacher and mother to a toddler who will soon be in a school setting, I will say that there is a lot to process with her comments. She doesn't get it wholly wrong, but she is nowhere near being right either.
For starters, she makes a sweeping claim about video games. While I'm personally not a fan of violent video games, there is no way to connect them to the shootings in America. Most developed nations spend a comparable amount to the US on video games, but no other country on the planet experiences the kinds of mass shootings we do. China, which had a "gaming revenue" nearly $10 billion higher than the US as of October 2017, doesn't have issues with school or mass shootings. Japan, which has similar video game spending statistics to the US, has basically eradicated gun violence entirely. So, no, it's not about video games.
Saying it's reality TV is also a nonstarter for the same reasons listed above. Other countries have similar reality TV viewing patterns as in the US, but we're the ones who have to constantly bury our fellow citizens — young and old — because of guns. Reality TV may encourage young people to practice contouring or filling in their eyebrows, but it's not telling them to shoot up a school.
What Guthrie Raley mostly argues for is stronger parental support and that parents need to do a better job disciplining their children. Cruz, for one, was not some overly coddled child who walked all over his adoptive parents. His mother called the cops on him numerous times in order to try to get support, and the school managed to expel him for behavior issues, as well as incidents of his use of anti-Semitic and racist language. Teachers were warned about him, and it was reported that he wasn't allowed on the school campus with a backpack as a precaution. People tried to discipline him, and he still became a murderer.
When I taught, I saw a range of parenting styles, many with varying success; the kind of parental support that Guthrie Raley is advocating for just does not work. Authoritarian parenting, which operates as the parent being the only true voice, has higher incidents of children exhibiting violence and delinquent tendencies. Children with authoritarian parents are more likely to become bullies themselves, and this type of parent-child relationship is one of the strongest predictors that a child will commit a violent crime in the future.
Again, we're not the only country to have authoritarian parenting, but we are the only country to have mass shootings of this nature. Stop blaming parents for the actions of the children. Cruz was the one to commit murder, not his parents. Even if he did have a hard life, plenty of children grow up with even less and don't decide to kill others. I will not be made to feel sympathetic for Nikolas Cruz.
Guthrie Raley's inital claim about the lack of support and talk around mental health issues is partly right. As a country we do need to do a better job of helping those who are struggling with mental health problems, and one of the ways to get help to the people who need it is through government funding for mental health programs and by taking away the stigma attached to mental illnesses.
Truthfully, Guthrie Raley and I are on the same side. We both agree that something needs to change, because the deaths of innocent people is just too much to bear. Where she and I differ, though, is in the thinking that gun violence is anything but exactly that: gun violence. Guthrie Raley putting the blame for these incidents on parent styles and reality TV isn't going to help to change our society. Background checks and mental health support will make the difference that Guthrie Raley and the rest of America demands when it comes to preventing the sale of semiautomatic weapons, which in turn will help to put an end to gun violence.
We as Americans are not, inherently, a more violent, immoral society than that of other countries. We are just victims of a system that has let radicals and lobbyists convince millions of Americans that mass shootings are all part of living in a free society. Newsflash: they are most certainly not.
