Editorial

Another school shooting leads us back to ‘Why?’

The scene has become all too familiar, and again we must ask ourselves: Why?

News outlets report an “active shooter” in a school, the school is placed on lockdown, and a community of parents, friends and neighbors—and a nation—waits frantically to see how the situation is resolved.

This latest scene played out at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, on May 18 and, tragically, we are overwhelmed with sadness, heartache and grief because of a high school student’s actions that left 10 people dead and 13 others wounded. The shooting occurred just three months after a similar incident took place at Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Fla., where a former student entered the school and shot and killed 17 people and injured 14 others.

We now mourn for the families in Santa Fe who have lost loved ones, for the students affected who no doubt will never forget the day they saw friends killed and injured, and for a community that we hope and pray can come to grips with an unthinkable evil.

As a nation, we again must unite to offer our support, but first and foremost, we must storm the heavens with prayer, asking God to lift this community up and shine his light on this darkness as they cope with such a heinous crime. We know the healing process will take time. And sadly, it may never come for some who had their world shattered by a troubled teenager.

We must also ask our Creator to help us understand why these senseless acts of violence are being committed by and to young people.

And though the conversations may be heated and uncomfortable, we must continue discussions about mental health, gun control and school safety.

“As a society, we must strive for a way to end such acts of senseless gun violence in our schools and communities,” said Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston after learning of the May 18 shooting about 35 miles southeast of Houston.

In a separate statement as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Cardinal DiNardo said: “Our community and our local Church joins an ever-growing list of those impacted by the evil of gun violence. I extend my heartfelt prayers, along with my brother bishops, for all of those who have died, their families and friends, those who were injured, and for our local community.”

Dakota Shrader, a 10th-grade student at Santa Fe High School, was stunned by the shooting.

“Honestly, I just had the thought in my head that somebody was going to come up behind me and hurt me, shoot me, kill me. I’m still jumpy from it,” Dakota, 16, said. “I don’t know who to trust anymore, at all.

“This should be our safe place,” she added.

It should concern us that other students now view school shootings as the norm.

To Paige Curry, another Santa Fe High School student, the May 18 tragedy was not surprising.

“I was thinking it was going to happen eventually, it’s been happening everywhere,” she said in an interview with KPRC, a Houston television station.

Paige’s sentiments seem to back up a Cable News Network (CNN) report released after the May 18 Texas shooting, which notes there have been 22 school shootings (elementary school, middle school, high school and college) where someone has been injured or killed so far in 2018. That averages to more than one per week.

And geography seems to matter little, with the school-related shootings taking place in 15 states spanning the nation: Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

What can we do to stop these tragedies from occurring? There is no easy answer.

But we must not be afraid to have the courage to say enough is enough, and do all we can to protect our children by making sure these acts of senseless violence cease to occur.

“Sadly, I must yet again point out the obvious brokenness in our culture and society, such that children who went to school this morning to learn and teachers who went to inspire them will not come home,” Cardinal DiNardo said in his statement as USCCB president. “We as a nation must, here and now, say definitively: no more death!”

—Mike Krokos