Salvador Ramos, 18, who killed 19 children and two teachers inside a Texas elementary school on Tuesday, had announced on Facebook 15 minutes before the shooting that he was going to carry out the attack, State Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement.
The high school student used an assault rifle, an extremely deadly weapon, the governor added. There were no other warnings in his Facebook posts, the governor clarified. The sheriff’s assistant lost his daughter in the school massacre. A border patrol officer shot and killed the perpetrator of the massacre inside a school classroom.
“There was no known history of mental health problems for the gunman, nor did he appear to have a criminal record,” the governor told a news conference.
However, the perpetrator “was bullied for his stuttering” and “gradually became more violent”.
The profile of the young man
“Light” in the profile of the young man who brutally ended the lives of 19 children and 2 teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas is given by the testimony of a former classmate with whom Salvador Ramos is said to have kept in touch, still and after leaving school. According to the young man, who spoke to CNN, on condition of anonymity, he revealed that Ramos was being bullied at school for his clothes, and for the fact that his family was poor. “He avoided going to school and slowly stopped altogether. “He came very rarely,” he said characteristically.
These events made him lonely and over time he became more and more violent.
Friends and relatives talk about a lonely teenager with a difficult family life, who throughout his childhood was bullied for a speech problem. As the years passed, Ramos erupted with more and more violence to his peers or strangers.
Τhe “causes” of the massacre
We all know now that the effects of peer violence increase as social inequality, extreme poverty, and social inequality in general increase. In Western societies it is documented that social inequalities are dramatically exacerbated. Bullying, which is the systematic practice of violence between two unequal children or one or more children, with the aim of using force to validate the position of power, has always existed. But what is shocking is that in American society, young people have very easy access to deadly offensive weapons.
In the past we have seen bullying but they did not have that particular cruelty in the violence that leads to the brutal deaths of innocent children – which had nothing to do with bullying- in order to “kneel in pain” a whole society. The new generation, is a generation that has been given the message that, “you have no future” and always based on the socio-economic conditions that prevail and in which today’s teenagers grow up.
The value of life and the solutions
The current generation only has to recall in their minds the danger at school or insecurity at home due to poverty. They remember financial crisis, health crisis and war. The value of life in this generation is beginning to lose its positive sign. Getting to the point where a teenager kills innocent children unknown to him to avenge the society that did not support him and rejected him is extremely problematic.
It goes without saying that access to arms acquisition should be tightened. However, all forms of bullying can not occur in a school and student community, respectively, which promotes a climate of respect for rights, respect for diversity and the prevalence of a democratic culture.
When we refer to a school community whose members are disconnected, where there is indifference, racism (please read the analysis titled “Racism: The “Open Wound” of the USA And What Should be Corrected?“) and a highly competitive climate, when it is not framed by psycho-social services, then obviously there is room for all kinds of evil flowers to bloom.
