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26 March, 2005
Red Lake Massacre: Another American School Shooting

On Monday the USA suffered yet another episode of what is now commonly known as “school shootings”. In Red Lake, Minnesota, 16-year-old Jeff Weise shot and killed his grandfather and step-grandmother, then drove to a school where he killed seven more people.

Students of the school described Weise as­this should not be a surprise­a victim of bullying. This relatively new phenomenon obviously causes a lot of pain. But it shouldn’t cause confusion.

The perpetrators of these tragedies seem to be transmitting at least one message very clearly: stop the bullying. Bullying is, very obviously now, not merely an adolescent rite of passage or an unfortunate reality of school life. It is a crime with very, very devastating results. So I hope that the cruel people who abused Weise, and who evidently learned nothing from the Columbine massacre, learn something from this week’s slayings.

American school shooters are suicidal. This may sound insensitive, but I think the key to this phenomenon lies more in the suicides than the homicides. Obviously, suicidal people do not feel fulfilled. Many people take their own lives every year. But they are not front-page news because they do not take a dozen people with them.

One must ask, if these killers were not suicidal, would they still so callously murder innocent people? It seems plain to me that these people kill others because they know ahead of time that they won’t have to face the consequences. So, how can society help these people feel fulfilled, so they don’t go on killing sprees?

Weise had a difficult family life. His father committed suicide and his mother had been living in a nursing home since suffering brain injuries in a car accident. What can we learn from this? That maybe a loving and attentive family can help someone grow up functionally. While this happened in Minnesota's second-poorest Indian reservation, the families of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (the Columbine killers) were not remarkably poor.

Forgive me if I sound traditional here, but I think what society needs is good guidance. Don’t Christians say that a sinner has “strayed from the flock”? A human being inevitably takes role models as it matures. We need to examine the role models being provided to our young humans.

The USA’s leader is a swaggering cowboy who solves problems with bombs. Clearly he is not a good role model. Even California, one of the USA’s most progressive states, elected as governor an actor who has committed unspeakable violence on-screen. Also, most popular culture teaches that strength of characters is bad, and that life’s biggest virtues are wealth, the approval of others, and sex appeal. Weise had none of these.

But in the face of negative role models and callous materialistic culture, there is something that can shine through to youths: parents. Of course, young people are still autonomous individuals, but discipline, example, instruction, and love can go a long way towards influencing young people in positive directions.

Forget trying to be a “cool” parent. The idea of being cool is part of what causes these tragedies. Instead of letting entertainment culture teach kids the difference between cool and nerdy, or rich and poor, we should show kids the difference between petty and meaningful, between selfishness and respect. That way there will be less bullying, and less lashing out.

The very fact that the FBI made reference to “other states that have had these shootings," shows that this is a growing problem. So, in the aftermath of Red Lake, let’s genuinely examine how we are raising own kids.

(sources: cbc.ca and rockymountainnews.com)

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