Belleville gets a near miss on a school shooting

Belleville came dangerously close to receiving the hopes and prayers of the nation.

A teen upset about his relationship with a girl tried to fix things with his mother's handgun. The thin line that separated such a common teen event from becoming another mass casualty event should give everyone pause.

Five days earlier a teen shot up an art class at Santa Fe High School in Texas, killing 10 and wounding 13. His father and a football teammate said he was bullied, but a mom said she believes the motive to be her daughter's rejection of the high achieving but isolated young man.

Common teen problems. Teens for more than a century have been rejected by peers, by potential partners and bullied. Only in recent history have we seen them try to solve their problems by turning their high schools into battlegrounds.

We are hearing and will hear calls for gun control. Same with making parents responsible when their firearms are accessed by their teens.

But you have to wonder whether calls for massive action, legislation and spending will ever be as effective as individual actions.

The thin line was the Belleville teen's mom realizing her gun was gone along with her son. She called police.

Individuals can make choices about whether they allow guns in their homes. They can secure their weapons in a fingerprint safe. They can make sure the key is not on top of the gun safe or the combination written on a slip of paper in the center desk drawer.

Individuals can be parents and decide what they allow teens to put in their brains. Hours a day for years of bloody splatter as teens use massive weapons to blast apart opponents is not a logical path to mental health.

On the day when Belleville East and West High School teens should have been focused on their final exams, they instead were home Wednesday wondering how close they came to becoming the next cable news headline.

You have to wonder whether their unplanned day off was spent playing "Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition," or reading "Fahrenheit 451."

You have to wonder how they will spend their summer vacation.

This story was originally published May 23, 2018 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Belleville gets a near miss on a school shooting."