MASS SLASHING SPREE AT
SUBURBAN PITTSBURGH HIGH SCHOOL
Alex Hribal,
the suspect in the stabbings at the Franklin Regional High School
is taken from a district magistrate after he
was arraigned on charges in the attack
on Wednesday, April 9, 2014 in Export, Pa.
(Keith Srakocic /AP)
TAGS:
PITTSBURGH AREA HIGH SCHOOL STABBING, 21 HS STUDENTS
INJURED,
MASS CAUSALTY EVENTS, KNIFE CONTROL,
CYNICAL
SATORICAL OBSERVATIONS,
PUBLIC
EDUCATION, EDUCATION INEQUALITIES,
JAILS,
PRISONS, PENITENTERIES AS MENTAL HEALTH FACILITIES
(PLEASE
READ ALL THE WAY THRU TO THE END)
(Thursday April 10, 2014,
Pittsburgh, PA) In the wake of a
slashing spree yesterday at the High School in Murrysville
that left 21 students and a
security guard with varying degrees of slash and stab wounds local, state and
federal leaders are calling for more “knife control” legislation. As the small town of Murrysville just north
of Pittsburgh was coming to terms with the shocking events of yesterday some
parents and officials were demanding that the issue of knife control to be addressed
as a serious threat. “There are far too
many knives in our society. People are
very careless with their knives. Some
knives like penknives, Boy Scout knives or pocket knives are not as dangerous
as kitchen knives, hunting knives, survival knives, carving knives, boning
knives, sabers, daggers, swords, machetes, and some of the larger bladed
implements that are out there”, said a man who would only identify himself as
Stanley for fear that he might become a target for a stabbing or slashing if
his identity was revealed. Others in the
community and here in Pittsburg as well echoed Stanley’s opinion.
In Washington, DC the Democratic
Senator and Majority Leader hapless Harry Reid went to the Senate floor late
yesterday afternoon and made an impassioned plea that “We all wake up to the
fact of knife violence. We should not
need to be reminded about this country’s knife problem whenever a mass attack
such as we witnessed today in a suburban Pittsburgh High School occurs. We should be dealing with making this less of
a knife culture all the time”. Democrats
have long been advocating for increasingly stricter knife control laws. The Republicans, on the other side of the
political divide, are very knife friendly and received staunch support and
financial donations from the National Knife Association (NKA).
NKA Chairman Dwayne La Sagna
made a statement at a hastily called press conference at the NKA headquarters
in Washington, DC. La Sagna commented
that “We all recognize that what happened today in that Pennsylvania high
school was tragic. However, if we
continue to just look at knives as the issue we will never reduce knife
violence and knife deaths. Over 99.9% of
Americans own and use knives for the same purposes they have and their families
have for generations. The knife is no
more a danger to our society in itself than is the crossbow. We have ample knife control laws on the books
and really need to look at the causative factors with knife violence such as
the mental health of young offenders. Knife control is not the answer. I own many knives and use them safely and
responsibly for many purposes. Maybe
parents should be teaching their children more about knives and knife safety”.
Dr. Arlen D. Stutter, a
clinical psychiatrist at the Western Pennsylvania Home for Lunatics, is a
recognized authority on knife violence particularly among young offenders. Dr. Stutter noted, “We live in a generally
violent society. As a people we tend to
be more aggressive in manner and actions, more impulsive and have plenty of
ways for us to safely, productively even, to express our aggressive urges and
violent tendencies. But the young people
who commit these mass casualty slashing and stabbing crimes tend to be shy,
introverted and, as is usually found in most of them, suffering from a more
significant mental health issue ranging from simple idiopathic neurosis to
schizophrenia and severe psychopathy. These
troubled youths need early intervention and most should be taking copious
amounts of anti-psychotic drugs”.
If the previous four
paragraphs seem a bit ludicrous it is because they are. They are meant to be. If you were to go back and reread them and
replace the word “gun” every time you saw the word “knife”, you would see just
how ludicrous those assertions and statements are. Make no mistake about it; yesterday’s events
are horrifying to imagine. That they
transpired in a school, a place historically of safety, security and refuge
makes them even more concerning. One might argue that had that 16 year old
student with the knives been armed instead with guns we would be counted dead
bodies rather than stab wounds and they are correct. To a point.
Accessibility to and choice of weapon notwithstanding, a person bent on
or driven to commit mass violence will achieve that goal one way or
another. The point here is that the topic of "gun control" is asinine. The issue, if it were to be addressed, is "illegal" firearms out on the streets being peddled as easily as a rock of crack or a bag of weed. Those are the guns that need control not the overwhelming majority of firearms owned and used by responsible people.
As Americans we have to accept
certain aspects of our culture and society today that may be a little
unsettling at first glance, need to be carefully considered when we debate
matters of crime, criminality, mental health, gun ownership, gun control and our
cultural obsession with violence. We are
a violent people; we always have been. Our
Country itself was born out of violence, practiced wholesale genocide on the
Native American population, fought a brutal Civil War and has never known the
true sacrifices that come with military conflict on our shores since the early
years of the 1800’s. The two “World Wars”
were fought overseas as were all the other military conflicts in which we
became engaged. Having not experienced war in our homeland, in our own cities,
towns and communities we have become vicariously violent as spectators of
violent sports, video games and more than jaded by the daily news.
Some will argue that we do not
have to “accept” these truths about our society, that we have the power to
change it. After all, we are not some
banana republic or “third world nation”: we are American’s dam it, and we can
change whatever needs changing. Alas, if
this were so. We are who we are; we do
what we can do. We might dance around
the fringes of an issue such as why many of our young children develop into
stalkers, bullies, murderers, arsonists, drug abusers, antisocial personalities
and exhibit all the various disorders defined in the textbook of mental
disorders. But, for all the fancy
footwork and dancing, for all the studies, panels, experts, blue-ribbon
commissions, peer reviewed papers and all the rest, we seem to wind up at the
exact same point from which we began.
For a country as big, diverse
and disparate as ours with a multicultural, multiethnic composition, free
markets, freedom of speech, religion and all the other traits that make our
country what it is, it is a little surprising why we do not have more crime,
why we don’t have more frequent mass casualty crimes committed. We number over 400 million in population and
are scattered over this part of the North American continent in big urban
centers surrounded by rings suburban and exurban living. We have smaller cities interspersed
throughout rural sections in the continental 48 States and our Constitution,
while a little strained and twisted, has served us well. Our public education system and criminal
justice system are profoundly dysfunctional and, if one were to believe that
those two entities are not intimately related, they would be very much
mistaken. If as a society we cannot
provide an equal education for all of our children regardless of any external
factors then we are failing as a society.
When our jails, prisons and penitentiaries become the go-to warehousing
place for the mentally ill among us we are falling short.
Our broad systemic failures in
public education also pose a serious national security threat. In a paper sponsored by the Council on
Foreign Relations and co-authored by two former Secretaries of State, Henry
Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice reported that an alarming number of applicants
to enlist in the Armed Forces cannot even pass the basic competency tests for admission
to the military. In a similar study
conducted by the RAND Corporation over 25% of potential enlistees were
disqualified because they could not achieve a passing grade on that same basic
skills test that Drs. Kissinger and Rice evaluated in their work.
Providing a basic education
for every child in the country should be among the very top priorities of the
federal government. State and local politics,
regional tendencies and any number of extraneous variables should not be
impediments to attaining that goal. Our
educators interactions with our children may be the only positive interactions
they have with an adult. This is not
about need or merit, nor is it about any of the other red herrings that
politicians like to throw out into this debate.
This is a nation-wide problem and it needs to be addressed in a serious
manner.
We do not intend to say or
even remotely imply that lack of education, poverty, bad neighborhoods or
whatever else can be tossed into the excuse pot are “valid” reasons for, or “causes”
of violence in our society especially among our youth. That is simply not the case. Millions of Americans over generations and
hundreds of years have lived in less than ideal circumstances and have gone on
to be productive law abiding members of society. We cannot perform some type of “Mass mental
health evaluation” for every child or teenager in the country but, the more of
them we can teach – actually get into a classroom and keep them there - the
better off we will all be. Having our
youth as “students” allows for them to be casually observed and unofficially
evaluated by their educators on a daily basis and it is that level of scrutiny,
that noninvasive or confrontational observance that might help a teacher identifies
a legitimately “troubled” student before they drop out and pick up a knife…or a
gun. Our public schools lose hundreds of
students a month to the streets or town squares. In some of our largest cities, the biggest
urban school districts, the dropout rates are almost at 50%. That should be unacceptable to every person
in the country, to every voter, to every elected official be they members of a
local school board or the President of the United States.
Until we assume the responsibility
as a people to provide an equal education for every child we will continue our
slow but sure backsliding and it will continue to get worse.
Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights
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