In the weeks since the tragic shooting in Jonesboro, Ark., there has been an avalanche of questions about the children who fired the guns.
Some ask “why?” Did the children watch too much television, or play too many video games? Is Southern culture to blame? Was family instability responsible? Are the boys mentally ill and, if so, shouldn’t someone have known? Other questions ask “how?” These have focused on the availability of guns.
As a pediatrician and urban mother, I have spent more than a decade considering the role of guns in the modern plague of violent death that has claimed so many American youth. My take on Jonesboro is built on this thinking.
I keep imagining what the Jonesboro incident would have been like if the attackers had used slingshots instead of guns. This mental picture makes it clear how easily guns turn anger into slaughter. Although it’s true that fatal injuries can be inflicted by other means, nothing is as user-friendly and as lethal as a firearm.
People keep and use firearms for different reasons in different contexts. In cities, some people keep guns for self-defense, and these are usually handguns. Many rural areas have family and community traditions that include hunting and sport shooting, so rifles and shotguns are more common.
Gun use tends to be a male activity, whether urban or rural. For many men, guns represent independence and self-determination. Further, guns can be an important link between fathers and sons. One way fathers express their love for their sons is by hunting and shooting with them. The effect is profound: Most gun owners are men and, in one survey, 80 percent of gun owners had parents who also owned guns.
The lore is that guns in rural areas pose no danger to children because they are a part of tradition. Yet in Arkansas, for example, the rate of deaths by gun is 65 percent higher than the national average, and more than 300 percent higher for children aged 0-14. Most of these deaths have been suicides, which is not discussed. The silence about suicides has helped hide the danger that guns have posed.
In this decade, guns — even in rural areas — pose more danger than before, because today’s boys live in a different world from their fathers. Today’s boys now grow up not only in their home communities but also in the mass culture of Rambo, the Terminator and Mortal Kombat. They grow up with images and games that model “blowing away” enemies. During the years of childhood and adolescence — when reality and fantasy inevitably remain intertwined and experimentation is normal behavior — the combination of the mass culture and living with guns entails a lurking danger. In Jonesboro, the danger became visible.
Part of what happened there was the clash of two cultures: a mass culture that is prepackaged and profit-driven, and that glorifies and sensationalizes gun violence; and a local hunting culture that, among other things, promotes the availability of guns, even to children. The mass culture gives new meanings to the guns that are around as part of the hunting culture, and this leads children to new uses of the guns. It is terrifying to realize that this is happening across the country.
In this situation, some gun-owning families are rethinking how to assess the dangers that guns present to their children, and the available means to protect them.
“Gun safety” courses seek to teach children to be safe around guns. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that these programs work: The vast majority — including those promoted by the NRA — have never been evaluated. However, we know that at least some of the children involved in mass shootings have gone through such training. “Practical shooting” courses, which employ human silhouette targets, serve to familiarize course participants with what it might feel like to shoot someone. One of the Jonesboro shooters had visited such a course with his father.
There also is not strong evidence that curricula aimed at preadolescent and adolescent children about the dangers of violence and guns succeed in preventing violence. In fact, for some children, such instruction generates anxiety and leads them to be more aggressive, even at times to seek out guns.
It is clear that within a pervasive mass culture that promotes violence — especially gun violence — as entertainment, children cannot be relied on to avoid guns, even after careful instruction.
This is true no matter where a child grows up, whether in the rural South or in a city in the North. And it has an important consequence. We shouldn’t expect our children to make such an adult choice. It is not enough to teach them; we must secure their environments. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends the removal of guns from the environments where children live, learn and play. For families who think they must keep guns in the home, guns should be kept unloaded and locked up; the bullets should be stored and locked in a separate location, and children must never have access to the keys.
Yes, we should tell them to stay away from guns. And we should also do everything in our power to make sure they never get their hands on one (except in certain sporting environments, under strict adult supervision).
By doing this, we fulfill an adult responsibility and let them know, “It’s safe for you to be a kid here!” Even the most macho teen needs (and wants) to know that is so.
When gun-loving parents do what is necessary to keep their children and their guns apart, they convey a crucial, modern message to their children: I love you more than I love my gun.
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If you are a gun-owning parent who would like to learn more about protecting your children (including safe gun disposal) contact CeaseFire at 202-429-1741 or visit the Web site at www.ceasefire.org. The Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence has additional information. It can be reached at 312-341-0939.
