Some of today’s children are in a war with us, the adults, the institutions, and other children. They see violence and self-killing as the solution to what is going on in their minds and hearts. What is their cause? What is their end? Can a truce be drawn?
On Monday, October 21, 2013, a 12-year old boy, still unnamed by law enforcement, walked into Sparks Middle School campus, shot a child, shot a teacher, shot another child and then shot himself, with a gun obtained from his parents, according to numerous Reno-area news sources.
How do child killers draw up these plans? Was there a war room where a lot of planning went into it?
We have seen children do this in other contemporary civilizations. However, they are acting on behalf of someone else’s agenda. They attack and kill because others, like Palestinian militia and jihadi groups, tell them to.
How can a child of 12 or 14 years even comprehend what it means, fully, to kill another and to kill one’s self? Is the availability of the gun the reason for the killing? Is it the result of bullying? Is the result of a bad home life, drugs, or something else we have not named, such as sin being in the world?
The day after the Sparks incident, two other child-related violence deaths occurred. Five hours west of this shooting, a 13-year old boy who was carrying a gun that police thought was an assault rifle was shot by those police in Santa Rosa. The same day, on the other side of the country, a 14-year old boy was arrested for allegedly murdering a high school teacher in Danvers, Massachusetts.
Child killers. They either kill or they are killed first. The one in Massachusetts seems to be the contemporary exception, as he has been jailed.
Children, being subject to the ideation of images, suggestion and bad role models, appear to be taking on the ills of our society. Adults cope, mostly, in good and bad ways. But children can’t cope with the confusion of the state of marriage, shack-ups, alternate lifestyles, bizarre “family” relationships depicted on television and being left to raise themselves while both parents either voluntarily or involuntarily go to work each day and return after dark.
Children are showing the symptoms of our fallen society. As educators say, they are “acting out”, but not necessarily acting out their own problems. Maybe they are acting out OUR problems. Unless our society changes, the children will not. In this war, we all lose, until we decide to stop.
