Dereliction of Duty

I bet there are a lot of homes where a big framed picture or an ornamental rug covers up a hole punched in the wall by a teenage boy.

A teenage boy has no where to go with his rage. This isn’t new. It’s always been this way. And, no, it’s not all boys, but it’s many. A boy has conflict with his parents or his siblings, hates school, fails at sports or a job, can’t do anything right, and the rage builds in him like vomit coming up his throat. And he punches the wall. After he punches the wall, he is spent and sorry. His parents rush to patch the wall or, because that takes too long, they cover the damage with something that will make them forget it ever happened. It could be years before they take the picture or the rug down and remember what happened. By then, it’s a small thing, their now-grown son’s rage. He just punched a hole in the wall, after all. He didn’t kill anyone.

A teenage girl goes to her friends with her rage. And her friends know everything about her. They ‘net’ her, every day. An argument with her parents or boyfriend will be only seconds old before her net knows and folds around her. Her rage is affirmed by them and dissipated. This is not to say that girls don’t experience dramatic and serious consequences of their rage in terms of self-medication, mental health issues, and suicidal thoughts and actions. What I’m saying is this: of all the holes punched in walls across America right now, a very small percentage were made by a teenage girl’s fist.

And why the difference? Why don’t boys have what girls have? We’ve been struggling for fifty years to raise boys who can express their feelings and aren’t afraid to cry but it hasn’t worked. Maybe this is the triumph of nature over nurture. If trauma can be transmitted genetically through generations as we are now finding out, then it is likely that male reactions to stress can be similarly transmitted. I act this way when I’m angry and upset because my father did and his father and his father before him. And similarly women turn to their women friends in times of stress; it may be learned behavior, more likely it’s behavior predetermined by the exigencies of survival. In both genders, their reactions seem unconscious, automatic, and predetermined as if all the contrary teaching in the world would be futile.

The steady stream of terrible school shootings is 100% gender-based. It is 100% a male phenomenon.* This is no accident. This is because the rage of some teenage boys, the same rage that puts holes in walls, has been weaponized with assault rifles that can kill dozens of people in minutes. And these assault rifles are ubiquitous. They are everywhere. They are as easy for a teenage boy to buy as marijuana or heroin or gym shorts. Google “assault rifle purchase” on your phone right now and see what comes up. There is nothing remotely mysterious or even expensive about buying an assault rifle.

So a teenage boy buys an assault rifle. Just to have. Maybe his parents know and maybe they don’t because teenage boys – teenagers in general – have lives and thoughts and possessions that aren’t always completely transparent. Much can go on seemingly right under a parent’s nose and, while they will get blamed later, most of them would legitimately be able to say they had no idea.

One day, the teenage boy is humiliated by his coach, ditched by his girlfriend, ostracized by his friends and he feels that vomit firing its way up his throat but he doesn’t punch a hole in the wall this time.  Not all boys but say one boy goes to where he stowed his new AR-15 and he makes a plan, the consequences of which no picture or rug will ever be able to hide.

So yes, it is the guns. It is the vast availability of guns. It is the ease with which guns are acquired. It is the ridiculous normalcy of guns available for purchase on our phones. It’s the perverted defense of assault rifle ownership as representing the intent of the musket-owning framers of our Constitution 250 years ago. It is also the unexplained ignorance of policymakers and much of the public about the powder keg that is a teenage boy full of rage.

We know this, all the parents in this country who have had teenage boys. Teenage boys can be volatile and dangerous the same time they are vulnerable and sweet. As parents we protect them from themselves, pray they reach maturity without doing irreparable harm to themselves or others, we cover up the hole in the wall because in our hearts we know that the punched hole doesn’t represent who our boys really are. But we can’t protect them from hurting other people at the same time we are handing them assault rifles. We can’t protect them from themselves if they are armed. Then it’s too late. Then we run the risk of burying people.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Our job as adults – as parents – is to shield all the children – the enraged boy and the children he wants to hurt – all of them need and deserve our love and protection. That is our obligation and duty as the mothers and fathers of this country. We need to step up and take the guns away.

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Photo by Ryan Tauss on Unsplash

*School shooters are also nearly 100% white; this is an important issue needing much more examination.