Why do young people turn to violence?
In a time when we worry about violence in our schools, businesses, churches, and public spaces, people often speculate about why others turn to violence. Why would a student bring a gun to school? Why would a coworker bring a gun to work? What drives people to senseless acts of violence against others?
Guard911 had an exclusive interview with Aaron Stark to discuss his experiences planning to be an active shooter. Aaron was saved from his own acts of violence by the humanity of others. He knows first hand what makes an active shooter.
I was almost an active shooter
Aaron shared with Guard911 how he lived a difficult and dark life but was saved by the simple kindness of others. This is his story in his own words.
“Today I have a beautiful wife and four wonderful kids. But thirty-five years ago, I was almost a school shooter. I grew up in a really violent, aggressive, and criminal household from my early days. Life with my birth father was like a Stephen King movie of extreme abuse. Then I moved from that to my stepdad where there was crack cocaine and crime constantly.
“This led to me believing that something was wrong with me. I thought I was broken and I was the reason why all this was happening. I thought I was the reason why we’re moving every couple of months and why the cops were always knocking on the door.
An unstable home led to violence and self harm
“And as I grew older, that lack of self worth really increased more and more. I went to between thirty and forty different schools. My parents were running from either the authorities or social workers or cops or getting evicted. This was the late eighties and early nineties, so it was easy to move from state to state and make up an entirely new identity until the record caught up with you.
“So their modus operandi would be to get a house in Colorado, get evicted from there, move to Oregon, lie about your job history, lie about your rent history, make up a whole new identity, put your kids in school without any records. And then six months later, everything’s been found out. Records have caught up to you. You’ve stolen from your new job. You get evicted again. Watch, rinse, repeat, bounce back and forth. That was kind of what we would do. So we were constantly moving from place to place. I never had any kind of stability. I was a fat, dirty, smelly kid growing up. I was both making fun of myself constantly, and I was making myself as toxic to be around as I could. I started self harming when I was around 12 or 13 years old, and that started as a way to kinda calm the waves of the chaos I was living in at the time.
“Starting about 14 years old, I became homeless. I couldn’t take it anymore because of the drug addicted violence of my home. I couldn’t live that fight or flight response constantly. So I started living on the streets. And I quickly developed a group of what I call disaster groupies. They were kids who kinda lived vicariously through my darkness.
“Quickly, it devolved into a bunch of kids navigating depression without any adult supervision. The conversations turned from regular movies and TV and women and quickly turned to murder and mass killing. So if you’re gonna shoot up a school, what would you do? If you’re gonna kill 10 people, how would you do it? And it became the fiction of the group. It was kinda like glorifying the destruction of my own life.
One friend made a difference
Aaron continues his story…
“It’s important now to bring in the other character in the story: this kid that I met when I was 12 years old. He was 10 and his name was Mike. Now Mike lived the polar opposite life from the life I lived. He had a very well-to-do family and a big four-story house. We met at a comic book shop. He lived at the opposite end of one of the blocks that I lived in. And we bonded immediately over comic books and deep conversation. We just hooked up and became really good friends. And so as I’m bouncing from state to state and living this kinda nomadic street person lifestyle, he became my home base because he never moved. He had full stability. So for a couple hours a day, I got to go be a normal kid with Mike.
“I was attending North High in Denver, but the only classes I ever went to were choir and English class. I never actually went to other classes. The choir and English teachers made me feel seen, but I never went anywhere else.
“I hit a low point when no one could help me at all and right then, I knew what I wanted to do. The plans crystallized in my head. I was gonna scream out and make everybody hear me.
“I was going to either attack the school food court and kill as many people as I possibly could and die by suicide by cop, or I was gonna go down to the mall and attack the mall food court and die by suicide by cop. And I worked through all those plans sitting there with those disaster group of kids. We’d already worked through it and talked it all through, so I knew what to do. I was calm. I started calming visiting people and basically saying good bye.
Human connection changes everything
“And so in that state, I went to Mike’s house, and I knocked on Mike’s door. And when I did, I was in tears. And he opened up the door, and he brought me inside. And he gave me food, and he gave me a shower, and he never asked me why I was there. He just kept on telling me I was a good kid. He kept on saying over and over again, you’re a good kid. And Mike knew intimately the hell I was living in.
“But he never asked me what I was there for. He just brought me in and treated me like I was a person. He was trying to act normal, I think. And for me, it was profound because when I knocked on his door, I wasn’t a human. All the humanity in me had boiled away. I was just a walking ball of nothing ready to explode. I was a void. I wasn’t just invisible. I was erased. And I wasn’t there to hang out with a friend. I was there to say thank you for my life, and I’m writing the last line of my book. And I’m closing it, and I’m done.
But he brought me inside, and I never left his house for a week. I think Mike just told his mom, ‘No, he’s not leaving.’ And he’s still my best friend to this day. Chokes me up every time I talk about it. He’s still my best friend to this day.”
If it weren’t for the kindness and compassion of one individual, Aaron’s story might have ended quite differently. Aaron Stark’s story stands as a profound reminder of the importance of simple human connection. Who could you reach out to right now and make a difference in their life?
If you want more information about how to safeguard the people in your care from life threatening emergencies, contact us at Guard911.
