This accessibility is compounded with the popularity of violent video games among teens and young adults, which often involve shooting animated characters and animals in realistic scenarios. There is apparently a sense of adventure, satisfaction, and power that comes from this.
The desire to hunt in the real world, with real weapons, for a heightened sense of accomplishment or power as a follow-up to this fantastical activity seems a normal progression of behavior. Shooting ranges, wild animal hunting farms, and deer hunting in autumn are usual and customary ways to fulfill this desire. Families in western New York, where I live, often teach their sons and daughters to use a gun starting at age 12 and take them on annual hunting trips. This is not a problem.
When a teen or young person becomes despondent and lonely, the feelings of power and satisfaction from hunting or killing something can act as an antidote to the negative feelings. If anger or jealousy are part of the problem, the weapon can be turned on the perceived source of those feelings. The shooters in these devastating massacres seem to be able to use their chosen weapon competently. Where does this familiarity come from? Often, the weapon was accessible in their own home.
Teens and young adults with depression or feelings of loneliness, anger, or jealousy should be evaluated for access to weapons, and for their knowledge of use of these weapons, as part of the care plan. Parents and other adults should be queried and warned to keep weapons away from them until their mood has stabilized. There is reluctance to do this in our society. Health care and law enforcement professionals need to put out public announcements that give this warning to everyone.
Alone, these two ideas I’ve outlined will not prevent all mass shootings. But a more rapid reaction to the red flags of loneliness, mood changes, and social changes in a young person, and seeking to change that dynamic, might reduce the prevalence. Public health is at stake, and prevention will require a willingness to see and react to troubled people—before the police need to be called for a crime.
Sandra Glantz, MSN, MPA, FNP-BC
Pittsford, NY