|
Abstract
|
My town is in the national news this week--and not for something that could engender civic pride. Instead, I feel heartbroken. The headline in The New York Times says it all:
"Living with the Specter of Gun Violence: 1 School, 5 Dead Students" (Rojas, 2021). Within the span of a few months, five Black teenagers from Austin-East High Magnet High School are dead, killed in separate incidents. Their young lives are extinguished by bullets, their community grieving and seeking a way forward. Sadly, this story is replicated in countless other towns as shooting deaths rise. Within the past 10 years, 30,000 children and teens have been killed in the USA by gunfire (Younge, 2021). Unlike the COVID-19 pandemic that preyed more so on vulnerable elders, this "other pandemic" is claiming the lives of vulnerable children, especially Black ones. Guns are the leading cause of death for African American children (Frazier, 2021). Our leaders share their "thoughts and prayers" but fail to take effective actions, and our legislators show no readiness to curb the ready access to guns. I write today to invite readers to share more than "thoughts and prayers": What actions can psychiatric-mental health nurses take to combat this "other pandemic"?
Investigations are ongoing regarding the deaths of the Black teenagers in my town. In only one case were police involved. Gang wars have been blamed for earlier tragic deaths in our town, when bullets were fired from cars and "stray bullets" struck people sitting on porches. But gang activity has not been identified as the causative factor in the most recent tragedies. It seems that armed teens are shooting each other, but not always with intentionality. In one case, the shooting by one teen of his companion was purely accidental; in another, the death was thought to be the result of a "stray bullet" rather than deliberate. What is not being discussed is why these Black youth, some as young as 14 or 15, feel that they need to carry lethal weapons. Is it solely because of fear, fearing that they must be ready to defend themselves because the other kids are armed? Or perhaps because the gun in their pocket also conveys a sense of power that is otherwise unavailable to them? I heard an NPR interview several years ago in which the young man spoke, almost as a lover would speak, as he fondled the gun in his pocket. He described the smooth, cool, feel of the gun as he caressed it. I have never forgotten the sound of his voice.
I do not want to confine this discussion to gun violence of Black teens, because it is White teens who perpetrated the mass shootings of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School and at high schools in Colorado and Florida. It was a 14-year-old White boy whose shooting rampage at a South Carolina school caused lasting psychological trauma...
Language: en |