Reading the papers or watching the TV news, you'll probably get the idea that the world is a dangerous place full of crime and mayhem. Just look at the number of school shootings. What's the cause of all this increased violence?
The cause may be simply a matter of numbers. It has been estimated that one in every hundred individuals is mentally deviant to the point where institutionalization may be legitimately considered as a means of protecting society. Unfortunately, that individual must usually commit some horrendous act before being identified as a threat and before the judicial system can act. Furthermore, safeguards involving the rights of minors make any such preventive moves especially difficult, if not impossible, when it comes to youngsters. Now when you consider the growing population, it's obvious that the number of students in school who fall into that one in one hundred category is going to rise proportionally. There are many more children around today than there were a couple of generations ago so, just going by the numbers, you're naturally going to see more examples of extreme behavior.
And you will indeed be sure to see these examples of extreme behavior because that's exactly the kind of story upon which the media concentrates. Events become news not because they reflect the real world but because they stand out...because they are so very unusual. One student shooting up his high school will be reported around the world while the millions of kids who showed up and did nothing more than chew gum during a history class will be ignored. In fact, it's been said that what you read in the papers and see on the TV is mostly an example of what's not going on in the average person's everyday life. The fellow who hits the lottery typically hits the front page but that hardly means the number of millionaires in your neighborhood will be going up anytime soon.
Then too, there are always a host of "experts" waiting in the wings to tell us why people in general - and kids in particular - are going to the dogs. The opinions (and they are rarely anything more than opinions) proffered by these pundits go from violence in video games to sugar in the diet, from the politicians who were just voted into office to the politicians who were just voted out of office. The fact is that random acts of mayhem happen...pure and simple. Forming committees of concerned clergymen to study the problem and then forming groups of concerned citizens to write their congressmen mostly fall into the "But we have to do SOMETHING" category...suggesting no clear idea of exactly what or exactly why. Such pointless but nevertheless energetic activity makes lots of people feel good and gives the impression that something of value is being accomplished...at least until the next random act of mayhem.
Look At It This Way
As JFK is supposed to have said a few days before he was assassinated in Dallas: "There's no way you're going to stop a determined guy with a high powered rifle in a tall building." If accurately quoted, it was certainly a prophetic observation and the lesson should be clear. There are things in life that can be done and things that should be done to promote a safer and saner world. However, there are also very definite limits to just how much can be controlled and protecting everybody from everything is simply not an option. Perhaps the best that can be done is to sincerely hope that school violence remains enough of an anomaly to continue warranting those big - but thankfully infrequent - headlines.
