


Please know that I am NOT saying these young shooters are not culpable for their crimes! I too was an outcast, ostracized and excluded, yet I never became a mass shooter or hurt anybody but myself. In my mind, the people who commit these crimes are to be punished to the greatest extent of the law! But I do understand that these young people are being brought up in a world they believe is supposed to be fair, they feel entitled to justice and will bring it to reality through the fantasy in which they immerse themselves. The point of this article was not make excuses for mass shooters or try to explain away the pain of the families of their victims with stories of the shooters own victimization, it was meant to show that gun violence can be avoided through attention and action. We need to pay attention to our young people and the choices they are making. Just because it is common belief that teenagers hate their parents and want nothing to do with them, that does not give parent the permission to shirk their duties, if anything it should motivate parents to be respectfully intrusive and justly disciplinary. If we see something in a young person that seems to point towards violent behavior we need to take the necessary steps to redirect that behavior. The video games are not to blame, the guns are not to blame, we must look to ourselves as parents, educators, and mentors and determine if we are truly working to make the lives of our young people positive, productive, and constructive.