Image Description: #NEVERAGAIN in white bold letters against a sepia-tinted photograph of a school with trees in the yard, beneath a partly-cloudy sky.
Content Warning: School Shooting, Mass Shooting, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, E’Cole Polytechnique, Sandy Hook, NRA, ableism, ableist language
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Forgive me a moment while I delve into US current events. It’s not very often that I use the word “inspired” (especially in connection to US politics, with apologies to my American readers, but keep in mind that I’m not really inspired by Canadian politics at any given time, either.) I was not inspired on Valentine’s Day. I was, along with America and with most of my Canadian friends, shocked at saddened by the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. I am, however, inspired by the actions since of student activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and their passion to make that what happened at their school never happens again.
It Never Gets Easier
America, you must never make the mistake of thinking that Canada doesn’t pay attention when these terrible events happen in your country – school shootings are relatively rare for us, but not so rare that we don’t remember what they feel like, and prepare students with lock-down drills. With a niece who is now school age, and another niece and a nephew that will be before too long, and family members and friends who are teachers, my fear and sadness around school shootings increases in intensity with each report of another incident.
So I was sad, and prepared to be sad all last week, the way I was after Sandy Hook, the way I get in early December each year when Canada remembers the 14 women killed and 14 other people injured at L’Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. The shooter was targeting women (feminists, specifically); he took his own life. I was 11 at the time, but I remember that day; it’s still difficult.
But then a Facebook friend shared the video of Emma Gonalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, speaking in Fort Lauderdale the Saturday after the shooting.
I was amazed. And as I’ve watched Emma and other students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas demand gun reform, I’ve continued to be amazed, and dared to hope.
Lighting an Activist Fire
I was a political kid in my own way, but it was quiet. My parents raised my sister and I to be informed, and didn’t discourage us from having strong opinions. When I was in elementary school, they listened to me talk endlessly about my concerns about endangered species and acid rain, and gave me stamps to mail my letters of concern to the Prime Minister, knowing that I’d get a form letter back, but letting me learn for myself and giving me kudos for trying when I did indeed get those form letters. As I got older and realized that things could happen to me and my friends that were unfair and that should make me angry, and eventually that it was okay to let myself feel that anger and put a voice to it, I started to resemble less and less the mousy kid who wouldn’t cry out if she was on fire.
But that was a journey that took all of my teens years and part of my twenties. The young men and women of Marjory Stoneman Douglas that take my breath away with the presence of mind that they exhibited while the shooter was in school, the poise and eloquence that they radiate now in their television interviews and the town hall with federal politicians and Dana Loesch of the NRA, all as they mourn the death of their friends and teachers – for some of them, right in front of them.
In high school, I was a reasonably intelligent, reasonably eloquent, well-informed, resilient young woman, but I couldn’t in a million years have done what these young people are doing. Even if you don’t agree with what needs to be done about guns in the US, you can’t disagree with their basic assertion that something needs to be done. And I think it’s important that we throw our support behind them as they do this difficult work.
I’ve been listening to what they’re saying: Emma Gonzalez summed it up nicely in a tweet the other night:
A gentle reminder that all we are aiming for here is stricter gun laws that make it harder for people to get guns (because it shouldn’t be easier than getting a drivers license) and the removal of Military Grade Weapons from Civilian Society. #BanAssaultRifles #GunContolNow
— Emma González (@Emma4Change) February 25, 2018
They just want the people who can influence policy, no matter what their political affiliation, to make a commitment to working toward real change, and keep that commitment. They realize that it’s not going to change overnight, but they want the process to start, and to not stall out.
It’s not too much to ask. It’s really not.
The Mental Health Narrative
I’m particularly impressed that the #NeverAgain activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas are so well-versed in the failings of the widespread focus on mental health issues as an explanation for why people become mass killers. Several of them have spoken out quite insightfully about this issue.
Mass shootings have a lot less to do with mental health issues than most people realize, but you wouldn’t know it from the way people like Ken Cucinelli, Dana Loesch, and President Trump himself have been tossing around words like “nuts”, “crazy”, “deranged”, “sicko” and other highly ableist terms to describe mass shooters who may or may not have been mentally ill.
The best “long story short” explanation as to why this is inappropriate is that it makes a scapegoat of mentally ill people, the vast majority of which aren’t violent and pose no risk to the public as gun-owners. I have had chronic depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for practically my entire life. I do not feel I’m a risk to the public, and have never had a doctor suggest that I am.
For most people “Are you mentally ill?” and “Could you potentially use a gun to hurt someone?” are questions that have nothing to do with each other. Don Lemon explains it very well, in a panel discussion on CNN Tonight with Ken Cucinelli and Van Jones (video cued to start of discussion):
Don Lemon: People keep talking about the mentally ill, and we keep putting mental illness and mental problems in one big category, and it’s not. It’s on a scale, just like everything else. You cannot compare a psychopath to someone who is maybe bipolar or someone who has some issue that is smaller. And sometimes someone is just disturbed and angry. It doesn’t mean that they are mentally ill, because they went in with a gun and shot someone, so to say that mentally ill people should not have a gun – mentally ill people aren’t usually violent. And we keep on pretending, or using, or saying whatever it is to say that mentally ill people should not have a gun, and they’re violent, and they’re the ones that are causing – it’s usually an angry person, or someone that is hell-bent on some sort of revenge. It doesn’t mean that they’re crazy. It doesn’t mean that they’re mentally disturbed. They’re just angry. And the bottom line is that they had access to a gun.”
Studies have shown that one of the characteristic that mass shooters tend to share more than presence of a mental illness by far is a history of stalking behaviour or of violence against an intimate partner (usually male-female violence.)
Criminologist James Fox identified some other characteristics that mass shooters tend to share:
- “…a history of frustration, failure, or disappointment.”
- A tendency to “…blame other people for their problems” and desire to have “…other people to suffer for what they have been going through.”
- Not much of a desire to live, because “…life is miserable,” coupled with a desire to “…have other people die as well.”
- No social support systems.
It’s not that there haven’t been people whose mental health status should make us concerned about them owning guns, or that there won’t be more, but deciding that any sort of mental health diagnosis makes a person ineligible to own a gun:
- Doesn’t make America any safer
- Contributes to the stigma around mental illness by perpetuating the myth that all mentally ill people are violent
- Violates the privacy rights of disabled people with no just cause
The activists of Marjory Stoneman Douglas obviously get this, and good for them.
I welcome their voices to the gun control debate, and to the disability rights debate.
The Voices of #NeverAgain and Marjory Stoneman Douglas
Here are some of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas crusaders that you should be definitely be watching and listening to right now:
Adam Alhanti – @AAlhanti
John Barnitt – @John_Barnitt
Sarah Chadwick – @sarahchad_
Jaclyn Corin – @JaclynCorin
Emma Gonzalez – @emma4change
Chris Grady – @chrisgrady5
David Hogg – @davidhogg111
Cameron Kasky – @cameron_kasky
Diego Pfeiffer – @firepfeiffer1
Delaney Tarr – @delaneytarr
Sophie Whitney – @sophiewhitney
Alex Wind – @al3xw1nd
I think I’ve got everyone on the #NeverAgain core team from Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Someone please let me know if I need to add anyone.
I can’t speak for all Canadians, #NeverAgain team, but know that there are a lot of us who are watching and listening and standing behind you. We will do whatever we can to help.
Keep giving ’em hell, okay?
Visit the #march4ourlives website to learn more about the March 24 march planned in Washington, DC
Image Description: Lit white candle against a dark background, with name of the students and teachers who died in the Parkland shooting in white letters.
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