What happened in Vegas shows how much marginalised boys need nurture

My son’s obsessed with guns. Not weapons exactly – we’ve yet to get to that stage, but I fear it’s imminent after I showed him a shot of me in Vietnam, circa 2001 holding an AK47, which felt quite cool at the time, but whose history I now dare not ponder.

No, at the moment it’s fairly innocent, and concentrated on simply being more well-armed than his friends, whose own recent purchases saw him buy the latest make and model of Nerf gun from money earned from walking the dog. Fully automatic, its rebound power is such it was recently criticised in the press as an eye injury risk – an article I sent to Jonah’s phone but which I doubt he read due to his implicit belief in unnecessary maternal fussing.

But I am worried about Jonah because, as a kid with Asperger’s, he has a tendency to become obsessed with things, and I’m not sure I’m all that comfortable with his obsession with things that shoot. Last week’s Las Vegas massacre is why. I’m not without good reason. This kind of thing can happen anywhere.

I am a child of Hungerford, England.  Aged just 10 when Michael Ryan walked the streets, shooting indiscriminately at people from the school cleaner to the local bobby to his own mother. I feared for the life of my dog, Rosie, a golden retriever known for walking the streets to fetch bones from an indulgent butcher. I was right to be concerned. Ryan turned his ammunition on his own dog, which, when all the human casualties have been accounted for (he had, according to news sources, a strict upbringing, it was said) I cannot begin to fathom.

There is something in the power of weaponry that affects young men, particularly those who, for whatever reason are marginalised from society and feel that their problems are other people’s fault – a tendency that I’ve already began to see in my son, despite efforts to mitigate this and build his self-esteem.

Another story I have from Hungerford, a small market town on the Kennet and Avon canal, is one that is only significant to myself, but no less relevant for that, is of a lodger who lived at my mother’s house – an ill favoured, unpleasant man who collected Nazi memorabilia – perhaps too, on the autistic spectrum, with hindsight. When I challenged him once for failing to clean the kitchen we shared, he turned on me and grew violent. He only came at me with a kitchen knife, but I don’t doubt had he had a live weapon I would not be here to tell the tale. He was later found to be hiding stolen goods in our shed – and once, after he’d been evicted, we found a threatening note addressed to me, pinned to the front door with a knife.

Which goes to show that lack of access is no barrier to causing harm – a recent spate of acid attacks in our neighbourhood, East London, shows that disaffected men in any culture can weaponise their marginalisation. But I don’t worry that my son will become one of those youths – gang on gang retaliation, or power struggles with a different cultural flavour seem to be at the root of many of those.

But it’s guns that seem to draw his fascination, and there’s a clue as to why in his early upbringing. Much like sugar, in seeking to be a good, though inexperienced first time parent, I banned toy guns because I didn’t like them. Like with sugar, I completely and utterly failed in my mission to shield him from its malign influence. He’s still a sugar-crazed lunatic, given half a chance, and my early banishment of toy weapons backfired massively. Realising my mistake, I swiftly backtracked but it was too late. He was hooked. I have pictures of his, a small boy, armed to the teeth in sunglasses, a junior menace who I indulged with a side helping of caution. Some of his pictures in primary school were of crazed attacks, where stick drawn avatars of himself and his friends were victors in an arena of bloodshed and hangings. To be honest, I was a little concerned, but when everyone I spoke to told me not to worry, I began to think to think I may have been overreacting. But, like me, Jonah has a tendency to overreact. Nonetheless, I made him a gin cake at his request. I am changed my stance on guns and sugar. Making them a taboo only makes them more of a draw, I realise.

Indeed, it was also last week that my son got his first ‘detention’ at school, for flouncing out of RE after a discussion about the holy trinity caused him to get upset – his teachers were unclear about the exact trigger, but  either way, for all the great strides I’ve seen Jonah make of late in terms of maturity and social understanding, he does still have a capacity for flipping his lid in a way that is probably only harmful only to himself, but who knows, given the right circumstances? After all, we’re all capable of darkness, but surely we should not ignore warning signs, however innocent they may be? When I spoke to him about his ‘detention’- which the teachers actually called ‘finishing the work he’d missed after school’, by way of not making it sound so punitive – he took himself upstairs and fired round after round in an empty room, but I didn’t get angry. I calmly told him to pick up the bullets, and gave him a cuddle, and later, spoke to him about what I think the real trigger was – that he didn’t get voted for school council, which he was really keen to do. Jonah will learn to manage his disappointments, hopefully in a constructive way, by not being punished for his anger and disappointment, and learning to cope with the social marginalisation his condition creates. And I hope by therein lies to key to avoiding greater tragedy much further down the line.

But it’s important to recognise that aspie kids are often the good guys- sensitive, highly strung, brilliant, difficult- not dangerous. They aren’t sociopaths or psychopaths, and often lack the duplicity to be manipulative like many others with dark triad traits, though they can be easily frustrated, and, like my son, often angry. Which is why it’s really good he doesn’t have a weapon of mass destruction easily to hand (unlike other tyrants round the world). But really, it’s down to me, his dad, the school and the rest of society to make sure he doesn’t become so angry at the world, he turns his emotions on himself, or anyone else for that matter. Because when something like what happened in Vegas happens, and it can happen anywhere, we all need to have a look at ourselves and see how far we’re culpable, because it take a village to ostracise someone, but it takes a world of screwed up priorities to turn unhappy men into killers.

Edited 14 Feb 2018- I hate to say I told you so, but another school shooting happened, in Florida, where my mother lives, and to me, was practically a foregone conclusion. This boy needed help and by failing him, everyone he went on to hurt has been utterly failed.

From ‘broken child’ to mass killer – CNN

I went to the doctor recently about Jonah’s recent spate of angry outbursts at school, asking for CBT to help prevent problems further down the line. I was told that last time I asked for help, it had been triaged with his school’s SENCO and considered to be unnecessary. I don’t think Jonah will become a school shooter by any stretch of the imagination but he does need professional regulating his emotions and the evidence for CBT for autism is really good. Denying him this treatment may simply cause problems further down the line. All it takes is a lifetime of marginalisation and one mad moment, and all hell breaks lose.

The society that failed Nikolas Cruz should take a look at themselves before casting stones at a boy whose story may well have been cast in stone, so predictable it all is.