Mental illness is addressed in the aftermath of school shootings but rarely before.

Official press release for recent school shooting in Pennsylvania.

When I researched this recent school shooting, I was listening to a news report that spoke of 5 school shootings in the past week.  

Towards the end of this letter, the school promises ongoing mental health personnel for all of the students and a heightened security posture.  Within a short while, the mental health workers will leave and assume all is well and the security standards will drop back to normal awareness levels.

If you ask the conservatives what the solution is, they don't really offer one, they simply point out that these shootings are happening in gun free zone's.  Somehow the rule that seeks to keep the potential for gun violence away from our schools is getting in the way of the shootout with crazy children who kill.  The goal inherent to this idea is keeping deaths to a smaller number.   Hopefully just one or a few people (and the gunmen) would be considered a success I imagine.  

Opponents of guns have questioned the reason that children have access to guns and whether or not we should simply deal with gun access through proper background checks and an examination of gun safety in the home. Gun advocates defy the connection between suicide killers and access to guns because suicide killers could use knives or any other means of murder.  It is hard to imagine them gaining access to something more dangerous than a gun, but the point is legitimate.

Here is where I get really confused by proponents of guns.  Often they blame the absence of God in our schools for the loss of morality and the subsequent killings, but then they declare that opponents are foolish if they think we can rid evil from our schools.  Apparently, only God can intervene in the lives of mentally ill children who might be considering suicide by mass murder.  Mental health professionals are only useful after someone gets killed in the school.  

Mental illness and the killing it causes may not be preventable, but it is detectable.

Freedom won't allow us to profile our own children in this way, but I am sure that we could.  We must be free from scrutiny and free to bear arms anywhere we want and we need to be free from religious oppression and free to worship in our schools as well. The land of the free, but are we very brave? With all of these freedoms, we sacrifice our children's freedom to feel safe at school . 

I sense a rise in home schooling soon.