It's common to think of the kind of person who could shoot up a school as a monster, who must have been raised by the worst kind of parents. But maybe some of them were just mixed-up kids, whose own lives (as well as those of their victims) were destroyed because they were able to get access to guns. And maybe their parents were just doing their best, defeated by some combintation of adversity and their offspring's inscrutability. In this film, three parents of school shooters go on the record to speak about rebuilding their own lives in the shadow of their own grief and shame. All of them come across as essentially good people, and while I am sure there are others who could criticise their lives, the portrait of individuals made to shoulder a terrible responsibility by fate is compelling. It's also worth noting the absurd penalties applied by the U. S. "justice" system; one the shooters (perhaps not coincidentally, an African American), was sentenced to 114 years plus life in gaol. Of course there were other, "innocent" victims; but school shootings are rare outside the United States. There has to be a better way of organising society than to let such things happen, then locking up the perpatrators and throwing away the keys.
Review of Raising a School Shooter
