Opinion Will I Die Today In A School Shooting?

Link (Archive)

Will I Die Today In A School Shooting?​

Will I die today in a school shooting? Did teenagers today attending Applachee High School in Winder, Georgia, ask themselves that this morning? As I write, four are dead and nine injured by a school shooting.

A pastor friend of mine, Rev. Jarmo Tarki, asked his teenage confirmands: what are the existential questions that deeply concern you? Recall that existential questions are life and death questions. They ask: will I exist or not? Here are two dramatic ones on their list.

1. When I go to school today, am I likely to die from bullets shot by a school shooter?
2. Will Earth support me in my old age? Or will global warming and ecological destruction so pollute the oceans and the atmosphere that I will either starve to death or suffocate from lack of fresh air to breathe? Will the present generation so deplete the planet of nonrenewable resources that nothing will be left for me and my children?

In this Patheos post, let’s deal with the first: will I die today in a school shooting? We’ll take up the second question in another Patheos post.

Is today the day I will die in a school shooting?​

First, fear that our death may be imminent creates uncontrollable anxiety. To eat breakfast and then go to school worried that today might be the day – well, that’s unbearable.

Second, our fear of a school shooting raises a moral issue. Not for the teenagers. Rather, there is a moral responsibility on the shoulders of the older generation, namely, to keep schools safe. This responsibility has been shirked. Those investors who make a financial profit off gun and ammunition sales benefit from the anxiety generated out of fear for the next school shooting. And the will of these investors has prevailed.

Which is more important: big profit or victims of school shooting? Our nation has made a choice. This choice leaves our teenagers with existential questions such as: will I die today in a school shooting?

Blog posts on school shootings and related massacres​

For details on the moral issue, try one of these.

Gun Safety Prevarication and Legislation

America’s Two Killing Fields

A Billion Bucks for Bullets and Blood

Two Mass Shootings Per Day

School Shootings Meet AR-15 Lapel Pins

Conclusion​

The deep anxiety rising up out of existential questions can be tortuous. When a teenager asks – will I die today in a school shooting? – my heart breaks.

My wife, Karen, and I wear tee shirts that read: “we can end gun violence.” We can. But we don’t. Is this the human condition?

 

[draggs]

My rights are inalienable. They don't become alienable because of the bad behavior of others. Fuck off

 

[Frank_Jaeger]

You're statistically about as likely to die in a lightning strike as a school shooting

 

[Neodanthril]

Are the social skills that anithomeschoolers constantly harp about learning how to not get shot when the school shooter comes knocking on their classroom door?

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

Yes.

Hold still.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

With that headline and article, im sure as hell hoping you do.

 

[KiwiFuzz2]

Me, personally?

Considering that I graduated over a decade ago, it's not likely.

 

[highly regarded 420]

How about nobody goes to school, everybody stops working, nobody gets internet, nobody has guns and we can all sit at home in our basements and coddle our offspring 24/7 until we grow together into familial centipedes whereupon we will roam the streets finding other assholes to attach our faces to until the planet becomes one unified human spaghetti.

 

[The Nothingness]

Depends. Are there any individuals that were notified to the FBI multiple times and they did nothing?

 

[CharlesBarkley]

Imagine being a kid worried about being shot at school. Then imagine that kid looking up auto fatalities or obesity related morbidities numbers and comparing the two.

Lmao.

 

[AllieKat]

Hopefully yes, you whiny shit heel.

 

[Northern Light]

You're statistically about as likely to die in a lightning strike as a school shooting

i believe walking to school is more dangerous as well.

 

[Vic Viper T301]

Unfortunately, Bettridge's law of headlines applies here.

 

[Otterly]

When I go to school today, am I likely to die from bullets shot by a school shooter?

Almost certainly not. The worry you have about it will do you more harm. But if you do want to reduce the chances, work for a world where mental health issues are prioritised. That means spending money on it. Perhaps spend less on illegal immigrabts and more on inpatient care for the sick?

Will Earth support me in my old age? Or will global warming and ecological destruction so pollute the oceans and the atmosphere that I will either starve to death or suffocate from lack of fresh air to breathe? Will the present generation so deplete the planet of nonrenewable resources that nothing will be left for me and my children?

There is absolutely nothing you can do about this even if it’s a genuine worry, which it probably isn’t. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Are you buying land to turn into an organic as possible market garden? No? Are you actively working towards cleaning up ocean plastic? No? Then shut up.

My wife, Karen, and I wear tee shirts that read: “we can end gun violence.” We can.

You can’t. As long as humans exist they will kill each other. Your T shirts are meaningless virtue signalling.
You ban guns? Do you think those Venezuelan gangs taking over blocks of flats will give a shit? Criminals? They’ll laugh as they shoot you.

Violence is the ultimate creator of freedom. You’re as free as the rights you can defend. You live in a society where you’ve largely delegated your right to mete out violence to the state. They’ve disarmed you and they promise to keep you safe. Guess how well that’s working in England? Not very well at all becasue the state doesn’t carry out its side of the bargain. And we can’t get our guns back.
You have the rights you can defend. If the guns go, all your rights will as well.
School shootings are awful. They got at the deepest emotions we have, to keep our kids safe. When such an atrocity happens we have a need to DO SOMETHING. We feel like we must do something. The knee jerk reaction is banning guns. Won’t help at all. Some bastard just walked into a dance class in England and macheted those within. The violent people are the problem. You need to create a society where there are fewer avenues for unchecked mental illness to go untreated.

 

[Wallace]

I spend all my time obsessively ruminating about how awful the world is and how this is everyone else's fault, and the only thing I do about it is virtue signaling online. Why am I so miserable?

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

It also shows, repeatedly, just how shit school security is. No one wants to do the hard work of actually checking if students are armed. We make fun of airport security, but that's because they're wagies playing Papers Please and miss things sometimes. Schools don't even bother to do that, so of course it keeps happening.

And maybe students should stop acting like faggots to each other. Do evil and evil will be committed to you.

 

[Spooky Dogwood]

It's hard to even address such retarded, disingenuous arguments. There are many things we could do to mitigate loss of life resulting from statistically insignificant events, but it will come at a great cost to quality of life. Kids don't even think about this shit. It reminds me of when I was a child post 9/11. All the adults were losing it, but the mentality the kids had were more along the lines of: "WTF does a building in New York have to do with me?" If you don't go to a school full of ethnic wannabe gangbangers, or if your school doesn't have an issue with chronic bullying that the staff completely ignores, then you probably have nothing to worry about. What pisses me off is that the schools and the feds will never properly be held accountable. Hey FBI, buddy, if he was "on your radar", if he was making obvious threats on social media, then how the fuck did you reach the conclusion that there was nothing to see here? "No probable cause"? He must have left an online fingerprint a mile wide, lets just blame the inanimate objects though, right?

 

[General Emílio Médici]

I sure hope the Author does. I would gladly see them dead in exchange for taking a bullet fired by a retard at a kid.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

Imagine being a kid worried about being shot at school. Then imagine that kid looking up auto fatalities or obesity related morbidities numbers and comparing the two.

Lmao.

Good point, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

 

[World Famous Quasi Payer]

Those investors who make a financial profit off gun and ammunition sales benefit from the anxiety generated out of fear for the next school shooting. And the will of these investors has prevailed.

How does the gun industry benefit from school shootings? Does the sale of ammo and firearms increase after a school shooting? Does it increase after democrats scream about gun control? Do teachers run out and buy handguns by the millions to keep in their desks? What's the link?