Looking for some help on this one. I started it after Parkland and it's just kind of sat in the unfinished folder. Feels like the last portion with possible causes needs to be built up more. Any suggestions?

In the wake of the shooting at Marjorie Stone Douglas High School and now Santa Fe thanks to all of these amazing kids saying #neveragain our society seems to finally be ready to do something about our children's safety. What frustrates me is that so many adults can't seem to grasp what these kids get so easily. This is a complex problem that needs a complex solution. As (name?) said on MSNBC “It's not about banning all guns, you can't just say it's about mental so fund mental health” I really wish I could say I had the answers, but instead I have a lot of questions. We're only going to figure this out if we start asking the right questions and stop accepting the easy answers. The most obvious question we need to answer is why the hell is this happening?? The stock answers everybody throws out there is it's the guns, it's mental illness & it's bullying. I do have an answer to all of those and that answer is BULLSHIT!

The argument that it's the guns is the most obviously ridiculous on it's face. We've had guns in this country since it was founded but we didn't have kids using them on each other in school like this until the last 20 years or so. I'm a child of the 70s and grew up when civilians could still buy fully automatic weapons and military explosives but we never had them used on us at school. My parents' generation didn't have this problem, nor did my grandparents. Gun regulations are tougher now but the violence is only getting worse. Does this mean we shouldn't pass tougher gun restrictions? Of course not. If people want to go out and commit mass murder we should make it as difficult as possible but to pretend that in itself is going to solve the problem or that the guns are the cause is ridiculous. Mental illness as an explanation is equally ridiculous unless you want to accept that our entire society is insane (and I think a good case could be made for that), again mental illness is nothing new. We've had people with assorted mental health problems for the entire history of the species and yes we have had people commit murders because of it, but are we really supposed to believe it has grown so drastically so quickly as to explain the astounding number of mass murderers our society is producing? This explanation seems to be really popular with Republicans and the GOP crowd because it means they don't have to take any responsibility or do anything. I find it really telling that the same politicians who blame it on mental illness (unless the shooter is Muslim or a person of color when they blame it on immigration and Islamic terrorists) want to cut funding for mental health resources. Bullying actually makes sense on the surface, but if you really think about it the logic falls apart. Again, this is nothing new but more to the point if these shooters are victims of bullying that get to the point where they can't take it anymore and snap why have all of them been straight white males? GLBT kids are bullied way more than straight ones, sometimes to the point of being beaten to death yet none of them have shot up their schools. Same goes for people of color. On top of the standard bullying for being “weird” or not having the right jeans, shoes etc. they also get targeted by racists so why aren't they shooting their oppressors? The list goes on and on, but you get my point. We need to stop looking for that magic bullet and accept that there is something systemically wrong with a society where so many of our youth want to kill each other.

Is it violent movies and video games? After all, most of the shooters partook of this fantasy violence. I don't think so. I think people are seeing a correlation and getting cause and effect backwards. I think kids that feel this compulsion for violence gravitate to fantasy violence as a way to satisfy their need. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe instead of helping them handle the desire it feeds it and the fantasy isn't good enough anymore. I don't know, but I think we should be looking into it. Maybe mental illness does play a big role, but if so, why has it become so common so quickly?? I don't buy the argument that it's the stress of living in the world we've created, after all my generation grew up during the cold war and my parents' generation had the Cuban missile crisis and Viet Nam but this didn't happen at either of those times. Part of the downfall of Rome was chemically induced insanity from lead poisoning. Could the chemicals in our food be driving the whole country crazy? I don't know but shouldn't we consider the possibility?