Letter to the Editor
To make progress in preventing guns from killing people we need to develop a plan to determine how people become dysfunctional.
We spend millions on forensic science to determine when and who kills someone. We spend next to nothing on applied behavioral science.
Over 60 years ago, a research team (Gluecks study) focused on children with behavioral problems from early grades through high school. As these individuals advanced through school they noted that their problems became more pronounced: bullying, noncompliance, withdrawing, low achievement, absences, dropping out or becoming delinquent.
Lacking long range and continuous intervention services, these students received lectures, detention, notes to parents and ultimately expulsion (Florida shooter). It is like punishing a child who gets sick because he was not vaccinated.
Background checks identify dysfunctional people, but services are not rendered. Energy, time and money defining guns is skirting the cause at a terrible waste.
Let us get started, and it begins with the family.
Mark Matulich
Spokane
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