Just as news has been spreading of yet another shooting at a high school today (Arapahoe County, Colorado), a sobering report came out today from The Washington Post. The report, titled Not Only Newtown, cites how nearly 100 children were killed by gunfire last year. The reason for highlighting this particular number of children, and naming them in this breakdown, is their ages. The oldest child noted was just ten years old.
Ten years old, the oldest. Six months, the youngest.
Any unnatural loss of life, particularly as a result of violence, is terrible, but when the victims are children, it hits us harder. At these ages, however, the feeling is almost numbing. Innocent lives ended far, far too soon.
What particularly struck me about this report is the inclusion of the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, last year. (The one-year anniversary is tomorrow.) What struck me was not just the reminder of the Sandy Hook shooting, but the sheer number of those murdered. More specifically, while the sheer number of those murdered in Sandy Hook is terrible, twenty-eight in all, the number of children murdered there (twenty) is but a fraction of the total noted in the report.
Think back to the shooting in Newtown: horrifying...saddening...angering. So many young lives cut down. And yet, the twenty young lives lost at Sandy Hook represents less than one-quarter of children aged ten or younger killed last year. In fact, the actual percentage is closer to just over one-fifth of these young lives lost in 2012.
Just over one-fifth of all those killed for the entire year.
The report cites mass shootings, angry or distraught (ex-)boyfriends, angry or distraught parents, and drive-by shootings as the main settings and dynamics for these senseless deaths. Approximately two-thirds of the shooters suffered from some form of mental illness, making arguments in favor of more steps being put in place to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally-challenged still germane, while .
We, as a society and a nation, need to pay attention. We need to see when someone is unstable, for whatever reason., and we need to address the issues. We need to be open about addressing these problems, avoiding judgment and shunning. Those in power of regulating mental health care need to step up and make a broken system whole again, just like those for whom they are meant to care. Those in power, particularly politicians, need to get involved, and not just talk about it and put forth minimalistic actions.
This will never be acceptable and it must stop! We must pay attention to what has gone before and we must do something to stop this epidemic.
Terry
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