Give A Boy A Gun - Twentieth Anniversary of Book by Todd Strasser - A Must Read for All Parents and Those Who Care About Children

The presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide fivefold.

“By state or region … for every age, for both genders, where there are more guns, there are more total suicides.”

Facts and Quotes

“The … cliques that rule American high schools are every bit as murderous as Harris and Klebold, only their damage is done in slow motion, over a period of many years, and fails to draw the attention of parents or teachers.” —a posting on the Internet 

“ ‘Every day being teased and picked on, pushed up against lockers—just the general feeling of fear in the school. And you either respond to a fear by having fear, or you take action and have hate.’ ” —Brooks Brown, a student at Columbine High who knew both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Rolling Stone, 6/10/99 

Several news organizations pointed out that the ratio of students to counselors at Kipland Kinkel’s high school was roughly 700 to 1.“Like most students, I lived in fear of the small slights and public humiliations used to reinforce the rigid high school caste system: Poor girls were sluts, soft boys were fags. And at each of my schools, there were students who lived in daily fear of physical violence.” —a posting on the Internet after Columbine 

“Outcasts loathed Columbine. With equal venom, they detested popular kids and an administration that in their minds kowtowed to the popular kids.” —Rolling Stone, 6/10/99 

“How many kids ostracized, humiliated, and assaulted in American high schools, like the survivors of Columbine High, are left scarred for life? How many commit suicide every year? So long as some kids go out of their way to make high school hell for others, there are going to be kids who crack, and not all of the kids who crack are going to quietly off themselves.” —a posting on the Internet

More than 50 percent of male youths say it would be easy to obtain a gun. 

“I went to three [high schools], and in none of [them] did I for a moment feel safe. High school was terrifying, and it was the casual cruelty of the popular kids that made it hell.” —a posting on the Internet

 “Most of the attackers in the recent cases had shown signs of clinical depression or other psychological problems. But schools, strapped for mental health counselors, are less likely to pick up on such behavior or to have the available help.” —New York Times, 6/14/98 

In 2016 the United States led all high-income countries in firearm deaths among its youth. The rate in the US was 36.5 times higher than in a dozen comparable countries. —CNN

“The hallways erupted in screaming, terror- stricken pandemonium as students realized this was … another, increasingly familiar scene: a student with a gun.” —USA TODAY, 5/21/99

In today's world, we can easily guess what a book will be about with a title like, Give A Boy A Gun. But 20 years ago, when Todd Strasser first published the book, I was fascinated by the fact that assignments were made to create book trailers for the story! I was pleased to see them and picked out a few to include with this article. To me, it is quite telling. What about you?

In an interview for the Velshi Banned Book Club, the author points out that, yes there were some concerns about guns, but that most of the time, it was caused by students who were actually attending that school. And caused by student bullying. While since then, there is no such connection for school shooting. There is simply a mass shooting epidemic that has sometimes had no connection to the location where the shooting occurs!

Still, Give A Boy A Gun, is an excellent story based upon just how some students become dominant, many times this group is made up of athletes or other students active in social events. The key question, though, is why do those dominant, or popular, students decide to bully classmates?

The book moves from excerpts of the associated suicide notes and the interviews with students related to the two individuals who came to school with guns--and more! Both the 8th and 9th grades were reviewed.

More of Eighth Grade: I thought I knew Gary better. We sort of went together on and off for nearly two years. It’s obvious now that I didn’t know him. Not really. I knew he had that whole other thing with Brendan. Sometimes it almost felt like they had their own language. They each just seemed to know what the other was thinking. But now it’s obvious he hid a lot. Not just from me, but from everyone except Brendan. —Allison Findley  

Until Gary came into the picture, I think I was Brendan’s closest friend. I can’t say I was really sorry when that changed. By then I’d gotten to know some other girls who were like me—quote, unquote “outcasts”—and we were trying to have a life in spite of all that cliquey weirdness at school. I don’t know why, but Brendan couldn’t get past the weirdness. He was more fixated on it. It was almost all he would talk about. I was trying to get away from it. He just wanted to keep looking at it under a microscope.—Emily Kirsch. 

 Gary and I got into my mom’s car one day. It was parked in the driveway, facing the garage. Gary sat behind the wheel, and I was next to him. He put his arm around my shoulder, and we just pretended we were driving somewhere. We were staring at the garage door with big flakes of white paint peeling off it, but in our minds we were going through the desert. Gary had done that once, so he was talking about cactus and sun-bleached bones and jackrabbits and hot sun. I leaned my head on his shoulder, and I could see it all in my mind. The two of us, all alone, driving through the desert, a million miles away from everything. Just sagebrush and creosote bushes and burned reddish cliffs. A trail of dust flying up behind us. Gary pulled me close and kissed my hair, and it was one of those really happy moments. I guess it was about as close as we ever got to blissful puppy love. Ha, ha! Then Gary stopped. I looked up and saw that he was staring into the rearview mirror. I turned around, and Deirdre Bunson and Sam Flach and a bunch of other kids were in the street, pointing at us and laughing. I wanted to die. Gary did too. He couldn’t even turn around. He just slumped down in the seat and stared at that stupid garage door and the peeling paint. It was like they’d just stuck a knife in his heart. Sometimes Gary and I could escape into that world where no one bothered us or laughed or made fun. But it never lasted long, and then it was like waking up from a dream and facing the cold, bald truth that it wasn’t real and never would be. For the popular kids the dream was real. They lived it. They never had to be afraid of waking up. —Allison Findley

Ninth Grade: It started to change at the beginning of ninth grade. I went away with my parents for two weeks in August, and Brendan and Gary stayed home and just hung with each other. When I got back, it was different. I can’t exactly explain how, but I felt it. There was something dark in Brendan. I don’t know where it came from. Whether it had always been inside him, or whether it just started to grow because of the way people treated him in school. —Allison Findley 

Gary wasn’t always like that. When we were in eighth grade and some big jock would body-slam us into a chalkboard or rip the pocket off our shirt, we’d be pissed, and we’d grumble about how we’d like to kill this guy and kick his face in. The thing was it was all sort of make-believe wishful thinking...

In many ways, the book is written as if it was a police file of what happened. Readers get to know the characters through their own notes or through the response to questions from classmates. Frankly, it is not an easy book to read. In fiction form, we would be able to separate our lives as well as the involved students from the actual reality of the events. In the book, Give A Boy A Gun, the stark reality of the shooting is so real--in one way, even more real than seeing the hundreds of news videos that show us what was occurring. Knowing students' named, their thoughts, feelings...and pain, forces us to absorb the lives of those who are no longer living into our minds...and hearts...

No matter how you feel about the Second Amendment, in my mind after seeing so many killed through the use of a gun...and, if I remember right...all of them were just boys... Boys that had no real awareness of what he or she might have caused through their bullying... Or, because guns had become some type of symbol for them that led it to be available at such an early age, that even their minds have not yet matured enough to know and understand... and... control their thoughts... and actions! This book needs to be shared with teens--boys and girls. And, NOT banned by those that are using guns as a political issue rather than an epidemic caused by manipulation of our children... Just my personal opinion, of course!

Read this book... Share this book... Vote for Gun Control to keep guns out of the hands of our children... and to keep all of our children safe!

GABixlerReviews

Maya Angelou Presents Inaugural Poem

Inaugural Poem

by Maya Angelou

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
 

Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.

They hear.
They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind.
Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers--desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours--your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need.
Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.

Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.

Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

---

Poem by Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson, was an Pulitzer Prize-winning African American poet. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 8 1928 and died in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on May 28, 2014. Angelou was also a dancer, an actress and a singer.

Her most prominent works include I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which documents her childhood, and The Heart of a Woman. She won multiple awards and honorary degrees throughout her life. She was awarded the Quill Award for Poetry in 2006 for the poem 'Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem'. Angelou was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom - the highest civilian award in the United States - three years before her death. She won the NAACP Award for Outstanding Literary Work(Poetry) in 2007 as well as the BET Honors Award for Literary Arts in 2012.

Angelou was educated at the San Francisco Labor School, where she won a scholarship to study dance and drama, but left at the age of 14 to become a cable car conductor - she was the first African-American woman to do the job.

She gave birth when she was just 16 years old to her only child, Guy. To make money, she worked as a prostitute - something she wrote about in her work. In the 1950's, she worked as a professional dancer in San Francisco where she was convinced to use the stage name "Maya Angelou". After this, she worked at the Arab Observer in Egypt - where she was the sole female worker - before spending time teaching and writing in Ghana.

While her career is mostly remembered for her various writings, Angelou also spent time working as an actress, a film-maker and a producer. She starred in 'Roots' in 1977 and had a part in 'The Richard Pryor Special?'. In 1998 she directed Down in the Delta, a film starring Alfre Woodard and Al Freeman, Jr.

At the 1993 Presidential Inauguration, Angelou recited a poem from her And Still I Rise volume. She was the first African-American woman to perform at an inauguration.

Angelou is hailed as one of the most significant authors of her time, and is seen as a torch-bearer for African-American women. She received worldwide acclaim upon publishing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969 - a volume where she discusses how she is kept from freedom. However, her work has also been criticized for being controversial - for raising issues such as pornography - and some have even been removed from libraries.

Angelou was well-known for her civil rights activism and worked with both Malcolm X - who she first met in Ghana - and Martin Luther King. She aided X in building the Organization of Afro-American Unity until he was assassinated in 1964. King was killed four years later on her 40th birthday. Despite their deaths, Angelou continued to work in civil rights.The freedom with which Angelou wrote owes a lot to her legacy. She was considered influential for freely writing about her personal experiences - her seven autobiographiesopenly documented her life. Before her works, black women were often marginalized and unable to properly showcase their lives. Angelou's story of succeeding from poverty and struggle has left her revered both in her field and in society as a whole.