Musings: School shootings affect so many
Watching former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy be honored by President Joe Biden with the Presidential Citizens Medal was another reminder that the gun violence epidemic’s victims are not just those killed by these weapons.
The medal was accepted on Jan. 2 by granddaughter Grace McCarthy, daughter of Carolyn’s son, Kevin McCarthy, severely injured at age 26 in the 1993 Long Island Rail Road massacre in Garden City Park. Kevin’s father, Dennis McCarthy, was killed. Carolyn, 81, became a passionate gun control advocate.
Children in schools today were born almost a decade after the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, and many of the survivors of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting are among the Newtown (Conn.) High School graduating class of 2025.
To these children, the constant alerts to a school shooting in some part of our country can lead them to be fearful of going to school, wondering if the day will come that they are destined to be one of the pictures they have lived to see on TV showing those schools’ victims.
It’s time for our state and federal governments to look at the mental health crisis we have seen in children today, and to specifically examine anxiety created around school shootings. This is an issue that should not — and cannot — be partisan.
The mental health of our future leaders is on the line. For the future of not just these children and their families but for the entire nation, we must ensure adequate funding at the federal and state levels to address the mental health crisis in this country.
— Jared Goerke, Plainview
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