Guest Opinion: When trauma hits close, everyone feels it
by Edie Jones
All of us in Central Oregon have felt the impact of the terrible shooting that took place at the Silver Rail Elementary School. When trauma hits close, everyone feels it.
The classmates of the victims and the teachers who shielded kids, risking their own lives, are survivors. Their days ahead will be difficult. What will it take to help them regain footing and move forward?
In “The Scaffold Effect, Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant, and Secure Kids in an Age of Anxiety” by Harold S. Koplewicx, MD, he speaks to that question. He suggests that strength, resilience, courage, confidence and tenacity are what it takes.
If we think of surrounding our community with a scaffold, we can understand what the author means. A pillar of a strong structure is support, so when we support each other, we provide the bricks that help us survive the anxiety that invades us.
When trauma happens, we all need to scaffold ourselves so we can be there for others. Each of us needs to work through the grief and confusion with our own best coping mechanism. For kids, that might mean crying, staying quiet, asking questions or playing. Be alert to their needs, and you will know how to respond.
Today the anxiety in our small world is extremely high. Thank goodness for the counseling taking place throughout Bend and beyond. All of us need to share the grief we are feeling, providing communal care that brings us together for support
When adults model strength, resilience, courage, confidence and tenacity, kids learn what is needed. If we rant and rave loudly with no actions to back it up, we aren’t modeling the best ways for our children to handle situations. Research validates how patience, support and warmth help kids get through difficult times.
Patience helps us know what to do when everything falls apart. Using dispassion when crisis descends models and teaches kids how to handle their own emotions. The warmth of family gatherings and one-on-one time shapes how we respond to others. Take time to listen to your kids today and bring them into the conversation about what has happened. It helps them cope when they see you share your thoughts and feelings, and it lets them express fears about going to school or being alone.
When something like the school shooting occurs, it’s human nature to let up on rules and boundaries; however, it’s important to keep life as normal and stable as possible. This is a time when your kids need you to take charge. Keeping familiar limits helps stabilize their feelings.
As patience, warmth, awareness, dispassion and monitoring are established, courage, resilience, confidence and tenacity will develop throughout the community. With everyone helping each other, we will move forward and get past this tragedy.
—Edie Jones’ background includes owning and directing Camp Tamarack, serving as a professional Girl Scout trainer, working for 22 years at Together For Children as a parent educator and executive director, and holding a Master’s in Adult Education. She’s also the author of “Raising Kids with Love, Honor, and Respect: Recipes for Success.”
Another and another and another and another
It is far too easy to get your hands on a gun and kill people indiscriminately. It is also far too COMMON. Gun law advocates have fought tooth and nail to restrict allowed makes, restrict modifications, restrict ownership requirements — and all those restrictions absolutely reduce the possibility and impact of gun violence. But the only requirement to shoot someone is a gun, ANY gun, regardless of its capacity or fire rate. Americans will never accept a blanket gun ban; we aren’t moved by logic, or emotion, or evidence. I don’t know if a blanket ban is the answer — I’m at a loss for answers, at this point. The solution cannot simply be to add more security measures in our everyday lives, to install metal detectors and armed guards at our schools and movie theaters and parks and grocery stores and places of worship. That’s not the America I want to live in, controlled by fear and violence.
—Lily Wilcox
Bend shooting
The peace in our beautiful city has been shattered. The angst of high gas prices and groceries, the upcoming election, none of it seems to matter when we think of the teacher who has been killed and the young children who are no longer in the arms of family. Our gun culture has killed them and injured two other innocents in one of our schools.
We have a hero among us who prevented many children from being murdered. We want to thank him as every day we cry more tears than we have in a long time. And we also have among us many irresponsible gun owners. Or at the very least gun owners who haven’t been screened, haven’t been tested. Not every person is qualified to own and use a gun. Can we at least agree on that?
Can we agree that the NRA has created this American phenomenon of a gun culture, where even today many will enter a local gun shop, pull out a credit card and purchase a first or second or third weapon. More guns in our town. More people with mental illness or anger issues or simply some who are incompetent owning military-style weapons.
We have created this terrifying world that our children now live in. There are those who fight for better legislation, for common sense restrictions on gun ownership. I know you have your own thoughts and your own tears, but there is at least one action you can take today.
Give your support to Sandy Hook Promise or Every Town for Gun Safety. There are good folks everywhere working to make our country safer. There is work to be done if we care enough, really care enough to prevent another school shooting. Our tears must lead us to action.
We owe it to the children and young woman who died in Bend this week. It’s our town, our country. What do we want the future to be for our kids?
—Linda Spaet
How did this 16-year-old slip through the cracks?
The leadership of Cook and Kranz made a bad situation worse. The things we continue to learn about the killings at Silver Rail Elementary on Oct. 15 point directly to our superintendent and our chief of police’s lack of preparedness and poor response.
A 16-year-old is a minor and we must ask what interventions and adequate support for a minor at risk was given to this student? How did it fall through the cracks, a minor in distress? Furthermore, why were students and school nurses evacuated without their medications or monitoring equipment? If your child has asthma or diabetes you understand how this error in preparedness could have cost more loss of life.
To add insult to injury in the reunification center at Journey church, parents learn in the line to pick up kids that theirs was among the dead. Mike Kranz had 3 hours to find the parents and let them know so they wouldn’t have to find out about the horrible news in front of the whole school community.
It’s election season and everyone needs to earn our vote. Vote Blue without results is a thing of the past.
—Joanne Mina
Are we responsible enough for guns?
The heaviness felt in our idyllic little community is palpable. Bend enjoys a privilege of safety most cities dream of. Yet again it was shattered by senseless — and completely preventable — gun violence.
We need to accept a grim reality — America is not evolved enough to SAFELY grant 2nd Amendment rights. This isn’t debatable. It’s factual, backed by horrific statistics. Annually, upward of 4,000 children and teens die from guns every year. Yet politicians continue to bow to gun lobbyists and firearm sales continue to grow — fueled mostly by sensationalist fear.
When will we have enough?
The so-called safeguards and systems in place to prevent Silver Rail’s shooting failed. Social services failed. Our government and elected officials failed. These children, families and our community paid the price. Until we can guarantee the very basic safety of children, we should demand stricter gun control. Currently only half of states require a degree of firearm “safe storage,” Massachusetts being the only that mandates locks when not in use. At a very minimum we should demand a universal locking mandate.
This is common sense regulation needed NOW.
Speak up. Make our politicians listen. Have difficult conversations with gun-owning friends and family.
VOTE. The safety of our children depends on it.
—Robert Jensen
School is closed today for grieving
School is closed today for grieving
Vigils are planned, inviting our candles and our useless tears
to mourn those forced on early flight from earth
Yesterday, just down the street, around the corner, bullets ripped, again,
through the tender bodies of school children,
another killer, a youth himself, already so much pain
to share, to spread, to shatter
You see the news, you nod your head, oh, how tragic, again,
But this was in OUR town, and, I looked it up, enough lives lost to qualify as a massacre.
A massacre of children here in the mountains.
Are we still going to make the Travel and Leisure top places to live in the United States?
Is it OK now that we’ve joined the ranks of Columbine, Sandy Hook, Flagstaff, Red Lake and Marysville?
Yeah, those last few, you might not even know
The news of a yet another school shooting is as common as the weather,
as the sun rising in the east
I have an idea
Instead of bringing our thoughts and prayers and broken hearts
Our useless tears, our sad murmurs, our patted shoulders, and low hung heads
Bring all the guns to the village square, we will meet you there
We will bring our blow torches, the fire of our forced futility, our furnaces of rage
We will invite the artists to come and work the molten metal
into a tribute that reaches up to the sky
up to where the slaughtered children have gone
They will make it ugly, brutal, a stain of shame
so big that it can be seen from the heavens
Right here in the middle of our town where we hold our numb vigils
A reminder to all of what we’ve done with our loophole laws,
our second amendment notions, our deadly politics and health care gaps,
And those now looking down can see, too late, our deep and hideous regret
Maybe in your town, you can gather them up before your children die,
and make something beautiful instead
But here, today, at least school is closed for grieving.
—M.M. Andre
Without Measure 114, Oregon’s gun laws remain a C+
Following the tragedy at Silver Rail, there have been multiple news organizations that have cited Everytown’s ranking of Oregon having the “12th” strongest gun laws in the country. Similarly, Giffords grades Oregon as a B+. These grades are simply incorrect because they are ranking Oregon on laws that are not in effect. In reality, Oregon’s gun laws remain a C+. In 2022, Oregon passed ballot Measure 114, which required permitting, banned high capacity magazines commonly used in mass and school shootings, and required safety training before the purchase of the firearm. This was brought to the ballot by Oregon voters, passed, and should be in effect today. Research from Johns Hopkins University has shown that hundreds of lives would have already been saved in Oregon had Measure 114 been in place. Instead, the law is still tied up in court, with the lawsuits backed by out-of-state gun industry lobby groups. When you report on Oregon gun laws, please reflect actual laws in effect today. Many Oregonians believe Oregon already has a waiting period and full background checks. In reality, we have no waiting period and today, a gun can be transferred from a dealer to a buyer after three days if the background check has not been completed. The data show over and over that states with stronger gun laws have fewer school shootings. Without Measure 114, Oregon’s gun laws have long been ranked a C+ (Giffords Scorecard Rank). This is where we remain today.
—Kat Baviera
Letter of the Week: Thanks to all who submitted their thoughts for this week’s Letters. Kat: Peter Madsen’s reporting on Sunday reflects the reality of Measure 114. Give it a look.
Given the heaviness in the air, it feels like the wrong time to be handing out awards, so no Letter of the Week this week. And to those looking for the election-related letters I promised I’d publish this week, I’m holding those for next week, just ahead of the election. This week, our community really wanted to share their lament.
—Nicole Vulcan
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