by John Walters
Think back to when you were in high school. Did you have a classmate who had the potential to be a Nikolas Cruz? I did.
My high school years were 1980-1984. I was lucky and blessed enough to attend an outstanding Jesuit high school in Phoenix. All of my classmates were young men and many of them came from the most affluent or privileged families in the Valley of the Sun (I think we had a Goldwater and an O’Connor while I was there). My parents, for the sake of disclosure, had jobs as a sheriff’s deputy and a legal secretary.
Anyway, even though the majority of us were clones in OP shorts and Ralph Lauren tops, we had one classmate who showed up at school each day in military fatigues. He was socially awkward and just seemed to have dead eyes (and I’m not naming him here, more than any other reason, because I’d really prefer that he not hunt me down and murder me). I don’t remember having too many conversations with him, though I was decent friends with his one and only friend, and I spoke to that boy enough to know that these two fantasized about carnage and paramilitary operations and were not the biggest fan of women (who had nothing to do with them).
Someone at the school should’ve noticed!
(They did; they expelled him)
Someone should’ve notified FBI about his violent videos!
(Someone did)
Someone should’ve been protecting students!
(They had an armed security guard on-site)— Medium Happy (@jdubs88) February 15, 2018
It was the early ’80s. I would never have thought to turn them in to any teachers and, besides, our teachers were smart enough to see this young man for himself. The difference between then and now, or the two major differences, I should say, are 1) he didn’t have access to automatic or semi-automatic weapons and 2) there was no social media.
Teens like Nikolas Cruz have been around for a long, long time. And one of the things that stands out about him is that he’d lost his mom (where’s dad?) but that a kindly family had taken him in and tried to help him find his way back. There WERE good Samaritans out there. He just snapped, which is awful. And he was able to legally purchase an AR-15, two years before he’s legally able to buy a beer, which is shameful.