A few years ago my sister called me, panicked, and she said that she was worried that her step-son might become a school-shooter.

At this time, my sister lived with her then-husband, my brother-in-law, who a large collection of guns, and who also had a serious drug problem.

Ian left rifles and pistols all around the house… on the kitchen table, on the couch… He even an AK-47 (which I shot one Christmas).

The step-son was getting into trouble at school, my sister said, and she had found him (12 years old) in bed with his younger cousin (8 years old).

I was frankly kind of confused by the subtext that my sister—who usually doesn’t call me out of the blue, or at all—had wanted my advice, it seemed, about the kids’ same-sex playing-doctor situation, I guess because I as the gay brother would have some insight?

The whole back story about my brother-in-law and his son needs to be explicated in another draft of this story. For years, I was led to believe that they were brothers. I’m still frankly not sure if my sister was fully aware of the truth. Also for what it’s worth Ian was one of the gang of guys, whom I had researched back when I was 16 doing my immersive journalistic project…

In any case, I think that the history of Latin America can help to make sense of the U.S. school-shooting phenomenon. In Mexico and in Argentina, several times, right-wing dictatorships have used paramilitary forces, trained by the CIA, to murder students. As Cavanaugh, Klein, and Falquet have argued separately, this has ideological benefits to right-wing regimes (atomizes the population, stifles dissent, firms up the state’s power).

The school-shooting is another thing. Not a directly organized conspiracy, by any means. But the logical and constant outcome of state policy. It’s like the free-market, invisible-hand, individualist version of murdering young people—and it serves the same ideological ends.

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