In a response to the recent Parkland shooting, well-meaning teachers and students are promoting a walk-up, not out approach to stop future shootings before they start. The goal of this movement is to "[encourage] creating a friendlier school environment for children who might feel bullied or ostracized," to quote a Vox article.
I'm here to tell you it won't make things better.
I'm autistic, gay, and clinically depressed. I was bullied through high school. Kids asked me out as dares and told me I looked pretty, just so they could giggle and point when I smiled. I sat alone at lunch and at assemblies, and I always kept an eye out for a gang of laughing lackeys when a kid stopped me in the halls. I was the poster-child of a student who needed to be "walked up" to.
If you take the logic of this movement to the extreme, because nobody "walked up" to me back then, I should be out there shooting up schools. I should feel so much rage because the world wasn't nice enough to me that I become a villain, that I need to hurt others.
Do you see how this places blame on kids that already are hurting? Do you see how this might make them feel worse about themselves? This "walk up" is coming from a place of fear and pity, not from a genuine desire to make connections. You feel sad for the kid who sits alone, and maybe you want to remedy that, but acting on that impulse right after a school shooting sends the message that you associate not fitting in with things like violence and cruelty.
A Romper article puts it nicely. "Insinuating that children are responsible for mass gun violence because they simply don't take the time to "befriend the lonely kid" is not only victim-blaming, it's dangerous."
Moreover, if sad, ostracized kids like myself are to blame for school shootings, why are the perpetraters usually white men? White people shot up more schools than all the other races listed combined. And we know racism is a thing, even when we had a black president.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be nicer to one another. Hell, I would have loved a friend in high school. But I would have wanted that friend to come out of a genuine interest in who I was as a person, not just because "the poor girl sits alone." If some kid "walked up" to me after the Parkland shooting, in my mind it would only reaffirm the fact that I was ostracized enough, that I was enough of a weirdo to warrant their pity. It would make the problem worse.
No doubt mental health and gun control are issues that are deeply intertwined; I won't say otherwise. At the end of the day, though, making increased efforts to support the hurt only after one of them commits murder -- it sends the message that you only care about our problems when we act out.
How is that going to heal us?
