We will all be safer if we see a troubled kid as a call to action
There’s an urgent question about the Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, N.Y. shootings we must confront: How can we keep socially outcast, emotionally isolated 18-year-old boys in our own communities from exploding in grotesque, hateful violence?
Salvador Ramos, the barely 18-year-old shooter in Uvalde, was at first reported to have no known mental troubles. But when reporters started digging, they found that he had fought with his mother, who struggled with addiction, and with the grandmother he lived with. He had been bullied for a speech impairment, and called a homophobic slur. He was an angry loner. Online, he posted repeated threats of rape, kidnapping and murder against girls. He had shot at people with a BB gun. His co-workers at Wendy’s called him, among other things, “school shooter.”
One parent advised his son to stay away from Ramos. One of the girls he threatened on the social app Yubo reported him, but nothing was done. Others didn’t bother to report him at all.
Yet so far as we know, no student or parent raised concerns about him with his school, or with child welfare authorities.
Payton Gendron, the Buffalo shooter, was also 18. He had two mental health evaluations, both brief, and with no follow-up. He also had a furtive online life, where he learned to turn his rage onto Black and brown people and Jews.
It would be folly to believe that no young person in our community is at risk of becoming overwhelmed by similar darkness and rage. We just don’t know how many.
We do know that kids’ emotional health suffered during the pandemic. As one teacher told us, “It wasn’t great before the pandemic hit.” But while girls are more likely to attempt suicide, boys seem more likely to turn their despair and anger against others.
The chronic shortage of mental health professionals who treat kids hasn’t gotten any better, and is worst in rural areas.
We are encouraged that our schools are investing in “social and emotional learning” that educates kids about how to name and manage their own feelings, and how to have healthy relationships.
But kids need more: more attention, more supervision, more eye-to-eye, smile-to-smile contact with adults, more affection, and more affirmation of their uniqueness and worth.
Kids also need to know that if they report concerns about another young person to an adult, they will be acted on. It’s not enough to just tell a child or teen to avoid another kid who is deeply troubled.
A kid who is troubled is a call to action — deep, lasting action through deep, lasting relationships with one or more adults who can see and nurture the best in them.
So while we strongly support banning the sale of military-style assault rifles and tightening gun registration laws, we don’t need to wait for that to happen to start making our kids and communities safer.
We will all be safer if we become a more kid-centered community. We don’t need new laws to do that; we need more volunteers and more donors to child and youth programs. Local kid-focused organizations that need help include the Bridge Music Project, Community Youth Services, TOGETHER!, Pizza Klatch, and Big Brothers Big Sisters. They all welcome volunteers. Volunteering in schools also is an option.
We also need more families that open their homes and hearts to their kids’ friends who need emotional support and respite from neglect or conflict.
There is no single cure for mass shootings. Even if, like Canada, our leaders banned gun sales tomorrow, we would still be living in a country with more guns than people.
Violence is a tree with many roots: racism, childhood trauma, poverty, alienation, toxic masculinity, and poisonous online content have all helped bring us to this low point in our national life.
The responsibility for change sits on all our shoulders, not just on Congress.
