Suburban White Male Youth: Is our failure with these kids costing lives?

Columbine Killer/Victim: Eric HarrisWikipedia

Columbine Killer/Victim: Dylan Klebold Wikipedia

Keep your guns, keep your weapons. Keep anything you need to help you feel safe on this earth just as long as you use it and store it responsibly.  Now...Can we talk about our kids?



Maybe its just me, but every time we have another school shooting I keep thinking to myself about the mind and heart of the shooters that move to these kind of actions; or is this best described as a reaction?

My bathroom reading as of late is Patricia Cornwell's "Portrait of A Killer" Jack the Ripper: Case Closed.
To get in the mind of a forensic scientist as they climb into the mind of a deranged killer is fascinating.  With these school shooting scenario's,  we never get the opportunity to get into the mind and heart of these killers who I see as victims themselves, to see what we can learn.  We have yet  to see if we can save our son's.

I'm sure the Harris and Klebold families miss their son's dearly.  The tragedy of these actions is more widespread than we are willing to talk about as we scream over gun rights.  In fact the greatest tragedy is that we are losing these young men more and more not realizing that if we save them we save us all.

Cornwell would certainly make a clear observation that white young men from the suburbs (that somehow have knowledge and access to weapons) are now the profile.  As a nerd myself I would have to include a less than cool guy aspect to most of these kid's profile. You can call them young adults if you'd like, but typically it is a lost child who becomes young adults that have disconnected themselves from their own humanity.

Given this push to expand healthcare in America, it might be a good time to promote the necessity of mental health support.  Most of us find it in the comfort of God, but mental health is necessary.  One of the challenges that we all face in this fractured economy is the demand of making ends meet at all cost and paying the cost in the development of our children.  The sacrifice of keeping a parent in the home comes with the debate over earning enough money to put food on the table or having enough time to sit down and enjoy dinner with your children.  Few households are pulling of both tricks anymore.

When this dynamic happens in the inner city, our nerd kids go to the Boys and Girls club while or hip kids experiment with sex, drugs, gangs and petty crime.  In the suburbs the options seem to be different.  Many suburban kids will do the same stuff as inner-city kids, but for the disenfranchised child with access to weapons, the recipe for risk seems apparent.

As a parent, I am thinking from the mind of a parent and imagining what white suburban parents must be thinking right now?  Not my kid.  God knows that the chances are minimal that it will be your kid and I am praying against even the small chance that does exist. The truth is that public schools continue to test children to insure that they do not have other developmental issues like hearing, seeing or speech impediments.

My kid had a speech impediment.  At the time they told me I was a little angry because I have seen these kind of things go away over time and who were they to single out my perfect kid as anything but perfect.  Thank God for those tests and for the simplistic but necessary fixes that we used at school and at home to correct an impediment that may not have gone away on its own.

Can we create tests with markers that help to identify these types of emotional imbalances?  If we do not already have them I am sure Cornwell could create them.  This doesn't have to be just for white suburban males, we should test all of our kids to make sure they are not experiencing violent/suicidal emotions. However, if you have guns that are not locked up safely all the time, you might want to get your kids tested first.