Who are they? Who are these boys, these teenagers who viciously kill innocent school acquaintances or unknown children, each victim special in his or her own way, all of them loving and adored?
Think of the astonished horror endured by 19 youngsters and two teachers in a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school as bullets left punctured, bloody bodies where the majesty of life used to rule.
That was just one of 27 school shootings this year on top of 34 last year, and there is a lot to understand if we are to overcome this evil. One place to start is with the shooters and what’s welcoming is that all kinds of organizations, governmental and otherwise, have deeply explored their backgrounds, their personalities, their anger and their hatred. Many have arrived at similar explanations for these soulless Americans, and a big one is the raggedy families that produced them.
It’s an atrociously neglected subject in America today that families are disastrously falling apart in huge numbers, that one parent (usually the father) gets lost and the other faces fierce demands that are hard for even two to satisfy. Sometimes things can work out OK, but fatherless children are more likely to drop out of high school, commit crimes, kill themselves and go jobless. The worst households are often dysfunctional to the point that children are not trained but ignored, rejected and abused. Their guidance is left to TV, video games and cellphones.
