Another School Shooting in America: The Blood is always the Same

When will the gunfire end?

There was another school shooting yesterday. This time the blood spilled out on the floor of a high school in Troutdale, Oregon. We have now had so many school shootings—74 since the Sandy Hook massacre—that it can be hard to keep track. And that doesn’t count planned shootings that were thwarted.

According to authorities a San Antonio teen recently managed to sneak an AK-47 into his high school with “intent to commit a violent act.” His plan was foiled when parents noticed the weapon was missing and notified police.

Certain aspects of all these stories are the same. The blood is the same. The sorrow of families who lose loved ones is the same. The shock of survivors who can’t believe it happened is the same.

The reaction of the N.R.A. is also the same. “Guns don’t kill people,” Wayne LaPierre will insist. That’s true. They just help people kill people.

In an emotional speech yesterday, President Obama said, “We’re the only developed country on earth where this happens.”

That’s also true. You can pick from dozens of stories. In April an Indiana man shot and killed his wife in the parking lot at a Catholic school in Griffith, Indiana. The couple’s two children watched. The blood was the same—although you could argue that this shooting doesn’t “count” because it happened outside a school not inside.

But the blood was the same.

Only the details differ. Remenard Castro, the husband, had a history of violence. He once threatened to beat his wife with a crowbar.

In Oregon yesterday, the assailant carried a rifle into the school. Once inside he gunned down a 14-year-old student. A gym teacher was wounded in the hip. The shooter retreated to a bathroom where he committed suicide.

The blood was the same.

The sentiment of the Police Chief, Scott Anderson, was the same. Anderson told reporters later: “I’m very, very sorry for the family and for all the students and everyone who will be impacted by this tragic incident.”

The story was the same. It happened in America. It didn’t happen in Japan or Germany or Canada. It happened here.

The blood was the same last October in Sparks, Nevada. There a middle school student shot and killed one teacher and wounded two classmates. Michael Landsberry, the teacher, “probably saved lives” when he approached the shooter on the playground. Landsberry had served a tour of duty in Afghanistan. So he knew the power of guns in this situation. Guns don’t kill people. That’s true. But a 12-year-old doesn’t kill Landsberry either.

Not without a gun.

The blood was the same. Only the details differ. In an interview with CNN, one of the wounded saw his classmate—the shooter—approaching. “Please don’t shoot me,” the boy begged, “please don't shoot me. I looked at him. I saw [the gun], and he braced it and shot me in the stomach me.” 

The blood is always the same. It’s thick and red. It dries fast in halls and classrooms and on the clothing of the dead and wounded. Only the details are different. We know twenty-six teachers and children were massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary. Did you realize in one classroom where fourteen children and one teacher died there was one survivor? A six-year-old girl rose from among the bodies when police arrived. The blood was the same. Only the trauma of that child was different.

Think of the nightmares to come for that first grader.

Guns don’t kill people. That’s true. But without his mother’s Bushmaster XM-15 rifle, Adam Lanza, the shooter at Sandy Hook doesn’t kill 26 people either. He doesn’t have the chance to spray a classroom with a semi-automatic weapon.

Guns only make it easy for people to kill people.

In the wake of yesterday’s shooting, the reaction of the N.R.A will be the same. Wayne LaPierre will insist: you can kill people with crowbars and knives. You can kill them with cars. You can kill them with a frozen loaf of zucchini bread it you want. That’s true. But it gets harder.

The blood is the same. It was the same when Colleen Ritzer was murdered in a women’s bathroom at her school in Danvers, Massachusetts this past January. In that case the 14-year-old accused in the crime was armed with a knife. First he raped the 24-year-old math teacher. Then he cut her throat and went to the movies.

The blood was the same. And sure: knives don’t kill people. People with knives kill people. For mass slaughter guns are way better.

Since the shooting at Sandy Hook there have been 74 incidents involving gunfire in our schools. You can read about the LaSalle High School (Cincinnati, Ohio) student who brought a gun from home, carried it into a classroom and committed suicide. You can study up on the Arapahoe High School shooting in Colorado. There the 17-year-old killer shot Claire Davis, a classmate, in the head. 

Davis died later.

Claire Davis: the sorrow is the same.

The sorrow is always the same. The shock is always the same. The blood always dries the same. And then our leaders seem to forget.

You can take your pick. You can read about the killer who kept a journal and expressed admiration for the murderers at Columbine High and Virginia Tech. He killed or wounded three students at a Seattle college just last week. Don’t get confused, though. Don’t get mixed up trying to remember if this was different from the shootings at other colleges—other high schools—other elementary schools. You can check out the list if you want to. It makes for sad reading. 

The blood is always the same. 

What else is the same? Members of Congress, says President Obama, “are terrified of the N.R.A.” That’s true. The N.R.A. will claim again that any attempt to register guns—or do anything about the problem is a direct assault on the Second Amendment. The crazy people will say Mr. Obama is planning to take away all their guns. It hasn’t happened yet. It’s just going to happen. And soon!

Last year 21.1 million guns were sold in this country.

That topped the record of 19.6 million set the year before. (Records have been falling annually. See chart below.)

Meanwhile, the story is always the same. The blood is the same. The shootings happen in America. Guns don’t kill people. They don’t. 

In this country, however, they make it ridiculously easy. And any attempt to do anything about it will be met with fury by “gun absolutists” on the right. 

Next week or next fall when schools reopen the story will be the same. There will be more school shootings in America. 

The blood will be the same. Thick. Red. Drying quickly. 

Perhaps it’s time for a change.

Another Teacher Killed in Danvers, Massachusetts

THE PICTURE AT THE END OF THE POST IS RELATED TO A SEPARATE INCIDENT, A SCHOOL SHOOTING IN CHARDON, OHIO


Monday, I picked up the New York Times and read again about how dumb America’s teachers supposedly are.

I’m a retired teacher myself, and a liberal, too, and love to read the Times. So, maybe that does make me dumb.

More on that in a moment; but a few hours later I turned on the TV and heard about the school shooting in Sparks, Nevada.

Depending on how you count such incidents the shooting at Sparks Middle School was the fifteenth in or near a school this year. (That includes a number of episodes involving gunfire on college campuses.) In Sparks, the shooter, 12, wounded two classmates, killed Michael Lansberry, a teacher and ex-Marine who served in Afghanistan, then took his own life.

Today we have terrible news again.

The body of Colleen Ritzer, 24-year-old math teacher at Danvers High School in Danvers, Massachusetts, has been discovered behind her school. Blood was found in a second-floor school bathroom and a 14-year-old has been charged with murder.

It’s bad enough, then, that American students and teachers are killed with such sanguine regularity. The Sandy Hook Elementary massacre briefly focused attention on the problem. But the deaths of one or two or three individuals, here and there, are no less horrifying. Here in Ohio, last April, a La Salle High School student shot himself in the head and ended up in critical condition. In February 2012, gunfire erupted at Chardon High, not far from Cleveland. That incident left three teens dead, a fourth paralyzed, and one “slightly” wounded.

(Imagine that you are the parent and find that your son or daughter was “slightly” wounded at school that day.)

Worse yet—if there can be a “worse” when it comes to such matters—the Chardon shooter showed no remorse in court. At his sentencing, T. J. Lane, 18, wore a plain white tee shirt on which the word “KILLER” was scrawled in magic marker. “This hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons,” he told stunned families in court, “now masturbates to the memory. F--- all of you.”

With that he flipped everyone the bird.

So here I sit in my safe retirement. I read these stories of mayhem in the schools and find myself sickened. I read of the father who stuck his infant daughter in a freezer to stop her from crying. I read—in the Times, of all places—that 10% of babies born in Scioto County (again, here in Ohio) are addicted to drugs. I read in the Times, again, that 15% of parents let their sons and daughters stay home from school twenty times or more every year.

Then I read the editorial on Monday: “An Industry of Mediocrity.” I know my disgust is as nothing in the face of very real tragedy in Sparks or Danvers. A stupid article is nothing compared to the loss of a loved one. Still, this article is all too typical in its lame attempt to come to grips with “what’s wrong with America’s schools.”

I think to myself: “Maybe part of the trouble involves ‘gunfire.’”

Well, what industry is producing all this “mediocrity?” Colleges of education, naturally! What is the mediocre product? Why, it’s you and me, a nation’s public school teachers.

Here’s the gist of the article:

• America’s teachers aren’t all that bright. According to “one respected study” only 23% come from the top third of college graduates. That sounds bad, till you stop to realize, statistically speaking, that only 33% should come from the top third—the same as bankers, bakers, butchers and editorial writers.

• Worse yet, only 14% of teachers in high-poverty schools come from the top third of their college classes. 

• People who run charter schools are quoted, insisting that, yes, it’s true! Charter schools are way better than regular public schools. That’s because they have freedom to pick teachers and don’t pick dimwits. (I admit I’m paraphrasing.)

• The article quotes individuals who run various foundations interested in reforming education (but much too smart to go into the high-poverty schools and do any teaching). These theorists promise that, sure, they know exactly how to fix education.

• Some college professor who did a study grumbles about how we train teachers. There are a few good training programs. Sadly, most don’t require middle school math teachers to study calculus before entering the classroom. Therefore, “Some of our education programs are putting out math teachers at the level of Botswana.” (Damn! Botswana!) Worse, yet, according to Bill Keller, who penned the column, “the Botswana-level teacher programs produce about 60% of America’s future middle school math teachers.”

• Finland has better teachers—all chosen from the top third of their classes. We need to copy this system. Keller quotes Amanda Ripley (who also did not choose to go into a high-povertry school), who wrote an entire book about Finland’s smarter teachers. (I admit I liked a large part of what Ripley had to say in The Smartest Kids in the World, but I’m not buying this happy myth about how we could solve all our problems if only we had smarter teachers.)

Finally, Keller notes that there are already 3.3 million public school teachers in America today. They can’t all be trained (retrained?) by new methods or start-up programs. So, hell, we’re temporarily screwed, at best, and there’s still a lot of “widespread mediocrity.”

What I notice, very sadly, is that there’s a lot of gunfire. And I don’t think you have to graduate in the top third of any class, not even kindergarten, to realize most of the problems “in” our schools have deep roots in a society outside their walls.

I don’t think the main problems in education have anything to do with where Michael Landsberry or Colleen Ritzer or any of the rest of us finished in the college rankings.

I’m surprised editorial writers continue to miss the point. 

Say a prayer for all the students and teachers.

T. J. Lane gunned down several classmates.

School Shooting in Sparks, Nevada: A Gory Red, White and Blue Pattern

Once again an ordinary American school day ended in a cacophony of gunfire. Once again all the guns in the world don’t seem to make America's students and teachers safer. Once again the gun lobby will refuse to admit even simple truths.

Well, let me be the first to say, “Good job, N.R.A.”

FIFTEEN SCHOOL SHOOTINGS SO FAR THIS YEAR.

Unfortunately, the report of yesterday's shooting at Sparks Middle School ought to shock all citizens of this blood-soaked nation.

This time gunfire shattered an ordinary morning on a playground in Sparks, Nevada. Students arriving for school told reporters later that they fled screaming into the building once they realized the “pops” they were hearing were gunshots.

“A kid started getting mad and he pulled out a gun and shoots my friend, one of my friends at least,” a seventh-grade student identified as Andrew told local KOLO-TV. “And then he walked up to a teacher and says back up, the teacher started backing up and he pulled the trigger.”

 “The teacher was just lying there and he was limp, he didn't know what to do, he was just in a lot of pain,” he told KOLO.

 “And me and five other friends went to him and said come on we’ve got to get him to safety. We picked him up, carried him a little bit far and we left him because our vice principal came along and said go, go, go get to safety, get to safety. So we left the teacher there and we went to safety,” Andrew said.

Safety, Andrew said. Where is the safety today? This was the fifteenth school shooting in the United States this year. Two students were wounded. Michael Landsberry, 45, a teacher and former Marine who served in Afghanistan, was killed.

The perpetrator—himself a victim of a national inability to come to grips with gun violence in any way—was 12.

An ABC report noted that an eyewitness described the scene in one word: “chaos.”

Student Thomas Wing said he was walking out of the cafeteria after eating breakfast when he saw a gun.

He told CNN affiliate KOLO that Landsberry was trying to get the student to put the weapon down. After a gunshot, Thomas started running back toward the cafeteria. He heard another shot.

"I was thinking, oh my gosh, am I going to get out of this? Am I going to die?" he told KOLO. "My heart was pounding faster than I could run."

CARNAGE AT SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY PART OF A GORY RED, WHITE AND BLUE PATTERN.

The carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary garnered headlines last December. But the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut was just one of many. It’s all part of a gory red, white and blue pattern. There were ten school shootings in 2010. There were eight school shootings in 2011. In 2012, there were a dozen awful incidents. Forty-two students and teachers were slaughtered. Seventeen were wounded.

This year the killing continues:

A 17-year-old student at Lanier High in Austin, Texas, died earlier this month after he pulled a gun and committed suicide in the school courtyard.

A 15-year-old at Carver High School in Winston-Salem, N. C. was shot in the neck by an 18-year-old classmate just as a fire drill ended. Somehow, the victim was not safe even though an armed school resource officer (a policeman assigned to the school) saw the shooting and arrested the gunman almost immediately.

In August bullets flew at Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy near Atlanta when a deranged individual carrying an AK-47 opened fire. This time students, faculty and police were probably saved, not by a gun, but by Antoinette Tuff. Tuff, a school secretary, managed to talk the shooter into laying down his weapon.

Six died in a bloodbath at Santa Monica College in June and four others were wounded. The assailant was garbed in black and wearing a ballistic vest. According to police he carried a semi-automatic assault rifle.

The N.R.A. will insist, “We need to arm teachers.” Perhaps they mean we should arm them like Navy Seals, so they’re not outgunned during the next school shooting. There will be a “next.” You can count on that here in one of the most heavily-armed nations on earth.

Just hope your children aren't among the victims.

A student at La Salle High School in Cincinnati, Ohio was critically injured in April after he pulled out a pistol during first period and shot himself.

A former University of Central Florida student died by his own hand in March, after apparently planning a Virginia Tech-style mass shooting. He first pulled a dormitory fire alarm, probably hoping to lure more victims into the open. His plan was disrupted when a roommate stumbled upon him in their room. The gunman pointed a weapon and his roommate fled and dialed 911. The gunman was found dead soon after, lying next to “an assault weapon, a couple hundred rounds of ammunition and four homemade bombs in a backpack.”

January 2013 was a particularly gory month. There were eight incidents. On the 31st classes at Price Middle School in Atlanta were broken up by gunfire when a classmate shot a 14-year-old in the head. A teacher was injured and once more a school resource officer managed to disarm the assailant.

Two days earlier a 60-year-old Alabama man with mental problems boarded a school bus and shot and killed the driver. He then took a 6-year-old hostage and held the child for several days in an underground bunker.

Students at Lone Star College in Houston found themselves hiding in closets when a fight on campus ended with bullets flying. The campus was locked down, and three students were wounded, before police could take two individuals into custody.

Tyrone Lawson, 17, of Chicago, wasn’t safe when both his life and a high school basketball game he was attending were ended. In the parking lot, after the final buzzer, he was hit by multiple gunshots. And this, despite what school officials termed “a significant security presence both inside and outside the gym.” His mother remembered sadly: "He asked if he could go to the game. I gave him the money to go to the game, and [by] 9:30, my son was dead."

Another shooting occurred in the parking lot at Hazard Community and Technical College in Hazard, Kentucky. Three died, including a 12-year-old girl.

After a regular basketball game ended at Detroit’s Osborn High, a pickup game on a nearby court led to an altercation. A pistol was fired and a 16-year-old collapsed to the asphalt, badly wounded.

A dispute over financial aid ended in yet another school shooting. A student opened fire at the Stevens Institute of Business and Arts, striking a faculty adviser in the chest. When police approached in a stairwell he turned the gun on himself.

Finally, Ryan Heber—an unarmed teacher in Bakersfield, California—managed to convince a 16-year-old student to put down a shotgun. But not before the boy badly wounded a classmate, fired at and missed another, and not till Heber was hit in the head by a ricocheting pellet. According to reporters one terrified student called her parents from inside a locked closet. Another told her parents “she saw a classmate on the floor in a pool of blood.”

THE N.R.A ISN'T WORRIED.

Still, the N.R.A. isn’t worried. And gun manufacturers continue to enjoy record sales. In 2012, the FBI ran 16.8 million background checks on gun purchasers. In the first six months of 2013 the pace only accelerated. Federal authorities ran 11.4 million additional background checks during that period.

At this rate, perhaps safety will finally be achieved when every American is armed to the teeth.

Then, perhaps, school children and teachers will be safe at their desks. That is: unless a classmate or some crazed individual happens to be planning to open fire.


Addendum:

On the same day as the Sparks shooting the New York Times ran another editorial citing the mediocrity of this nation's teachers as a major problem in education. 

I will comment on this tomorrow.