America Experiences Another School Shooting But Ignores The Core Problem Yet Again
The Cycle Of Inaction: Why The Root Causes Of School Shootings Remain Unaddressed
Pictured, victims of the school shooting: Richard Aspinwall, Cristina Irimie, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo
As reported by The Washington Post, the mother of the 14-year-old school shooter that recently took the lives of 4 in Georgia allegedly gave the school warning in advance of an “extreme emergency” and that they needed to “go immediately and find…” her son “to check on him”, according to texts to her family.
The father of the 14-year-old was arrested shortly after the shooting - on charges of second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, and cruelty to children. According to police, the father knowingly allowed his 14-year-old to possess a firearm and faces prison along with his son.
As usual with most recent mass shooting events, the 14-year-old was already on the FBI’s radar and had even received a tip about online messages from him claiming he was going to perform an attack on a school in the “next 2-3 years”.
In these online messages, the 14-year-old shooter expressed frustration about trans people being accepted in society. Such hateful and incendiary rhetoric should hold accountability, and it is excessively unacceptable that a mentally-ill child was essentially given clearance to kill.
Despite the FBI knowing of the shooter, and the shooter posting irrational, crazed comments online - nothing was done to prevent potential tragedy.
Writing back in 2022, after the Ulvade elementary school shooting happened, I pointed out just how many mass shooters were previously on the FBI’s radar:
Less than 6 weeks before the Parkland, Florida school shooting in 2018, the FBI received a tip complaining about the soon-to-be shooter and no one from the agency followed up…
Leading up to Pulse night club shooter performing his heinous act and killing scores of people in Orlando, Florida, the FBI investigated the shooter for 10 months and were still unable to prevent the mass shooting despite looking into the subject for close to a year.
After killing 10 at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, the FBI admitted that the shooter had already been on their radar.
In 2015, a married couple in San Bernardino, California opened fire on a work event, killing 14 in the name of Islamic terrorism. Afterward, the FBI said that the husband and wife discussed jihad and martyrdom online as far back as 2013.
Mass shootings, let alone school shootings, shouldn’t be politicized but at this point, with the lack of focus on mental health in America and the FBI’s complete lack of effort into preventing this sort of violence, how much of this problem actually has to do with gun control?
42% of Generation Z have been diagnosed with a mental illness. Scores and scores of adults already grapple with some sort of mental illness. It’s simply a fact of the matter: although American children and adults deal with mental health problems routinely, mental health is largely ignored and written-off in modern-day society.
If the FBI is shirking their duty to prevent known perpetrators from performing disgusting act of mass violence, then this is yet another case of America’s institutions failing its citizens.
That isn’t to say gun laws couldn’t be tightened, background checks couldn’t be stricter, and other methods couldn’t be enacted to make guns harder for mentally unwell people to access.
However, if we only focus on one crux of the issue, no solution will be reached. Mental illnesses are a real issue many people face everyday and the stigma and lack of conversation regarding said issues doesn’t help bring awareness to the issue, further isolating those already suffering.