Another day, another shooting

By now, the story is familiar. Someone with a gun walks into a school and opens fire.

In the wake of the incident, “thoughts and prayers” pour in from all corners. In a week or two, the furor dies down — until it happens again and the cycle repeats.

Nothing changes.

Last week, an 18-year-old high school dropout armed with an AR-15-style rifle opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers and injuring 17 others, including three law enforcement officers.

The victims were mainly third- and fourth-graders, according to reports from law enforcement. The shooter himself, who reportedly also shot his grandmother in a separate incident, was killed by police at the scene.

It was the second-worst school shooting in U.S. history behind the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 and the seventh-deadliest shooting in the country since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.

This wasn’t in some far-off place. It happened one state away, raising the question — if it can happen there, can it happen here?

Getting a gun, especially in a rural area like this, where gun ownership is almost a birthright, is frighteningly easy.

Daddy’s got guns. Mom might have a few. Grandpa’s gun safe is overflowing. And don’t forget all those aunts, uncles and cousins.

In the case of the Uvalde shooting, the shooter waited until his 18th birthday and went to a gun store. Gun laws won’t stop a determined teen from getting a gun. That job falls to the family.

But aside from that, I think we have to find —and fix — the root of the problem.

Is it that we’ve become somewhat numb to gun violence? Has it just become so frequent that it seems to be an acceptable response?

According to an article in The New York Times, researchers and gun control advocates say that since 2013, they have logged school shootings — a term that encompasses any incident in which a firearm is discharged at a school — at a rate of about one a week.

“We have absolutely become numb to these kinds of shootings, and I think that will continue,” Katherine W. Schweit, a former senior FBI official and the co-author of a study of 160 active shooting incidents in the United States, told the Times.

In the years since the massacres at Columbine High School in Colorado, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., gun safety advocates have said that school shootings seem to have lost some of their capacity to shock.

It’s hard to be a teenager. It’s harder when it seems like everyone is against you.

I understand all that, even lived some of it. But when did it become acceptable to pick up a gun?

Is it a symptom of a much larger problem? What can we do to change?

If it seems like all I’m doing is asking questions, well ... that’s all I have.

Between bullies, cliques and the ever-present threat of pop quizzes, school can be hard enough without the threat of getting shot. School is supposed to be a safe place.

Most of the time, it is. But when angry, troubled or mentally ill individuals take it upon themselves to arm up and visit the local campus, it should become crystal-clear to all of us that something has to be done.

I don’t have the answers. I just know we need to have a real conversation about the problem and try to figure how to stop it.

Some will blame it on a lack of God or prayer in school. That can’t be it. Students can pray all they want, as long as the school stays out of it. Things have been that way for decades. Religion is personal. Religion is family. Some will blame violent video games, discounting the fact that, out of all the countries in the world where violent video games are common, the U.S. is the only one to have issues with school shooters. Some will blame guns and what they consider weak or easily avoided gun laws.

Placing blame isn’t going to help anyone, particularly since there’s no clear reason for any of this.

We need to figure out some answers — and quickly — if we want to prevent even more school shootings.

Otherwise, the cycle will just continue and more children will die.

Robert Cox is associate editor for Carroll County Newspapers. His email address is RCox@cherryroad.com.