Last week’s shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas has understandably caused visceral reactions in many Americans. We expect our children to be safe in our homes and in our schools. It shakes us to our core when they are not.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, there was finger-pointing, blaming, and recriminations. Meanwhile, politicians do what politicians do best: grandstand and attempt to score political points (here, here). However, the knee-jerk, emotional responses are often irrational, not grounded in reality, and are counter-productive, aside from making some of us feel better.
Advocates of stronger gun restrictions often point to school shootings like Uvalde and argue their motivation is to safeguard children. As horrifying as they are, mass school shootings are not even close to the biggest killer of our sons and daughters. A pair of Northwestern University researchers report that on average about 10 people, including students, faculty and staff, have been killed annually in mass shootings since 1996. Of course, this is 10 deaths too many.
Compared with other school-related fatalities, mass school shootings are not the biggest threat to our nation’s youth. Each year, an average of 800,000 injuries, about one-fifth of all injuries suffered by school-aged children, occur at school. The other, deadlier causes that affect school-aged children do not get the same amount of attention from social activists and like-minded media outlets, as do mass shootings.
Self-inflicted death is among the biggest threats to adolescents. At more than 6,200 deaths annually, suicide is the second leading cause of death for high school teens and young adults ages 15 to 24. And it’s on the rise. On this troubling trend, most politicians and media are silent.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports 1,241 people were killed in school transportation–related crashes between 2008 and 2017. This included school buses, private vehicles, bicycles, and walking. The death toll of around 124 people annually is more than 10 times larger than school mass shooting incidents. Yet no one is calling for a ban on yellow school buses.
According to analysis of three decades of FBI data, an average of 498 children of all ages are killed by their parents each year. Of these, 52 children between 7 and 17 years old are killed annually. This figure is demonstrably higher than school mass shootings, but no gun control advocate is known to be campaigning on eliminating filicide.
In addition to demanding new gun ownership restrictions, some politicians have called for the regulation of video games as a gun-violence instigator. But are violent video games really to blame?
Still, reducing gun violence in schools is an admirable goal. But activists are ignoring critical details that may identify the root causes of gun violence.
Let’s examine the shooter rather than the inanimate object. There is a profile of a typical school shooter that has emerged in the past quarter-century. The shooter is a male, from a broken home, and was taking or had taken a Schedule II medication. A Schedule II drug is a heavy-duty category of narcotics that includes methamphetamine and cocaine. These drugs given to the would-be shooters are most often prescribed to treat ADHD, anxiety, or depression, and often have very serious side-effects.
Sadly, it's become too common to prescribe heavy duty medications for children, even the youngest of children. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2016 more than 6 million children aged 17 or younger were diagnosed as having ADHD; 388,000 were just 2-5 years old. Of this group, 62% were prescribed a Schedule II narcotic, including 18% of the 2-5 year olds. Should any two-year old ever be given a Schedule II narcotic to treat behavior?
It's not as if these shooters one day snapped and went on their rampage. So many exhibited worrisome signs of anti-social and violent behavior. According to a press report, fast food restaurant coworkers nicknamed the Uvalde gunman “school shooter” due to his unnerving behavior. Others, like the 2014 Santa Barbara, California gunman, and the 2018 Parkland, Florida shooter, had been reported to law enforcement, including the FBI, who did nothing.
One inescapable point common to school shooters is they attend public schools rather than private or parochial schools or are homeschooled. Perhaps the absence of a value system in many public schools is a contributor.
Another irrefutable point is society’s daughters also live under the same troubling circumstances of broken homes, have access to guns, and play violent video games, but schoolgirls are not mass shooters. What is the difference? An obvious factor is the absence of a father or responsible father-figure and his very critical role in raising a well-adjusted and well-behaved son.
Unfortunately, the importance of a responsible male in the life of an adolescent boy runs counter to the narrative argued by some political constituencies that the presence of a dad is unimportant. This attitude is not a recent phenomenon. Three decades ago, Vice President Dan Quayle was vilified by the political left and the media when he criticized the “Murphy Brown” television program for “mocking the importance of fathers.”
Data has overwhelmingly shown Quayle was correct. Children in fatherless homes are more likely to live in poverty, suffer drug and alcohol addiction, become victims of physical and emotional abuse, underperform in schools, are more likely to engage in criminal activity and become teenage parents.
If we truly want to end school violence then society must first stop unnecessarily medicating our children – especially our boys – with heavy-duty narcotics. Next, is the goal of having a father or father-figure active in their lives. These two steps will go a long way to reducing, if not eliminating, school shootings.
Mark Hyman is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, and Parler at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.
His books Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation and Pardongate: How Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Brothers Profited from Pardons are on sale now (here and here).