I was going to leave the Michigan shooting behind, but an email from our friend Steve Klitzman contained a link to another comment about the Oxford tragedy which needs to be mentioned and deserves a reply. It’s a rant about the mother of the shooter written by Dick Polman, who teaches journalism at the University of Pennsylvania and spices up his blog with political commentary from a liberal slant.
The column is entitled, “The parents from hell: America’s decline in a nutshell.” Polman never bothers to explain exactly how or why America is in a state of decline, his conviction in this respect is based on a nutty blog that the shooter’s mother posted in 2016. The blog was discovered within hours after the massacre at Oxford High School took place and has since become Exhibit #1 to explain how and why an adolescent gets his hands on a Sig-Sauer pistol and kills four students at his school.
School shootings are the most horrendous and frankly, scary events. After all, schools are supposed to be (and usually are) safe havens even in the most violence-prone neighborhoods. To put it bluntly, most communities which suffer a school shooting are never the same again. In Newtown, they had to tear down the Sandy Hook Elementary School because town residents were traumatized just by driving past the facility after the 2012 massacre took place.
The other problem with school shootings is that even when a youngster is identified as having behavioral or mental problems which require individual attention by parents, professional care-givers and school staff, nobody never imagines that the issues are so dangerous and so immediate that a psychological and then physical explosion is about to take place.
The parents of the Michigan shooter had a conference with teachers and school personnel just several hours before their son began his rampage which left four students dead. Did anyone at that meeting inquire as to whether the kid had access to a gun? The school’s official statement says that “The student’s parents never advised the school district that he had direct access to a firearm or that they had recently purchased a firearm for him.”
Were the parents asked if their son had access to a gun? No. They were not.
It seems to me that this would be a much more important question to ask than whether a goofy blog written by the shooter’s mother in 2016 should be taken not only to explain why the kid did what he did, but also to support the idea that America is in a state of ‘decline.’
Adam Lanza’s mother dragged him from one shrink to another in the years prior to his invasion of the Sandy Hook school. James Holmes, who killed 12 and wounded 70 at the Aurora movie theater in 2012 was seeing a shrink at the time of this massacre event. The kid who killed 33 victims at Virginia Tech in 2007, had recently been discharged from a mental health nearby the school.
So here were three young men who together murdered 70 people in three school shootings, and at no time was the issue of access to guns raised by the mental health professionals who saw them, talked to them, and sent them on their way. And in all three situations, the shooters had been planning their rampages for months in advance – months when they were being treated for emotional distress.
Let me make one thing very, very clear. I am not (read: not) in any way promoting any idea that the professionals who saw these obviously disturbed young men didn’t do their jobs. Mental health isn’t like diagnosing the flu or Covid-19. It’s a terribly complex, multi-layered issue which in many instances we can barely figure out why it occurs or how serious a problem it has become.
On the other hand, how difficult is it to ask any patient or the parents of a patient whether the individual whose behavior is concerning has access to a gun? You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out, okay?
Somehow, don’t ask me how, but when the issue of gun access should be staring professional caregivers and educators in the face, a curious silence emerges, and the presence or absence of a gun is left unsaid.
So, the parents of the Michigan shooter were dopes. So, the parents of the Michigan shooter loved Donald Trump. So, the parents of the Michigan shooter didn’t believe they needed to lock their guns up. So what?
If influential people like Dick Polman would focus on the real lesson which needs to be learned from the Michigan massacre and ignore the prurient content of some stupid blog, maybe we might begin to figure out how to keep our schools as safe havens and, for that matter, make the whole society safe as well.
It’s called a gun, Professor Polman, a gun.
Dec 06, 2021 @ 10:00:03
As I keep saying “It’s the guns stupid it’s the guns.” However, nobody (including the NYTimes letter) listens to me either.
Jim Webster MD
Dec 06, 2021 @ 10:14:55
Spot on, Mike. Should be the first question to ask when someone is looking like they are in need of mental health counseling, etc.
I’m not of the opinion that ANY mid teen should be “gifted” a Sig Sauer or any handgun. Maturity level just ain’t there.
I had control of handguns when my old man was standing nearby and not otherwise. I was 22 when I finally filled out all the paperwork, got the character references, and obtained a NYS permit for my own first handgun, a Ruger Mk 1 22 LR target pistol.
In my case, I grew up in a gun culture household where guns were taken seriously, meticulously maintained and secured, and as the Old Man said, “a gun is not a toy”. What were these parents thinking? Thinking??? Oh, never mind….
Dec 06, 2021 @ 10:52:44
A parent who texts her son a message saying that she’s not mad at him, but he should learn to not get caught is a bad parent. Parents that buy their troubled child a gun are bad parents. Parents that abandon their child and flee when he has just been incarcerated are bad parents. Yes, it’s the gun and, in this situation, it’s the parents too.
Dec 06, 2021 @ 11:29:08
Maybe the presence or absence of a gun is left unsaid because of something called, boundary violations. Many doctors and professional caregivers do not see politically motivated patients counseling as appropriate professional conduct. And for those seeking treatment they can simply change doctors. Some may even take the avenue of a written complaint to the health plan’s membership services department which can send a powerful message that boundary violations by doctors will not be tolerated. If the problem persists, patients can file a complaint with the doctor’s state licensing board.
Now the threat of losing one’s license that they worked so hard to get would be quite a motivator for a gun question to be left unsaid.
Dec 06, 2021 @ 16:50:38
Richard overstates the risk to a physician. Even the Florida law, which was the most stringent and eventually struck down by the full 11th Circuit as violating a physician’s 1A rights, “…prohibited Florida doctors from asking routine questions about their patients’ gun ownership, unless that information was deemed relevant to patient care or the safety of others.”
So even Florida admits it’s all in the context. If my personal physician, who has been working with me for 20 years, thinks I am depressed, etc., and asks about guns or other potential harm-inducing agents, I trust he is looking after my health and welfare, not engaging in “politically motivated patients counseling”. If he suddenly out of the blue asks me about guns absent a context, I’ll ask him why he is asking. Its called the doctor-patient relationship. Now if Jim Webster were my doctor, I know what he would say…
Not sure there is a more recent article than this one, below, regarding doctors and guns, but here is a link.
Law, Ethics, and Conversations between Physicians and Patients about Firearms in the Home.
AMA Journal of Ethics
Alexander D. McCourt, JD, MPH and Jon S. Vernick, JD, MPH
https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/law-ethics-and-conversations-between-physicians-and-patients-about-firearms-home/2018-01
Thanks, Mike, for raising this issue.
Dec 07, 2021 @ 12:08:10
Thank you khal for the link. However, I never said anything about violation of any local law, state, or federal. So overstating the risk to a physician was not my intent. My intent is that there could be administrative action taken if one feels that their doctor is pushing the boundary for purpose for their visit.
Let’s say one goes to visit their doctor for a foot pain, plantar fasciitis, your doctor asks if you have firearms in your home. Then he announces that your family would be better off if you had no guns at all in your house. What does guns have to do with plantar fasciitis? Does the doctor care about your family’s safety? Or instead, did he/she use your trust and his/her authority to advance a political agenda? My comments were nothing but to say there are avenues one can take.
It has been documented that the AMA, AAP, ACP are urging doctors to probe their patients about guns in their homes. They profess concern for patient safety. But their ulterior motive is a political prejudice against guns and gun owners. And I believe that places their interventions into the area of unethical physician conduct.
As your article points out, “The particular advice offered, however, might be complicated by state policies like UBC and CAP laws.” So if you, as a patient, feel that your physician went too far in their questioning…there are options.
Dec 07, 2021 @ 16:19:49
All good points, Richard. I concur. My doc goes over my physical and my bloodwork and asks relevant questions. He has never asked anything out of the blue, in spite of various medical organization politics. Of course he and I both own overpowered motorcycles, so we do tease each other about having a death wish!
Dec 07, 2021 @ 17:04:57
Hmmm..
I see Dick Polman only prints comments that make him feel good. Whatever. Its his blog, not mine.