It was day two at a new school. Thirteen-year-old Ty, a Tennessee middle-schooler, wanted to show his friends something. He told his teacher he didn’t want anyone looking in his backpack. According to ProPublica, he ended the day arrested.
Ty’s biggest comfort, his purple stuffed bunny, was in that backpack. So when his teacher asked him why not, he exaggerated: “Because the whole school will blow up.” New Tennessee law requires felony charges for anyone threatening mass school violence, seriously or not. And despite exceptions for kids like Ty, who’s autistic, they aren’t foolproof.
So, of the 18 kids arrested during the first six weeks of school in Ty’s county, one-third had disabilities. Why?
The adultification of Black youth. The criminalization of disability. The school-to-prison pipeline. And scapegoating, informed by misconceptions of why violence happens. t’s why people blame mental illness for mass shootings, even though statistically, mentally ill people are the victims, not perpetrators, of violence.
A complex web, from drug criminalization and gun lobbying to early behavioral indicators and systemic oppression, underlies mass violence. But in response to terror, policymakers offer Band-Aid solutions. People struggle to understand why horrible things like mass violence happen. So does Ty. When he passes his old school, he’s terrified. “Am I going back to jail, Mom?” he’ll worry. “Are you taking me back over there?”