Another school shooting. This time in Rosewell, New Mexico, at Berrendo Middle School. This time two students injured: a 13-year-old girl in serious condition an an 11-year old boy in critical condition. This time yet another story of a heroic teacher. Only this time the teacher lives.
And this time a familiar question that has grown tiresome: Why?
As usual, the facts are almost clinical and now seem almost like they were scripted:
Students escaping New Mexico’s chilly temperatures congregated in the Berrendo Middle School gym before class started. Then, 13-year-old students Evan James and Kayla Koren, standing on opposite sides of the gym, heard a loud pop.
When they looked up, they saw blood and a fellow student on the floor, the victim of a gunshot wound to the face. A 12-year-old classmate holding a 22-gauge sawed-off shotgun stood nearby.
“I just saw blood everywhere,” Essance Sosa, 12, said Tuesday. “Everyone started screaming and running.”
It’s symptomatic of how an important segment of the once-innocent part of life called “childhood” has been stripped of its trusting innocence due to shootings in schools and the need to be aware of and prepared for the risk. Students in a statistically small number of schools could be traumatized for life by incidents unthinkable generations ago, parents in the back of their mind know schools aren’t necessarily safe and could be perilous, and news reports of school shootings seemingly imprint younger students who seemingly play out past school shooting “scripts” learned through movies, TV, news reports or word of mouth.
Events in the culture perpetuate future events in the culture.
Witnesses say that for the next 10 seconds or so, panic engulfed the gym and, eventually, the entire Roswell school Tuesday. Word began to spread that a student had opened fire, injuring a male and female student. Those who could quickly texted parents and friends, and worried family members began frantically calling the school.
Officials credit John Masterson, an eighth-grade social studies teacher, with saving lives as he immediately stepped in and talked the boy into dropping his weapon. Masterson then held him until authorities arrived.
“He stood there and allowed the gun to be pointed right at him,” Gov. Susana Martinez told a packed room of 1,500 or so people at a prayer vigil late Tuesday, “so there would be no more young kids hurt.”
Officials also credit previous “active shooter” drills by Roswell Independent School District for preparing teachers and students, who say they were ready for what happened Tuesday morning. Students say they even thought the shooting was a surprise drill at first.
Indeed: the bottom line is that teachers have to ponder the “what if” and be ready to react if it becomes reality, and schools have to prepare their students for a “what if.”
But the problem is less the ‘what if,” then the why.
The suspect will be identified. Stories will emerge explaning the specific trigger and stories will chronicle shocked friends and relatives of the shooter and those who were shot.
But the bigger, deeper question for schools and for American society is about kids who feel that when they’re angry, or sad, or vengeful the idea hits them that they should bring a gun to school and take out a some people.
Why?
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.