School Shootings: The Elephant in the Room

commentary by Monomakh…………..

Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz. The face of a VERY mentally ill young man!!

Before I begin this post I want to say that nobody wants to believe they have a family member with mental and emotional problems and no parent wants to believe that their child has those kind of problems either. Dealing with a relative or a child with these problems is very hard on the families to say the least. It is extremely stressful on these families and often it is also very difficult to admit the problem and/or to get help with the family member or child. Everyone wants everything to be ok but sadly we don’t live in a perfect world and in families where everything is not ok dealing with a disturbed child or family member can be devastating. Such is the case, I believe, concerning Nikolas Cruz the 19 year old young man who killed 17 people at the high school in Florida yesterday. As hard as it might be to understand or admit everyone involved in the horror yesterday is a victim including Cruz.

The liberals wasted no time yesterday immediately following reports of the mass killings pushing their agenda, gun control. Some of them even talked as if the AK-47 Cruz used just got up and went to the high school and shot 17 people. But, the gun didn’t kill those 17 innocent victims because the fact is that those 17 victims were murdered by the young Nikolas Cruz! Nickolas Cruz a 19 year old young man with a lot of emotional and psychological problems who over the YEARS had given out NUMEROUS warning signs and red flags to which, sadly, few paid attention. And to top it off people who knew him said yesterday that they were NOT surprised by his actions!

Cruz is just the latest example of a rash of shootings carried out by youth with mental problems. We say the same M.O. in the Sandy Hook shooter, the Columbine shooters, the Colorado theater shooter, and most of all of the rest of such shooters. And our response is also the same because following these shootings we start pushing political agendas pro and con gun control as we continue to ignore the elephant in the room!

Cruz is described as a “loner.” Some described him was “weird” and “very angry inside.” Oh, indeed he is very angry inside! In fact, I am 100% certain that this young man often rages inside himself. In the past he’d made threats to other students and teachers and at one point teachers were advised not to let him on the school campus. Last year he was expelled from the school for “disturbing behavior.” In one incident in Middle School, Cruz kicked out a window and cussed his teacher out in yet one more of I’m sure a long line of violent behavior demonstrations. All these are red flags and warning signs or should have been indicating that there was something very wrong with this child and now this young man! From what I understand he was on psychiatric medication and under the care of a community counseling center. That’s all find and well but he likely should have been institutionalized long before now. Problem was no one really wanted to deal with this young man so they ignored him and his very disturbing behavior or they simply minimized it.

Cruz and his brother were adopted by the Cruz family and a family member said yesterday that they’d have several problems with both. Ah yes, rejection causes problems, anger, and even rage and I’m sure that is what Cruz and his brother feel over having been given up (rejected) by their natural parents. The adoptive father died a few years ago and the adoptive mother just died a few months ago, reportedly. I’m sure Cruz feels he has no one! I’m sure the passing of his adoptive mother angered him making him even more angry inside. I’m sure he became so angry inside that he just wanted to strike out and make others hurt the way he hurts inside. And that’s exactly what he did yesterday!

The story is the same or very similar in all of the cases with these young shooters. On medications, angry, violent behavior, somewhat sadistic, weird acting, rejected by family and peers to varying degrees, loners! Angry…very angry young males full of rage inside and when it explodes it REALLY explodes! And in all of these cases all of these youth gave us plenty of red flags and warning signs yet we ignored them or we minimized them! And now that they’ve carried out their vile deeds by killing people we want to talk gun control and ignore the elephant in the room! These shootings are not about gun control. The elephant in the room is MENTAL ILLNESS!! Every one of these shooters has been severely mental ill and they are mentally ill people with guns! Guns they would have gotten no matter what our gun control and if they couldn’t then they’d simply got a hold of another weapon likely one more deadly than a gun!!! Think about it.

How much longer do we pretend these kids don’t have MAJOR problems? How much longer do we ignore them and minimize all of the red flags they are throwing up at us? How many more of these shootings must happen before we acknowledge the problem (mental illness) and get these kids some help instead of waiting for them to explode? How much more?

No one wants to deal with these kids for some reason. Their families don’t want to admit that there is something VERY wrong with these kids! Their schools don’t want to admit it! Yet there is something very wrong with them as these youth are, in my opinion, violently psychotic!! I’m glad President Trump gets it because yesterday he pointed out that Cruz had given many warning signs in the past and that he had big mental problems. Now if the rest of teh country would only GET IT!!

We can enact all of the gun control we could ever desire and NONE of our laws are going to stop any of these youth from killing people in mass in the future! Like I said, if they can’t get a gun they’ll use of make something else that just might be even more deadly! Make no mistake about it. NONE of these youth are idiots. In fact, most of them are highly intelligent.

Most of us have no idea what it is like to have someone in your home who is very mentally disturbed especially when it is your own child. Most of us cannot imagine the overwhelming stress in dealing with such a person in the home. In such homes almost every moment is like walking on pins and needles because you never know what the person is going to do next. You never know when he might “go off” into a rage! You never know when he might threaten you or the others in the home! You never know when you go to bed if you are going to wake up alive the next morning!! In fact, in such homes you never know anything for certain! So what do you do? You become afraid of them and just try to “keep the peace.” You downplay their disturbing behavior and pretend like it “just ain’t so.” You do this because you just want to be a “normal family” like everyone else in the neighborhood. But, deep down inside you know you’re not and as a parent that just rips your guts out inside!!

And then you might come to a point where you try to get the disturbed family member some help such as the Cruz family did. You get the person to a therapist and get them some medication hoping to God that this will “fix” the problem. Sometimes it does but sometimes it doesn’t. Then what? What do you do when nothing works? You go back into denial acting if it’s all ok when you know NOTHING is ok. And so, you come to the end of your rope with the child or family member. You throw up your hands in frustration and sometimes just give up. You’ve done all you can do and nothing works! And so you return to denial, that is, until the kid, the family member does something like Nikolas Cruz did yesterday. And then, then, all the years of problems, disturbing behavior, the tears, the fights and arguments, the denial, and everything else comes falling down on you like a brick wall!! And I’m very sure that this is the way that the Cruz family is feeling this morning after yesterday’s horrendous events.

Clearly, Cruz and all of the other shooters were a danger to others but they also were/are a danger to themselves because the are MENTALLY DISTURBED! They have MAJOR psychological problems and issues! These are the REAL problems. The guns are just a symptom of the real problem! These kids are very angry inside and that anger is on a level that most of us cannot even imagine. These kids hurt inside to a degree that is beyond inconceivable. These kids, these shooters, are just as much victims as the people they killed and these kids have been VICTIMS for a long, long time. All of the red flags they’ve thrown up in the past years have been mostly ignored and/or downplayed by US! All of the cries for help have gone unheard by US! That is a “shame on us” folks! Shame on us as parents, as teachers, and as a society!!

Are police, our schools, our parents…..they don’t need any more “training” in order to deal with these youth because it doesn’t take a rocket scientists to know that there is something VERY WRONG with a youth who threatens to kill other people or busts a window out while cussing at a teacher or parent. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that there is something very wrong with a youth who flies off into a rage and is out of control behaviorally! Rather than more training what IS needed is that we need to START paying attention to the RED FLAGS! And when we see one of those red flags we need to step in and do something about it!! We need to get these youth HELP!! Help BEFORE they do something like Cruz did yesterday in Florida.

Some of these youth choose to kill like Cruz did yesterday as their way of striking out. But, sadly, MOST of these youth choose to do something else as their way of striking out. That is, they commit SUICIDE! The suicide rate among our youth is outrageous and out of control and that should be our first clue that something is very WRONG in our society, in our country, in our schools, in our communities, and in our families!! Others choose to strike out by committing sexual crimes or other crimes over and over again until finally they are locked up for decades in which they can stew even more. These youth need HELP and, frankly, we are NOT giving it to them! Instead we are concerning ourselves about gun control, ignoring them, or minimizing their HIGHLY disturbing behavior. And we really think the problem is just going to magically go away? Seriously? I’ve got news for you. For as long as we continue to ignore these youth and not give them the help they need we are only going to see more and more shootings, suicides, and commissions of other crimes!!

Mental illness doesn’t magically go away one fine day. In fact, without treatment it tends to grow much worse over time. It is NOT an act of cruelty to get someone who is disturbed the help they need. It is NOT inhumane to force someone who is disturbed into psychiatric treatment including long-term treatment. What is inhumane and cruel is minimizing their disturbing behavior and ignoring them! What is inhumane and cruel is not acknowledging the red flags and pretending like all is A-ok!

At some point we as parents, teachers, police, and as a society are going to have to deal with this GROWING problem in our society. Ignoring it and pretending it doesn’t exist is NOT the answer! These kids are very disturbed mentally and behaviorally and there is no doubt whatsoever about that. WE as the ADULTS owe it to them to get them all the help they need so that things like happened yesterday in Florida will NEVER happen again.

None of this justifies what Cruz did yesterday.  What he and what the other shooters in the other incidents have done is horrendous and even evil.  Life is about choices but, frankly, youth like Cruz are UNABLE to make positive and rational choices.  Cruz wasn’t some domestic terrorist or common criminal with a gun.  He was a MENTALLY ILL young man with a gun and THAT is both dangerous and sad!  It’s time we as a society and nation confront the elephant in the room and deal with all the side issues later because these youth are NOT about our politics.  They are about saving HUMAN LIVES!