All We’ve Got
By Albert B. Kelly
In the wake of the latest school shooting at Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida with a body count of 17 dead,
I’m not sure what to think. I want to be shocked but I’m not sure that I am and
that bothers me. I want us as a nation to do something, but I’m not hopeful because
if the first-graders in Newtown, Connecticut didn’t move us to act in any
meaningful way to stop gun violence, I’m not sure anything will and that
discourages me.
We’re entitled to something more than Congress’s “thoughts
and prayers” and I’ve got to imagine that we can come up with something better
than a few throw-away lines about teachers packing heat in the hopes that maybe
a coach, a librarian, or a math teacher might take out the gunman before the
body count gets into double digits.
The fact that we’re even discussing arming teachers seems an
awful lot like a flag of surrender.
Forget for a moment that a teacher with a gun in a highly
stressful situation is as likely to hit a student as the gunman. And set aside
the fact that by some estimates, even trained law enforcement officers have an
accuracy rate of barely 50%; do we really want to turn our schools into armed
camps?
Honestly, I don’t have any quick, easy, or obvious answers. One
part of me thinks the shootings are a symptom of a much deeper dysfunction
while another part of me thinks it’s about mental health and every now and then
I’ll catch myself thinking it’s just pure evil- especially when I see the grief
of parents and families.
So really what we’re left with is the behind-the-scenes work
to try and impact youth and families for the better so that whatever it is, it
doesn’t explode in a haze of bullets in a school. These efforts are daily and
weekly and when stacked up together, they add up to a semester, a school year,
maybe even a college career.
It’s the Cumberland County Positive Youth Development
Coalition which has helped drop the juvenile arrest rate by 44% over the last
several years. It’s Station House Adjustment programs, a juvenile diversion
effort that holds youth accountable while keeping them out of the system; recidivism
rates for those in the program were down to 13% in 2015.
It’s the Police Athletic League connecting with our youth
providing them with a platform for building relationships and perspectives in a
positive and supportive atmosphere. In a day and age when it is all too easy to
become isolated and cutoff, these programs help to pushback against the
dysfunction that seeds so much chaos.
It’s the efforts like the Give Something Back Foundation
started by Bob Carr that has resulted in 48 full ride scholarships for
Bridgeton High School students and the efforts of the United Advocacy Group at
the Ashley Building after school and the AmeriCorps volunteers working with
nearly 70 students from the Bridgeton Public Schools.
It’s the Families to College Collaborative working with
dozens of families not only to help the high school student in the family make
it through to college, but helping entire families whether supporting parents
in adult education, helping them improve their job skills, financial management,
or connecting them with other resources depending on the need.
My point is that dealing with the chaos and dysfunction underlying
school violence and mass shootings will never be a “one-size-fits-all” strategy
or approach. The desperation and chaos evident in the eyes of a 17year-old
shooter looking down the end of an AR-15 assault rifle are years in the making
but this is not at all obvious or inevitable when talking about that shooter as
an 11 year-old. There’s no way to know which kid will end up so disconnected from
himself and his life that he grows up and goes wherever one goes to score an
assault rifle ahead of a shooting spree.
So you deal with as many kids as you can and you try and
touch their lives in a thousand ways in the hopes that they will have something
other than bitterness, hatred, and loneliness in their hearts. We do these
things for all we’re worth because absent any help from the feds with some
additional gun control, national data bases, CDC studies, or background checks;
it’s really all we’ve got….that and a few thoughts and prayers.