On Monday, October 18, a 12-year-old boy, Dima, brought a Saiga rifle to a school in the village of Sars, Perm Territory, and started shooting. Fortunately, no one was hurt – the sixth grader surrendered to the headmaster. Dima, according to the teachers, is a calm, trouble-free child, he is friends with classmates, only one girl teases him – he decided to take revenge on her.
Dad’s rifle, they often have fun like a man – they go to nature and shoot at pieces of paper. The father says that the weapon is kept in the safe, as it should be. Why keep a rifle in a safe if dad lets his son shoot? You can ask, and dad will give. The juvenile serial killer Nikolai Dudin (“Furman’s Chikatilo”, “touchy killer”) also began by going with his dad to shoot and hunt. In 1987, his own father became the first victim of 13-year-old Dudin. Something offended.
Dima from Sars is a good student, at “four” and “five”. He brought the rifle, but he started shooting not at his abuser, but at the walls – to prove to his classmates that he was capable. They didn’t believe. Tenth-grader Sergei Gordeev from Moscow school No. 263 did even better – he claimed a medal, was preparing to enter MEPhI. In 2014, he opened fire for exactly the same purpose – to prove to his classmates what he can. His dad taught him. Only the bullets did not hit the wall, but the geography teacher and the police. He also took hostages – from mistrustful classmates. The weapon, of course, is the father’s. They tried both, both got off lightly – now they are free. But they went down in history. Sergei Gordeev – as the first school shooter in Russia who became a murderer.
Boys at the age, when they have not yet learned to pronounce the letter “r”, moms and dads give pistols with bullets and machine guns with a twinkle – the more they look like real ones, the better. More fun to play. After all, as the teachers say, the child learns life in the game, he has such a need – therefore, it is necessary to satisfy. I killed you, you killed me, fell down, lay down and went to play again. In computer shooters, you don’t need to fall, just sit on a chair. There are several lives left, and if you run out, you just need to wait until a new life grows back.
Death is an element of the game, you also want to taste it. A fake death from a fake machine gun. But at some point, when death in the head of a teenager is still not quite real (although, of course, he is no longer an infant, he understands with his mind, but emotionally – not quite), a real weapon from his father’s adult world turns out to be in his hands. Where is the age line, where is the criterion by which it can be determined that a 12-year-old or 14-year-old child is fully aware: his act will be irreversible, he will destroy the life of himself, his parents, the offender-classmate or teacher will lie in the blood and will never get up again, like in a child’s game?
Pennsylvania’s 11-year-old Jordan Brown, who shot his father’s pregnant fiancée in 2009, simply didn’t want him to marry her. A completely understandable desire for a child left without a mother. I solved the problem exactly as I would have done in the game – removed the obstacle. But on that fateful night in his hands was not a toy machine gun, but a real shotgun – a gift from his dad. Probably, now the dad is visiting his son in prison – he became the youngest American to receive a life sentence.
Children can play for a very long time. To play not for entertainment and leisure, like adults, but to live by playing. The underground organization “Fourth Empire”, or “Fourth Reich”, in 1943 united Soviet high school students, Komsomol members, children of high-ranking officials. They called each other Gruppenfuehrer and created a “secret government of the USSR” not to overthrow the Soviet regime and swear allegiance to Hitler. They played in a secret opposition – the center teenagers, darlings of this very Soviet regime. The game ended when the 15-year-old son of the People’s Commissar of the Aviation Industry, the “prime minister” of the “secret government”, Vladimir Shakhurin, shot and killed the diplomat’s daughter, his classmate Nina Umanskaya, and committed suicide. His friend and accomplice in the “empire” was the son of the deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars Anastas Mikoyan. The teenagers of that era knew a lot about weapons, they were a cult value, and the game of war was a noble and encouraged ritual of introducing the Chapaevs and Shchors to the wonderful world.
Each school can be fenced off with a blank fence with barbed wire on top, and Rosgvardia posts can be set up near the offices. But harmful classmates and evil teachers will sooner or later enter the unprotected space. You can prohibit hunting, remove firearms from private circulation – but if you wish, you can kill with a slingshot. It is possible to prohibit computer shooters – but, for example, in Canada, the first case of mass murder by a schoolboy of his classmates occurred back in 1975, when there was not even Tetris.
Of course, there are pathological personalities, including among children. It is, rather, not a police problem, but a medical problem, and it must be solved in special ways. But in many cases, school shooting is not a school problem, but a family problem. A family that encourages brutal fun and forceful question-solving techniques. The problem of a house in which a firearm – a device designed exclusively for murder – a toy or a real one, has its place of honor, even in a safe. If adults find this style acceptable, they must be prepared for the consequences. It is a pity that sometimes even such as Dima and Sarsa – calm, friendly children – have to be responsible for the mistakes of their parents.
The author is a columnist for the Izvestia newspaper
The editorial position may not coincide with the opinion of the author
#Games #adults