Apparently two high school students were planning an attack on Springbrook High School in Silver Spring. The method would have been explosives, not guns. That actually makes me hope that they wouldn’t have been that successful at pulling it off as even terrorists with some logistic support can botch that, but thank goodness we didn’t find out. Saw the news from Andrew Gelman who I didn’t realize was an alumni. I don’t know too many high school students these days, but back then I had several friends that went there.
I don’t know to what extent small groups launching murderous attacks on society is cyclical or if this is a disturbing, albeit still extremely uncommon, new trend. One thing I have heard is that sensationalism does feed this phenomenon, so I’m trying to keep this entry low-key and not repeating the name of the students involved. Also, it is still breaking news, so things might not be as they now seem.
A lot of the common perceptions around school attacks are wrong. This came up recently in Gary Krist’s review of David Cullen’s Columbine. It’s fairly widely known that there’s no evidence to support the idea that they were targeting Christians, but the early incorrect information doesn’t end there.
We remember Columbine," Cullen writes, "as a pair of outcast Goths from the Trench Coat Mafia snapping and [then] tearing through their high school hunting down jocks to settle a long-running feud. Almost none of that happened. No Goths, no outcasts, nobody snapping. No targets, no feud, and no Trench Coat Mafia. Most of those elements existed at Columbine -- which is what gave them such currency. They just had nothing to do with the murders."
Far from feckless pariahs, in fact, the two shooters in the Columbine case – [See above regarding names] -- were smart, reasonably popular kids who doled out more bullying than they ever suffered. Their shooting spree was not some precipitous act of revenge against specific tormentors, but more like an elaborately planned theater piece, worked out almost a year in advance, designed to demonstrate their innate superiority by indiscriminately killing as many victims as possible.
It is important that we keep this kind of thing in perspective. The normal flu for examples kills 30,000+ annually in the U.S. Driving collisions kill many more than that. Overreacting to these incidents takes away resources from more pressing needs and can result in mistreatment of those who are outcasts to begin with.
One recent change that gives me hope is that by law mental healthcare and physical healthcare must be given equal coverage. Political radicalization is one issue, but I think it’s uncontroversial to say that anyone who would commit the alleged acts is deeply troubled in one form or another. I don’t believe we have any sort of panacea at the moment for these cases, or for many other mental health challenges. But I do believe in science and in medicine, as we study and assist all those that need help but don’t strike out violently, we will do great good and should learn more about how to assist the extreme cases.
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