Like many I was appalled at the school shooting in Georgia last week. I am heartened that the father of the shooter was arrested and indicted as well as the kid. I have a question.
For the last 36 years, since the school shooting perpetrated by Laurie Dann in suburban Chicago, we’ve been aware of a tragic pattern. Parents who hide and coddle their seriously mentally ill children with violent urges. This time we hear that “he was on the FBI’s radar”. Here’s my question. Why isn’t there something in between looking on silently while violent mentally ill kids are enabled by their (probably also mentally ill) parents to go shoot up schools and locking kids up on suspicion? It would seem to me that such kids should, at least, have some sort of mandatory counseling.
AFAICT there is no law which would allow you to have mandatory counseling. People dont want to be told what to do with their kids. How would you enforce it? You think the same parents who bought the kid a gun for Christmas AFTER being told he was threatening to kill people would make him go? In half of the counties in the US if the govt said the kid had to do something local law enforcement would ignore it on purpose and most fo the rest would make it a low priority. We have lots of kids who fit the profile but relatively few who actually become shooters.
Steve
You might be able to mangle the Child Abuse/Juvenile laws to get mandatory counseling in a few locales. However, who will do the counseling, who will pay for it and where can we find competent therapists within say 25 miles who can work around parent’s work schedules?
There would have to be some interdiction to compel counseling. My impression is that they didn’t have a positive ID on the Georgia school shooter, but ultimately it was going to be up to the local law enforcement.
A neighbor kid was caught making a threat to another high school student on a social media ap. I think he used the phrase “I have a gun in my locker.” I don’t know if it was reported or the FBI caught it. The school was locked down and no guns were found. The kid was arrested and sent to psychiatric facility to be released by a clinical psychiatrist. The state’s attorney was apparently tired of all of the school shooting threats and was trying to send a message. The kid was expelled for the rest of the year.
My impression is that online threats are pretty epidemic. A local kid even called Sandy Hook to place a false threat of another school shooting. My wife receives referrals for kids with behavior disorders from schools in an out-patient setting. I don’t think that’s a magic bullet and mostly counseling depends on the client’s willingness to participate. See the Virginia Tech shooter.
I think Steve, Walt and OD all make good points.
I certainly have no magic bullet. It used to be that neighbors and communities self policed. But that custom has broken down. And then we have the lawyers.
My only suggestion is that there should never be disclosure of who the shooter is. For many, it’s their brief moment of fame. Hard for me to justify “the public’s right to know” juxtaposed with cold blooded or mentally ill murder.
Apparently in the recent GA case the mother was a drug addict and the father was abusive so the kid really should have been removed from the home…but the foster system is so overwhelmed and broken that it’s not possible to handle all the cases like that. Just tragedy all the way down.