Reducing mass murders by focusing on children

Casey Gwinn, The San Diego Union Tribune

The debate rages in America this week about guns, mass shootings and mental health treatment.

Families in Roseburg, Ore., are burying their loved ones in the midst of inconsolable, grief, pain and heartbreak. President Obama has called for stricter gun control measures for the more than 300 million guns owned by private individuals. Others have pointed to inadequate mental health treatment for the estimated 57 million Americans with a diagnosable mental illness.

Statistics that inform the debate are being analyzed by many. Gun control advocates count 267 mass shootings in 2015 (four or more people shot in one incident, excluding the shooter). Another analysis counted 133 mass murders with a gun (four or more people killed in one incident, excluding the shooter) between January 2009 and July 2015.

Social media is on fire with the intensity of people’s beliefs and feelings. People demand protection of their Second Amendment rights. Others want guns outlawed. Everyone wants easy answers and there are none.

But most of the media focus and the public analysis misses this indisputable fact: The majority of the mass shootings in 2015 have been committed by men with a history of domestic violence against women or by men with a history of childhood trauma. The children of domestic violence and childhood trauma grow up to become the mass murderers of America.

We need to address the violent and abusive individuals who have access to guns. We need to address mental health treatment availability. But above all, we need to invest in trauma-exposed children with internalized rage from violence, abuse and abandonment issues. If you want to prevent mass murders, you need to intervene with the children who will later become mass murderers. Murderers are not born. Murderers are grown. And in America, we raise our killers at home.

The majority of all mass shooters in America grew up in homes with some mix of child abuse, domestic violence and/or drug and alcohol abuse. Though not all children growing up in homes with abuse become mass murderers, there is no question that focusing on trauma-exposed children should be one of our highest priorities.

Children of trauma grow up to repeat the generational cycle of violence and the “splash zone” of their rage produces mass murder. One recent study found that 57 percent of all mass murders involve a perpetrator shooting a spouse, former spouse or current or former intimate partner along with children, family members or others present at the time. The vast majority of the killers grew up in domestic violence homes.

If we want to dramatically reduce mass murders, let’s start focusing more on children and teens growing up with violence and abuse.

We can save the lives of many if we start addressing the internalized rage of children long before the rage of an adult opens fire on the next college campus. First, we need to identify the children with high levels of trauma. Second, we need to get trauma-informed counseling to the most troubled of those children and teens. Third, we need to work on giving every trauma-exposed child two things – a cheerleader/mentor and a viable pathway to a life without violence and abuse.

My passion is to prioritize camping and mentoring through our nationally recognized, evidence-based Camp HOPE America program for children who have witnessed domestic violence.

Our goal is to give children mentors and surround them with peers and healthy adults to cheer for them and encourage them toward lives lived without violence and abuse of others. And there are many other ways we can all invest in the lives of the most troubled children. Every community in America should focus more resources with these children. And don’t buy the lie that we cannot afford it.

We are spending millions to deal with each mass murder and billions to incarcerate the children of domestic violence homes when they grow up and populate our prisons after assaults, rapes, murders and mass murders.

We can afford to focus on the children. The only question is whether we have the will to do it before the next 267 mass shootings in America.

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