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The Omaha Shooting
Dec. 7th, 2007 | 12:42 pm
mood: 
sad
Today I decided to write a post about my thoughts on the shooter in Omaha.
This recap of the victims by CNN is powerful. It's hard, when you live thousands of miles away, to really think of the victims as people.
It's difficult when something like this happens to look at the perpetrator of the crime as a person as well. And yet I find myself—starting with the school shooting in Springfield, Oregon by Kip Kinkle—to have a tremendous amount
of compassion for the shooters. Perhaps this is why I want to teach "at-risk" high schoolers eventually.
This kid, Robert Hawkins, looks troubled in the widely circulated photo of him. According to the AP he "spent four years in a series of treatment centers, group homes and foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002." I've been reading some articles claiming that he was on medication, and doubtless many will blame the medication, but I don't think that is it at all.
When thinking of the people who shoot people and buildings—who they don't even know—I often ask myself: what if I could go back in time and befriend this person? What if I would care enough to put love into them and spend time with them? The answer simply is: this wouldn't have happened.
I'm not blaming myself, of course, I live in Oregon and he lived in Nebraska. But I am convinced if people had healthy relationships with other people, then these kinds of things simply wouldn't happen. Of course there are occasional people who snap, but especially with school shootings and shootings done by young people, they are premeditated and done for "fame" and desperation.
So I feel sorry for this kid. I don't know if he was harassed throughout high school or if he simply was a loner, but it makes me think back to high school, to all of the loners that I ignored and was embarrassed to talk to. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and be friends with those kinds of hurt people, and not be so caught up in my own life.
This recap of the victims by CNN is powerful. It's hard, when you live thousands of miles away, to really think of the victims as people.
It's difficult when something like this happens to look at the perpetrator of the crime as a person as well. And yet I find myself—starting with the school shooting in Springfield, Oregon by Kip Kinkle—to have a tremendous amount
of compassion for the shooters. Perhaps this is why I want to teach "at-risk" high schoolers eventually.This kid, Robert Hawkins, looks troubled in the widely circulated photo of him. According to the AP he "spent four years in a series of treatment centers, group homes and foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002." I've been reading some articles claiming that he was on medication, and doubtless many will blame the medication, but I don't think that is it at all.
When thinking of the people who shoot people and buildings—who they don't even know—I often ask myself: what if I could go back in time and befriend this person? What if I would care enough to put love into them and spend time with them? The answer simply is: this wouldn't have happened.
I'm not blaming myself, of course, I live in Oregon and he lived in Nebraska. But I am convinced if people had healthy relationships with other people, then these kinds of things simply wouldn't happen. Of course there are occasional people who snap, but especially with school shootings and shootings done by young people, they are premeditated and done for "fame" and desperation.
So I feel sorry for this kid. I don't know if he was harassed throughout high school or if he simply was a loner, but it makes me think back to high school, to all of the loners that I ignored and was embarrassed to talk to. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and be friends with those kinds of hurt people, and not be so caught up in my own life.