Hindsight from The New Gun Week May 10, 1998
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
The series of school-related shootings involving teenage and sub-teen students in the last six months has gotten a lot of people talking about the causes of this spate of aberrant behavior. It is the focus of reports, discussion and punditry in newspapers, magazines, radio and television shows, and of conversation among average people.
The anti-gunners, of course, immediately use most of these incidents as a soapbox from which to call for ever more restrictive gun laws, including the total abolition of private firearms ownership. Others use it to attack television and the movies, popular music, and even the general American culture.
But whether or not one has an ax to grind, there have been so many of these incidents recently, and they have been so widely reported, that gunowners also are weighing the implications of these horrors. The most recent shooting was one of the topics of table discussion at a Niagara Frontier Pistol League (celebrating its 59th year of competition between US and Canadian clubs) awards banquet we attended on April 25.
Gunowners and no-gunowners are asking themselves, why? why now? and why so young? Right after the March 24 school shooting in Jonesboro, AR, my wife and I were on a plane to Atlanta and the woman sitting beside us, a pro-gunner, said that the anti-gun hue-and-cry was the first thing she anticipated when she first heard of Jonesboro.
Gunowners have a special stake in helping to find answers, and they are joined by a lot of cooler heads in academia, the sciences and journalism.
Guns and kids have been around a long time. Murder reports date back to the Bible's book of Genesis. Thousands of laws have been passed since Cain and Abel, yet we still have murder, and murder by young people against other young people, by old against old, by young against old and old against young and infants.
Maybe today we report the murders faster, "with film at 11:00," and four-color newspaper photos. Maybe today the reports focus not so much on the murders but the method of the murders.
Here's the latest.
On April 24, a 14-year-old boy, armed with a .25-cal. pistol registered to his father, shot and killed a 48-year-old science teacher at Parker Middle School, John Gillette, a man, he didn't even know, on a patio outside the Nick's Place banquet hall where an eighth-grade graduation dance was in progress.
The boy then proceeded inside the building where he fired several more shots, wounding two fellow students, and grazing a woman teacher. He then left the hall and was captured in a field behind the building by Nick's Place owner James Strand, who was armed with a shotgun. The shooter, Andrew Wurst, was still in possession of the pistol, as well as a small amount of marijuana.
Wurst was charged as an adult with criminal homicide, three counts each of aggravated assault and reckless endangerment, as well as drug and gun charges. He was jailed without bond.
School officials said they did not know what motivated the shooting. Other students, however, told police that Wurst, who was called "Satan" by some of the other children, had "joked" a month earlier about killing people and then committing suicide, but said that they did not take him seriously because he would laugh.
Wurst also was reported to have said he was going to go to the dinner dance "and kill some people." This report mirrored similar early warning signs that were available but unheeded in other high profile incidents.
This information prompted several psychologists to urge parents, principals, guidance counselors, teachers, police and especially other children to take all such threats seriously and report and evaluate them carefully.
Dr. Paul Friday, chief of clinical psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at Shadyside Hospital, was quoted by Associated Press, as saying, "The solutions lie in the family dwelling, they don't lie in the government, the school or the psychologist's office. I don't think they lie in the church either."
The Edinboro shooting came one month to the day after another incident in Jonesboro, AR, where two boys, 11 and 13, are accused of shooting a teacher and four students with rifles stolen from the younger child's grandfather's house.
In December, there were more casualties in a West Paducah, KY, school shooting, and in October, two more students were shot and killed by another teen-aged boy in Pearl, MS.
In the Pearl shooting, as in Edinboro, the suspect was captured by someone armed with a firearm. At Pearl it was a vice principal with the aid of a .45-cal. pistol he had in his car.
Other Crimes
But not all of the headlines involve crimes committed by juveniles who illegally obtain firearms. The non-gun crimes, however, seem to get a lot less attention from the media or lawmakers eager to make even more headlines.
Just a couple of months ago, The Buffalo News reported that a group of 12-, 13- and 14-year-old boys in Niagara Falls, NY, had beaten and kicked to death one of their 13-year-old schoolmates in the aftermath of a post-school brawl.
More recently, The Dallas Morning News reported the "intentional blinding" of a 16-year-old Dallas boy in the early hours of April 19 by another 16-year-old who is a high school varsity wrestler.
One witness is quoted as reporting that the victim was pinned down in a fight with another boy when he saw the enraged face of his adversary as he prepared to claw into his eyes. "You better remember my face because this is the last thing you're ever going to see," the witness quoted the boy as saying.
The victim, Jason Prickett, was released from Parkland Hospital three days later. His mother told The Morning News that he can distinquish light from dark but is legally blind. The other boy was arrested the next day on a felony charge of aggravated assault.
In Toms River, NJ, a 15-year-old boy is awaiting trial charged with killing an 11-year-old boy selling holiday items door-to-door for the PTA last Sept. 27.
Prosecutors say the older boy attacked the younger one when he came to his door, stole the younger boy's money and killed him.
Defense lawyers for the suspect, who was undergoing psychiatric treatment at the time of the incident and has also been linked to a sexual relationship with a 43-year-old pedofile, say they will seek an insanity defense. The killing occurred three days after the suspect's parents had unsuccessfully asked a judge to commit him to an institution because of his erratic behavior.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported on April 25 that a 15-year-old boy has been charged with sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy in a bathroom while the two were in custody at the Fulton County Detention Center.
The alleged assault occurred just three weeks after the state of Georgia and the US Justice Department settled accusations of gross neglect in the state's juvenile detention facilities. The younger boy was taken to a hospital for treatment after the attack and later returned to the Fulton facility. The older boy was arrested and charged with sexual assault and aggravated sodomy and transferred to another facility.
Aged Violence
Not all of the aberrant behavior explodes during the teen years. The seeds for some of it may start then, but the eruption can occur when a person is 20 or older. Here's an example reported by The Chicago Tribune on April 21. A 20-year-old man in Madison, WI, with a history of bizarre behavior, boarded a city bus, doused a fellow passenger with gasoline and ignited it, severely burning himself and five other passengers.
The man had been in and out of jail and homeless shelters since he was 18, but on April 19, he boarded the bus with a covered 5-gallon bucket filled with gasoline and rode for 30 minutes before tossing the gas, according to police.
Amid the hysteria that accompanies high profile mass killings and other public horrors, there are some voices of reason raised.
Among them, Detroit Free Press staff writer Jack Kresnak who offered some sound observations during a March 31 review of Ghosts from the Nursery, a book by family therapist Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith Wiley (Atlantic Monthly Press). In the book the authors trace the roots of aberrant behavior to the womb and the first two years after birth.
In his review, after mentioning the public's usual suspects for the causes of youthful violence, Kresnak wrote:
"But many children have access to guns and don't kill their classmates. Most children get immersed in the phony violence of television and don't injure others. And more than half of the country's children will have to deal with living with just one parent at some point in their lives-and the vast majority will adjust well."
We all need to be looking for the real answers.
The New Gun Week is published three times a month by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) on the 1st, 10th, and 20th. Hindsight is a commentary written by SAF President and Gun Week Executive Editor Joseph P. Tartaro. This commentary may be reprinted so long as credit is given to the author and the publication. For more information or to subscribe, write Gun Week, PO Box 488, Buffalo, NY 14209, or call 716-885-6408 Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST, or inquire on Compuserve to John Krull, Production manager-JohnSAF@Compuserve.com or gunweeksaf@broadviewnet.net
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