In the wake of the most recent school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, the protests, demands for change and political agitation that were virtually everywhere after the Parkland, Fa., shootings are conspicuous by their absence. It seems that the political will to work on this problem is missing. This leaves the problem in the realm where it ultimately belongs – personal responsibility.
Anyone who has gone through any formal firearms training has been told of the need to secure his or her firearms and keep them out of the hands of unauthorized or untrained individuals. The problem is, however, that the adolescents with whom we live often know how to access the firearms in spite of the security measures we think are securing them. Adolescents know how to gain unauthorized access to much of what we think we are keeping from them, and they have the time to work at looking for things such as keys and combinations.
People in the suicide prevention usually recommended the removal of guns from the homes of at-risk adolescents, at least until the crisis period subsides. Given the current environment in which we all reside, if your adolescent does not seem at risk, it would seem prudent to make some changes in your firearm security anyway.
If you use a gun safe with keys, periodically switch the location of the keys. If your safe uses a combination lock, change the combination periodically. If you feel you need to have a gun close by for personal protection, change its location periodically, or better yet, always keep it under your control. This may seem like over-securing things, but no one wants to be on the news apologizing for what one’s family member has done. You always need to be able to answer affirmatively to the question: “Do you know where your guns are right now?”
The harder part, of course, is identifying if your adolescent might be “at-risk.” Adolescence is a time when kids put a premium on secrecy from adults, including about what is going on inside. You won’t know everything your child is thinking or feeling, but you do need to take the time to both maintain an active dialogue and be an astute observer.
While people in the media and some level of common sense lead us to focus on anger as a warning sign to look for, what may be more important is social detachment. An adolescent who doesn’t seem to have many, or even any, attachments to others may be at high risk for suicide, violence or both. In order to know about your son’s attachments, you need to know about his day-to-day life, and in our busy lives, it is easy to lose touch with that. Observation, communication and dialogue with teachers are all important, and not just for problem issues.
New to many parents is whole world of social media, and in the aftermath of many recent shootings, warning signs on social media were often very apparent. Having at least a reasonable understanding of the themes of their computer behaviors, and what those themes say about their inner lives, is important.
While adolescence is a time of rapid change, including trying on new identities, drastic changes in a child’s functioning, such as appetite, sleep, activity level and performance in school, as well as withdrawal from people and activities he has been heavily involved in the past, can all be signs that something is wrong.
Thankfully, becoming a school shooter is statistically rare, though having suicidal thoughts or abusing substances are much more common. If you aren’t involved with your child, and aren’t paying attention, these things can slide right by you as a parent, and he may be struggling when there are ways he could get help.
While this may all sound preachy, clinical experience and exposure to years of data suggest that many (but not all) negative outcomes can be prevented, and in the “Live Free or Die” state, we need to rely on personal responsibility as a key aspect of that prevention.
(Mark Ciocca lives in Penacook.)