February 24, 2023 • 21 mins
School shootings continue to make headlines—and because of that one listener is reluctant to allow her daughter to attend middle school. Is her fear rational? Dr. Saltz helps this mother put things in perspective and offers practical steps she can take to deal with her fears.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Bees are challenging times, but you don't have to navigate
them alone. Welcome to How Can I Help? I'm doctor
Gale Saltz. I'm a clinical Associate Professor of psychiatry at
the New York Presbyterian Hospital, a psychoanalyst, and best selling author,
and I'm here every week to answer your most pressing questions,
(00:26):
hopefully with understanding, insight and advice. The United States has
more guns than people at this point, more guns per
person than any other country in the world. It also
has more gun deaths, more mass shootings, and gun violence
(00:47):
than any other country in the world. It also has
fewer gun laws and restrictions. Death by gun is now
the leading cause of death in children and teens, and
children and parents have increasing fears, not unfounded, about their
child safety in school. Today, I am answering a question
(01:11):
from such a parent who was worried about gun violence
in her community. Guns are the leading cause of death
among US children and teens. According to the Sandy Hook Promise,
a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing gun violence at schools,
one out of every ten gun deaths in the United
(01:32):
States are of people aged nineteen or younger, and that
includes suicide. At least one hundred and fourteen incidents of
gunfire on US school grounds caused at least twenty three
deaths and sixty injuries in twenty twenty one, according to
Every Town, and it was reported that in twenty twenty one,
(01:56):
one hundred and seventy school shootings had occurred in United
States that year. It was the highest number of school
shootings since nineteen seventy, and the numbers look like they're
continuing to rise. The National Center for Education Statistics reported
a total of seventy five school shootings in the twenty
(02:19):
nineteen twenty twenty school year, of which twenty seven resulted
in deaths, and the majority of school shootings occur at
high schools. In incidence of gunfire on school grounds, up
to eighty percent of shooters under eighteen got the gun
they used from their home or the homes of relatives
(02:42):
or friends, and in seventy seven percent of school shootings,
at least one person most often appear new of the shooters.
Plan In this country, the number one cause of deaths
from guns is actually still suicide. Homicides by gun are
(03:05):
most likely to be committed by angry, often hate filled men,
with risk factors, the risk factors being a history of crime,
domestic abuse, substance abuse, and past violent behavior. Very few
of these people have actual mental illness as the risk factor.
(03:30):
In fact, despite what you may hear talking heads say,
people with mental illness are far more likely to be
victims of violence and even to harm themselves than they
are to harm anyone else. Removing access to guns from
people who have these risk factors that I mentioned before, though,
(03:53):
has proved to be difficult or actually impossible due to
laws in this country, or I would say lack of
laws related to gun possession in this country. A disproportionate
number of mass shootings are from men under the age
of twenty two. This is actually not at all surprising
(04:18):
if you understand anything about brain development. The teen brain
has higher activity in deep brain structures, for example, the
amygdala and its high activity which is higher in teams
than at any time before in childhood and higher than
(04:40):
it will be any time afterwards in adulthood. It's responsible
for the high impulsivity of teams. The message the amygdala
sends is hey, that felt good. It was high risk,
Let's do it again. This is why there is concern
about the impulsiveness of teens doing dangerous things regarding driving, sex,
(05:06):
and drugs, and at the same time, an area of
the brain that is biologically immature in adolescence and in
teen years, and not fully developed actually until the age
of twenty four or twenty five is the prefrontal cortex.
(05:26):
This area houses judgment consequence, the ability to say, if
I do this thing today, what will happen tomorrow? And
therefore maybe I need to suppress this impulse. All teens
and young adults feel shame, feel anger, feel the desire
(05:49):
for revenge. What they cannot do, however, is fully consider
what acting on any of those feelings in the moment
might mean for someone else or for themselves after the
moment is over, And therefore they are truly very much
(06:10):
at the whims of they're already over zealous impulsivity. As
a result, the number of teens and young adults responsible
for mass shootings, homicides, and suicide remains disproportionately high for
gun owners and those with access to guns. If you
(06:33):
are humiliated and seek revenge but don't have access to
a gun, you might beat someone up, but they would
not likely die. If you shoot them, They likely will
if one of the growing number of teens and young
adults with depression or who feel horrendously hurt, ashamed, or
(06:58):
just can't bear how they feel has access to a gun,
an attempt to harm themselves in the moment will be
lethal to some degree. This was the decision behind raising
the drinking age to twenty one, that an immature brain
(07:18):
further impaired by alcohol puts its owner at an unacceptably
high risk. The same issue really applies for guns. It
puts its owner at risk, it also puts others at risk.
Biologic immaturity of the brain is something that should be
(07:41):
but is not considered in who can buy, own, or
have access to firearms. It simply is a reality one
we have overlooked for too long and to the pain
and agony of many. It is only the start to
(08:02):
twenty twenty three and we already have more mass shootings
and deaths by gun than any other year at this
time in the year. Understandably, this makes many people nervous
and fearful, as it seems gun violence is only growing
annually with no new safeguards on the horizon that might
(08:24):
curb the violence. So with that right after the break
we'll get to my listener's question. Welcome back. Let's get
to my listener's question and see how can I help,
(08:48):
Dear Doctor Solts. We live in the next town over
from a town that has seen recent gun violence. A
student brought a gun to school and shot someone. With
all the shootings in the news and this recent event,
I feel myself increasingly worried about sending my daughter to
(09:08):
middle school. The shooting drills that are supposed to somehow
protect the students seem fruitless and are not making me
feel any better. I know I can't just not let
my child go to school, but I really don't know
how to contend with the daily fear that a shooter
(09:28):
will come to school and harm my child. In years
gone by, I would have spent the majority of the
time here answering this question purely on what to do
if you have a truly irrational fear that is nonetheless
causing you great distress. But very sadly, the frequency of
(09:52):
school shootings has increased in recent years and appears to
only be escalating, which is why this is no longer
a totally irrational fear. That being said, you unfortunately live
close to where a shooting occurred, and being close to
trauma increases the likelihood that you will have more fear
(10:17):
and have the perception that such events are occurring more
frequently than they actually are. It is likely this proximity
to the tragic event has stoked your fears. Actually, in
a recent Pew Research Center survey, about one third of
parents said they are very worried about school shootings and
(10:41):
their child safety, a third actually are not worried at all,
and the remaining third are somewhere in the middle. One
unfortunate fallout from the increased number of school shootings is
the community around grows ever more fear and traumatized. This
(11:03):
is also true of many parents who watch a lot
of news and in some way follow the tragedies unfolding
across the country, making it feel like it's happening more
often than it is. The reality is still, even though
the numbers have risen, it is a very rare event.
(11:26):
In fact, it is still statistically as unlikely that your
child will be shot and killed in their school as
that they will be struck by lightning. If you look
at the actual numbers across the nation, they are still
that low. Of course, in everyone's opinion, any number is
(11:48):
too high, and I agree, But in terms of your
fear day to day, you should know the numbers are
still about the same as dying in an earthquake. So
the worry has to be given perspective, and it's important
for you to do so because your fear will likely
(12:09):
transmit to your child, which can make going to school
very difficult for them. It is hard enough that most
kids do shooting drills, which makes it feel more dangerous
and unfortunately fills many children with anxiety. Reassurance that this
is a highly unlikely event will help them to be
(12:33):
less afraid too. The other thing that helps is to
actually do things that can help to do things that
are reasonable and can make a difference in this area.
For example, if you see or hear of something, say something.
(12:54):
It is known that almost all school shootings are preceded
by some red flag something was said or heard about
a gun or about a wish to shoot people. Often
no one says what they heard or read, though, tell
(13:16):
your child if they hear or see something, they should
tell you and you will report it. The same, of course,
goes for you. Another issue is the safe storage of firearms,
which doesn't always happen, as awkward as it can be
to do. Before your child goes to play at a
(13:39):
friend's house, ask the parents do you have guns and
how are they stored. I would not send my child
to a home that has not got any gun they
own in a locked storage. The more all of the
community does these kinds of things, the safer the community becomes.
(14:05):
If you feel so moved, you may also find it
really helps your anxiety to get involved in solutions to
gun violence via community policy making. School Boards decide whether
a school will get a metal detector, whether there is
mental healthcare available for students, whether funds are spent on
(14:26):
a security guard, even involvement at the state level as
to whether teenagers should be allowed to own or purchase
semi automatic weapons. Supporting and helping make safer laws safer
policies can do a lot for your own personal safety,
(14:48):
as well as your personal and community safety. I hope
that was helpful. In the US, gun violence is a
major public health problem and a leading cause of premature death.
Preventing death, disability, and injury from gun violence requires a
(15:11):
public health approach, then involves collecting data and research to
understand which policies and programs are effective in decreasing gun violence.
Initiatives to implement those measures are needed and to see
if they work so they need continued surveillance continued evaluation.
(15:37):
In addition to the loss of life, gun violence cost
the United States approximately two hundred and eighty billion dollars
a year. The societal costs of firearm assault injury includes
work loss, medical and mental healthcare, emergency transportation, police and
(15:58):
criminal justice activity, insurance claim processing, employer costs, and decreased
quality of life. But gun violence is not inevitable. It
can be prevented through a comprehensive public health approach that
keeps families and communities safe. A public health approach recognizes
(16:22):
that violence is contagious and can become an epidemic within
a society. Primary prevention involves the use of core public
health activities to interrupt this transmission of violence by conducting
surveillance to track gun related deaths and injuries. To increase
(16:45):
our insight into the causes of gun violence and to
access the impact of interventions, we need to identify risk
factors even more so that are associated with gun violence,
like poverty and depression, and we need to also understand
(17:06):
resilience or protective factors that guard against gun violence, like
young people having access to trusted adults. We need to develop, implement,
and evaluate how we can reduce the risk factors and
build resistance among communities, and we need to think about
(17:29):
institutionalizing prevention strategies at work. To enhance the US's public
health response, we need surveillance, and this costs money. Congress
did provide twenty three and a half million dollars to
basically looking at surveillance across all fifty states. However, we
(17:55):
need more money because actually, for many, many years, it
was not legal to research gun violence. That was actually
something that was legally prohibited via the CDC, and it's
only just recently that we've been allowed to conduct any
(18:16):
sort of research, and so we are way behind on funding.
Funding would allow more research, and that information that is
collected would allow us to develop what laws would help
us in preventing gun violence. For example, there is almost
(18:36):
no credible evidence that right to carry laws increase or
decrease violent crime. There is almost no empirical evidence to
support dozens of violence prevention programs for children. There is
no data on the effects of different gun safety technologies.
On violence and crime, or the link between firearm policy
(19:00):
and suicide behavior. This is why more research needs to
be done to investigate what is working and what is not.
Common sense gun policy needs to be initiated. Background checks
criminal background checks for all firearm purchases, including those sold
(19:23):
at gun shows and on the internet, need to be done,
but currently, unlicensed private firearms sellers are exempt from conducting
criminal background checks on buyers at gun shows or over
the internet, which gives felons and someone who actually does
(19:44):
have severe mental illness and others who are prohibited from
owning firearms access to weapons. In March of twenty twenty one,
the US House of Representatives passed a bipartisan Background Checks
Act which does expand background checks for all firearm purchases
(20:04):
with limited exceptions. This allows family members or law enforcement
also to petition a judge to temporarily remove a firearm
from a person deemed at risk of harming themselves or others.
Sixteen states and Washington, d c. Have laws authorizing courts
(20:28):
to issue this what's called extreme Risk Protection order. We
need to incentivize all states to have such an order
because at the end of the day, if you note
that someone is talking about harming themselves or others with
(20:49):
a gun, you should be able to call the police
and have the gun removed for their own and for
others protection. By basically research and then addressing the gun
violence issue, I do believe if we treat this as
a public health concern that we can make a difference
(21:10):
in the number of gun deaths, either self harm or
harm of others in this country. Do you have a
problem I can help with? If so, email me yet
How can I help? At senecawomen dot com. All centers
remain anonymous and listen every Friday too. How can I
help with me? Doctor Gale Salts
Bees are challenging times, but you don't have to navigate
them alone. Welcome to How Can I Help? I'm doctor
Gale Saltz. I'm a clinical Associate Professor of psychiatry at
the New York Presbyterian Hospital, a psychoanalyst, and best selling author,
and I'm here every week to answer your most pressing questions,
(00:26):
hopefully with understanding, insight and advice. The United States has
more guns than people at this point, more guns per
person than any other country in the world. It also
has more gun deaths, more mass shootings, and gun violence
(00:47):
than any other country in the world. It also has
fewer gun laws and restrictions. Death by gun is now
the leading cause of death in children and teens, and
children and parents have increasing fears, not unfounded, about their
child safety in school. Today, I am answering a question
(01:11):
from such a parent who was worried about gun violence
in her community. Guns are the leading cause of death
among US children and teens. According to the Sandy Hook Promise,
a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing gun violence at schools,
one out of every ten gun deaths in the United
(01:32):
States are of people aged nineteen or younger, and that
includes suicide. At least one hundred and fourteen incidents of
gunfire on US school grounds caused at least twenty three
deaths and sixty injuries in twenty twenty one, according to
Every Town, and it was reported that in twenty twenty one,
(01:56):
one hundred and seventy school shootings had occurred in United
States that year. It was the highest number of school
shootings since nineteen seventy, and the numbers look like they're
continuing to rise. The National Center for Education Statistics reported
a total of seventy five school shootings in the twenty
(02:19):
nineteen twenty twenty school year, of which twenty seven resulted
in deaths, and the majority of school shootings occur at
high schools. In incidence of gunfire on school grounds, up
to eighty percent of shooters under eighteen got the gun
they used from their home or the homes of relatives
(02:42):
or friends, and in seventy seven percent of school shootings,
at least one person most often appear new of the shooters.
Plan In this country, the number one cause of deaths
from guns is actually still suicide. Homicides by gun are
(03:05):
most likely to be committed by angry, often hate filled men,
with risk factors, the risk factors being a history of crime,
domestic abuse, substance abuse, and past violent behavior. Very few
of these people have actual mental illness as the risk factor.
(03:30):
In fact, despite what you may hear talking heads say,
people with mental illness are far more likely to be
victims of violence and even to harm themselves than they
are to harm anyone else. Removing access to guns from
people who have these risk factors that I mentioned before, though,
(03:53):
has proved to be difficult or actually impossible due to
laws in this country, or I would say lack of
laws related to gun possession in this country. A disproportionate
number of mass shootings are from men under the age
of twenty two. This is actually not at all surprising
(04:18):
if you understand anything about brain development. The teen brain
has higher activity in deep brain structures, for example, the
amygdala and its high activity which is higher in teams
than at any time before in childhood and higher than
(04:40):
it will be any time afterwards in adulthood. It's responsible
for the high impulsivity of teams. The message the amygdala
sends is hey, that felt good. It was high risk,
Let's do it again. This is why there is concern
about the impulsiveness of teens doing dangerous things regarding driving, sex,
(05:06):
and drugs, and at the same time, an area of
the brain that is biologically immature in adolescence and in
teen years, and not fully developed actually until the age
of twenty four or twenty five is the prefrontal cortex.
(05:26):
This area houses judgment consequence, the ability to say, if
I do this thing today, what will happen tomorrow? And
therefore maybe I need to suppress this impulse. All teens
and young adults feel shame, feel anger, feel the desire
(05:49):
for revenge. What they cannot do, however, is fully consider
what acting on any of those feelings in the moment
might mean for someone else or for themselves after the
moment is over, And therefore they are truly very much
(06:10):
at the whims of they're already over zealous impulsivity. As
a result, the number of teens and young adults responsible
for mass shootings, homicides, and suicide remains disproportionately high for
gun owners and those with access to guns. If you
(06:33):
are humiliated and seek revenge but don't have access to
a gun, you might beat someone up, but they would
not likely die. If you shoot them, They likely will
if one of the growing number of teens and young
adults with depression or who feel horrendously hurt, ashamed, or
(06:58):
just can't bear how they feel has access to a gun,
an attempt to harm themselves in the moment will be
lethal to some degree. This was the decision behind raising
the drinking age to twenty one, that an immature brain
(07:18):
further impaired by alcohol puts its owner at an unacceptably
high risk. The same issue really applies for guns. It
puts its owner at risk, it also puts others at risk.
Biologic immaturity of the brain is something that should be
(07:41):
but is not considered in who can buy, own, or
have access to firearms. It simply is a reality one
we have overlooked for too long and to the pain
and agony of many. It is only the start to
(08:02):
twenty twenty three and we already have more mass shootings
and deaths by gun than any other year at this
time in the year. Understandably, this makes many people nervous
and fearful, as it seems gun violence is only growing
annually with no new safeguards on the horizon that might
(08:24):
curb the violence. So with that right after the break
we'll get to my listener's question. Welcome back. Let's get
to my listener's question and see how can I help,
(08:48):
Dear Doctor Solts. We live in the next town over
from a town that has seen recent gun violence. A
student brought a gun to school and shot someone. With
all the shootings in the news and this recent event,
I feel myself increasingly worried about sending my daughter to
(09:08):
middle school. The shooting drills that are supposed to somehow
protect the students seem fruitless and are not making me
feel any better. I know I can't just not let
my child go to school, but I really don't know
how to contend with the daily fear that a shooter
(09:28):
will come to school and harm my child. In years
gone by, I would have spent the majority of the
time here answering this question purely on what to do
if you have a truly irrational fear that is nonetheless
causing you great distress. But very sadly, the frequency of
(09:52):
school shootings has increased in recent years and appears to
only be escalating, which is why this is no longer
a totally irrational fear. That being said, you unfortunately live
close to where a shooting occurred, and being close to
trauma increases the likelihood that you will have more fear
(10:17):
and have the perception that such events are occurring more
frequently than they actually are. It is likely this proximity
to the tragic event has stoked your fears. Actually, in
a recent Pew Research Center survey, about one third of
parents said they are very worried about school shootings and
(10:41):
their child safety, a third actually are not worried at all,
and the remaining third are somewhere in the middle. One
unfortunate fallout from the increased number of school shootings is
the community around grows ever more fear and traumatized. This
(11:03):
is also true of many parents who watch a lot
of news and in some way follow the tragedies unfolding
across the country, making it feel like it's happening more
often than it is. The reality is still, even though
the numbers have risen, it is a very rare event.
(11:26):
In fact, it is still statistically as unlikely that your
child will be shot and killed in their school as
that they will be struck by lightning. If you look
at the actual numbers across the nation, they are still
that low. Of course, in everyone's opinion, any number is
(11:48):
too high, and I agree, But in terms of your
fear day to day, you should know the numbers are
still about the same as dying in an earthquake. So
the worry has to be given perspective, and it's important
for you to do so because your fear will likely
(12:09):
transmit to your child, which can make going to school
very difficult for them. It is hard enough that most
kids do shooting drills, which makes it feel more dangerous
and unfortunately fills many children with anxiety. Reassurance that this
is a highly unlikely event will help them to be
(12:33):
less afraid too. The other thing that helps is to
actually do things that can help to do things that
are reasonable and can make a difference in this area.
For example, if you see or hear of something, say something.
(12:54):
It is known that almost all school shootings are preceded
by some red flag something was said or heard about
a gun or about a wish to shoot people. Often
no one says what they heard or read, though, tell
(13:16):
your child if they hear or see something, they should
tell you and you will report it. The same, of course,
goes for you. Another issue is the safe storage of firearms,
which doesn't always happen, as awkward as it can be
to do. Before your child goes to play at a
(13:39):
friend's house, ask the parents do you have guns and
how are they stored. I would not send my child
to a home that has not got any gun they
own in a locked storage. The more all of the
community does these kinds of things, the safer the community becomes.
(14:05):
If you feel so moved, you may also find it
really helps your anxiety to get involved in solutions to
gun violence via community policy making. School Boards decide whether
a school will get a metal detector, whether there is
mental healthcare available for students, whether funds are spent on
(14:26):
a security guard, even involvement at the state level as
to whether teenagers should be allowed to own or purchase
semi automatic weapons. Supporting and helping make safer laws safer
policies can do a lot for your own personal safety,
(14:48):
as well as your personal and community safety. I hope
that was helpful. In the US, gun violence is a
major public health problem and a leading cause of premature death.
Preventing death, disability, and injury from gun violence requires a
(15:11):
public health approach, then involves collecting data and research to
understand which policies and programs are effective in decreasing gun violence.
Initiatives to implement those measures are needed and to see
if they work so they need continued surveillance continued evaluation.
(15:37):
In addition to the loss of life, gun violence cost
the United States approximately two hundred and eighty billion dollars
a year. The societal costs of firearm assault injury includes
work loss, medical and mental healthcare, emergency transportation, police and
(15:58):
criminal justice activity, insurance claim processing, employer costs, and decreased
quality of life. But gun violence is not inevitable. It
can be prevented through a comprehensive public health approach that
keeps families and communities safe. A public health approach recognizes
(16:22):
that violence is contagious and can become an epidemic within
a society. Primary prevention involves the use of core public
health activities to interrupt this transmission of violence by conducting
surveillance to track gun related deaths and injuries. To increase
(16:45):
our insight into the causes of gun violence and to
access the impact of interventions, we need to identify risk
factors even more so that are associated with gun violence,
like poverty and depression, and we need to also understand
(17:06):
resilience or protective factors that guard against gun violence, like
young people having access to trusted adults. We need to develop, implement,
and evaluate how we can reduce the risk factors and
build resistance among communities, and we need to think about
(17:29):
institutionalizing prevention strategies at work. To enhance the US's public
health response, we need surveillance, and this costs money. Congress
did provide twenty three and a half million dollars to
basically looking at surveillance across all fifty states. However, we
(17:55):
need more money because actually, for many, many years, it
was not legal to research gun violence. That was actually
something that was legally prohibited via the CDC, and it's
only just recently that we've been allowed to conduct any
(18:16):
sort of research, and so we are way behind on funding.
Funding would allow more research, and that information that is
collected would allow us to develop what laws would help
us in preventing gun violence. For example, there is almost
(18:36):
no credible evidence that right to carry laws increase or
decrease violent crime. There is almost no empirical evidence to
support dozens of violence prevention programs for children. There is
no data on the effects of different gun safety technologies.
On violence and crime, or the link between firearm policy
(19:00):
and suicide behavior. This is why more research needs to
be done to investigate what is working and what is not.
Common sense gun policy needs to be initiated. Background checks
criminal background checks for all firearm purchases, including those sold
(19:23):
at gun shows and on the internet, need to be done,
but currently, unlicensed private firearms sellers are exempt from conducting
criminal background checks on buyers at gun shows or over
the internet, which gives felons and someone who actually does
(19:44):
have severe mental illness and others who are prohibited from
owning firearms access to weapons. In March of twenty twenty one,
the US House of Representatives passed a bipartisan Background Checks
Act which does expand background checks for all firearm purchases
(20:04):
with limited exceptions. This allows family members or law enforcement
also to petition a judge to temporarily remove a firearm
from a person deemed at risk of harming themselves or others.
Sixteen states and Washington, d c. Have laws authorizing courts
(20:28):
to issue this what's called extreme Risk Protection order. We
need to incentivize all states to have such an order
because at the end of the day, if you note
that someone is talking about harming themselves or others with
(20:49):
a gun, you should be able to call the police
and have the gun removed for their own and for
others protection. By basically research and then addressing the gun
violence issue, I do believe if we treat this as
a public health concern that we can make a difference
(21:10):
in the number of gun deaths, either self harm or
harm of others in this country. Do you have a
problem I can help with? If so, email me yet
How can I help? At senecawomen dot com. All centers
remain anonymous and listen every Friday too. How can I
help with me? Doctor Gale Salts
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.