I had missed this watching news coverage of the Wisconsin high school student who shot his principal dead:
[Eric] Hainstock said that a group of kids had teased him by calling him "fag" and "faggot" and rubbing up against him, the complaint said, and the teen felt teachers and the principal wouldn't do anything about it.
So Hainstock decided to confront students, teachers and the principal with the guns to make them listen to him, according to the complaint.
So Friday morning, he pried open his family's gun cabinet, took out a shotgun and then took a handgun from his parent's bedroom, the complaint said.
If true, it of course dosen't excuse murder. But the blind eye that educrats give rank homophobia in their schools is also inexcusable.
15 Comments for “The Wages of Homophobia?”
posted by Randy R. on
Nope, nothing excuses murder. Perhaps the question should be brought to our national gun lobby, which insures that guns are so easy to obtain and use.
And maybe even up in Wisconsin, people will realize that gay taunting isn’t in any one’s interest.
posted by Northeast Libertarian on
Yes, let’s pass some laws making guns illegal to obtain for criminal purposes. That, along with outlawing murder, will send rates of violence plummeting, I’m sure.
As for the taunts, it’s not much of a surprise that the institutional public schools are in such poor shape. They spent very large amounts of money to create what is roughly a center of trauma for many children — but don’t seem very good at the “education” part. Their primary remedies for dealing with potential “problem” students is drugging them or censoring their creative aspects, rather than providing a real environment for learning — and then they fly into the “how could this happen” cliche later, sans self-reflection.
posted by Jorge on
Better yet, let’s actually get the police to enforce gun sale and possession laws, build GUNSTAT to find out where the most violations are occuring, and hit the offending manufacturers in their assets. We did it with the murder rate.
This has been a bad week for gays.
posted by ETJB on
It is a horrible crime. However, in went to both public and private education in my high school years and both were equally homophobic.
posted by Randy R. on
Well, got any other solutions? People are dead because two guns were in a house. Now, of course I have little sympathy for the dead principal, but did he really deserve to die for his improper behavior? I think not.
Something failed here. There is plenty of blame to go around, to the principals, to the kids who taunted him, to the kid who shot the people, and so on. Why can we not also put some blame on the parents for having guns in the house?
I don’t know what the solution is, but something is very wrong here.
posted by kittynboi on
“”””Something failed here. There is plenty of blame to go around, to the principals, to the kids who taunted him, to the kid who shot the people, and so on. Why can we not also put some blame on the parents for having guns in the house?””””
I don’t support gun control, but I do have to concur that it is, at the very least, extremely troublesome that when a school shooting occurs, its completely acceptable to blame anything and everything except guns.
It seems only the very left of center media outlets are willing to do so.
I have my own ideas of where the blame lies, and guns is not one of the targets.
But still, that guns are seemingly the only area in such debacles that is off limits in mainstream discourse is at least noteworthy.
posted by Northeast Libertarian on
The problem is not a “lack of focusing on guns,” but rather a lack of focusing on the underlying causes.
In the UK, the emphasis has been the “epidemic of knife violence” due to the lack of availability of guns there. Hasn’t changed the core problem — violence — in the least. The government response? Ban knives, even basic Swiss Army knives, from all pockets.
So now the chosen weapon will shift, yet again, to something else — cricket bats, for instance — and the institutional regulators will demand that those be banned as well.
All the while, ignoring the fact that there’s a violence tendency leading to problems, and the chosen medium is just a technicality.
posted by dalea on
Some years ago another school in WI got sued for letting this happen to a kid. School lost big time, huge payout. Seems the message did not get through. Sad that sometimes it drives people over edge, they kill or wound. Don’t know how to drive home the message that bullying is wrong, especially to school officials. Substituting killing for law suits is not a good idea. Where could the kid have turned for help? Anybody know?
Banning guns is the sort of psuedo solution that usually comes up after these incidents. Like in Wisconsin where hunting is a religion, almost. Great idea. Sure sell. Wisconsonites live every year thru a hunting season where hunters shoot deer and anything easily mistaken for a deer, like a Lutheran church, They will never give up their guns. And there is no point in even bringing this up.
posted by Mark on
While I think that guns are entirely too easy to get in this country, this kid didn’t walk into a shop and buy one. More gun control is a lot like more abortion control or more gay marriage control. We cannot legislate morality and we cannot legislate rage. I agree with Northeast Libertarian: the root causes of these tragic incidents in schools is out of control. I’m not going to pretend that I think it’s simple or that it’s somehow an easy fix, but I think all of us can remember some kind of taunting in school, whether over being gay or being a geek or being “different” in some way. Of course, the problem starts at home and escalates to society. I’ve spent a lot of time in public schools as a volunteer and have a vital interest in the future and success of public schools, and I perceive that until we make teaching and administering schools a respectable, well-paid position, we will continue to draw the kind of people to teaching who stand idly by and allow kids to become the victims of the bully and the out of control. Don’t get me wrong: I admire teachers, and I know I’m making an offensive generalization. There are wonderfully dedicated teachers who work tirelessly to help kids come to adulthood in a reasonable and respectable way. But obviously, when we see the rash of these kinds of senseless violent outlashings, we must know that somewhere, the system is broken. But having said that, I don’t have a lot of hope for all these things to change: families, society’s view of the teaching profession, teacher’s salaries, bullies, mankind’s lack of tolerance for anything different. They will likely go on long after we are gone. We are fast becoming a society of locked down, frightened, paranoid individuals. Sad to say it, but we probably need magnotometers (metal detectors) in our schools. We’re not safe on planes, we’re not safe on the freeway, we’re not safe on the streets. We have too long taken for granted that we are safe in our schools.
posted by raj on
Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006
the Jamie Nabozny case
linked text. After the Court of Appeals held for Nabozny (the court was reversing a lower court’s summary judgement in favor of the school district), the school district settled out of court for US$900,000.
One interesting thing about the Nabozny case is that Nabozny’s parents stood up for him in fighting the school. Where were Hainstock’s parents?
posted by raj on
Sorry, my previous post got garbled. Here is the correct one:
dalea | October 2, 2006, 10:55pm |
Some years ago another school in WI got sued for letting this happen to a kid. School lost big time, huge payout.
That would be the Jamie Nabozny caset. After the Court of Appeals held for Nabozny (the court was reversing a lower court’s summary judgement in favor of the school district), the school district settled out of court for US$900,000.
One interesting thing about the Nabozny case–and this is clear from the appeal court’s opinion linked to above–is that Nabozny’s parents stood up for him in fighting the school. Where were Hainstock’s parents?
posted by Northeast Libertarian on
Sad to say it, but we probably need magnotometers (metal detectors) in our schools. We’re not safe on planes, we’re not safe on the freeway, we’re not safe on the streets. We have too long taken for granted that we are safe in our schools.
Actually, you’ve hit on the other point I was going to make, which I hoped someone else would make for me (thank you).
We’re being squeezed into an ever smaller box of rights which are revoked regularly in order to keep us “safe.” We’re told, constantly, that everywhere we go is unsafe, and we need metal detectors, closed-circuit TV cameras, warrantless searches, illegal wiretaps, etc. to “keep us safe” in this “new and dangerous world.”
It’s infinitely more dangerous to accept the ubiquitous police state and its trappings than it is to live in a free society, with an assessment of the risks that you face going out into free society. So the police state can take its metal detectors and illiterate TSA agents and go pound sand, as far as I’m concerned.
posted by Randy R. on
You know, I once met a woman who had immigrated from the Czech republic to the US. Yes, she loved it here, better opportunity for her and her child, more freedom, things to do, the people, etc.
But one thing really really bothered her. It was that the US was such a violent society. The violence on tv, in movies, in the papers, and so on. This was the one thing that frightened her about America, and made her fearful for her child. Not that she was worried about personal violence against her so much, but that her child would grow up in such a violence-loving society and what effects it would have on him.
I agree, banning guns isn’t going to stop the violence. But on the other, guns and violence go hand in hand.
posted by CPT_Doom on
[Eric] Hainstock said that a group of kids had teased him by calling him “fag” and “faggot” and rubbing up against him, the complaint said, and the teen felt teachers and the principal wouldn’t do anything about it.
So Hainstock decided to confront students, teachers and the principal with the guns to make them listen to him, according to the complaint.
Actually, this is not surprising. About a year after Columbine, the Secret Service did a study on all the recent school shootings, to look for common ground. They found that bullying in general in school, and anti-gay bullying specifically, was one of the key drivers of many of the shooters. That, of course, does not limit the shooters’ responsibility for their actions, but it does show a cost to anti-gay bullying above and beyond even court settlements.
I agree, banning guns isn’t going to stop the violence. But on the other, guns and violence go hand in hand.
Banning guns won’t end violence any more than banning cigarettes would end smoking, but perhaps the social campaign against cigarettes provides a lesson for how to deal with violence. It was only after social mores changed, and people began to object to smoking in their environments, that smoking rates declined – it certainly wasn’t only due to health findings. We should treat guns the same way. I know when I was growing up, my mother made it a point to inquire about guns in the houses of any kid I went to play with. If guns were present, I was not allowed to go, no matter how “safe” the parents claimed their guns were. Heck, she even insisted my uncle and cousins lock up their deer rifles when we visited.
posted by Northeast Libertarian on
my mother made it a point to inquire about guns in the houses of any kid I went to play with. If guns were present, I was not allowed to go, no matter how “safe” the parents claimed their guns were.
This is one reason why my parents told me to always lie to anyone who asked if they owned any weapons. Responsible gun owners, they didn’t want to be targeted by theives OR hysterical neighbors.
If I had children, I would instruct them in exactly the same way. Whether or not I own a firearm is none of the neighbors’ business — if they don’t want to come around as a result, that’s fine.