commentary by Patrick H. Moore
The high school “shooter on a rampage” syndrome struck again on Friday when alleged shooter Jaylen Fryberg, a freshman at Marysville-Pilchuk High School 30 miles north of Seattle, walked up behind his cousins and a girl who had rejected him and opened fire with what is reported to have been a legally-registered 40-caliber Beretta handgun, shooting five students, killing one and wounding three critically.
Curtis Skinner of Reuters reports that “a school district official, who declined to be named, identified the shooter as Jaylen Fryberg, a freshman described by classmates and parents as a popular member of both the wrestling and football teams.”
“He came up from behind and had a gun in his hand and he fired about eight bullets…They were his friends so it wasn’t just random,” student Jordan Luton told CNN.
Greg Botelho of CNN writes describing the halftime scene at an October 17th football game between Jaylen’s school and Arlington High School one week earlier:
“There stood Fryberg, looking dapper in a tie, vest and sneakers, with his long hair tied up tightly. A schoolmate noted Fryberg played football and planned to try out soon for wrestling; then people in the stands applauded him, with enthusiastic whistles and yells of admiration thrown in for good measure.”
It was the sort of scene high school kids dream of; Jaylen had just been named the freshmen class’s “Homecoming Prince”, and his peers were applauding him enthusiastically.
Yet one week later, Jaylen has permanently ended the dreams of one his victims, a ninth grade girl whom he shot and killed, because he was angry that one of the victims wouldn’t go out with him and had begun seeing his cousin.
At a deeply emotional community vigil on Friday evening at The Grove Church in Marysville, hundreds of parents, students and community members packed the aisles holding flowers and weeping.
Outside the vigil, 9th grader Bella Panjeli said she attended a different school but was friends with one of the female victims, calling her “a beautiful girl and so, so sweet.”
Bella explained that Jaylen was in an ongoing dispute with his victim cousin over the deceased girls affections.
“I heard he asked her out and she rebuffed him and was with his cousin,” Panjeli said, adding that she learned of the connection after talking to the victim’s family and friends. “It was a fight over a girl.”
Thus, at this point, the available information suggests that the girl’s death, Jaylen’s death (he eventually turned the gun on himself), and the injuries sustained by four other students, three of whom are critically wounded, all were triggered by Jaylen’s juvenile heartbreak coupled with intense jealousy.
If the situation wasn’t so tragic, it would almost be funny. I mean, c’mon, didn’t most of us suffer high school heartbreak at one time or another? Of course we did. I remember being so lovesick over B, the sweet object of my affections, that she was all that I could think about for weeks, perhaps months, on end. I clearly remember attending a school function with the lass most lovely and to my shock, her former boyfriend, who I knew slightly, showed up with another cool dude and they hung around for an hour or two making us all feel uncomfortable.
On another occasion her ex showed up at school dead drunk (those were the days, my friend) and B, with a grave look of concern, ignored me completely and raced to his rescue.
I can’t say that I ever fantasized about gunning down my rival and I certainly never considered shooting Sweet B in the back of the head. Furthermore, at that point I was basically the new kid in town and certainly was not nearly as popular as Jason was at his high school. As for the ex, I have no idea what he thought but he appears to have fought off any urge to pick up a gun and come after me or Sweet B.
According to the available reports, Jason, who like virtually all kids these days was active on social media, gave no indications that he had been planning such a rampage. Three days before the shooting, he did tweet concerning his despondency over his lack of romantic success with the girl he ultimately murdered:
“It breaks me…It actually does…I know it seems like I’m sweating it off… But I’m not.. And I never will be able to.”
So what’s the difference? Why did Jaylen snap? He surely didn’t “love” the girl he killed any more than I “loved” Sweet B. Obviously, he was prideful and felt humiliated, but haven’t we all been there?
The difference is actually fairly simple and horribly mundane.
It seems that Jaylen, who was a Native American and a member of the Tulalip tribe, which runs a casino in Marysville, was also “an avid outdoorsman who liked to go hunting and had guns. Just three months ago, he posted a picture to Instagram of himself holding a rifle, along with the words: “Probably the best BirthDay present ever! I just love my parents!!!”
So there it is, my friends. Jaylen was a member of contemporary gun culture which made it easy for him to grab a gun while in the throes of jealous frustration.
It is noted that fellow student Jason Luton reports that Jaylen got into a fight with someone who “said something racist to him” a few weeks ago. According to another source, “there was bullying involved and a couple words said towards him that he obviously didn’t like.” What happened is unclear but it is reported that Jaylen was suspended from school over this incident.
Now if Jaylen had used the Beretta on the alleged racists it would still be 100 per cent wrong but perhaps a bit more understandable. But he didn’t. He used the Beretta on two of his cousins, the girl who rejected him, and two other girls who were also his peers. In a sense, he lashed out at those he was closest too.
“All of the victims of the shooting were under 18, and three were in critical condition with gunshot wounds to the head, said Joanne Roberts, chief of medicine at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett. The fourth wounded victim suffered less serious injuries.
Two of the wounded were boys and two were girls, hospital officials said. The boys, 15-year-old Andrew Fryberg, shot in the head, and 14-year-old Nate Hatch, shot in the jaw, were both in intensive care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle on Friday night, a spokeswoman said.”
Both boys were reportedly cousins of the shooter.
* * * * *
It’s not enough to simply say the shooting occurred because Jaylen was a member of contemporary gun culture. Why? Simple. Because contemporary gun culture is an integral part of our society and it is not going away. At this point it is as deeply ingrained in our culture as home, hearth, and family; cars, goals, jobs and ambitions; sex, drugs and entertainment; football, pop culture, fashion; it’s probably fair to say that in the eyes of a great many Americans, their right to have and bear arms is one of the three or four most important things in their lives, and wields great force in their psyches.
So what to do, my friends? It seems to me that a society that permits adults to be heavily armed and also permits children to have ready access to firearms needs to figure out how to ensure that these weapons are not used inappropriately. One possible first step would be to require that all incoming high school freshman take a class on Conflict Resolution. The fact of the matter is that when Jaylen got upset, the rational part of his brain shut down completely and the emotional side took over. He might as well have been Karla Homolka in the throes of her infamous rape-murder rampage with Paul Bernardo, a perfectly intelligent young woman who rational function wasn’t working AT ALL.
If you think about, in a sense, Karla wasn’t that different from Jaylen. She was driven by her emotions rather than her rational function. Teenagers, because their brains are not completely developed in the first place, have a severe need to put their emotions aside and learn to think rationally, particularly in times of crisis. We all struggle with this when we get upset, even as supposedly mature adults, but it’s even worse with kids.
So why are Conflict Resolution courses not offered as a matter of course to incoming high school freshman? Once again the answer is simple. For complex and probably self-serving reasons, our society does everything in its power to keep young people from learning to think critically and rationally. All they’re supposed to do is get the answers right in their math and science classes. Other than that, they’re supposed to remain blissfully empty-headed. Their truly human needs are ignored completely by our educational system. 
Somehow, as a society, we are deathly afraid of having our kids learn to actually THINK. I suspect it has something to do with money and politics and groupthink but this issue is not something I will attempt to unpack in this brief post.
Meanwhile Jaylen is dead and the girl who didn’t “love” him is dead and three other teens are critically wounded. All because Jaylen couldn’t think straight. Why? Partly because for some crazy reason the powers that be apparently didn’t want him to learn to be rational. And they don’t want you to think straight either, my young friends, so you better get that through your head. And because of this societal blind spot and refusal to deal with the real needs of young people, crazy rampages like Jaylen’s are just going to keep happening.