After Madison shooting, Baldwin backs social media limits; would-be school shooter calls for better parent-teen communication
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- After another American school shooting, there's a renewed conversation about how to prevent future tragedies. Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin on Wednesday said tighter gun laws and new restrictions on social media would make a difference.
For one man who said he once considered carrying out a school shooting three decades ago, the most important preventative measure is improved communication.
Aaron Stark, 46, lives in Arvada, Colorado and serves as an honorary board member of the group, We Are Many-United Against Hate. Stark said in an interview Wednesday he suffered through an abusive childhood.
Living most of his life in Colorado, he recalled the calls he got on the day of the Columbine High School shooting in April of 1999. That day, two students killed 13 people before killing themselves.
"While [the Columbine shooting] was happening, my phone was blowing up with people both in Denver and Oregon to make sure I wasn't the one attacking the school," Stark said. "They wanted to make sure it wasn't me doing the attack."
Stark said what prevented him from going through with his plans for a school shooting a couple of years before Columbine was what he expected to be a final visit to his friend's house.
"My friend brought me inside and treated me like I was a person, and for the first time in years, I was treated like an actual human worthy of respect," Stark said. "I felt like I was not only invisible, I was erased. I was just a stain, and to have someone actually see me as person in pain that deserves love, it saved my life."
What's different from the '90s, however, the proliferation of internet forums and social media where teens on the brink can more easily find content and communities that encourage violence.
"They're finding [affirmation] in these toxic subgroups," Stark said. "The groups on X, the different forums. They're finding it there. They're finding it where the person is saying, 'Yeah, you can be good, but to be good, you have to be terrible to that person.'"
In an interview Wednesday, Baldwin said she believed Congress could play a role in restricting adolescents' access to online content that glorified mass killers. She acknowledged it's a tricky balance between obeying First Amendment freedoms while moving to protect teens.
"The algorithms that drive content to children...that idolizes self-harm or harm to others," Baldwin said. "We should be able to pass legislation to rein that in or to ban that."
Baldwin suggested lawmakers could also pursue federal age restrictions on when young people can create social media accounts without their parents' permission.
"Look at what some other countries are doing in terms of restricting access to social media to minors," Baldwin said. "Making sure that parents have a greater role in knowing the content that their child is looking at, much better guardrails than we have."
A Reuters analysis found numerous other countries have enacted age-based restrictions on social media. Australia's outright ban on the use of social media for kids younger than 16 will take effect in a year.
In France, social media users younger than 15 need parental consent to access the apps. The country has encountered challenges in enforcing those restrictions. German teens younger than 16 are required to have parental consent.
Baldwin added she supported requiring background checks on the private sale of firearms and "red flag laws" that allow courts to order the temporary confiscation of guns from people deemed a threat to themselves or others.
Spokespeople for Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Reps. Glenn Grothman did not return messages this week. A spokeswoman for Rep. Bryan Steil said he was not available for an interview.
Stark said he believed government bans and restrictions at home were not the most effective way to prevent young people from going down a rabbit hole of violent content.
"Because that's gonna defeat the entire purpose. You don't want to go in there and say, 'Well all these things are bad, you need to avoid all these things.' Be fluent in it," Stark said. "Learn their language. Go onto the same sites they are. Learn the things that they're learning."
Stark maintained parents, guardians and other relatives can do a lot more good when they're able to speak to teens in their own language.
"I would say to be as open and honest with your kid as possible," he said. "And try your best to learn everything about what the kids are learning. Remember to treat your kid with respect and as a human, and not as an object."