Another tragic school shooting, this time in Florida – it has to be a parent’s worst nightmare.

In a topic when one is too many, after the Florida shooting the internet and social media were abuzz with a report it was the 18th school shooting of 2018.

It didn’t say how the number was documented but it comes from Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit group that works to prevent gun violence and is well known for keeping a total tally as the year goes on.

A Washington Post article took Everytown to town citing this year’s first school shooting counted in the list which went: On the afternoon of Jan. 3, a 31-year-old man who had parked outside a Michigan elementary school called police to say he was armed and suicidal. Several hours later, he killed himself.

The school, however, had been closed for seven months. There were no teachers. There were no students.
Again, when one is too many, I don’t try to downplay the horror but the list isn’t comprehensive comparing a first-person shooter to an event on, near or about a school.

Of course, guns themselves are going to get a lion’s share of blame. Since a gun has to be used intentionally as a weapon, the fact there are guns in the world isn’t the cause of school shootings albeit anti-gun groups are going to beat you over the head with it nonetheless.

I never had to face this topic going to high school, as in the '70s we didn’t even have SROs, an action plan for school shootings or even lock the doors for that matter. Now, schools have all those things and more like metal detectors at the entrance.

I think it boils down to a thinning of the fabric we call society. It takes a village and all that and anymore we’ve strayed so far away from moral and upright as to be laughable. Do we not think this transfers to our children?

Everything is you’re wrong and I’m right and there isn’t much tolerance for differing viewpoints amongst adults let alone when the children grow up in this type of scenario.

We had five or six high schools in my area but no more. Nowadays, high schools look like shopping malls and house all the students of a particular county in a student mill where there’s so many children at one school there’s not enough resources to do actual teaching and getting to know a smaller student body where warning signs might just be picked up on.

We have video games that glamorize shooting people and we don’t bat an eye when our young children play them. What ever happened to Pong?

We’re in the age of cyber-bullying where everyone has a cell phone and the virtual world is where a lot of our kids spend most of their time. Not learning social skills like conversation or writing but texting and Facebook.

I don’t think it’s any surprise our schools reflect the society we live in.

Contact Steve Warner at news@smithvillereview.com