The last time I was forced to get my troubled thoughts on paper was in the days following the Tucson massacre. And now after several more mass shootings, here we are again. Only this time the tragedy is above and beyond what even the most jaded among us can compartmentalize and certainly beyond what any of us can comprehend. We are living a national nightmare. This crisis can’t be overlooked any longer.
Our politicians and media put forth a great deal of effort telling us who and what we should be scared of. We are told that outside threats such as terrorism, illegal immigration and Iran need our attention. We spend billions of dollars and dump countless other resources into confronting these threats. What would be our nation’s reaction if one of these outside threats had walked into a school and murdered 20 of our children?
Would we not be moving heaven and Earth to make the changes necessary to prevent this from happening again?
The threat this time was a wealthy white kid who was simply a product of all that is American. He was the product of a society that does not prioritize or invest in mental health services. He was a product of a society that celebrates and immerses itself in violence. He was the product of a society that allowed Nancy Lanza to legally purchase and own, what proved to be beyond any doubt, a weapon of mass destruction.
This massacre is a sign of a society that is in decline. This massacre is a sign of a society that has stopped investing in its young people and its future. We are told that we can’t afford to fully fund our schools but that wealthy people need tax cuts.
We are told that mental health services must be gutted but that we can spend as much as the rest of the world combined on our military. The perverse gun lobby that has helped write our laws tells us that our “freedom” allows weapons of war to be legally purchased and owned. Our sick priorities have been exposed.
Upon first hearing of this event, my initial outrage focused on gun control. Why was the assault weapons ban allowed to expire in 2004? How can anyone honestly say that the writers of our Constitution intended for average citizens to own modern day weapons of mass murder? How could anyone say that the answer to this tragedy would be to add more guns to the equation by arming teachers? How can the National Rifle Association and the rest of the gun lobby say that people such as Nancy Lanza are “responsible gun owners?”
In hindsight, can anyone say there was nothing wrong with Adam Lanza being able to simply walk upstairs in his own house in order to access his weapons of choice? For the sake of our children, legislation for sensible gun control is critically needed and must occur immediately. This is now beyond obvious, and anyone who would ignore our children’s safety and block this action has lost their way.
The Monday following this tragedy brought me face to face with another major component of this incident as I returned to work in my role as a children’s mental health worker. Somehow I did not anticipate the tsunami that was heading my way.
I work with teenage males who have severe emotional and behavioral issues. They have various diagnoses, including autism spectrum disorders. For the last two days I have listened as hysterical parents have contemplated the terrifying possibility that their son could be the next to explode.
In some cases I have been able to confidently say, “I don’t think your son is anything like the shooter.” In other cases I have just promised parents that no matter what, we will stick with them and support them in trying to help their son.
I have been working with this population for more than 10 years. I have seen an increase in the number of children who need mental health services and an increase in the types of violent and aggressive behaviors that my clients exhibit. I believe we have a mental health crisis in our country, and I am particularly concerned with what I see everyday in our young men.
I don’t pretend to have the answers to this situation, but I do know that research and resources are paramount. However, as this crisis has worsened, those in positions of power in state and federal government have systematically cut the funding that allows mental health support programs to exist. Countless programs have been closed and many more are on their way out. Families are often left with accessing mental health services for their children at hospital emergency rooms, which often just send them back home.
Our current path is terrifying, beyond agonizing and unacceptable. The reality of the last several days has made that clear. Five mass shootings in four years has become the status quo. It is time for our national priorities to change.
We must start investing in our children with how we write our laws and how we use our vast resources. Those who say nothing can or should be done and choose to block action will be complicit the next time a massacre occurs. It is time to come together in order to create a better world for our children. They deserve it.
Jonas Allen grew up in Orland and is now a children’s mental health case manager who lives and works in Portland. He has been working with at-risk youths for 11 years and specializes in supporting families that have aggressive and unsafe children.
Once again, the answer is ‘gun control and more public spending’. Does it even matter what the question is?
You’d think they’d get tired of hearing themselves.
That was what struck me the moment I read the headline.
National priorities must change: “Invest…”
As if government can invest for a profit. Governments spend. That’s what they do.
Ours also murders women and children. Obamas drone. Campaign has killed hundreds of innocent little kids all,over the world…
Where is the outrage????
Jonas, you are correct that we need to invest in psychatric services. Too bad that we have a country of current and past politicians who, when they look at expenditures, pick mental health services as one of the easy targets to pick for cuts. This process is not recent, just ongoing. The dismantling started 60 years ago.
IMO, the politicians will do a dance around the maypole about gun control and do nothing for mental health services.
It sounds like his mother was shielding him from the system in the last few years by home schooling him. Why isn’t their any mental health professionals coming forward to say they were at least familiar with Adam Lanza? What possessed her to introduce her child with obvious social and emotional issues to real guns? With over 300 million guns in the hands of American citizens already, does anyone really believe that gun control will prevent these heinous acts in the future? Remember, McVeigh used fertilizer and diesel fuel to kill a building full of adults who were all armed to the teeth, plus 18 poor little kids.
“With over 300 million guns in the hands of American citizens already, does anyone really believe that gun control will prevent these heinous acts in the future?”
Prevent in total? No. Reduce the carnage? Unquestionably. Heroin is less available because it’s illegal; the same should be true of weapons of mass destruction. As the writer points out, the need for reasonable gun control is “beyond obvious.” Except, I guess, to people blinded by ideology. Will banning assault weapons solve the problem? No, but it will help. Show me the upside of allowing civilians to own military-style assault weapons. The downside is painfully clear.
I have to wonder which way the jerking knee would have been aimed if he had driven a hijacked propane tanker through the building at 80 mph killing even more innocent people? I do not own an assault weapon, or any weapon for that matter. I do not feel the need. I am simply maintaining that most of the solutions being offered up in light of the latest tragedy are moot points with over 300 million guns already out there. There were people screaming for a ban on fertilizer sales after McVeigh did his evil deed.
Here’s the essential difference. You can use fertilizer as… fertilizer. You can use a propane truck to deliver propane. The entire reason for the existence of assault weapons is to commit carnage against human beings. No one hunts with them. No reasonable person needs that kind of weapon for self-defense. Nobody but a survivalist whacko thinks that we need to rise up in arms against a tyrannical government, which by the way is armed with drones, cruise missiles, and nuclear weapons.
I don’t pretend for a minute that any legislation will solve the problem of violence in our society. But even half-measures are better than none. You position is akin to saying that because thousands of Americans will die in car accidents this year, there is no need for speeding laws, seat belt laws, or periodic vehicle inspections.
I disagree. My position is not akin to automobile deaths. Cars are a necessary evil, guns are not. If it were not for seat belt laws, speed limits, or vehicle inspections, the death toll would be much higher. My opinion is that given all the guns already out there, another ban on assault weapons would not prevent a single death, not one. It is nothing but after the fact warm fuzzies for people who hate all guns to begin with.
Why? Because it didn’t happen like the corporate media told you.
Do your own research.
From example, according to mainstream corporate media: it was Adam, no it was Ryan. ( btw Ryan hasn’t seen Adam in two years, how did Ryan get his I’d?) second shooter caught in the woods put in patrol car, shooter had two pistols, no he had a semi auto long gun, no he didn’t, mom was a “prepper” (really, a wealthy woman connected to high finance was a dooms day prepper?) the accuracy is amazing to have done what he did, no one survived? Really? No CCTV cameras? Really?
Why were bodies taken in the middle of night? Etc etc
Oh goodie! I love conspiracy theories. What was it? A ploy to increase gun sales? Make Obama look bad to get him to yield on those Bush tax cuts? A move to collect all our guns and turn them into leg shackles?
Conspiracy? You betcha. When followed from the very start the mainstream media completely fumbled this story. I realize you believe everything they tell you on the “news” show (it is a show by the way, important to remember that). The diverging stories are nothing short of irresponsible and amazing. Do you care to address the facts? Or ya just gonna cry “conspiracy” mention something about tin foil hats then go back to your tee vee? Probably.
But if you are actually curious and want some objective pint of view research this shooting on your own, then get back to me about conspiracy.
For example, and this is just a sample of the facts, the actual reportage from that very day, backed up with news footage in most cases: a second shooter emerges from the woods in camp telling people as he walks by ” I didn’t do it”. Where is he now? The shooters brother says he hasn’t spoke with him in over two years yet he had his current i.d.? The mother worked at the school the y said, repeatedly. Not n,y did she NEVER work for the school no one knew her! It was said the bushmaster was in the trunk. Then it was with the shooter. Which is it? Kinda important. Killing yourself with a bushmaster? Really? The story then changes again to say he had a pistol for the suicide!! He didn’t miss? the number of shots fired would be a lot! Meaning he would’ve had to reload multiple times. No one survived? Really? The police station is minutes away yet it took them twenty to get there? The mothers prepper story is laughable.
Do you have any actual thoughts on this story?
Much of the dismantling of our mental health system happened when a court case in the late 70’s released a lot of people that were previously committed because these people were not perceived to be a threat to self and others. Obviously history tells us otherwise.
It is likely to need another one to change anything.
The 70’s is when it went full speed. I know because my mother worked in mental health back then. She witnessed the expulsion of patients that were no threat to others or themselves. What the were was prime victims dumped on the mean streets of Philadelphia. It got to the point that my mother wouldn’t read the paper anymore because she was reading too many cases of her ex patients who were found dead on the streets.
But don’t worry your taxes won’t go up. All the effort will be about gun control. They will do a huge production dog and pony show centering on gun control and not one more red cent will be allocated toward mental health services.
I don’t disagree with your mothers experience. It may surprise you to know that I agree with you. Certain people even harmless psychiatric types really are a danger to themselves when they are sleeping on heating vents near downtown buildings or in dumpsters. ( I know of one person in particular) This person is unlikely to “open up” on people but there are many out there that would given the circumstances.
I recall, but can’t locate it now, a legal case in the late 70’s or early 80’s that made it harder to keep the mentally ill off the streets. That was when they dumped people and places like BMHI started to drop census.
We may need to revisit that. I’ll go you one better… I think we need to remove serious drug addiction from the “private sector” infrastructure. We are funding it anyway, with free methadone, taxi service, housing, crime increase and in a hundred different ways. Obviously drug addiction is a “danger to self” why not classify them as some order of mental/physical “danger” and remove them from society until they are clean? How attractive would drugs be if people knew they would be housed in a state facility with few “rights” if they were addicted?
I expect that many of the 1,800 addicts in the Bangor area would clean themselves right quick.
It is the measure of a “civilized” nation about how their prisoners and mentally ill are treated.
We score badly in the later. About 30 years ago, we got the idea that we should empty our mental hospitals so occupants could live fruitful lives in the real world. The result of which was lots of homeless people living on the streets. And when they behaved badly, they were arrested, imprisoned, and treated as criminals.
We don’t like to think of our children as ever being mentally ill. It’s almost a social taboo. And as a nation, this denial has begun to bear a horrible fruit. They may be your little boy or your little girl, but if they’re old enough to pull a trigger out of anger, they need to get help.
We are gulity of not giving it to them in time.
x
Stop feeding your kids GMO foods, fluoride water, and vaccines filled with poison! Maybe take them out of the govt nightmare called a school?
Wake up sheep. Don’t belive everything you read, hear and see. Specially when that voice or visionis corporately owned!!
Do your own research regarding these mass shootings. Way too many discrepancies…
Aurora and newtown related. How? Look into the shooters’ fathers and the libor scandal. Coincidence????? Hmmmmm???
How about big pharma?
Second shooter reports at both shootings!! Among many other inconsistencies reported at both shootings!!
And finally. The Oregon mall shooting was likely stopped by a civilian carrying a concealed pistol who had the shooter in his sights!!! WHERE IS THE CORPORATE MEDIA ON THIS?? Connect the dots folks…it ain’t pretty
Maybe end the poisoning of the population via flouride and vaccines.
GMO foods anyone?